alisa: i am alisa parenti in washington and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your first word news. president trump says senate republicans working on a bill to replace the affordable care act are making progress but could use help from their colleagues across the aisle. president trump: the senate is very close to votes it needs to pass a replacement. the problem is we have zero help from the democrats. they are obstructionists. that is all they are. that is all they are good at, obstruction. alisa: meantime, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is pressing dissenting senators to back the health care bill in a threshold vote tomorrow. that is when they go to debate the g.o.p. legislation. it is unclear which version the

chamber will consider. white house senior adviser jared kushner denies any collision with russia. the president's son-in-law spoke today after meeting with senate investigators who are probing russian meddling. he spoke with the house intelligence committee for nearly three hours. house minority leader nancy pelosi and senator chuck schumer are offering a retooled message for democrats, promising working americans that someone has your back. democrats also unveiled a new slogan, "a better deal." this is bloomberg. ♪ global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. i am alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. "bloomberg technology" is next. ♪ ♪ emily: i am emily chang and this is "bloomberg technology."

coming up, the ad-pocalypse seems to have blown over at google. alphabet each bidding on earnings and revenue, so why did the stock dropped after hours? we will discuss. plus masayoshi son's , multibillion-dollar spending uber out of force ove another major market. we will discuss the softbank threat to google as rivals look to capitalize on the company's crises. a bloomberg scoop, regulators open talks with executives from time warner and at&t as the $85 billion dollar deal continues to take shape. lead, shares dipping in after-hours trading. the parent company releasing second-quarter earnings which sent shares soaring but then turned south. revenue for the search giant came in at $26 billion, up 21% year over year. but aggregate costs per click

dropped 23% from a year ago. these numbers include the effect of the $2.7 billion fine from the european competition commission. i spoke with the cfo about the findings and she told me "it is so early in our analysis of the decision, this is an ongoing legal matter and they have not decided if they will appeal." joining us from new york, collin colburn, and cory johnson. atant to start with a look the bloomberg so i can show you what happened with shares today. up and down today. why did that happen? cory: look at that. very fancy. really interesting quarter. i think the reason the stock is down is because of traffic acquisition costs. the company has been warning as they shift away from ads on the website to ads on a mobile programmatic, her and ads on youtube, but mobile apps. we are on an apple iphone, and

we are seeing ads on an app. they are making the sales calls ads, butg in those selling them through apple. it is more expensive to acquire that traffic for google. google's costs for the ads had been rising. emily: you think this is more about traffic acquisition costs than cost per click. cory: i think that is what it is. they have warned this is a big business, more mobile, more programmatic, and it will cost more. this time, we saw it. emily: collin, what is your take? you singled out the strength in mobile search and youtube in terms of driving the momentum here. >> i think mobile is the big driver. that is kind of the headline. i think that is why you see increase in clicks and a

decrease in aggregate cost per click. that has been a driver for google for some time. emily: what about what has been going on with youtube? about a bigout investigation into extremist content shown next to prominent advertising. a lot of advertisers pulled their campaigns. it seems the advertisers have returned. i did ask about this. she reiterated revenue was strong. we continue to take this issue seriously and do everything we can to protect the ecosystem. cory: a lot of people have made noise about this. they also like the traffic google was giving them in terms of clicks from ads. the google ad is like nothing else in the history of advertising in that you can see the result of an ad as it runs.

that is where they are shifting their and dollars to. to the extent advertisers pulled the ads, it is probably good news for google now because they have fixed what little problems had been there. i don't know how big these ad problems were for advertisers. it looks like they're back and none stayed away for good. i think what is interesting is that it actually might make the comparison numbers look better for google going forward. emily: collin, there are ongoing investigations in the e.u. we had this big $2.7 billion fine. google is trying to decide whether they will appeal. how concerned are you about future investigations? >> from an advertiser perspective, there is lots of concerns. obviously the youtube scandal earlier in the year and now the ruling from the e.u., from the competitive commission, does not help an advertiser's stomach

when going to invest in advertising on google. how do you know your ad is not going to be placed in a position you do not want it to be in? how do you know that if you are buying things like product listing ads or shopping ads that it is not being skewed against you? so there are obviously some issues. i agree with cory. i think this is a good thing for google in the long run with advertisers pulling out and google is able to identify what they have to do going forward, to work on to instill better trust in our advertising partners. emily: for so many quarters the bets have been focused on moonshot bets. revenue is increasing. the losses going down. it is also becoming a smaller part of the overall pie. i'm wondering if google will be less focused on moonshots going forward.

cory: i was struck by the capital intensity of the business has declined significantly in this quarter, capital expenditures were way down this quarter, about 60% this quarter. emily: $85 million lost last year. this year they lost $772 million. cory: i think a lot of it is pulling back on google fiber. it is a very capital intensive business. that is one thought. i think what is interesting is the diversions here. ruth porat says we will make the business a lot simpler to understand. we are going to put other bats over here, google over here. we have alphabet as a parent company. google is the biggest business, here is how it works. but they made google more complicated from a marketer's perspective. there are many more types of advertising going on. there are more places the ads are going on in terms of mobile and also programmatic.

they have emphasized big growth in youtube, which is highly under-monetized. they have numbers on youtube that are unbelievable. 1.4 billion users on youtube, registered users who are logged in. this is not just people watching on a twitter feed or catching a video. those are facebook-like numbers. emily: second only to facebook. cory: those are huge numbers. i think they have made the business more interesting and complicated under the hood in maine google with the selling of ads and type of ads they sell , even as the overall business looks simpler by description. emily: when it comes to other bets, ruth told me the losses the revenues are driven by nast, nest, fiber, and the losses are coming down in part because of a pause when it comes to google

fiber. the increasing simplicity of the overall business, does it make you more or less excited about the stock as a whole? >> from a marketing perspective, there's still a lot to be excited about from google. the counterpoint to what cory was saying is if i am an advertiser, i have more options now with how i can interact with my customer, whether it is shopping ads or mobile paid search ads or display ads through other places. i think that is a good thing from an advertising perspective. emily: collin colburn, thank you so much. cory johnson, editor at large. we are listening to the call that is beginning now. cfo ruth porat saying revenues demonstrate ongoing momentum in the business." tremendous performance in mobile, as we were discussing. we will be talking more about google later and listening into that call. now, in deal news webmd has

agreed to sell itself to kkr, with the medical website agreeing to make it more private. that represents a 20% premium to friday's close. used by 75 million consumers a month. coming up, softbank has placed a major that in the global ridesharing wars. how the become investment has the potential to threaten google's drive for global dominance. "bloomberg technology" is live streaming on twitter. check us out. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a stock we are watching, blue apron shares jumped as much as 20% after receiving buy ratings from seven of 11 analysts. the votes of confidence pushed it to its biggest intraday

increase since it went public last month, but still below the ipo price of $10 a share. five of the 11 analysts warned blue apron should not be valued at more than the $10 price. uber is at risk of losing out on another big chunk of the global market. grab, the leading provider in southeast asia, announced it has raised $2 billion from japan's didi.nk and china's the company is expected another $500 million from existing backers. this move is the latest hurdle for uber amidst a series of scandals. joining me to discuss, brad stone. why is this funding round so significant? >> the numbers are eye-popping for southeast asia. this is the biggest funding round of any company in asia. $6 billion valuation, still significant. it shows grab is a major player in the ridesharing space on par

with companies like lyft. out, uber'sointed hold on all these markets is tenuous. emily: we have seen them get out of china, out of russia. how much pressure is this put on them to get out of southeast asia? >> i think china and russia are good benchmarks. when they withdrew from those markets, it was not necessarily a defeat. they got out by taking major didi inn yandex and china. they are simplifying their business and cutting losses. it is not that bad for uber at a time of turmoil. emily: what about other markets? potentially brazil, india. >> i don't think they want to sacrifice the whole chessboard. india is one place where they have significant competition. i think they will still try to make a major play there. europe, most of south america, uber is strong. they can streamline business and it is not necessarily a defeat. but, we have come a long way from the early sentiment this could be a globe spanning platform.

clearly it is not. also putftbank has money behind the indian competitor ola. what do you make of softbank supporting the anti-uber alliance? >> masayoshi son has a lot of conviction in this category and a commitment to online payments. softbank may be interested in taking a stake in uber buying shares from investors and investing more money into uber. softbank has denied that publicly. we think there is still something to it. watch this you've all. evolve. we could have a global peace treaty where all these companies take an ownership stake in each

other and we reduce the level of competition causing them to lose money. emily: softbank potentially taking shares of uber because investors seem to want to liquidate stock. is that because they want to cash out or they are losing faith in the company? >> i think it is the former. it has now been 10 years. early investors are impatient. as we know from listening over the years, impatient for an ipo that may or may not come next year. despite the management turmoil, the company uber has continued to perform well. while there might be anxiety, i think people are still bullish on this category. emily: is it performing well it has may be raised some white flags in these markets? is it better for uber to walk away from them? or do they lose something big by not having a stronghold? that in somee is of these markets like singapore, the market is growing very fast. grab is discounting and losing money.

the idea pioneered in china with the peace treaty is to reduce competition, get rid of the discounting, allow prices to go up, and then you return to natural profitability. i think uber wants to get in more markets. emily: any updates on the uber c.e.o. process? do we know how long it will take? >> i have not heard anything. i have been asking and listening where ever i can. they do not seem to be in a particular rush. they have a committee of executives inside uber. i think they're waiting for the right candidate. would i be surprised if we hear about it tomorrow? maybe not because they need to fill that spot. i think it will be a couple of more weeks if not months. emily: brad stone, thanks so much for stopping by. coming up, as the white house announced its defense against the accusation of russia ties, it is also pushing forward massive health care legislation. we will break down the latest in washington next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: it was another busy day in washington. president trump son-in-law and advisor jared kushner appeared on capitol hill today talking to the senate select committee on intelligence in closed session about his contacts with russians during the presidential campaign. after the meeting, he denied any collision. >> nor do i know of anyone else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian funds for my businesses. and i have been fully transparent in providing all requested information. emily: at the same time, the white house is also trying to pass a health care overhaul. president trump turned up the pressure on republican lawmakers

on twitter, and in a speech this afternoon, he said the senate will vote on a procedural vote tuesday. president trump: the senate is very close to the votes it needs to pass a replacement. the problem is we have zero help from the democrats. they are obstructionists. that is all they are. that is all they are good at, obstruction. emily: before the speech, the president made a series of tweets where he said republicans have a last chance to do the right thing on repeal and replace after years of talking and campaigning about it. if republicans do not repeal and replace the disastrous obamacare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand. it is very sad some republicans, even some carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect the president. president trump trying to throw around his weight, use more muscle to get what he wants when it comes to the health care bill. we are still watching headlines from the alphabetic earnings call. ruth porat speaking moments ago

, saying there is strong momentum in the second quarter with the growth in mobile search and youtube. alphabet stock in late u.s. trading not reacting well to the earnings report, falling 3%. we will also have more on google coming up. ♪ emily: those are the tech movers of the day. we are back with kevin whitelaw to talk about washington. i want to start with what is going on with health care. what do you make of the president's speech and the likelihood republicans are going to heed what he had to say?

>> we will see. it is coming down to the wire. republican leaders are still insisting that they are planning to go ahead with a vote tomorrow to debate the health care bill, but a lot of senators do not know what the bill is and which bill is the one they are intending to try to put forward. there is an option to do a repeal only that would be delayed repeal. they have obviously also been talking about a version of a replacement bill revised several times by mitch mcconnell that is still a work in progress. so it is an unusually fluid situation for a senate usually seen as much more of a deliberative body. emily: what do you make of jared kushner's appearance today on confirming four contacts with russians during the campaign and calling these unmemorable? >> this is sort of the beginning of what is likely to be a long

process of public statements, not just from jared kushner, but from other members of both the trump administration and those associated with the campaign. kushner will be back on the hill tomorrow morning meeting behind closed doors with the house intelligence committee where staffers and we expect members will get a chance to ask him some questions. there also might be public appearances down the line. a number of democrats and some republicans have said they want to see kushner show up in public to answer questions in front of everybody. that is one thing. we still have other hearings in the potential future. the senate judiciary has made it clear it wants to hear from donald trump, jr. and paul manafort at some point. originally scheduled possibly for wednesday. that will likely happen at a later date now. there will be a lot of these appearances coming up in the coming weeks and months.

emily: there has been a lot of controversy swirling around ideas and things that could happen, whether it is president trump pardoning himself or firing bob mueller. obviously, the president has shown himself to be fairly unpredictable. in when could we see a step some direction? >> at this point, who knows? we know president trump does tweet a lot. he is an impulsive tweeter. i believe he debates things amongst his staff that way, too. as far as actions, it is clear there are a lot of republicans nervous. a lot of them are happy with the choice of robert mueller, someone who has a lot of respect from both sides of the aisle. i think there's a certain amount of nervousness about what might happen about jeff sessions, given some of the tweets we have

seen trump give about the attorney general. emily: i know you are continuing to follow all of that. thanks for the update. coming up, officials have started talking to at&t and time warner about approval conditions. we will discuss. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> it is 1:29 p.m. in sydney. i am paul allen with the first word news. president trump son-in-law of jared kushner has denied improper contact with russian officials. a senior white house advisors been two and a half hours answering questions from the senate panel. the two hour meeting, krisher reaffirmed his stance that he did not act with impropriety during the campaign or transition. not collude with russia, nor do i know of anyone else who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian

inds for my businesses, and have been fully transparent and providing all requested information. >> turkish president recep erdogan has held talks at the end of a three nation tour aimed at resolving the regions diplomatic dispute. he flew in from kuwait and said he supports initiatives to end the crisis. turkey maintains a military base in qatar. china has reinforced its role as a supporter of global trade c nations must speak with a common voice. the ministry also said china wants to enhance intellectual property rights among the bri c's.

global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. i am sophie kamaruddin. stocks are mixed, bonds falling, and the forex market ahead of the fomc meeting on wednesday. the yen is resuming gains, putting pressure on tokyo shares. shares in sydney powering ahead aussie trades at 79.29. .1%,ang seng losing materials dragging the most in shanghai. we do have the kospi halting a rally, with a profit taking theme. resonant mode and fairness overgrowth in his economic land. copper at a five-month high, and iron ore gaining in singapore. rising on the back

of earnings updates, but toshiba sliding. c down over 7.5% after its share sale came in at a discount. ♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang. our top story this hour, alphabet second quarter report, shares are still down. the ad model is shifting to a mobile dominant space. also hammering down profit was the record antitrust fine from the european union. was it all bad news? take a listen to ruth porat, the c.f.o. of alphabet, on the investor call. >> in terms of the revenue detail, google site revenues were $18.4 billion in the quarter. up 20% year over year. youtube. the biggest growth was in mobile

search and youtube. emily: joining me, the bloomberg senior analyst. we are taking a look at shares after hours. you can see the spike, then the plunge. what is going on? >> if you look at the underlying demand through paid click change , strongest growth since 2007, the demand is strong. the traffic acquisition costs, because they are making more money from mobile and programmatic advertising, the acquisition cost is higher on those platforms. that is why the net revenue came in line with estimates or missed most of the bullish estimates. that is why you saw the reaction you see. emily: we have been talking about what has been going on with other bats becoming a smaller piece of the pie overall. this is what ruth porat was brought in to do. losses are narrowing. revenue is increasing. they have taken a pause on fiber. here is what ruth porat had to say about those other bets. >> we are pleased with our progress on other bets.

a couple of updates. nest continues to drive expansion, such as the indoor security camera as well as geographic expansion, both of which support its position as the leading brand in the connected home. emily: when i spoke with her on a phone call before the earnings call, she said nest and fiber , even though they are taking a bit of a pause, are really driving the revenue. it seems like it is taking a backseat to the overall google business. >> the actual meaningful contribution is still a couple of years away. that is why they classify that in other bets. what is interesting is the cost cost control we are seeing over there. there is more focused coming to other bets, which is helping the core alphabet groups bottom line am a but don't expect revenue growth to accelerate away from meaning leaf from the other bets anytime soon. you will see acceleration in

other revenues such as cloud services. that is where they are doubling down. emily: cloud obviously a huge opportunity for them with amazon and microsoft, an area where they are investing. they also named the c.e.o. of google to the board. it is interesting because he is the fifth alphabet employee on the board. on the one hand, it's smooth out this strange reporting structure where she was on the board and reporting to the ceo through her work on the cloud, but there are some questions about whether that is too many people from one company on a board. facebook is just mark zuckerberg. amazon is just jeff bezos. what is your take? years, the last two google ceo has shown focus. when it comes to machine learning and ai, it is literally betting the farm on machine learning and ai. this allows them to apply that to the core alphabet group. focus coming tocuse

alphabet because of this. as we have seen and the results, it has been working. with the focus, i think it will help in the long run. emily: thanks so much for breaking it down. we are continuing to listen to the call and bring you headlines as they happen. now to a bloomberg scoop, at&t and time warner are said to be an early talks with antitrust officials for approval conditions. competitors and lawmakers have been pressuring the justice department to stop the $85 billion deal on fears it may lead to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. another possible challenge, the justice department is without antitrust chief, who now awaits senate confirmation. joining us is gerry smith. what is the latest? >> the latest is at&t and time warner are in talks with the justice department about how

this deal could go through with conditions. that is an encouraging sign because there have been questions for a while about whether the justice department might try to block the deal. president trump has criticized cnn, which is owned by time warner and said during the campaign he might try to block the deal. what we know now is that the two companies are in talks with justice department lawyers about the deal going through and then having certain conditions they have to follow after the deal goes through. emily: talk to us about other television channel owners and what they are concerned about. >> well, for example, premium channel owners, rivals to hbo, companies like showtime, they are very concerned at&t could use hbo, basically favor hbo because hbo is owned by time

warner, and at&t is acquiring time warner, so they would favor hbo over there channel. they are asking the justice department lawyers for conditions that protect them and make sure they get the same kind of marketing and packaging, equal footing on online distribution that hbo is getting once it is part of at&t. emily: if the deal goes through, what conditions might we see imposed on at&t? >> right, that would be one of the conditions that might be imposed, that at&t would have to treat hbo's rivals the same way that it treats hbo. one thing that has been an issue and is being looked that is the idea of what is called zero rating, which means if you are an at&t wireless subscriber, there is the potential streaming hbo might not count towards your monthly data, whereas other channels would count towards data. that is something hbo's rivals are concerned about and justice department lawyers are looking at as well.

emily: all right gerry smith, , our bloomberg media reporter there. thanks so much for joining us. we will keep watching. bleacher report is putting a condé nast executive is the chief marketing officer. the company named its first chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer. it is part of time warner's cable unit. the goal is to position bleacher report as a viable alternative to facebook and google for marketers looking to reach young audiences. he will work on new advertising opportunities for brands like at&t, gatorade, and ford motor s motors august 14. coming up, competition in the augmented reality space is showing size of heating up.

how blippar plans to carve out a space in the field. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a report we are watching. con score out with its monthly internet user data for 2017 june. pinterest continues to stall, highlighting the risk it may struggle to sustain user growth. amazon, pandora, and facebook continue to see visitor challenges in june. phone-based augmented reality is on track to become a major trend in coming years with tech titans launching their own new ar platforms. it is not his major tech giants making a play in the field. we are going to caroline hyde in london, who spoke with a longtime player in augmented

reality. what have you got? caroline: thank you. yes, the longtime player is blippar. it is one of europe's so-called unicorns. it has a reported valuation in excess of $1 billion. the company is known for its visual discovery apps, which boast 65 million active users. though it's active user base might be a bit smaller than that. it recently launched a facial recognition feature which claims more than 95% accuracy. it can already recognize 377,000 public figures. i recently caught up with the c.o.o., danny lopez, in london. i started about asking about application for the latest feature. take a listen. recognition is

fun, social. we want people to play around with it and learn from the experience. the key for us is the accuracy of the recognition. our facial recognition has a 99.67% accuracy rate. that's what we want to make sure is working, and when it is working well, you can take that and use it in a host of sectors. think global banking with facial recognition as a way to transact. think building access where you are fussing around to find your card but there is actually a camera lens that recognizes you as an employee. so many smart networking things, 5000, 10,000ith people, trying to find out who is who, who might be relevant to you, having the ability to scan a photograph and get that information is exciting. caroline: security issues or worries about that as well in terms of being able to scan a picture of anyone and know the details about them?

at the moment it is opt in, but how does that scale? >> security is a key area. not something we are working on now. like everything, you have to embrace the technology. at the end of the day, if you acknowledge facial recognition gives you the ability to find where the bad guys are, that is a very positive development. people think about privacy issues, but think about someone in a foreign city who falls down, has nothing on them, the ability to do facial recognition and find out the nationality and send that person to the embassy, the next of kin, so that saves lives. there is a debate about privacy , but also so much value added. caroline: what is it now. when blippar first launched five years ago, it was very much about branding and exciting ways of using it and brands getting access to you and i. what do you want blippar stand for now? >> we are a technology company that specializes in augmented

reality and computer vision. people think of us as the app. the app is a showcase of the technology. we made the clear decision that you need to be good at computer vision. when you have a perfect marriage between augmented reality with computer vision, true recognition and cognition, you have the perfect marriage that will allow ar to scale. we are both, and we essentially provide people the ability to get more from the world in front of them. that happens within our app, but the technology we have built can be taken outside the app and used by companies in other sectors to be able to capitalize on the progress we have made in computer vision. caroline: you said you have been investing heavily. what does that mean in terms of money? are you looking toward profitability or breakeven? how do start to make sure that you can make this a revenue driver as well?

>> we already generate significant revenue from the brands that we work with. we take a long-term view here, which is that we are building something pretty ambitious. we are indexing the entire world. to do that, you need the best engineers in the field. we have a lot of those here in london. we have a lot of those on the west coast in the u.s. we fundamentally want to become a profitable company in the future, but take the long-term view i think it is important to spend money to have technology you are proud of. of course along the way, meeting significant milestones. caroline: have you got a need to be fundraising anytime soon? >> we raised just over $100 million over the last five years. we have incredibly supportive shareholders who are very comfortable with the progress we are making both from a commercial standpoint and tech

milestones. we are a private company. who is to say what happens in the future? but right now, feeling good about where we are going. caroline: yuan have to go to investors anytime soon. there is talk in the press of burning for cash. it sounds like you are heavily investing in the area you are in. >> fundamentally it is about whether your board is comfortable with the money you are spending and the progress you are making. if the answers to those is yes, than that is exactly where you want to be. caroline: what about the road to exit? are you a ipo driven, m&a driven company? >> all those options in a few a few moreed, and are on the horizon. it is a very exciting time for the space. since 2011, this is the year when people are starting to take that more seriously, because a lot of the big players,

facebook, apple, google, they sense it is here and happening now or they are investing heavily in computer vision. both of those are areas we have been working on for 5.5 years. it gives you an inkling that the next 12-18 months will be crucial for the space. nobody has the answers. that is the key. it is not like the big players or ourselves can map out what will happen in the next 12 months. it is just going to be very exciting to follow every single step. caroline: optimistic c.e.o. danny lopez. emily: thanks so much, caroline hyde in london. next, we turn our attention to southeast asia and india. alibaba and amazon said to be pouring millions of dollars in these regions. we will discuss the latest negotiations. we continue to monitor the alphabet conference call. the tech giant reported second-quarter earnings come the ceo commenting on its growing cloud business, saying in serving cloud customers, the

company is reliable. they are continuing to hire an scale as quickly as they can. shares still down about 3% in after-hours trading. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: alibaba is said to be in negotiations to lead a funding round in indonesia's largest online marketplace. it is part of alibaba's push into southeast asia's largest economy. joining me now from new york, selina wang, who has been following the story. talk to us about the strategy behind the potential investment. >> alibaba has been incredibly aggressive in southeast asia. we know they want to penetrate this market and dominate while there is still green space and no clear winner. it is a big start up in indonesia. alibaba recently upped their stake by another $1 billion to have full control of this singapore-based company. tokopedia is a national

extension of them wanting to dominate the space. emily: what does it mean for alibaba's competitor jd which had been in talks to buy tokopedia? >> this is deathly a big blow to jd. alibaba is the much larger competitor and has much more cash and impetus to win over tokopedia with more money and a higher valuation. sources did not say the exact amount jd was looking to invest, but it was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. it does make more sense for alibaba because the business model is more similar to alibaba in that it matches buyers and sellers rather than selling from its own shares. shelves, whereas jd has tended to only entire chain from their warehouses and delivering to the customer. emily: staying on that side of the globe, in india, amazon making a bid for the indian payment business. tell us what is behind this. >> nothing is going to stop jeff

bezos to win over india. big market withust more than one billion people. he needs to have a strong digital payment system to make e-commerce as easy as possible. he has big ambitions in e-commerce and payments. the local competitors, one of them has their own large payment service. amazon needs that as well. freecharge is a good extension of that. emily: what does this mean for local amazon competitors in india? >> amazon would be buying a this from snapdeal, a smaller competitor. for the smaller local competitors, they need to up their game. in the midst of the potential acquisition, snapdeal and

flipkart are in talks for a merger. this would mean there would be a stronger domestic behemoth to compete with amazon and jeff bezos. jeff bezos has said he wants to invest $5 billion in india so nothing is going to stop him. with freecharge, he will have better brand recognition and another channel to acquire new users. this is definitely something for local competitors to keep an eye on. emily: selina wang covering the other side of the globe. as always, thanks so much for joining us. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are live streaming on twitter. check us out at @bloombergtechtv weekdays, 5:00 in new york, 2:00 in san francisco. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

rishaad: it's 7:00 a.m. here in st. petersburg, our top story comes down to crude oil, strengthening again as saudi arabia pledges to further cut oil, but the kingdom says it can't work alone, others need to pull their weight. i'm yousef gamal el-din. shery: just gone midday here and here are the other top stories.