Hayley Tsukayama

Silicon Valley has been following a tempest surrounding the fallout of now-former PayPal executive Rakesh Agrawal's very public departure.

Agrawal, a noted payments analyst who joined PayPal only two months ago as its director of strategy, submitted his two-weeks' notice to the company. He then let loose on Twitter -- in a series of late-night, disparaging (and since deleted) messages that he said were meant to be part of a private conversation.

It's just the latest in a string of recent departures from tech companies that have played out in the open rather than in the traditional privacy of a human resources office, or even over the phone.

Tech companies are particularly susceptible to having their personnel issues brought into the light, said Peter LaMotte, a senior vice president at the strategic communications firm Levick. "This is the world in which we now live," he said, "especially in these technology-focused companies, where social media is such an integrated part of communication."

The upshot, LaMotte said, is that the skeletons in any company's closet are increasingly likely to get pulled into the open, be it a single employee's personal grudge or evidence of a more systemic cultural problem. In cases such as Agrawal's, where the drama unfolds almost entirely on social media, LaMotte said that companies should address the problem through whatever channel seems best but then step away from the temptation to engage with the situation any further.

"No company should get drawn into the drama," he said. "But if it takes place on social media and is being heavily discussed on social media, a company should at least communicate in that medium."

With buzz building about Google's newest project, the build-it-yourself smartphone known as "Project Ara," it's worth noting that some company observers are concerned about what Google's side projects are doing to its profit margins.

The tech giant is set to report earnings for the first quarter of 2014, and while analysts expect that it will post solid revenue, a growing number of voices are asking whether the company is spending its money wisely.

Google is, primarily, a search and advertising company. But it's clearly happy to invest in a variety of other projects that aim to tackle big problems and new challenges. These, in turn, offer Google new ways to make money -- something that's particularly important as the average cost of an online ad drops, and Web users shift more heavily to mobile devices, where the ads aren't as lucrative.

Where's the next major battleground for technology companies? For all the talk of drones, wearables, homes of the future and flying Internet networks, the truth is that tech companies are still keenly interested in the consumer electronics device that's been a fixture in the American living room for decades: the television.

Speculation has been flying for years that Amazon will release a streaming video device -- similar to Apple's Apple TV or Google's Chromecast -- that brings online video content, and potentially Android-based games, to the largest screen in your house.

Why? Despite what you may think, the TV is still where people turn for the bulk of their screen time, and Amazon wants to be a main portal for all of your entertainment.

According to the data from the Nielsen published in February, Americans still spend an average of 185 hours per month with their televisions, as opposed to 34 hours and 21 minutes with their smartphones. And while mobile use is on a steady rise -- up an average of six hours from the same time in 2013 -- much of that time is spent accessing entertainment, with Americans reporting 15 percent of all their mobile time is devoted to that exact purpose.

A quarter-century ago, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to his colleagues at CERN that outlined his vision for what would become the World Wide Web. Now, he wants to make sure that it's growing up the right way. He's taken his call for an online Magna Carta to the people, working with the "Web We Want" campaign to encourage people around the world to draft and submit copies of an online bill of rights for each country: “The Web We Want Campaign will build support for national and regional campaigns to create a world where everyone, everywhere is online and able to participate in a free flow of knowledge, ideas, collaboration and creativity over the open Web.

We’ve come together in support of the following principles:

• Affordable access to a universally available communications platform
• The protection of personal user information and the right to communicate in private
• Freedom of expression online and offline
• Diverse, decentralized and open infrastructure
• Neutral networks that don’t discriminate against content or users”