Nick Bastone

<p>Another Google messaging app is about to bite the dust — this time, it's Google Allo.</p>

<p>According to <a id="bd4eec23-d084-35ea-a8c0-908354524310" href="https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/">  a report by 9to5Google </a> , the search giant's "smart" messaging app — which came equipped with Google Assistant — will be shutting down soon.</p>

<p>Google did not immediately reply to Business Insider's request for comment on the report.</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a id="baab1d66-e67f-3ce6-aa26-3c62e916c1ca" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-chat-could-succeed-2018-8?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Google is surprisingly bad at building messaging apps, but there are 4 reasons its plans to replace texting may work </a></p>

<p><a id="5535a57f-57b2-3c05-a6ec-dab14968cd4c" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-messaging-app-allo-2016-9?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Allo was announced </a> at the company's developer conference in May 2016, and after lackluster adoption, the company said in April 2018 it would be "pausing investment" on the app.</p>

<p>"The product as a whole has not achieved the level of traction that we’d hoped for,” Anil Sabharwal, vice president of product at Google, <a id="714aac62-188d-3d31-abe0-cf24632647c5" href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting">  told The Verge at the time </a> .</p>

<p>The decision to shutter Allo makes strategic sense, since the company announced — also in April 2018 — that it was working on <a id="e20672a7-25f4-3980-a5a5-f2b72e1ecb11" href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-chat-android-apple-imessage-iphone-text-messaging-2018-4?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  an ini </a> <a id="42a82196-14fc-3dd9-a65c-5c00ea8f6485" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chat-android-apple-imessage-iphone-text-messaging-2018-4?r=UK&amp;IR=T?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  tiative known as Google Chat </a> . Google Chat will be similar to SMS and Apple's iMessage, creating a new universal standard for text messaging for Android users known as rich communication services (or RCS).</p>

<p>Still, it's hard to ignore the difficulties Google has had launching a consumer messaging app throughout the history of the company. Once Google confirms the shutdown of Allo, it will join Google Buzz, Google Wave, and Gchat — <a id="d4eee9b0-36b4-311e-ae2b-885072e5562b" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-kills-google-talk-or-gchat-replaces-it-with-hangouts-2017-6?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  technically called Google Talk </a> — in the chat app graveyard.</p>

<p>NOW WATCH: <a id="48644983-6e7d-38f0-af87-11b0e0f41e02" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reason-virtual-reality-hasnt-taken-off-future-technology-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Here's why virtual reality still hasn't taken off, despite being around for nearly 2 decades </a></p>

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<p><strong> SEE ALSO: <span id="2ec27a16-4393-3aff-ac2c-bf7c7e5110e9" itemtype="link" itemscope="itemscope">  The 29 best tech companies to work for in 2019, according to employees </span> </strong></p>

Google is reportedly shutting down its Allo messaging app for good (GOOG, GOOGL)

<p>At <a id="d9acdf1c-720b-3008-adf9-495c29f1147c" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/a16z?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Andreessen Horowitz </a> 's annual Innovation Summit in November, a16z General Partner Angela Strange spoke about the history of the insurance industry and the tech companies that are helping to shape its future.</p>

<p>Strange explains the difficulties that incumbent companies face, which is why no new insurance company has cracked the Fortune 500 list since before World War II.</p>

<p>With the advent of new data analysis technology however, Strange is confident that the insurance industry is bound for a seismic shift. </p>

<p>"The innovation we’ve seen over the last three centuries [in insurance] isn’t going to be nearly as exciting as what happens over the next three decades," she said.</p>

<p>Chek out BI's recap of Strange's presentation on tech and the future of the insurance industry below ( <a id="146a06d9-14f2-359a-af0f-79b40696f889" href="https://youtu.be/Y34JChoVrzE">  you can also watch the full video here </a> ):</p>

<h1> We protect against our losses by sharing our risk, or pooling. </h1>

<h1> Farmers used to pool their crops at the end of their season. They would choose to give up a higher than average yield in good years, in order to mitigate loss in down years. And this is the fundamental concept behind insurance. </h1>

<h1> The first insurance market was actually a coffee shop in London. Helmsman would insure the content of their ships before going overseas. </h1>

<h1> The London Fire wiped out two-thirds of homes in the city and insurance went from a nice-to-have to a must-have. </h1>

<h1> Acquire customers, underwrite them, and manage claims — these concepts have developed, but have remained relatively the same. </h1>

<h1> Insurance is a $5 trillion market worldwide. </h1>

<h1> The government is also behind many other forms of insurance. </h1>

<h1> These major companies have all been around since before WWII. </h1>

<h1> Why hasnt there been more incumbents? Starting an insurance company is hard. </h1>

<h1> But the insurance industry is on its way to changing. </h1>

<h1> We’ve moved to a world where we can pretty much get anything we want on-demand. </h1>

<h1> The level of risk has increased so much that its forcing the industry to react more quickly. </h1>

<h1> The most exciting story in insurance is a data story. </h1>

<h1> New insurance companies are targeting niche groups. Next Insurance, for instance, has insurance specifically for yoga instructors. </h1>

<h1> There are also companies focused on the type of insurance. If you buy a hedgehog, for instance, you might want insurance for your hedgehog from Bought By Many. </h1>

<h1> If you have a home, you’ve probably had to fill out a form like this with 40-60 questions. </h1>

This Andreessen Horowitz General Partner talks about the tech companies disrupting the centuries-old insurance industry

<p><a id="7b19d4cd-3df1-3b56-a0e3-662f35c42b7f" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/boring-company?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  The Boring Company's </a> test tunnel near Los Angeles will open slightly behind schedule, but CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that the launch would involve more than just a hole in the ground.</p>

<p>"Boring Company product launch on Dec 18. More than a tunnel opening. Will include modded but fully road legal autonomous transport cars &amp; ground to tunnel car elevators," <a id="c6601ca5-e749-3cbf-a65c-4affa52a9b8a" href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070834865619259393?s=21">  Musk tweeted </a> .</p>

<p>In October, Musk tweeted that The Boring Company's first tunnel would be <a id="9bfc3903-176d-3fbb-af84-9a8287b0917f" href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tweets-that-the-boring-companys-first-tunnel-is-set-to-open-on-december-10-2018-10?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  ready to use on December 10 </a> , but he did not mention that the transport cars and "ground to car" elevators would be revealed as well. It's unclear if the tunnel and the cars will be available for public usage or if this will merely be a demonstration.</p>

<p>The tunnel revealed at the December 18 event will cover about <a id="434872a9-0ef9-3af6-afd4-30b23e37c7ad" href="https://www.boringcompany.com/testtunnel">  2 miles, beginning near SpaceX headquarters </a> in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. The company is also working on plans for a tunnel near Dodger Stadium, called the <a id="71f135de-a7eb-3012-a784-f6d08865d527" href="https://www.boringcompany.com/dugout">  Dugout Loop, </a> that would transport fans from nearby subways directly to the stadium.</p>

<p>The company faced <a id="92d06ded-88f5-3d56-a418-e8487eb56e3a" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-company-abandons-la-westside-tunnel-plans-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  one of its first major setbacks in November </a> after local groups sued the city of Los Angeles for exempting a Boring Company tunnel project from environmental regulations. The Boring Company subsequently agreed to withdraw its plans for that project, which would have consisted of a second 2-mile stretch, this time under western Los Angeles.</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a id="03f8373d-199e-3106-af96-faedadd6342a" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/la-traffic-shows-why-we-need-transportation-revolution-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  This picture of hellish LA traffic shows why we need a transportation revolution </a></p>

<p>For a company that " <a id="c00360b5-67d4-30f8-acb2-c7688e16d831" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-company-started-as-joke-la-tunnels-may-fail-2018-9?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  started out as a joke </a> ," Musk's tweet on Thursday makes his dream of a Los Angeles traffic-buster all the more likely to become a reality.</p>

<p>NOW WATCH: <a id="9ae96f44-e39e-34da-a44e-a11c39be83b8" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-self-driving-motorcycle-driverless-tech-2018-10?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Watch BMW's self-driving motorcycle accelerate, turn, and brake to a stop </a></p>

<ul><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-tech-scandals-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">The 18 biggest tech scandals of 2018</a> </li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-should-rescue-a-gm-factory-in-ohio-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">5 reasons why Elon Musk should rescue a GM factory in Ohio</a> </li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-roasted-by-nasa-for-smoking-weed-live-on-the-internet-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">'That was not appropriate behavior': NASA roasted Elon Musk for smoking weed live on the internet</a> </li></ul>

Elon Musk said the Boring Company will show off its first tunnel on December 18, including 'modded but fully road legal autonomous transport cars'

<p>Google is denying claims that it failed to alert temporary and contract workers about an active shooter that attacked YouTube's San Bruno, California headquarters in April, disputing allegations that the company rushed to protect its full-time employees but left its lower-paid contractors in danger.</p>

<p>A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that contract workers were sent security updates about the situation with or in parallel to full-time employees. The spokesperson said in some cases email updates might have come from the TVCs' employer directly.</p>

<p>Google's comments are in response to an <a id="82d10f64-80ac-342b-afe9-0a92499a7f44" href="https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/invisible-no-longer-googles-shadow-workforce-speaks-up-9ea04b7bcc41">  open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai </a> , published Wednesday by a group claiming to represent the 20,000 temporary workers and contractors, or TVCs, at Google and YouTube. Among the many grievances listed in the letter was the allegation that, as a shooter went on a rampage on YouTube's campus that left one dead and four wounded, "the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire."</p>

<p>The conflicting accounts of the traumatic afternoon reveal the sharp fault line within Silicon Valley's workforce, where high-paid techies enjoy the perks of a barista in the office and unlimited vacation policies, while the blue collar workers who drive the shuttles and prepare the food complain of being treated like second-class citizens.</p>

<p>The shooter, a disgruntled YouTube creator, entered one of the company's parking garages and into an open courtyard where employees were eating lunch on the afternon of April 3rd. Armed with a Smith &amp; Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, she proceeded to fire "multiple" shots, causing panic and sending people to <a id="8b72b4e0-7d21-393a-ad16-ce0a4e91868f" href="https://twitter.com/Lavrusik/status/981259304408788993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E981259304408788993&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fyoutube-shooting-timeline-2018-4?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  barricade themselves inside of nearby meeting rooms </a> .</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a id="25c689e2-1f58-3d80-a411-3b65d89cca32" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-shooting-timeline-2018-4?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  This timeline shows exactly how the YouTube shooting unfolded </a></p>

<p>One current TVC that Business Insider spoke to said she was working at Google's Sunnyvale campus at the time of the shooting and first found out about it on social media about two hours after the incident occurred.</p>

<p>"I was like, 'What! This can't be true,'" she remembered. "Then I started surfing the web, and that's how I found out."</p>

<p>The contract worker quickly emailed her boss (a full-time employee at Google), who confirmed the shooting had indeed happened. Her boss then sent an email to the entire team, letting them know they could go home for that day if they didn't feel comfortable at work. However, she maintains that there was "no corporate-wide communication from any public relations person" immediately alerting her of the shooting.</p>

<p>"That is a big fat lie!" she said, when told of Google's claim that it spread the word to all employees.</p>

<p>Another point of contention is the town hall meeting that took place the next day in response to the shooting. In their letter, the TVCs claim they were "excluded from a town hall discussion the following day."</p>

<p>However, a Google spokesperson told us that in-lieu of the shooting, TVCs were invited to that week's town hall meeting, which is typically reserved for full-time employees only. The spokesperson also said that therapy animals were provided to meeting attendees.</p>

<p>"I never received any communication about that [meeting]," the current TVC told us. She did contend that she was based in Sunnyvale at the time, and that it is possible San Bruno TVCs were invited.</p>

<p>The inequity of access to information is just one of the demands the TVCs demanded on Wednesday. When a shooter is on the loose, a lack of information can be the matter of life and death. As one former TVC told Business Insider, though, it typically that means temporary workers can't access certain Google Groups or book meeting rooms.</p>

<p>Still, such limitations create inequities in the workplace.</p>

<p>"In a country where democracy was developed, I don’t think it's quite fair," the former TVC told us. "I will never work again as a temp."</p>

<p><strong> Got a tip? </strong> Contact this reporter via Signal at +1 (209) 730-3387, email at <a id="7ffac662-4e1d-324d-abcc-c0f619eba1b1" href="mailto:nbastone@businessinsider.com?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  nbastone@businessinsider.com </a> , orTwitter DM at @nickbastone.</p>

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<p><strong> SEE ALSO: <span id="7f88598d-15ee-3143-acb4-5a3c84288077" itemtype="link" itemscope="itemscope">  The Facebook papers are a timely reminder that Mark Zuckerberg is ruthless about making money </span> </strong></p>

Google denies claims that it didn’t alert contractors about the active shooter at YouTube — but at least one temp says it’s a ‘big fat lie’ (GOOGL, GOOG)

<p>On Tuesday at Business Insider's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="d21cb271-0a11-349e-aec4-5285c3e85d3c">  IGNITION </a> conference, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/salesforce?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="cd45da42-0285-36c9-a2d0-d5db66ae4d30">  Salesforce </a> President and Chief People Officer Cindy Robbins shared the story of how the cloud software company became committed to equal pay for its employees. It's a story that she first brought to the public's attention on <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-leading-by-example-to-close-the-gender-pay-gap/" id="c1bf7bbd-dedc-389d-ac18-3b5b67099354">  60 minutes earlier this year </a> .</p>

<p>Robbins said it started around 2014, when CEO Marc Benioff held his quarterly meeting with 60 to 70 top executives at Salesforce — and realized there were hardly any women in the room. Benioff knew there were strong female leaders within the company, and decided that moving forward. at least 30% of attendees to that meeting would be women.</p>

<p>"He gave us a seat at the table," Robbins remembers. "Our job was to stay invited to those meetings — which we did."</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/match-group-publicly-shares-equal-pay-results-2018-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="1e891266-705f-38a7-aa83-37b8fd01bd9f">  Match Group's CEO audited the company's payroll to make sure she was paying women equally and was surprised at the results </a></p>

<p>Robbins rose the ranks at Salesforce and became the head of human relations — or officially, Chief People Officer. Soon after the promotion she starting thinking: "Why isn't easier for women to elevate at Salesforce?"</p>

<p><strong> Here's the story of how Salesforce became a company committed to equal pay, as shared at Business Insider's IGNITION conference: </strong></p>

<h1> Robbins (second from the right) teamed up with Leyla Seka (far right), an executive VP, and formed a list of how to help women grow in their careers at Salesforce. Equal pay was a concept they could not ignore. Robbins and Seka met with Benioff and — without any data — said they wanted to investigate whether Salesforce had a pay gap between men and women. </h1>

<p>Benioff was surprised at the request given the efforts he and his team had made to make Salesforce a place of equal opportunity and benefits. But ultimately he agreed and supported the initiative.</p>

<h1> Since an audit like this had never been conducted at Salesforce, Robbins and Seka had first to assemble a team of internal and external experts and define their methodology. They then assessed all of Salesforce's some 30,000 employees and made the necessary adjustments to their compensation to close the gap. </h1>

<h1> Salesforce has run its equal pay assessment for three years now, and spending less on compensation adjustments each time. </h1>

<p>Salesforce acquires lots of companies, Robbins explains. In 2017, it acquired 14 companies. And, as she points out: "When you acquire 14 companies, you acquire not just their technology and their people, but also their pay practices."</p>

<p>Also, Robbins says the audit is a continuous learning process, and their methodology wasn't perfect from the start.</p>

<h1> In total, Salesforce has paid around $8.7 million for equal pay over the last three years. </h1>

<h1> Robbins says she gets questions about why Salesforce has to run an audit every year. "Unless you have flawless systems and flawless processes, you're going to have to run the audit every single year," she explained. "That's one thing I aligned with Marc [Benioff] very early on, that this was not a one and done thing." </h1>

<p>One of the most significant process changes Salesforce made was during the recruitment process. Instead of asking candidates about their current compensation, Salesforce recruiters and hiring managers now ask: "What is the compensation you expect?"</p>

<p>Otherwise, Robbins explained, new employees are simply bringing in their pay gap from their previous employer.</p>

<h1> "One thing around equal pay is the tremendous impact it has around culture," Robbins said. Since implementing the equal pay audit in 2016, employee sentiment around whether they thought they were paid fairly rose from 80% to 92%. </h1>

<p>Salesforce has also increased the number of women employees by 2,000 in the last year and increased the number of female in leadership roles by 34% since instituting the assessment.</p>

<h1> Robbins says Salesforce effort around equal pay is a call to action for other companies to start doing the same. </h1>

<p>She also reiterated that the equal pay initiative couldn't have happened without the buy-in from their CEO, Marc Benioff.</p>

<h1> Robbins closed by telling attendees, "The power is in the data. Every company, no matter the size of your company, you have all the data. There's really no excuse not to look at it." </h1>

<ul><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition-2018-just-capital-ceo-presentation-investment-for-good-2018-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">Here's what Just Capital's CEO presented at IGNITION 2018 about investing in companies 'for good'</a> </li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/match-group-ceo-talks-tinders-impact-on-dating-scene-ignition-2018-2018-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">'People in their 20s really never used dating apps until Tinder:' Match Group CEO talks about the changing dating scene at IGNITION 2018</a> </li><li> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/most-eligible-singles-america-2018-hinge-2018-1?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">The 100 most eligible singles of 2018 across America, according to the dating app Hinge</a> </li></ul>

Salesforce's Chief People Officer explains how and why the company has spent $8.7 million to close its gender pay gap (CRM)

<p>Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have conceived the idea for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/google?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="af6c34e3-265d-305e-a70a-6a6a9178eb60">  Google </a> 's original search engine, but another duo within the company — Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat — turned that theory into a reality, and then some.</p>

<p>A <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge" id="671cc5db-eaac-33d8-a5c2-33597f122d5f">  profile by The New Yorker </a> in its December 10th issue tells the story of these two early engineers who — back in 2000 when there was no supercomputer big enough to process Google’s index of the Web — saved the company from going broke.</p>

<p>The piece describes a deal negotiated by Page and Brin to power Yahoo's search engine. It was a deal needed to keep the company funded. The problem, however, was that a bug on google.com was causing five-month-old search results to surface and Google's top engineers were stumped.</p>

<p>“None of the analysis we were doing made any sense,” Craig Silverstein, Google's first employee, told The New Yorker. “Everything was broken, and we didn’t know why.”</p>

<p>Coding together side-by-side for days, Dean and Ghemawat started noticing some words were missing from Google's index of search terms, like "mailbox," and others were out of order. According to the report, the two decided to convert Google's index into a binary code (a series of 0's and 1's) to better understand what their computers were seeing. From there, Dean and Ghemawat were able to spot and fix the issue.</p>

<p>The deal — and the company — had been saved.</p>

<p>The duo went on to build hugely important projects at Google, like MapReduce in 2003 which was a new way for the company to crawl and index the Internet. A free clone of MapReduce would eventually enable platforms like LinkedIn, Netﬂix, and Facebook to run.</p>

<p>Today, Dean is the head of AI projects at Google, while Ghemawat is continuing to innovate on search.</p>

<p>"If Google were a house, Jeff would be building an addition. Sanjay is shoring up the structure, reinforcing the beams, tightening the bolts," James Somers of The New Yorker writes.</p>

<p>Inside Google, Dean, at least, is known as a bit of a rock star. He even has a <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts" id="36ff6bfc-980f-30a2-ae24-16c075a029b2">  Chuck Norris-like Quora page </a> dedicated to"Jeff Dean facts," like: "Cricket matches used to take 5 days, until Jeff optimized them" and "Google Search was Jeff Dean's Noogler Project."</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/astounding-facts-about-googles-most-badass-engineer-jeff-dean-2012-1?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest#compilers-dont-warn-jeff-dean-jeff-dean-warns-compilers-1" id="fe7be463-e8bb-3910-a32f-5766887bcf67">  Astounding 'Facts' About Google's Most Badass Engineer, Jeff Dean </a></p>

<p>Outside the Googleplex walls, however, knowledge of just how much Dean and Ghemawat influenced the course of Google (and the Internet) are less known and worth cozying up for the 6500+ word read.</p>

<h1> Read   the full New Yorker story here  . </h1>

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<p>Back in 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted in a "60 Minutes" interview that his company would begin drone deliveries within the next five years. Yet, as 2018 draws to a close and there are no Amazon drones in sight, that prediction seems to have missed its mark.</p>

<p>At Business Insider's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="d9dfcb4a-5a09-3573-ad88-4fbaae3c5416">  Ignition </a> conference on Monday, Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo says the company he helped co-found two years ago is already making drone deliveries today.</p>

<p>Instead of consumer products, however, Zipline has focused on humanitarian needs, delivering medical supplies to rural communities around the world.</p>

<p>"5.8 million kids die every year due to lack of access to basic medical products," Rinaudo said. "When we heard that, especially in a world with as much wealth as we have, it seemed completely insane to us that no one had applied technology to solve this problem once and for all."</p>

<p>To start, the company has set up a distribution center in Rwanda, where autonomous airplanes take off to deliver over 36 different blood types to hospitals in hard-to-reach places. Today, Zipline delivers around 35% of the national blood supply to Rwanda and helps saves lives by making blood transfusions possible.</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-zipline-drone-delivery-works-in-africa-2017-10?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="cafa7984-e273-3c73-a602-2197ab500240">  A Silicon Valley startup is delivering blood bags by drone to some of the most remote places on Earth </a></p>

<p>Rinaudo says that Zipline's operation in Rwanda is the largest fully autonomous delivery system in the world.</p>

<p>"For people who think that the future is going to start in the US and then trickle its way down to other countries, this couldn't be further from the truth," he explains. "We don't think the exciting potential for that technology is delivering burritos or pizza. We think the exciting potential for that technology is providing universal access to health care to every human on the planet."</p>

<p>You can watch the full conversation here:</p>

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Meet the two-year-old Silicon Valley startup that beat Amazon to creating the world's largest fully autonomous drone delivery system (AMZN)

<p><a id="5f01fc51-5e81-3276-a33b-753f3a290225" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/googl-stock?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Google </a> has paid $1 billion to buy a large business park near its Mountain View, California, headquarters, according to <a id="8eedbfab-12c6-3b12-adca-8db7866dd95e" href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/26/billion-dollar-deal-google-pays-1-billion-for-huge-mountain-view-business-park/">  a Mercury News report </a> on Monday.</p>

<p>The business park Google will acquire in the deal is larger than the Googleplex headquarters a few blocks away, according to the report. The land parcel is also larger than the Google's planned "Charleston East" campus that will feature futuristic domes and canopies.</p>

<p>The deal is the latest big-ticket real-estate purchase by Google and its parent company, Alphabet, as the internet giant's aggressive expansion plans swell its headcount. As of September 30, Alphabet had 94,372 employees, an increase of about 16,000 employees from one year ago.</p>

<p>And with more than $100 billion worth of cash and short-term securities <a id="d55fb12d-31e4-3465-a362-d62fff4747d6" href="https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2018Q3_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=d17140f">  on its balance sheet </a> , Alphabet can afford to go on a real-estate shopping spree.</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a id="6f6526f8-a44c-3dbc-a7ce-ba65dc94c605" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-charleston-east-campus-photos-2017-2?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Here are the latest plans for Google's crazy new campus </a></p>

<p>The $1 billion purchase is the largest Bay Area real-estate deal in 2018 and second largest in the US to only Google's $2.4 billion acquisition of Chelsea Market in Manhattan, New York, according to the report.</p>

<p>Google's newest land acquisition, known as Mountain View’s Shoreline Technology Park, is a 51.8-acre site with 12 buildings. Currently, the only other tenant besides Google is Alexza Pharmaceuticals.</p>

<p>A Google spokesperson confirmed the deal with Business Insider on Monday.</p>

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<p>At Andreessen Horowitz's annual Innovation Summit on Thursday, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell spoke about tech companies that are disrupting the home buying experience.</p>

<p>Rampell describes the broken process of buying a home today — mainly, the fixed 6% real estate agent fee — and highlights tech companies like <a id="c74cf06e-0b1c-35f1-a08e-5989aa035c50" href="https://www.opendoor.com/">  Opendoor </a> , <a id="0331c951-2545-3037-a1d2-13b41f065fa2" href="https://point.com/">  Point </a> , and <a id="096d1975-f92a-3c3e-a3d2-2ebb324bc3b2" href="https://www.divvyhomes.com/">  Divvy </a> that are each transforming the industry in different ways.</p>

<p><strong> Read more:  </strong> <a id="129852ea-f662-3aef-a9fa-6ccacf84c985" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/divvy-helps-people-buy-homes-without-traditional-mortgage-2018-11?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Meet the startup that's on a mission to help 100,000 people buy homes in the next 5 years, and recently raised $30 million to do so </a></p>

<p>From home discovery to purchasing to financing, Rampell explains that the industry is evolving to help lower the friction and bring more transparency to the process for home buyers.</p>

<p>The full video of Rampell's presentation can be <a id="d42ff4b9-38e6-3732-a22d-186eb5a1097b" href="https://youtu.be/IRPH3K1GXj0">  found here </a> .</p>

<h1> "When Software Eats the Real (Estate) World" </h1>

<h1> Reasons why the home buying experience is broken. </h1>

<h1> The annual commissions for real estate agents in the US is around $100 billion. </h1>

<h1> Real estate agents have pushed for the industry to become an anti-competitive market, especially when it comes to their 6% fee. </h1>

<h1> Initially, real estate tech companies aggregated home listings. </h1>

<h1> Today, more investments are being made in real estate tech companies. </h1>

<h1> Recent real estate tech companies are trying to solve the problems of the industry from top to bottom. </h1>

<h1> Just increasing home ownership isn’t necessarily a good thing, as we learned in 2008. Increasing the ability to own homes and what it means to own a home, Rampell believes, is a good thing. </h1>

<h1> Real estate as an asset class has become much more dynamic. </h1>

<h1> For most people, buying a home is the most important transaction of their lives which will force these companies to innovate quickly. </h1>

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This Andreessen Horowitz General Partner discusses the future of home buying and the startups that are turning the 'broken' real estate industry on its head

<p>After more than a decade, <a id="3b3f6e4c-087e-3028-a72f-e83dc7865792" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/asana?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  Asana </a> can finally call itself a unicorn.</p>

<p>On Thursday, Asana announced it had raised a $50 million series E funding round, putting the company at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Generation Investment Management with participation from others including Benchmark Capital and Founders Fund. Asana has <a id="7d0edc22-85a1-381d-a222-377b05bd612e" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/asana">  raised over $200 million to date </a> .</p>

<p>"It's really nice to cross over that concrete mark," Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz told Business Insider of reaching the so-called unicorn status of companies valued at more than $1 billion. "But ultimately it's just a milestone on the way to something much bigger. The market opportunity in front of us is gigantic. We're still just getting started."</p>

<p>2018 has been a momentous year for the work-management software company, which its chief operating officer, Chris Farinacci, says "eliminates work about work."</p>

<p><strong> Read more: </strong> <a id="1690429a-ba6a-3126-afa2-2130b3dae8b2" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asana-business-launches-enterprise-2018-10?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest">  A Facebook cofounder's $900 million startup has a new plan to go after big-business customers </a></p>

<p>Asana raised a $75 million series D round in January, and early this month it announced it had reached 50,000 paying organizations alongside its over 1 million companies using the product free. Asana has said its recurring revenue has increased for seven consecutive quarters, growing at a pace of 90% year-over-year.</p>

<p>Farinacci said Asana's biggest driver of growth was a need for its product, a cloud-based software service that lets workers collaborate on projects and assign tasks.</p>

<p>"On top of all this collaboration software out there and communication software, there's a need for clarity for teams," he said. "We started with selling to the disrupters — the Ubers and Airbnbs and such. But now it's going mainstream and going global."</p>

<p>With its latest injection of funding, Asana plans to expand its international reach. The company plans to open an office in Australia next week and in Japan in the first half of next year.</p>

<p>The product is already used in 195 countries and is available in six languages, and the company says half of new revenue is coming from outside the US.</p>

<p>Moskovitz also tells us the company will grow the number of "Asanas." Today, the San Francisco-based company has about 400 employees, but Moskovitz says the goal is to have 600 by the end of 2019.</p>

<h1> After a decade, Moskovitz is as excited as ever </h1>

<p>Moskovitz seems enthusiastic about the future of his decade-old company.</p>

<p>"Honestly, it's more exciting than ever because the business is taking off," he said. "The category is taking off. One way to look at our growth is that we've added more value to the world over the last 15 months than we have in the entire history of the company before that."</p>

<p>As for what keeps Moskovitz at the company he created immediately after leaving Facebook in 2008, he told us: "I think this is a really important point of leverage in the world. No matter what type of problem you think about — whether it's healthcare, education, climate change, any number of nonprofits — any of those missions ultimately have a team of people behind it. And those teams need to collaborate well. And that means they need great software like Asana."</p>

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Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz's Asana is now worth $1.5 billion

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