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tv   Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  March 3, 2017 11:00pm-12:01am EST

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alisa: i am alisa parenti and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your first word news. president trump visited a religious school in florida, signaling his education agenda will focus on school choice. he began the tour of the catholic school in orlando with a visit to a fourth-grade classroom. teachers unions criticized the visit, saying it shows trump's hostility towards public schools. federal authorities have arrested a man in connection with threats made to at least eight jewish community centers nationwide and the anti-defamation league's headquarters in new york city. he appeared in federal court in missouri today. attorney general jeff sessions
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met with the head of the naacp today. that's after sessions suggested the justice department would limit federal investigations of troubled police departments. the naacp say sessions' policy signals a troubling decline. -- decline in the country's commitment to civil rights. vice president mike pence used his personal email as governor. says theana star" account last year was compromised by hackers. an aide said he almost did not deal with classified information. global news 24 hours a day. i am alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. "bloomberg technology" is next. ♪ ♪
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caroline: i am caroline hyde. this is "bloomberg technology" live from new york. coming up no risk, no reward. vc bolted to the top tier after being the first to bet on snap. we speak with the managing director. it is her job to make sure they play by the rules. does the e.u. have it in for apple, facebook, and google? you will hear our exclusive interview with the eu competition commissioner margrethe vestager. autodesk's first report card. how did the pivot to the cloud impact their bottom line? we will crunch the numbers with the company's interim co-c.e.o. first to our lead, snap continues to pop on the new york stock exchange. shares continue to rise, ending the day up 10%. also riding high is its investors. they were the first institution to financially back it.
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the vc has been on a seller run i in recent months with sales in at the o's. joining me now from san francisco, the managing director barry eggers and founding partner. what a story you have to tell on the back of snap. it was, what? five years ago you sat in the daughternd saw your playing with a new app and had to take a look? >> that is right. about five years ago today, i walked into the kitchen. my son and daughter and some of their friends from high school were looking at their phones and laughing. i was curious what they were doing. i asked what they were doing. my daughter said, hey, dad, have you heard about this app? it is called snapchat. i said, no, i have not heard of it. what does it do? she said you take pictures. you sent them to your friends and they disappear in 10 seconds or less. i thought, what kind of pictures?
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she said, funny, goofy stuff between friends. they showed me a bunch of examples. it turns out they were using this thing about 30 times a day. all the girls were nodding and saying we use it a lot. my son said we use it a lot, too. , there is this app all the kids are using and no adults knew about, and so we had to investigate. caroline: you and your partner met the founders within a few days. within 10 days, the money was in as part of the $485,000 investment that went up to $8 million or so. do you think the growth will your daughter's generation, or grow with that generation or will it encapsulate a broader age group? >> well, you know, when we invested, i think the company had 100,000 daily users. now they have something like 158 million daily users five years later. we have seen plenty of growth. what captured our attention was the engagement and the time
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these kids were spending on it. my daughter and her friends were going on the app 30 times a day. they still do that today. these kids live on this app and they spend a lot of time communicating with each other. caroline: the haters that say this will not be the next facebook. you are saying, it does not actually need to be. with the depth of addiction to this app, does it need to grow much past 158 million? >> i don't know. i think every new social media platform grows and develops its audience and revenue in a different way. i think snapchat is taking its own course. caroline: i've got to dig into the rest of your portfolio. as 2017 goes, it is stellar. you were in apt dynamics. they get bought quickly by cisco the day before they are to list. then we have another on the list will go public soon enough. is this a perfect storm for companies to go public right now?
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are you actually leaning on your portfolio companies to go public? >> no, i think we feel fortunate to have some of our companies have liquidity events. you mentioned four of them. including nutanix. it was not like we made these investments yesterday. we made two of those eight and 10 years ago. snapchat five years ago. these things take time to build the business and become mature enough companies to be able to stand alone as a public company. we are thrilled we have a number of these things happening this year. it has been a nice year for us. caroline: do you think it will continue? heightswe are at heady when you look at the indices. they are near record highs. has the market soured? would you have been as willing to see snap go public now? >> i think that is a question for the company to make. i think good companies we have
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past, good companies can go bad in bad markets. in really good markets, a lot of companies can go public. what people are hoping is snapchat creates excitement in the ipo market and maybe other companies can follow. caroline: we have a great function on the bloomberg called the startup barometer. it really tracks not only the venture activity, but also the exits we are seeing. it has deteriorated over the last few months since the heady highs of december and the real highs in june of 2015. does it need more exits to be feeding back into the seed money and into the ecosystem around the world? do you think venture capitalism is becoming more wary of wanting to see growth and some measure of profitability before they come jumping in? or is seed as good as it ever was? >> i think you are right. as an industry, everyone likes to talk about unicorns and the highly valued companies. we have investors, too.
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they have been very patient with us. they would like their money back. they would like more than the money back. liquidity is something our industry has to deliver. i am hoping through 2017 and 2018 our industry can start to funnel more liquidity back to our investors, which i think will fuel the continued growth of our industry. caroline: do you think the ecosystem for startups still has plenty of money? do you think that is changing? >> i think that tide is changing. there has been a lot of money come into our industry. at the end of the day, it is every company's dream to be a public company. i think a lot of companies want to do that. we are trying to encourage our companies to put themselves in a position to be a candidate for that. caroline: barry, i have to end on a high note from a great personal perspective and feel good story. you also encouraged your
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children's school to invest in snap. and just explain who they were and how much money they have come out the wiser. >> that is right. st. francis high school where my kids were going at the time, i had the venture fund they started in the late 1990's and i am a member of. when they heard about snap through the kids, we thought what better way to reward them then bring them along in our investments. we asked if they would like to join us in the seed. they said yes. we recommended investment. the rest is history. they invested $15,000. i think yesterday they sold some stock somewhere around $24 million and still have some shares. they are really happy at st. francis. i think they will do great things with that money. caroline: wow. $8 million invested for a $2 billion holding you have. absolutely wonderful news for you. i'm sure we will be speaking to
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you in the future about quarter -- about some more portfolio companies. not to a story we are watching -- more questions over uber. the company is drawing scrutiny counteractam to enforcement. "the new york times" reports the tool allows the company to show enforcement officers a fake application. ube said ther effort is meant to enforce violations of its terms of status agreement in what it calls a prevention program. scandals continue to pile-up including video showing the c.e.o. arguing with a driver. we will have more on that video later this hour. meanwhile coming up, we catch up , with the e.u. competition commissioner margrethe vestager. find out what she has to say about the numerous u.s. tech giants under the watchful eye of european regulators. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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caroline: a stock we are watching, go-pro falling on friday after the endless initiated coverage of the stock with a sell rating. he described go-pro as the best house and a deteriorating neighborhood. he says their products are not enough to overcome standalone imaging products declines. they are some of the u.s. tech companies that have come under fire for european regulators. the commissioner says these campaigns have nothing to do with the companies' country of origin and reiterated the need for a level playing field in europe. we caught up with the commissioner on "daybreak."
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regulators are concerned about if -- and we asked if regulators are concerned about the pace of disruption in the industry. commissioner vestager: no i , don't think so. i am very happy to be with you this morning. i think it is very important we see businesses grow, create value, create jobs. and in europe, where not at all foreign to success. on the contrary. obviously, we and to make sure we have the right tools in the toolbox in order to ensure fair competition. caroline: you have wielded those tools with some efficiency it would seem. i'm sitting in silicon valley at the moment. as a european, i hear u.s. companies feel at times they are under fire. at times we have seen, of course in the past year, apple being asked to pay back billions. anti-breach investigations. you have had facebook being investigated. do you think u.s. tech giants have something to be concerned about from you? do you think they are
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misinterpreting perhaps what the e.u. is trying to accomplish? well, oneer vestager: of our basic values is equal treatment. we do not see the flag, we do not see the ownership in europe. we have big, publicly owned businesses. what we are looking at is fair competition. we do want to see successful companies allow for others to challenge them. that is the content of the now three google cases, to allow them to be challenged and not misuse their dominant position. we are still in the process of looking into whether our objections are correct, taking on board also google's views in that procedure. caroline: the search case is seven years old. does it frustrate you how long
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the investigations take? do we have to realize things can take years? do you have an idea when the google search case might be confirmed or wrapped up? >> i think some of my staffers find i am a little obsessed. no matter how much we work on making our processes more lean, we are always held back by the fact of the quality of the casework. that is what ensures the rule of law, that you have the full right to defend yourself. that can never be compromised. obviously, we have to make sure we have sufficient time. but we are always pushing to make our procedures quicker, more lean, to get better access to files to make sure we are working as professionally as possible. that being said, it is very difficult to give any deadlines because something may come up and we will have to look into that. that also goes for the google cases. caroline: talking tax now.
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it was what everyone's ears pricked up to the apple case. that was to do with ireland. how do these countries react to you? do they worry about how efficient or attractive they could be if the taxation rules are changed? commissioner vestager: that is difficult for me to say because we have a large degree of autonomy in member states in europe when it comes to setting the level of taxation. the one thing we agreed on that goes 60 years back down is taxpayers should not support one company or group of companies where no one else can enjoy these benefits. that is basically the ups and downs of these tax cases. these old and fundamental principles that selective
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advantages paid by taxpayers disturbs competition. that is a competition tool specific to europe. i don't think you have anything similar in the u.s. caroline: that was the european competition commissioner. we will bring you more of that conversation later. coming up, we speak with the autodesk interim co-c.e.o.'s on how the company is faring. a reminder of our tv function. you will be able to watch a -- watch us live, but also see previous interviews and dive into any of the bloomberg functions we talk about. and you can become part of the conversation by sending us instant messages during our show. this is for bloomberg subscribers only, i'm afraid. check it out at tv . this is bloomberg. ♪
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caroline: the design software giant autodesk's change of course is showing in its numbers. in the first earning reports as
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the c.e.o. step aside, it boosted its recurring sales. the overall revenue fell hindered by fewer license sales. joining us from san francisco is the autodesk interim co-c.e.o.'s and the chief marketing officer. i want to dig into the revenue. revenue per share loss guidance for the next year did miss some forecasts. i want to read you a quote from one of the analysts. she said remain on the sidelines until the new subscription model can settle into a more consistent predictable pattern. i want to ask you, when will this occur, this consistent pattern? >> we are on the path to delivering that. if you look at our annualized
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revenue growth, it is growing nicely. 84% of our quarterly revenue on track to get to 90%. we are building the right long-term results. the change in the outlook for 2018 had to do with decisions we made to change short-term revenue for long-term revenue. they were as designed. we are very confident about our long-term targets. caroline: this is something we have tracked with many a company making the shift to the cloud. i want to ask you, andrew, will you stop selling licenses altogether? how much will you shift to a cloud-based model? >> essentially, we have already stopped selling perpetual licenses. we only sell a small number. all of our mainline products have already done the cloud over. the thing we are working on now is moving the customers who are maintaining their perpetual
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licenses. it is another form of subscription we call maintenance. they pay us a fee every year and we ship them a new copy of perpetual software. that is what we have to move over. in the earnings call we announced our new program to move the maintenance base over to the pure subscription model as well. that is going to be in process. that will be the last vestiges of the perpetual model in our business. caroline: does it mean the 3 million subscriptions will grow significantly? >> yes. we anticipate it will grow at 20% annual growth rate. i think we are seeing sustained momentum from new customers taking advantage of subscription and existing customers switching from maintenance over to subscription. i think we are on track to exceed over 5 million subscriptions in the three-year timeframe. caroline: andrew, talk to me about the new subscribers and sectors you are pushing into. construction, manufacturing, that seems to be the way you are going. how much does it ebb and flow with the economy? >> we do go a little bit with the economy.
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the cyclical part of our business is the low end of our business, the people with one or two person companies. that is where we see the more cyclical behavior. construction and manufacturing are stable. that is where we are seeing a lot of growth, particularly construction. one of the things you heard in our earnings report is we saw three times more subscribers from our cloud products in q4 than any other quarter. those are the products squarely positioned on construction. we actually saw the same kind of performance in our manufacturing products. we saw 150% growth year over year in the subscribers to those products. we are seeing strong growth. we are not seeing any secular or macro headwind at all in our business. caroline: talk to me about the bottom line. we are hearing about the revenue
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potential, subscription potential. what about profitability? is that going to pick up? >> as our annualized revenue base keep growing and more revenue becomes recurring, people can predict our profitability which we have tried through presentations given indication we will reach $6 in free cash flow share by 2020. the metrics we delivered against earnings show us on track to deliver that. on a p&l basis, on the traditional accounting side, it looks like we are at a loss right now. everything is as designed. that is heading towards the profitability we predicted for the long-term. caroline: andrew, how tough was the investor day? you have been under pressure from activist investors in particular. how do you deal with that? how much pressure to they put on your business model? >> investor days are always an
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opportunity for us to explain what we are trying to accomplish long-term. one of the things we were getting from our investors over the last 18 months was we do not understand the transition. we don't understand where the business model is going and how you are doing it. we spent a lot of time in our last investor day giving them detail about the business. one of the things you saw was our stock price ran up pretty dramatically afterwards because people started to get more detailed understanding about what we were doing and some of the underlying mechanics. that is what you have to do sometimes to get people comfortable with what is happening. you have to give them the details. caroline: very quickly, are you going to remain c.e.o.? will you be fighting it out? >> we are working very well together. it is up to the board. they are running a process to figure out who the next leader will be. andrew and i have worked together for 15 years or more. we are having a blast running the company. we have been co-architects of
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this transition. we are going to keep driving it. caroline: wonderful to have you both on, autodesk interim co-c.e.o.'s. this is bloomberg. ♪
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mark: i am mark crumpton. you are watching "bloomberg technology." president trump visited a private religious school in florida friday signaling his education agenda will focus on school choice. he began a tour of saint andrew catholic school in orlando with a visit to a fourth grade classroom. president trump: you want your own business? you are going to make a lot of money, right? don't run for politics after you do that. [laughter] mark: teachers unions criticized the visit saying it shows the president's hostility towards public schools. mr. trump called education the civil rights issue of our time and asked lawmakers to pass a bill that would fund school choice.
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in france, he has overtaken marine le pen in the presidential race for the first time. a new poll has him with 27% leading le pen by less than two points. another candidate is under pressure to step aside after being caught up in a corruption investigation. mexico's economy minister told the detroit economic club friday any renegotiation of nafta must be a win-win-win for mexico, canada, and the united states. >> the 23-year-old agreement, we need to bring it up. when we were negotiating nafta, we did not have cellphones. we had to do consultations with mexico with landlines. mexico is open for private
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-- e-commerce did not exist. mexico is open for private investment and free competition. the telecom sector is not as relevant as it is today. we have open competition in the telecom sector in mexico. mark: the minister says mexico is part of the solution, not the problem. tunisia agreed today to expedite acceptance of 1500 citizens whose asylum applications were rejected by germany. it also accepted a $264 million funding to develop rural regions and create jobs. the agreement between the tunisians and germany comes in the wake of a fatal truck attack on the christmas market carried out by a tunisian. his asylum request was rejected. germany says the tunisian bureaucratic delays prevented his expulsion. the yuan's special envoy for friday concluded a marathon round of talks in geneva with an agreement from the conflicting parties to resume further talks on a
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political transition to end the six-year war. >> the train is ready, in the station, it is warming up its engine. everything is ready. it just needs an accelerator. the accelerator is in the hands of those attending. mark: he added only a political solution can address the problem. in new york, i am mark crumpton. ♪ caroline: this is "bloomberg technology." i am caroline hyde. let's get back to the biggest story in tech this week, the snap ipo. the company looks to be off to a strong start after a pop in shares in the first few days of trading. i spoke with alex barinka and eric newcomer about snap and other key tech headlines grabbing our attention this week. >> people still excited even with long-term concerns looking at what the analysts are saying, the word "euphoric" comes to mind from the notes we have read.
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it seems like a successful ipo so far. we have got news on the likes of comcast investing $500 million in the ipo. that is a 15% share of the stakes sold. caroline: great scoop. great reporting from you. talk about euphoric. it is the making of lightspeed ventures in particular. they were the first ever investor in this company. >> lightspeed, jeremy liew tracked them down with his partner. they found snap and got a huge stake of it worth more than $2 billion now. they will have to see. this price has to sustain. they sold some of it in the ipo. i think it was them $8 million if i remember right. -- $78 million, if i remember right. benchmark is the biggest holder.
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lightspeed got in early. it is not just the snap investment. they have been in others. it has been a string of wins. >> it has been interesting because there have not been a lot of tech ipo's. when you think about meal soft is on file right now. app dynamics got bought by cisco earlier this year the day before it went public. when it comes to the lack of exits, it does seem like lightspeed has done it right. we don't know if that is them picking the right founders, the good outcomes for lightspeed. >> they are getting in early which is what you need to do if you want to be a top firm and own a lot of the company by the time it goes public like snapchat. caroline: it is a busier space in seed investing in silicon valley. another company has not had such a euphoric week. you managed to get your hands on a special video. >> every driver i think has imagined this at some point, confronting their top loss, the c.e.o. of uber in a car.
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at the end of the ride, the driver says i'm going bankrupt because of you and directly confronts travis who has a fierce response. caroline: to be fair, it was super bowl night. maybe he had a drink or two and was not being fully himself. what he has done is apologize. >> he has. there have been a lot of questions about his leadership ability because of this. he is already dealing with the sexual harassment claims in the past couple of weeks from former employees. there are a lot of concerns right now. i have been up to my eyeballs with ipo's this week. talking to them about the uber, it seems like this was a name folks would consider could go. these are some of the pair met concerns that could keep a company from getting out.
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regardless of the company's plans right now, they say they will wait. travis has said he will wait. when it comes to the future path, if they decide to go in the near term, these risks are going to be layered on top of the regulatory concerns and those kind of things we have seen in the past. caroline: we heard peter thiel call this the most ethically challenged company in silicon valley. >> travis admitted for the first time he needs leadership help. there are lots of questions about whether that means an advisor or very strong sheryl sandberg-esque c.e.o. we really don't know what is going to happen, what he means by leadership help. it is clear they have to make moves and bring people in. they have an acting c.f.o. right now. there are a lot of high-level positions they still need to
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fill. caroline: still with uber, another executive has stepped down. he announced his departure in email. he is the second executive to resign in the past week. the other quit after reports of his failure to disclose he was the subject of a sexual harassment investigation at his previous employer, google. all the share-popping love for snap is sure to draw the skeptics. the financial firm says interest is likely to reach $1 billion in a week. joining us now to discuss the ins and outs of snap is cory johnson from san francisco. you buy the short interest building? i'm looking at the analyst recommendations. there are five on the bloomberg. none are buyers yet. cory: i think the analyst recommendations don't matter a
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lot. there are 26 investment banks on this deal. many will likely write research about snapchat. they are prohibited for 40 days. i expect they will come up with bullish arguments for the stock. caroline: potentially there are not only bullish hopes for where the share price goes, but when you pour over the ipo perspectives as you have, there are some weeds to be pulling out. cory: i don't mean to suggest is short a stock because the company has problems or because of valuation. this valuation does not make sense based on the existing business. people like the stock at 20 times. it does not mean it will go down because it is expensive. it is important to understand the underlying characteristics
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of how the business works. it is about how many users they have and how fast they can grow that user base while they charge more to advertisers to reach those users. caroline: i was speaking to barry eggers, the man who first found snapchat and put the money in with lightspeed. he says it is the addiction that matters. there might be expansion in the developed world. it seems to be the fact they have such addiction among gen x. cory: it is a wonderful product beloved by users. the does not mean the business can make money. it also does not mean it can grow. for this business to grow, it will have to add a lot more users. user growth has been slowing dramatically with instagram. what is interesting is not just the slowing growth around into
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the fourth quarter, the 3% number that was so disconcerting. i think the real question is what was the holiday seasonality? the company had commentary in the filing. they said they had a boost in user growth at the end of the fourth quarter because of the holiday. if that 3% number is a holiday induced boost, there is worry for the next quarter. seasonal growth typically carries over from the fourth quarter to the early part of the first quarter. holiday seasonality we do not expect to continue through future months. it sounds like they are saying the addition of users at the end of the fourth quarter might continue for a few weeks in general but did not continue beyond that. if the user growth is well below 3% in the first quarter, that is a big problem for this valuation.
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caroline: you are going to be a snapchat parent. are you getting into using it yourself? do you buy the views it will expand in terms of the age of users? cory: i am not sure if you called me really old or even older. caroline: just because you have procreated does not mean your old, i promise. cory: i think snapchat is great. there is a cartoon that shows a head exploding and it says another case of an adult trying to learn to use snapchat. they have a great place for communication regardless of age of the user. i don't think it will be that grown-ups will not use it. i think young people will continue to use it. expanding the user base is so important. when users use the product, they use it a lot. caroline: there is the question of international growth and advertising. we trust you to pick through and
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get the juice when it comes to these perspectives. thank you very much for getting it out for us. editor-at-large, cory johnson. more of my conversation with european politician commissioner, what she has to say about all three investigations next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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caroline: u.s. social media giants are facing antitrust probes in europe. in part two of our exclusive interview, i asked at what point companies garner the attention of antitrust regulators. >> we are looking more careful
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-- commissioner vestager: we are looking more careful because we see personal data when you have a lot of personal information can be a barrier to entry for other companies. it can be a very strong asset when it comes to innovation. so far, we have not had cases where it was data issues that was the make or break in any transaction. we are looking for it because we see it becomes a more important asset in a number of different sectors actually. caroline: certainly. looking at germany for a case in point, they are analyzing whether facebook has perhaps looked at forcing its users to sign unfair privacy agreements. is this something you might be looking at from an e.u.-wide level? >> we have asked the germans to look into these issues both with the german legislative perspective and the european perspective to make sure we work
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efficiently and divide labor. this is a very interesting probe because they are looking at the interface between privacy and competition law to see if the fact that facebook is very dominant in some markets has allowed them to make their users accept less protection of their personal information that they would otherwise have due to the legislation. caroline: digging into facebook more, you have been looking into the deals in 2014. has the company responded to some of your objections regarding the data they provided during the transaction?
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>> we are still in the middle of that process investigation. it is too early to say. we have put a lot of effort into this because obviously it is very important for us to have correct information because we base our investigations on the facts of the case, the evidence, the information we get from the companies when we do a merger control. therefore, for us it is very important if we find out or get a concern we were not given the right set of evidence and facts when we did the merger control, for us this is high priority. we try to do it as quickly as possible. caroline: you are hoping this is a sign for companies looking at doing deals that transparency is the key? commissioner vestager: transparency with us is the key because obviously we are very committed to protect also the confidentiality in these transactions. we have put a lot of effort into making sure there is no leakages, but you can have a trusting working relationship
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even though we may have different responsibilities in the process of merger control. it is very important for us to have correct data, full information, in order for us to work in a way that will actually also make things happen in a constructive way, making sure we can do our job in a speedy and qualified way. caroline: when looking at another key tech giant, google ---- of course, out but, alphabet, google is something you delve into on various issues. there are two google cases at the moment regarding android phone software and advertising. these are contract based. does that affect whether you are inclined to settle or impose fines? where do you stand on the two outcomes? commissioner vestager: the two cases are newer than the google search case. google received objections in both cases.
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we have their answers. we are in the process of analyzing those answers and it is open as to where those two cases will go at the moment. caroline: are u.s. companies in general forthcoming with help and responsiveness to the e.u. competition commission? commissioner vestager: yes, in general, i think so. of course, we have different responsibilities, the businesses to their owners and shareholders, us to the citizens to enjoy the fruits of fair competition, of innovation, quality, affordable prices. i think there is a respect of the different responsibilities and very often a constructive working relationship. caroline: sometimes it seems as though companies, again for example google concerned about photos and particular publishers, it seems to go from
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the normal realms of antitrust but they seem to be looking to the antitrust commissioners to help whether it is something more to do with contract overwriting. what would you believe about the antitrust issue? is it an antitrust issue when it is more about copyrights? >> we have to be very thorough before we open a case because copyright is copyright and antitrust is antitrust. even though the forces to enforce competition is very strong in europe, that is not mean every question is a question of competition enforcement. we try to be very precise making sure we do not use our antitrust tools when it is a copyright issue or an issue of how a contract has been made. we also try to be very open with people who come to us and have
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concerns or want to complain. we say this is something we can look into. on other things, they have other authorities. caroline: how is your when it comes to companies and when they come to you with complaints about u.s. tech giants? do you feel they are over-protectionist or the viewpoint is balanced? commissioner vestager: of course, it takes some solidity in a complaint for us to start investigating because we need something to go on before we go there. you probably know that, some of the complainants in the first google case are u.s. companies but also active in the european market. i don't see that the flag or nationality of the company plays a role.
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it is a behavior in the marketplace that makes people concerned and sometimes triggers a complaint. caroline: that was the european competition commissioner. on monday, the team will be speaking with howard davies about the political risks out of europe. that conversation begins at 5:00 a.m. in new york and 10:00 a.m. in london. this is bloomberg. ♪
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caroline: techcrunch is reporting president trump's administration has tapped him as chief technology officer. peter thiel is a supporter and advisor to the president. pandora has extended its deadline for investors to propose changes to its board of directors. the struggling company has been having waning sales. they can use the annual meeting to challenge executives. the looming deadline will
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pressure stockholders to make any proposal public by march 17. amazon is planning to expand echo offerings. the company is expected to unveil a device that will allow people to initiate phone calls by voice. it will also allow people to talk with others on the opposite end of another electric device. finally, shares tumbled 26% in the session. the cloud services company was downgraded by morgan stanley to underway saying sales execution issues and rising costs will hurt the company for several quarters. it went public last september. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are back in san francisco next week. we have an exclusive interview with the lead of google's cloud regime learning group. that is all for now. live from new york, this is
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bloomberg. ♪
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