Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday February 24

• Alibaba's online mutual fund is struggling as China's appetite for online financial products stagnates: Alibaba’s Yuebao, one of the largest online mutual funds in China, started to stagnate and even shrink in 2014. Assets fell from US$92 billion to US$87 billion in the third quarter of last year. A combination of heightened competition, stricter government regulations, and declining interest rates likely contributed to the fund’s dip.China’s appetite for online financial products has slowed dramatically, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (via Xinhua). Products like online mutual funds, peer-to-peer loans, and insurance only showed 2 percent growth in the second half of last year. Between the time these products began to hit the market in early 2013 through the first half of 2014, CNNIC says 12.1 percent of Chinese internet users subscribed to or bought some sort of online financial product, but the rate of growth slowed in the second half of 2014 and only reached about 14 percent. As of December 2014, 78.5 million bought into these non-traditional finance options, up 1.5 million on the previous semester. The initial boom of consumers buying into online financial products stemmed from bottlenecks in the traditional banking system. In contrast to state-owned banks that cater more to businesses and state-owned enterprises, these privately owned and peer-to-peer alternatives offered a much lower barrier to entry. That includes no minimum deposits for mutual funds and loans for people without established credit ratings.

• Apple to spend $1.9 billion on 2 new European data centers: Apple Inc said it would spend 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) to build two data centers in Europe that would be entirely powered by renewable energy and create hundreds of jobs. The company said the centers, in Ireland and Denmark, will power Apple's online services, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers across Europe. The investment is set to be evenly divided between the two countries, with the Irish government confirming that 850 million euros would be spent in Ireland. The two data centers are expected to begin operations in 2017.

• Watch out - Gmail’s Autocomplete is suggesting the wrong addresses: Sending email to the wrong person is probably among the top five most awkward things you can do in a professional context. Whether you’ve accidentally let confidential info slip to a third party or simply aired frustration to someone who doesn’t need to hear it, dealing with mis-sent email is never fun. Hence the frustration coming from Gmail power users dealing with an auto-complete bug in the recipient field. Over the last few days, a number of venture capital and startup folk have come forward with complaints ranging from mild frustration to anger: Google confirmed that there is in fact an issue in Gmail’s auto-complete function. A Google spokesperson gave us the following comment: “We’re aware of an issue with Gmail and auto-complete and currently investigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

• As Paris forms a special police unit to spot clandestine taxis; Uber gives drivers tips on how to avoid detection: Uber Technologies Inc. drivers in Paris are adding a new word to their vocabulary: Boers. That’s the nickname of a special police unit whose responsibilities include spotting clandestine taxis. The 70-person squad has now the added task of enforcing a taxi law that bans practices including some used by the car-hailing smartphone application’s UberPop rides with unlicensed chauffeurs. Since January, some 110 drivers have been handed tickets. The fines start from a few hundred euros and can theoretically reach several thousands, according to a police official, who asked not to be named citing department policy. In France, where Uber says it has signed up a million users -- including 250,000 for UberPop -- in just over three years, the crackdown is the latest episode in a long legal battle where cab drivers say the startup unfairly threatened their livelihoods. Uber disagrees with the ban, backed by a Paris judge who studied the taxi law and ruled in December not to block the service. To avoid police attention, at least seven UberPop drivers Bloomberg News spoke to in the past week said they had been told by the company not to position their smartphones in plain sight when running the app, and to ask passengers to ride in the front seat. They declined to give their full names for fear of reprimand by Uber. Uber’s Simphal confirmed those guidelines. The company also regularly e-mails newsletters to drivers with advice on regulation and other topics, he said. “We always support the drivers,” Simphal said, when asked whether Uber reimburses them for fine tickets.

• Circle of Life - LivingSocial spawns a new generation of startups even as it shrinks: The tendency for start-ups to give rise to other start-ups is a self-sustaining cycle that excites technology enthusiasts. It can create a concentration of companies that generate well-paying jobs and attract skilled workers, as well as give well-heeled financiers a reason to invest money in the region. Nowhere is this more evident than Silicon Valley, where high-growth technology companies spin off new ventures, recycle engineering talent and grab billions of dollars from the world’s biggest venture capitalists. It’s the kind of ecosystem, built over decades, that other locales now strive to emulate. LivingSocial’s ability to spawn a next generation of companies may be among its most significant contributions to the local economy, especially as its own promise to become one of the region’s banner tech companies has faded. After raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to expand globally, LivingSocial in recent years has shrunk from 4,000 to 1,300 employees worldwide and retreated from countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.