*By Jacqueline Corba*
Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai wasted no time Tuesday addressing one of the most vexing issues facing the tech giant.
"It came to my attention we had a major bug in one of our core products," Pichai said Tuesday. "It turns out we got the cheese wrong in our burger emoji."
Determined to be as transparent as possible at a time when tech companies are coming under increasing scrutiny for opaque terms of service agreements and data privacy concerns, Pichai owned up to another gaffe that surprised ー and may have tickled ー the crowd at Google's annual developers conference.
The beer emoji, often used alongside the burger emoji, appeared to defy the laws of gravity.
"I don't even want to tell you the explanation the team gave me as to why the foam was floating above the beer," Pichai said. "But we restored the natural laws of physics."
To be fair, given the breaches of data security, mounting concerns over the role of technology in our lives, and the ways Silicon Valley firms treat their employees and customers, these emoji mishaps hardly rate. But it provided a light-hearted way for Pichai to kick off his keynote speech at Google's I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif.
And emojis really matter to consumers, said Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia's chief emoji officer.
"Companies in the last year or so have figured out people love emojis," Burge said.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-leads-developer-conference-with-emoji-controversy).
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama says his new Cabinet will include an artificial intelligence “minister” in charge of fighting corruption. The AI, named Diella, will oversee public funding projects and combat corruption in public tenders. Diella was launched earlier this year as a virtual assistant on the government's public service platform. Corruption has been a persistent issue in Albania since 1990. Rama's Socialist Party won a fourth consecutive term in May. It aims to deliver EU membership for Albania in five years, but the opposition Democratic Party remains skeptical.
The Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into several social media and artificial intelligence companies about the potential harms to children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index as its stock rides higher on a cryptocurrency wave.
Ali Kashani, CEO of Serve Robotics, dives into their $63.3M acquisition of Vayu Robotics and how it's accelerating the future of autonomous delivery systems.
