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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday. - Amazon may have violated New York's whistleblower law by firing a worker involved in a protest over workplace safety, the state's attorney general said in a letter to the company. The letter also said Amazon's coronavirus safety measures are "so inadequate" that they may violate federal and state workplace safety rules.
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider that Google will "stagger" its return to offices as it extends work-from-home until June 1. Pichai said the experience of operating from home was giving Google an opportunity to reimagine the way the company works.
- Uber's chief technology officer has resigned following a report from The Information that Uber is planning to lay off up to 5,400 people to save costs. Thuan Pham, who joined the company in 2013, was one of the last remaining executives hired by ousted founder Travis Kalanick.
- Alphabet's Q1 earnings revealed Google Cloud generated nearly $2.8 billion in revenue this quarter, up 52% from a year ago. Analysts have said that they expect demand for cloud services to increase during the coronavirus pandemic as remote work becomes more widespread.
- Senator Josh Hawley asked Attorney General William Barr to launch a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon after a Wall Street Journal report alleged the company used third-party sellers' data to benefit its private label brands. Hawley said the company "has engaged in predatory and exclusionary data practices to build and maintain a monopoly."
- Tripadvisor is laying off approximately 25% of its workforce, the company announced in a statement Tuesday. More than 600 employees in the US and Canada as well as nearly 300 elsewhere in the world are losing their jobs as result, while some others will be furloughed.
- Facebook is hosting a virtual graduation on May 15 for the Class of 2020 featuring Oprah, Lil Nas X, and Simone Biles. The company is stepping up after graduation ceremonies across the US were cancelled due to the pandemic.
- Andreessen Horowitz has completed its first full venture round into a seed-stage European startup and backed a former Google security whizz. Optimyze Cloud CEO Thomas Dullien previously sold a startup to Google and was on its famed Project Zero security research team.
- British far-right activists have turned to Russian social media platform VK after being driven off mainstream platforms. Far-right agitator Tommy Robinson is trying to build an audience on VK after being banned from TikTok on Friday.
- The CEO of Banjo, a SoftBank-backed neighborhood-watch app, was revealed to have a hidden neo-Nazi past. Damien Patton was involved in a neo-Nazi group as a teenager and was convicted for assisting a drive-by shooting of a synagogue at age 17.
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