A video posted to the right-wing media site Breitbart on Wednesday showed Google executives bemoaning the election of President Donald Trump at a company meeting in 2016. The release of the leaked video is the latest volley in an expanding campaign by Republicans and allies in the media to demonstrate that Google and other Silicon Valley firms are biased against conservatives.

Hope everyone stayed dry yesterday. And, we hope everyone stays dry today. Lots of luck with that one. Here’s today’s hunkered-down version of Five Things. Showing a lot of drive Lithia has poured a boatload — a carload? a truckload? nah, “boatload” still works — into a San Francisco e-commerce company. The $54 million deal (Lithia will become the majority shareholder) will team the Medford group with Shift, which provides digital services as well as a concierge offering that lets users see…

Amazon plans to sell 7-foot live Christmas trees that will be boxed and sent within 10 days of being cut down.

A top Oregon early-stage investment firm has closed its own second fundraising round. Bend-based Seven Peaks Ventures said in a Thursday morning release it has collected $28 million “to foster growth of early-stage technology startups in the Pacific Northwest and Western U.S.” Contributing to the fund were the state of Oregon and the Oregon State University Foundation, among others. At the same time, the firm will introduce an adviser and corporate resources platform that helps entrepreneurs fortify…

Software giant Adobe Systems is quietly negotiating a buyout of San Mateo-based marketing automation company Marketo, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources close to the deal. Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners Management bought Marketo in 2016 for $1.8 billion, a 64 percent premium over the company’s share price at the time. San Jose-based Adobe would likely pay “significantly more” than $1.8 billion to buy Marketo today, Reuters reports, citing its sources. Adobe, Marketo and Vista…

In its hiring process, Google measures a candidate’s cognitive ability, problem-solving process, role-related knowledge and enigmatically, a subjective measure called “Googleyness.” A pair of older workers are suing the company for age discrimination, claiming “Googleyness” is an internal code word for “young.” The case has stretched on for more than three years. Judge Beth Labson Freeman recently certified that the workers could take a collective action against Google, which would require…