mark: i'm mark crumpton. "bloomberg west" is next. fbi director james comey told a cyber security conference today that the bureau is trying to determine if hackers connected to a foreign government want to influence u.s. elections this fall. >> those kinds of things are things that we take seriously and work very hard to understand so we can equip the rest of our government with options how to deal with it. mark: his remarks came as senate minority leader harry reid asked the fbi to investigate the threat of russian tampering with the u.s. elections. the spokesman for islamic state is dead. he was reportedly killed while

surveying the groups defenses in aleppo, syria. a german lawmakers says if the u.k. wants the advantages of the european union's single market, it will have to pay into the eu's budget. he says norway is a non-member but contributes to the blocks finances in return for market access. a new poll shows hillary clinton leading donald trump in pennsylvania. libertarian gary johnson is at 6%. global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm mark crumpton. "bloomberg west" is next.

emily: i'm emily chang and this is "bloomberg west." the eu hands apple's harshest penalty ever, ordering them to cough up $14 billion. but will the world's richest company pay? is europe putting the tech giant on notice? he's the godfather of online blogging -- ev williams join us on a conversation from everything on the freedom of internet to the future of publishing. and making tech m&a history -- set to close a mega-head deal after it was rubberstamped by chinese regulators. but first to our lead -- european regulators slam apple with a 14.5 lien dollar tax bill, far and away the largest tax penalty in a crackdown on so-called sweetheart deals.

in this case, ireland, it's corporate tax rate is the lowest in western europe and has attracted more than 700 u.s. companies to set up shop, including google and facebook. apple employees about 6000 people in ireland but the eu competition commissioner says ireland allowed apple to pay an effective tax rate of 1% on european profits down to .005% in 2014 and that gave apple an unfair advantage. here she is in an interview with bloomberg earlier. >> that tax rate in ireland is 12.5% and obviously, most companies at the national or multinational level pay the tax rate or corporate tax rate in ireland and they have to look at some companies in case apple only pays a tiny, tiny fraction

they themselves have to pay. that is obviously not fair competition. it is not a level playing field. emily: we spoke to the irish finance minister. but first, i want to bring in matt larson who has been doing a deep dive as well as our bloomberg news reporter who covers apple for us. we knew apple was going to appeal, but what was the response from the company? alex: that they are not happy. i think a lot of people were surprised about the scale of the back payment date are going to have to come up with. this agreement has been put in place since 1991 and it was always legal. they never used any illegal but the agreement they had was

such that it was above board. emily: we have a letter from tim cook to users, including the original pictures of steve jobs at the factory in ireland. alex: he went along and opened a plant in cork. apple, as ever, they talk about the customer and not journalists. who is writing the story, of course, the journalists. guest: apple in ireland will appeal this to the general court in luxembourg. it's the court hearing the appeals in the starbucks netherlands investigation and the fiat chrysler case, both of which are significantly smaller but could give some indication into how this appeals court may take the decisions. this whole process is going to take two years at least to determine and after that, there are further opportunities to appeal to even higher courts in europe. it's going to be quite a while before we get a decision in

these cases. emily: the u.s. has been stepping up its defense apple, calling the eu a supernatural tax authority, indicating they are overstepping their bounds. what did we hear from the united states government today? alex: i think you have to be careful about calling it a defense of apple. they are not necessarily interested in ensuring the taxes paid in the u.s. every dollar apple pays in taxes overseas is deductible from the tax they might have to pay should they have to repatriate their fund. emily: we mentioned that apple is fighting this ruling. ireland is fighting this as well. why would ireland want to collect $14 billion from the richest company in the world? mark barton spoke to michael noonan earlier and pointed out

the opposition party in ireland would like to see just that. mark: why don't you just accept money and shut up? $13 billion is a lot of money. guest: i have a responsibility for advising the government on these matters. this has rescued ireland from 2011 on and from the creation of high level jobs, it's fundamental to our economic policies and we stand by our economic policies and we're going to protect our economic policies. we are not going to get into a situation of short term gain for long-term damage to the economy. emily: standing his ground there. what kind of long-term advantage are we talking about? alex: as we heard yesterday, people were saying on a scale of one to 10, 10 being extremely damaging, 23.

ireland has 140,000 people employed by u.s. tech companies and the risk is they start to be put at risk and it ceases to be the place where companies might go if they go to europe. ireland is about 180 billion euros in debt, so this will go toward paying that off. why should i subsidize apple to have 5500 jobs in ireland? emily: you've been looking at the tax structure other companies have. do any of them have this similar arrangement? matt: a lot of companies make use of ireland -- we think about it as the austin, texas of europe. they've developed favorable tax laws related to transfer pricing.

as a result, you have a lot of companies that have organizations, subsidiaries set up in ireland that have transfer pricing arrangements in place. you have life science from a pharmaceutical companies that have significant operations. there are favorable tax laws and favorable treatment for other tax system treats these pricing agreements. it's a little bit of a warning shot and may encourage some companies to take a look at whether maybe they negotiated to suite a deal or take a look at corporate structures and how their overall setup is working for them. emily: what about companies like google or facebook which have big aces in ireland.

matt: a lot of companies have headquartered there. linkedin, paypal, ea -- fidelity investments even has significant operations there. when you are one of these organizations, you have to take a very close look at how your taxation is working, not just in the revenue you are sending but what are the communications you have had with the tax authorities? it's not just here is our revenue, take a percentage of it. looking at company transfers and deals amongst the subsidiaries. you have to take into account what the basis is there and what percentage you are applying to that base that is going to be taxed. i think companies will have to take a look at the way there internal operations look and look at the deals they have struck with irish tax authorities. emily: apple shares ending today slightly down.

how did investors react? alex: they are relatively blasé about it. it's 6% of their cash reserves. the thing investors want to see is the ability to repatriate the money to the u.s. because they want to get it in the form of dividends and buybacks. it's not the end of the world for them. emily: our bloomberg news reporter and our bloomberg intelligence litigation manager. we will continue to follow these stories very closely. coming up, our guest host for the rest of the hour, ev williams joins us. the cofounder of twitter -- are social media networks becoming too powerful and where does digital publishing go from here? stay with us. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: evan williams has made a major role in shaping how users express themselves online, from founding blogger which he sold to google, he focused on podcasting and from there, a side project that he called twitter was born. he remains on the board of directors. he started medium as a way to publish posts longer than twitter's character limit. here with me for the hour, evan williams. i want to start with medium

because you play a tremendous role in how we publish online and express ourselves online. medium is your vision for the future. give us an update on where it is and where it's going. evan: medium is a place to write stories and ideas. it's meant to be open to anyone and anyone who has something of -- something to say of substance to find their audience. it's an a on blogging or social media but it is focused on things that tend to be longer. it's used by both amateurs and professionals. everyone from the president to individuals with stories to tell. emily: president obama, bono, hillary clinton -- you have publishers like bill simmons, what is the balance between amateurs, influencers and publishers?

evan: we think the mix is important and makes the conversation better. the entire point of medium is, unlike a standalone website, you are in the mix. your ideas bounce around with other people. you can respond and highlight and people can find you. one of our mottos is great ideas can come from anywhere. when it comes to writing, there are tons of individuals with unique perspectives and ideas and the ability to articulate them. we offer a place to do that. it is where a business leader can write something and a customer can respond. because there's the diversity of voices, you get much more insight. emily: it is beautiful, simple and elegant.

where are you on monetization? evan: we are working on growing the monetization piece right now. really making it work for individuals. now, we are focused on enabling professionals which means getting them paid. brands are publishing and working with the publishers to tell their stories and gain audiences to the stories. some publishers are implementing our subscription program as well so you can create a pay wall. that's looking good but it's in its early stages. emily: tim kaine responded and mitt romney announced why he's not running for president on medium. how does that come about? do you have a team of people

trying to get hillary to post on medium? what's the play-by-play? evan: we have an outreach team that's a white glove service team and they help get the ball rolling. it has taken on its own momentum. whether you are in dc or in that world, if you want to find in an audience, medium becomes the default for that. it really has gotten this momentum now and people from that world read it. if you have something to say, you go there and say it. emily: you mentioned there is one person who has not posted on medium and that is donald trump.

evan: we are happily open to what he would have to say but so far he has not chosen to expand much beyond his 140 characters in writing. emily: he has taken fine advantage of twitter. he seems to prefer expressing himself in 140 characters. what has that been like watching trump take off on twitter? evan: kind of the same as everyone. a mixture of bewilderment and fear. it has been fascinating, especially most recent revelation that his tweets were, you could distinguish his tweets from his staff by looking at the source. years ago, when we held in that ability to see the source, we did not picture that reticular use case but i'm glad it's there. emily: "vanity fair" had a provocative article that said silicon valley created donald

trump. do you think silicon valley or that without twitter, trump would be not where he is? evan: i would hate to us to take the credit or the blame for that. it's a result largely of our media ecosystem which has tremendously good and bad things. when i started working on the internet, i was excited anyone could that their voice out there and i thought the world is going to be smarter, wiser, when the truth is out there and unfettered, and the reason i'm still working in this area is that i realize it not as simple as that. the tremendous amount of noise has not made us or in many ways, it has made us dumber. they're so much we have to do on top of this system to take full

advantage as a society, we still have a lot of work to do. emily: you have high-profile tech ceos saying that they are against trump. where do you stand? evan: i am firmly against trump. emily: how do you, as someone who has built multiple platforms for free speech, how do you balance your clinical views with your responsibility to the platform? we just saw this, in the trending topic section that they deemphasized conservative stories. evan: i'm not unfriendly against all republicans. i'm proud that both on twitter and on medium, we have vuilt

plaforms that are giving an equal side. we have many senators and congresspeople and about an even mix on both sides. in fact, in our outreach team, we employ an equal number of people who reach out to the right and left. there's nothing in our system that biases one side against the other. that has created a healthy exchange and i read and recommend viewpoints from both sides. because they are on the same platform, i think people are more open to them. emily: bloomberg had a scoop today that donald trump wants to start a media business. evan: i think that would be very smart of them. i think there will be an audience. what do you think? emily: he seems to be getting a lot of interest. evan: maybe he could cohost. emily: evan williams, we will be speaking with you about the next hour. thank you so much for joining us. still ahead, we will continue

our deep dive with my cohost looking at the future of medium and twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a story we are watching -- sonos cutting a deal with amazon. soon they will be able to control their speakers from amazon echo. a long-term partnership marks a major pivot for the company. they've maintained the tightest possible control over the software its listeners used to control their speakers. and next week -- the company received clearance to go ahead with the deal that would bring the two leading providers on

data center and corporate computing acquitted together as they chase faster growth. they will close next month on the seventh. the combined company will begin operating under the new name dell technologies. still to come, more of our exclusive conversation with ev williams. we will talk about how his company's shape the future of how we talk about ourselves. check us out in the radio -- you can listen on the bloomberg radio app. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> a top stories this>> hour. creditors rejected a restructuring plan saying page and -- haijin would need an extra $1 billion. shares soared on news it would seem to buy some assets. shares fell more than two months with the expansion spree showing no signs of slowing down. executives said they wanted to buy brokerage in trust companies

plus smaller rivals. industrial production was unchanged in july, falling short of even the most pessimistic estimates. outpost is -- output did not july. in tell offered reasons for more optimism. factory production rose. global news, 24 hours a day. this is bloomberg. let's get the latest from the markets. .uliette juliette: you can take the weaker yen or i guess the stronger dollar. you have equities up. gain of 1%. for a the regional index set for a

very solid month. today, having a look at of s doinghyundai merchant well in korea. is downan cost fee 0.3%. about this dollar strength story, following the solid story. mining stocks leading the losses. we have seen divergence coming through for most of the southeast asian markets to read china goes on its lunch break, we have seen a turnaround. the market up 0.3%. in terms of the and of the

month, pretty good for stocks and not so good for gold. the story of the strong dollar. the gold price on track for an august loss. that is the state of play across asian markets. emily: this is "bloomberg west." medium has become the place where people post longer and in-depth pieces -- president obama, bill gates and bono are just a few of the people who have used this forum to share their thoughts with the world. the former leader of now bankrupt gawker just posted her thoughts. stay with us. ceo of medium and cofounder of twitter, evan williams. i is supposed she posted this on medium because the idea is you can't take it down.

what is your take on peter thiel versus gawker? is that going too far or fair play? evan: for gawker or peter thiel? emily: either. evan: it's scary for the press. especially if unknown sources of money are fighting you. i was not a fan of everything gawker did but in general, i'm a fan of freedom of the press. i think it is critical. ultimately, gawker should avail, prevail, but it would be a bad thing if random media sites can be taken out by people who don't like what they say. emily: it's a question you deal with behind-the-scenes -- what is free speech? what counts as fair? what is going too far? i'm sure when you started blogger, there were trolls and online harassment. it seems like nothing has changed.

evan: it has gotten worse, for sure. the early days of the internet, it was a little better and we felt like it's a big club and if you are there, you are welcome and we have dinner parties with our front door open. if you stop by, everyone is glad to see you and so much has evolved with that default framework. the idea that anyone can join any conversation is not something we expect in the real world. because so many wonderful things come from online, there's a lot of desire to hold onto that ability and yet it causes so much problems when you open it up to the massive society. emily: why is it hard to crack down on online harassment and to quiet the trolls? evan: because the line is fuzzy. when you dig in, it seems much easier from the out side then when you look at the details. a lot of the rhetoric would give

you the impression that twitter or other services don't do anything. there's a huge team focused on this and delete stuff all of time. what is tricky is where the line s get blurry and we want to defend free speech and allow the principle of free speech, you have to defend free speech even if you don't agree. it's not a legal requirement because twitter is a private entity, it is a value that we hold that people should be able to give out thoughts even if it is unpopular. the policies and tools are evolving, but it is not a trivial issue. sooner?we acknowledged a couple

of years ago and i think even from the earliest days, we would have thought about different architecture had we known how severe this issue would get. it really has gotten a lot worse in terms of the vitriol and the severity of the attacks people suffer. the architecture of the service is a lot of what allows a lot of great things and does allow the bad things but i think there are things you can do. i met with the team working on this and there's a bunch of smart people who are going to be improving it soon. emily: you are the cofounder of twitter, you've been the biggest champion of twitter, this is a company with a market cap high of $20 billion and now it's $13 billion. do you think it can get back to those heights? evan: i can't make any real

statements being a board member of twitter. i think abstractly speaking, it's an incredibly large and valuable service. the thing that twitter provides, the real-time information layer is valuable and can be a lot more valuable. it's a matter of innovation and development and there's not an asset like twitter in the world in terms of the individuals and world leaders and entertainers and the information created on a daily basis. there's so much more that can come out of that. i'm an optimist in general. emily: what is your faith in jack? evan: my faith is high and jack. i fully support them.

emily: i know you can only go so far. we've seen a lot of m&a. do you see twitter remaining an independent company? evan: no comment on that. we are in a strong position right now and as a board member, we have two consider all the options. emily: medium is almost a complement to twitter but is almost the opposite of twitter. it's more in-depth. do you see them as potentially opposite? evan: in some ways. part of my reason for working on medium is in -- while twitter grew and facebook evolved and all these other social media platforms took an increasing amount of attention, they still all pointed to and talked about nonsocial media.

articles, text, journalism was still incredibly important and people are consuming more and more, but it hasn't evolved as much. they are incredibly complementary, even though they are very different. twitter is more of a distribution vehicle for more substantive content than it is somewhere where you expand ideas or offer more complex stories. medium is complementary and that's the reason i work on medium. emily: we're going to talk more about the future of the internet and where you see it going. quickly, i do want to talk about uber and target's chief

marketing officer joining uber as vice president of ridesharing. the ceo described how marketing will integrate into uber's ground operations after the alphabet chief officers stepped down from uber's board. alphabet and uber are heading into competition with google piloting its own with its wave app. will google and facebook remain as powerful as they are today or what will the role of social media be? this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back. we are still here with evan williams, cofounder of twitter and founder of medium. we are joined by brad stone. you had a hand in shaping the web as we know it. the growth of the internet is something you have talked about and you are a multi-time author. my first question, have social networks become too big? evan: i don't think they are too big in general. scale is hard. we're not used to being connected to thousands of people and we're not used to discussing things among the of people or people we don't know. many basic social networks have always existed and they have never been as big as they are online. from a power in business perspective, size helps, the defensiveness, the value of social networks rose with the size.

brad: more advertising dollars are funneling in and people's attention is funneling to these platforms. i wonder are we losing some of that wonderful openness of the internet and is there a cost to the dependence on a handful of platforms? evan: there is for sure a cost and as the inevitable trajectory we are on. a few major platforms, if you broaden it from social networks to media platforms and syndication platforms, almost as a law of nature, it is to centralize and consolidate. emily: what about the mobile web in particular? these are the companies that decide what apps we use and it's a small number that we spend a lot of time on. is the internet actually becoming smaller?

evan: it is becoming more closed, for sure. many of us who develop software or the internet, thinking back to even 10 years, we would have had to get our software approved before we release it to customers and that feels like a step backwards in terms of openness and development. in exchange, you get infrastructure and all kinds of things that help. brad: not to raise the tar baby of net neutrality, but you have companies like t-mobile releasing these unlimited plans and that raises another host of questions, are we getting in the guise of free, getting access to some of the internet but not all of it? evan: i don't know where it's going to go but the idea that

this was built as a highly decentralized platform and was crucial, yet the paradox is -- most of the valuable things on the internet are centralized platforms or market late-season and once you create one of those, you get an increase in your returns. emily: you say the internet is more like tv than we think. what do you mean by that? evan: my current obsession is how do we up the quality of media on the internet in the way tv has evolved in the last years? the feed we are all used to is like turning on the tv and flipping channels. often lots of good stuff that you want, it's not very intentional what you consume. it's whatever catches your attention at the time whereas --

not just like video, but this experience of show me some stuff. whereas tv has evolved and we sit down and we look at our dvr or netflix and we have a limited selection of highly curated shows. as a result, those shows have gotten higher quality and tell more complex stories and you consume them from beginning to end. the business models have improved as well. the mechanism matters a lot. the ability for dvr's and that has changed the business model of the content. i think it's early days in content and media on the internet and if we can invent the new distribution and consumption models, we can change everything.

emily: do you see apple, google and facebook getting bigger and stronger or will other companies break through and we just can't imagine it? emily: in the last eight years of the obama administration, you had very weak antitrust enforcement. i guess the question is whether that changes in the next administration? we've seen some pushback, even today in europe on large technology companies. that's probably a big part of it and these companies get more and more successful and powerful because people love their services. we are in the age of the feed because people love the feed. we see all this traffic coming from the facebook's and snapchat's of the world. to the extent we buy new models, companies like medium has to invent things that have a grip.

emily: you say the internet is like a city. brad: there's this migration that's similar to the migration to urban areas which is going to happen over several decades and the percentage of the world that lives in urban areas and is projected into 2050 is going to be a majority of people. people -- it's a trade-off. you trade flex ability, you trade openness and the ability to do whatever you want on your own land. if you live in a city with access to culture and ideas, the same thing happens online. these companies build consolidation and you bump into people and you trade the same thing. emily: evan williams, cofounder of twitter and ceo of medium.

brad stone, thank you for stopping by. i want to take a look at one story that is out of this world -- spacex is preparing to cross another milestone. they are preparing to take flight with one of its recycled rockets. they will send their indications satellite into orbit on a previously flown falcon rocket. they have not announced what it will cost, but the price will be discounted. it's a major part of elon musk's plan to cut the cost of space travel and reach mars by 2018. tomorrow, don't miss a conversation on commodities. that's next a.m. new york time. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: now to a story trending

today -- kim.com has won the right to live stream his appeal against his extradition to the u.s. livestream is online showing comings and goings at the courthouse. this after a new zealand judge ruled the founder of megaupload can stream the corporate seedings. he's facing conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering charges and potentially decades in jail. he took to twitter saying i will post a live streaming link asap. this is breaking new ground, new zealand at the forefront of transparent justice. twitter cofounder evan williams is still with me. something also trending on twitter -- classic tags which lets people share advice under the hash tag "i tell my teen self." i believe we have some video of you from the early days talking

about the internet. evan: really? emily: that's not you. first, given everything you have been through, what would you tell your teen self? evan: talk to the girl. move to california sooner. trust your gut. emily: anything about starting a company? evan: do that. it worked out fairly well. but i did have any problem with that. do more sooner. emily: what advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs and people who are too scared to take the risk you took? evan: what i usually tell people when i start talking to them is simplify and focus. you can break anything down and it's great to have the grand

vision but it is surprising how successful you can be and how big something can be if you zoom in on it. there are still millions of opportunities in the world and often, you don't see that because you are looking too broadly and if you narrow your focus, you can find surprising worlds like we did with twitter. emily: why do you keep creating? why aren't you sitting on a beach? why are you talking to me ? why are you doing the start of thing all over again? evan: i don't know. i was compelled to work on medium because the work wasn't done. there's still so much potential in using the internet to help each other and help each other with ideas. the answer to most of our problems are already here but they are in someone else's head.

we have this great system for getting it out of your head. emily: you can find that video of evan williams when he was 15-year-old talking about the internet. evan: you don't have to. ♪

♪ yousef: no broncos ipo would result in a company work -- aramco's ipo would result in a company worth five times as much as apple. >> saudis oil minister says the cofounder expressed interest in investing. itsef: crude is heading for biggest monthly gain since april on action to stabilize the markets. >>