Five stories not to miss

1 Uber dealt London blow

Uber’s miserable 2017 – which has seen the company hounded over claims of sexism, bullying and not tackling driver safety – continued when Transport for London (TfL) chose not to renew the ride-hailing company’s licence for the capital. TfL bosses said the company’s “approach and conduct demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility”.

2 Equifax hack: a catalogue of incompetence

Red faces all round at the credit rating company Equifax after a breach that impacted 143 million customers and 400,000 UK consumers revealed basic weaknesses in the company’s privacy protection plans. British users’ details were only stored on the US servers due to a five year “process failure”, and the hack was made via an Adobe vulnerability that should have been patched months earlier. 3 EU talks tough on tech taxes European finance ministers turned up the heat on major tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, all of which, officials believe, should pay more tax in the region.

EU loopholes currently allow tech giants to minimise tax liability, but the finance ministers are looking at several options, including online firms being taxed on turnover rather than profit and “a levy on internet ads or withholding tax on internet transactions”. 4 Apple moves to fix flaws in early iOS 11

Apple was forced to address a slew of early bugs in iOS 11. Among a string of problems, end users were locked out of Office 365, Outlook and Exchange inboxes, struggled to connect to Wi-Fi networks, and saw traffic pushed over expensive mobile connections. Read our iPhone 8 Plus verdict on p56.

5 Google grabs handset nous in $1.1bn HTC deal Google agreed to pay $1.1 billion for a slice of mobile maker HTC – a move that strengthens the company’s hardware ambitions and signals a more focused attack on Apple’s iPhone. The deals sees Google gain 2,000 skilled research and development staffers, plus intellectual property, but Google chose to leave HTC’s virtual reality division alone.