Instagram faces Global Outage (it is back now)

Here are the top trending news from the world of technology. News that we feel every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.

1)

Instagram faces Global Outage (it is back now)

Meta’s photo sharing platform Instagram was down for thousands of users on Sunday before the service was fully restored. Meta has confirmed the outage citing that a technical issue caused people to have problems in accessing Instagram. The social media giant did not reveal the number of users affected by this downtime but the outage tracking platform Downdetector claimed that nearly 1,00,000 people in the U.S, 24,000 in Canada and over 56,000 Britain were affected. Whether developing markets like China and India were affected by this outage is still not known.

2)

Elon Musk refuses to pay Twitter’s Office rents

Controversies have barely stayed away from Twitter ever since Elon Musk took over the microblogging platform. Now in yet another controversy, the tech billionaire has refused to pay the pending rents of Twitter offices located across different countries and cities. Media reports claim that over the last few months owners of Twitter offices in London, New York and San Francisco have filed litigations against the microblogging company for not paying up the rent. But what is really shocking is that while Twitter’s office rent keeps piling up, Musk reportedly recently said to an investor that he would clear the office rent ‘over his dead body.’

3)

China bans Micron Chips from big Infrastructure Projects

Chips manufactured by the American chipmaker Micron Technology cannot be used in big infrastructure projects in China due to security issues, according to new decree issued by the Chinese regulatory body The Cyberspace Administration of China or CAC. This move seems to be response to U.S government’s continuous efforts to rein down on Chinese companies access to American technology and the U.S markets. In October last year, the Biden administration rolled out an extensive control on Chinese chip export. Biden administration is also mulling ban on the popular Chinese video sharing app TikTok citing security issues.

4)    

Tiger Global in talks to invest in IPL team Rajasthan Royals

American VC giant Tiger Global is holding talks to take up a minority stake in the Indian Primer League team Rajasthan Royals. A report published by The Economic Times claimed that Tiger Global is planning to invest nearly $40 Mn in the IPL team at a valuation of $650 Mn. If the deal goes through then this will be a first of its kind deal where a popular VC firm will be taking up stake in the IPL team, laying out a precedent for other VC firms to follow. Tiger Global is one of the primary investors in the Indian startup space and is investors in several Indian unicorns. Rajasthan Royal is currently owned by the U.K based Indian business tycoon Manoj Badale.

5)

Neeva, once a potential challenger to Google search, is shutting down its search engine    

Neeva, which was once seen as potential challenger to Google’s search supremacy, announced last weekend that it finally is pulling down curtains on its search engine. The company’s co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan said that the it will now pivot into AI but did not shed much light on it. Launched in 2019 as an Ad free search engine, Neeva cited that its inability in building a substantial userbase as one of the reasons for closing its search engine. However, Ramaswamy and Raghunathan did not comment whether ChatGPT’s impact on the search engine market played a key role in expediating its decision.