Technology

Holiday News Dump Time: How Facebook, Uber and Elon Musk Will Spend July 4th

Sexting scandal at the company? Announce it on a holiday Friday!

Jul 3, 2014, 7:30 PM UTC

Re/code photo illustration; base image Lightspring / Shutterstock

That clapping you hear today is not World Cup related. It is the sound of the tech industry’s public relations staffers rejoicing over the pure deliciousness of a national holiday that falls on a Friday — the ideal time to drop news bombs they’d rather go unnoticed. I’m only half-joking.

To wit: Leo Apotheker’s resignation on Super Bowl Sunday, Scott Thompson’s ouster on Mother’s Day and even Steve Ballmer’s retirement announcement on a late summer Friday.

But since we really want you all to enjoy that pool time and BBQ on the 4th of July, we thought we’d get out ahead of the news today, and cover some of the events that could possibly, theoretically, hypothetically, come to light tomorrow:

Sheryl Sandberg will put out a press release saying that she’s decided to reverse course and will spend the remainder of the year totally leaning out (let’s grab an adult beverage, Sheryl!).
Yahoo will quietly acquire a company nobody’s ever heard of for $30 million dollars and shut down a few things you never knew it bought.
Google will announce coverage of the Euro banking crisis has been wiped clean from its search engine in Europe. It will also almost surely be facing more regulatory action in the E.U. over privacy violations, but, in other news, did you check out their 4th of July Google Doodle? Mind blown.
AOL will … Never mind.
Fab.com will pivot. Again. CEO Jason Goldberg revives his blog. (On behalf of U.S. tech journalists: Thank you!)
Apple will decline to comment.
Apple will launch a new ad on Sunday.
Elon Musk will quietly cancel weekend trip to Mars, head to Lake Tahoe instead.
Some big retailer, which was hacked 24 months ago, will choose Friday to announce the breach. Two Fridays from now, said retailer will declare that your personal info, which it promised was safe, is still safe, aside from your full name, address, banking information and Social Security number.
Facebook will change its privacy settings again, and introduce a new category for relationships: “Emotionally Manipulated.”
Amazon will finally follow through on its grand plan: Replace all of its warehouse workers with Kiva robots. In true Amazon fashion, however, the company won’t say exactly how many robots have been deployed.
Uber will publish a heated blog post justifying the surge pricing on Uber-delivered hot dogs.
Nest Labs will acquire a Japanese smart toilet company; works with Dropcam.
What starts out as a friendly backyard beer pong match between ~~rivals~~ old pals Reed Hastings (Netflix) and Brian Roberts (Comcast) will devolve into a fist fight. Both parties will deny it ever happened. Sources will tell us Hastings won.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will divulge that earlier this month, the Healthcare.gov website was down for nearly 72 hours (nobody noticed).
Sometime after the publication of this post, Microsoft will want to know why it wasn’t included in the 4th of July news dump.