♪ emily: i am emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, alphabet advances, shares spike after the tech giant says it managed to keep at business growing study. i spoke to alphabet cfo about how they keep it up in the midst of rising antitrust scrutiny. we will tell you what she had to say. plus, amazon falls. shares tumble after the company reports profits missed estimates

. third-quarter profit guidance also a miss. up in smoke. jules defense of its marketing policy goes proof. the company is grilled by lawmakers in washington who say more teens are getting hooked. first to our top story, a tale of two earnings as amazon and alphabet report second-quarter results. shares of the parent company jumping while amazon is heading in a different direction. alphabet reported revenue that beat the highest estimates, calling concerns of slowing growth at the heart of the largest digital ad company. sales in the cloud unit grew by 37%, but not enough to top estimates. joining us to discuss -- you cover alphabet and amazon, so what is happening here?

>> alphabet was such a bad q1, that it was easy to step back from the disaster they had. they put a great number up. an additional 25 billion. this is one of the cheapest large-cap tech names we cover. it was the worst sentiment going in of any techmeme we cover. it is definitely the least transparent company, so given the q1 blitz, this is a rebound. i am not sure investors will treat this as a sustainable recovery. i think there are other names that investors will try. stock is lagging today. it -- see them step up and put it back in the buyback, which they have been slow relative to other tech companies. emily: shares were up 9% this year.

before this earnings report, lagging peers. i got off the phone with alphabet's ceo talking about the growth drivers. she said they have been focused on investing to support growth and said there was real strength in the other income and expenses line item, which we saw go up to $3 billion, including capital and g-v. that is the first time i have heard her mention or refer to investment in new uber and lyft, which both went public. talk to us about the overall story. ad revenue growth did increase 16% compared to 15% in other quarters. is this a new normal. >> i think it is. the good news for google is that they were able to stop the decelerating ad revenue for the first time in a year. they were able to increase that a little bit. i think the story remains from last quarter, which is that the digital advertising ecosystem is more competitive today than it

was even a year ago. obviously facebook and amazon being the new entrant as the third-largest to dull advertising company out there for advertisers to put their dollars into. there is more copper tissue and and that is feeding this new normal that we are going to expect going forward. emily: talk about the bigger picture as these companies face antitrust scrutiny, the doj has opened an investigation. the ftc has opened a review into facebook. how is this antitrust scrutiny going to impact the bottom line? >> when you look at what happened to facebook a year ago and how the market reacted to some questions around whether the regulatory environment was

going to hit their bottom line, the top line was going to float to the bottom line like it used to, we saw the stock get hit, then the name has surged. the same thing happened to google last quarter. it was partially because investors were worried about the youtube algorithm, the tweaks they were doing, and this quarter, we saw that it is not going to have a long-term impact. you will see the stock in the after hours surge. the other aspect is, google has a history for the antitrust reason of being able to ratchet up and down its growth as it wishes. this is not a surprise that they blew the numbers out of the water. it looks like some of that is from the other parts business, but the basic ad revenue business is incredibly strong. cost per click numbers were

strong. they came in above estimized consensus. some of the other internal numbers were a little bit weaker, but overall, they have the ability to turn the knob at will each quarter and they will be able to do that going forward. emily: there were concerns about youtube because of all the scrutiny. they have changed algorithms, changed policies around hate speech, but youtube is still the second largest driver of revenue. in talking about antitrust, what she said is that the doj review would be quite broad, and she talked about how we have been engaged with regulators around the globe for quite some time. there are areas where we are clear we support changes. she indicated that this is google's normal state of play, to be under pressure, to be dealing with regulators. it is not a distraction.

how worried are you for whether it is google or amazon or facebook about this regulatory pressure. >> as you said, they have been here for a long time. the way i look at this is all three of them are going to have to deal with this going forward, but if you think deeply about the ability of our legislature to actually put any real legislation on the board that is going to matter, it just won't. it will pressure all three companies at the margins to make small changes that could have a decent impact positively in a social way, but you are not going to see them break up facebook, crush amazon's dominance in the retail space, and you are not going to see them do anything to google that will have a massive impact from a regulatory standpoint. the pressure is warranted. these companies deserve to be under pressure. they are huge and there is no

reason why they should go without oversight. emily: do you agree? >> microsoft is a $30 stock when eu was investing them. it is now $40. this is total noise and the reality is, it is effectively broad reaching across all tech. the government is doing what they should do to protect us. it is like any other aspect of life. we think we do the right things for our clients. it does not mean that they are wrong. being big is not bad. being bad is bad. we don't think anything is going to come out of it and this is great, because these stocks have been pressured. i travel globally and the number one question is -- software has it multiple turns higher.

we have very strong views of the big platforms in internet of great buys at this level. emily: what? -- what are the headwinds in your view? >> when you look at digital advertising market, it is just growing. the pie is growing as amazon is bringing in dollars from off-line advertising. you have cpg's who have traditionally spent a bulk of their money in in-store placement, whether shelf space or inside the retailer, bringing that onto amazon, facebook obviously growing as well and google is, too. the only problem is that google is losing shares. they are not losing share at an enormous pace. it is really the competition

that is going to be the biggest problem for google going forward. amazon is creating a really interesting ecosystem. if you look at those shopper marketing dollars coming online, that means that retailers like walmart and target and kroger, some of the largest retailers are scrambling to figure out how to make a self-serve add platform like amazon. now, google and facebook are going to have to compete against retailers. i am a believer in pinterest. they have not had a huge success story, but amazon might pave the path for them to get to this game in a more substantial and real way. emily: pinterest did have a pretty big ipo. if that is not success, i don't

know what is. you are going to stick with me, brett, i know you need to get on some calls, so i will let you go. shares of tesla plunged thursday after the electric car posted a worse than expected loss and another major management change cast more doubts on itfuture. the co-founder is leaving the job. he has been with the company since before elon musk joined the board 15 years ago. coming up, alphabet shares advance in trading after sales and profit beat estimates. we are going to dig further into the highlights, listening to the call, we will bring you more headlines as we have them. this is bloomberg.

google is having a bounce

quarter that saul revenue top estimates. shares from its own online properties climbed 18% to more than 27 billion. last quarter, shares plunged. this time around, shares are feeling the love. with us to discuss, colin coburn, analyst at forrester research and lee drug and. i want to zero in on the cloud, because google cloud has been in third place for a long time, though the entire cloud pie is growing. they have made a change, replaced diane greene. what are you expecting when it comes to google cloud and how important is it going to be for the business, given that they have not been able to meet market share? >> it is still important business. it is not the core, but it is an important way for google to diversify their business.

if you look at the way that google gets revenue, 85% is coming from the ad business. given the competition they are facing, i don't think you want to be in a spot where you have north of 80% of your revenue coming from advertising. they are going to place a bigger emphasis on the cloud business. how much success are they going to have? it is hard to say. they have not been able to get out of that third slot. they are facing massive competition against microsoft and amazon, who have had success and who put significant dollars behind that business. it will be hard to get out of that slot, but still a significant part of their business that they will be focusing on. emily: you wonder if acquisitions will be part of the story. they did by earlier this year and i asked if acquisitions in the cloud would make sense.

she said we are open to acquisitions. there is a lot we are doing organically and we are excited about the opportunities. at the same time, she said the organic business is doing well, but, given the antitrust scrutiny, google might hesitate to do more acquisitions in the near future. is that what you would expect? >> i think the cloud business is important strategically. look at what microsoft did with open ai investing $1 billion in -- i don't even know what you would call it. it is a company, but kind of a nonprofit. i think google will look at their cloud business in a similar fashion, where the technologies of the future that will be scaled out, cloud business is going to be important. it is in a sense a platform for new businesses. while amazon will continue to push that cloud business to the bottom line, and as we have seen

today, it is incredibly important to the stock price, because it impacts so heavily in the bottom line numbers, for google, i don't see it that way. i see it even more strategic to google the and it may be to amazon. emily: open ai, and artificial intelligence research company, let's talk about youtube. it has been questions about how youtube can continue to grow. it is one of the centerpieces of scrutiny from lawmakers around the world. focusing on misinformation, fake news. youtube has made a lot changes -- we have done reporting on internal turmoil under google. very positive about growth on the call.

she echoed some of the things she said on the earnings call with analysts. how do you expect youtube to weather these headwinds? >> the brand safety issues that advertisers have are legitimate. it has been something on their spotlight for a while. google hasn't found a more automated way to figure out how to monitor for those sort of things, it is a manual, laborious process, just using resources to monitor it. in terms of headwinds when it comes to youtube, i am not concerned. when you think about google's package, last year, a big innovation was bringing all of their advertising platforms into the google marketing platform. a more comprehensive stack to offer to advertisers. the thing that is great about the way they did this is that google is able to offer a full customer lifecycle offer, unlike anyone else is able to do.

facebook is stuck in this early awareness phase, where if you are trying to bring awareness about the product or service you are selling, facebook is a good place, but if you are looking to convert customers right now, facebook is not so great. google is great for both. youtube is great for awareness, because people consume more video content today and they did five years ago. there will be 8% growth in video consumption by u.s. users. emily: good to hear your perspective. thank you both. we will continue to monitor the call and bring you any additional headlines. coming up, she calls herself a hard-core tennessee conservative. marsha blackburn, we will hear from her next. this is bloomberg.

emily: back to our continued look of how the u.s. government is regulating big tech. the government has announced it is opening a broad antitrust investigation. marsha blackburn has the tech task force and spoke with david westin about whether big tech has gotten too big. >> this is a bipartisan group open to every member of the senate judiciary committee. the chairman said we need to make certain everybody has got the institutional knowledge and we are all on the same page. as we began to look at all the different assets with privacy and data security and antitrust and competition and transparency and censorship and prioritization, all of those online issues that affect everyone as they have moved more of their transactional life online. as companies have set up platforms that allow consumers in that relationship to have more of that functionality

online. we got the task force started last week. it is bipartisan. our first topic was privacy and we have the global privacy leaders from snap, match, salesforce and mozilla come before us and lay out how they are approaching privacy and talk with us about how they would see a privacy structure. we talked about some of their vulnerabilities and some of their successes. >> it has not always been clear to me that big tech was paying attention to capitol hill. have you finally gotten their attention? we had facebook earnings and in the earnings call, they said they would take down revenue growth projections, because of the possibility of competition. do you have a sense that they are listening to you? >> yes.

we have been working on this issue for seven years, when we did the working group in the house at the energy and commerce committee. i led that also. here is what i think has happened. the american public, the online public has realized that when they are on all of these social media apps, they are the product, because these apps and these interfaces are data mining you, whether it is youtube or facebook or google, the revenue stream for them is in your data and these companies, these social media platforms are big advertising companies, because they sell your data to third parties and you don't know that they are benefiting from your data, the better or more high-quality the data is, the more money they make. >> i read in the paper today about some people in washington

talking about big social media companies to pay for the data. pay those of us on facebook or twitter or google. is that a serious possibility? >> this is something that has been batted around for a while. the companies say, we are giving you a free service, so we are not going to pay for your data, but here is why privacy is so important. you need to give the consumer the ability to opt in to protection for their personally identifying information, their sensitive information, and let them opt in if they want you to share that with a third party. you need to give them the ability to opt out and prohibit you from sharing your nonsensitive information, which is many times transactions or searching that they are doing online.

that would change a business model of the social media platforms. >> finally, give us a sense of the timeline if you can. we have the apartment of justice starting an investigation and your task force. which will give us results sooner? >> we are going to be giving you results on a rolling basis. it is highly possible that this fall, we are going to see privacy legislation move forward. my browser act, which puts in place one set of rules for the ecosystem, opt in opt out. it is bipartisan and we are going to have judiciary committee, commerce committee looking at these issues. i think you will see something soon. emily: tennessee senator marsha blackburn. coming up, amazon falling after hours largely on a profit. analysts worried the company will return to a big spending

cycle to expand same-day delivery. this is bloomberg. ♪ we're the slowskys.

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emily: this is "bloomberg tech." back to our top stories this hour. amazon profit fell short of forecasts under continued efforts to shorten delivery times. most analysts advise clients to buy into amazon. does this all have to do with the continued investment in shortening delivery times, warehouses, logistics, etc.?

>> i think that is a big art of it. obviously, they talked about the $800 million commitment, so i knew that would weigh on earnings, but i think aws is a bigger story. we saw that decline to 37% growth. first time we saw that dip below 40% and given how much that contributes to operating profit is potentially a canary in the coal mine. >> aws numbers were low, but you are forgetting how good revenue numbers were. with aws margins actually coming in a little bit weaker, that is one concern. is it because of international expansion, or is this competition? we think it is more about the expansion part. marketing costs really jumped quite a bit this quarter.

the highest we have seen in a good seven years, really. they give you a breakdown of advertising portion, but not in the quarterly findings. amazon spends more than $8 billion. they spent more than $8 billion less year in advertising and promotional activities, but that growth is something to think about. is it in terms of one-day shipping, is it prime-day related, or are they trying to fight back?

emily: it's interesting given that we were talking earlier about google's cloud business and how it is still in third place, though the cloud business in general is continuing to grow and is certainly not a zero-sum game. what do you think the slowdown or the disappointing numbers have to do with? is it because of competition or because of amazon-specific issues? >> i don't think it is amazon-specific issues so much as competition. microsoft cloud business is up 60% recently. we know that business is on fire. we do not have a lot of his -- google numbers. now amazon is competing with two giants, i think that absolutely could eat into the top line going forward. emily: what about the advertising business which has been slowly growing, slowly becoming a third-place contender into the digital ad market? it has widely been acknowledged as one of the biggest threats to google and perhaps a bigger threat than facebook? >> growth has been consistent this quarter compared to last quarter. amazon is going to get more aggressive into individual

advertising. they have all these devices out there, and you will see them push harder. the interesting thing over here is we thought the advertising boom -- that could be near-term overhang on profits, but as far as they're showing that it works and does not structural, the profit growth story will resume. emily: let's talk about what will happen in the second half of the year. we're listening in on the earnings call right now and the cfo said the company did spend more than what they said they would -- 800 million dollars -- on the same day delivery initiative and that it has been more difficult to execute than expected. i can sort of echo that as a customer. when i try same day delivery on amazon it often does not work

out. what will you be watching? >> topline growth is really driven by the commerce business and usually and really what i was expecting is to see that investment payoff in q3 and really in q4. if we are already seeing his coloration in q2, we could be looking at an explosive q4 for amazon because consumers start to develop the habit. but they are not really feeling the impact of that one-day delivery, especially as it rolls out. those habits will get ingrained in q3 and really cement themselves in q4. i think that's when we will see the upside. emily: how big an impact as the competition having? walmart, target, all these companies that are trying to up their shipping competition as well, shorten their delivery times as well? >> i feel like physical store sales at amazon, whole foods performance, single digits. they are still trying to figure out and i have a lot of work to

do to catch up to walmart, but having said that, with respect to their growth and commerce business, one interesting thing that stood out was the first party sales actually accelerated versus third-party quarter over quarter. that was interesting to see. i don't know if it is a function of the free shipping being prioritized somewhere or if it is a change in strategy, but it is definitely something to sort of look at what is happening with that mixture. emily: let's talk about the rest of the year, obviously, going into the holiday quarter, lots of acceleration is going to be happening. you've got all of this competition ratcheting up. how did you expect amazon to perform relative to the competition in the e-commerce unit in particular? >> i think there's a few things that really advantage amazon in q4, particularly in light of the one-day shipping initiative.

i don't know if a lot of folks are thinking about this just yet, but we get into a really compressed holiday season. last year, we had 32 days between thanksgiving and christmas. this year, it shrinks to 27 days. that advantage is someone like amazon. we always see amazon increase their share later in the season as consumers may be do not have the same confidence of getting their deliveries on-time with other retailers. i think that compressed season will really be to amazon's advantage. emily: what will you be watching? >> obviously, they are learning, but at the volume is too high and how they manage this balance of one-day shipping versus the other and how long the overhang will last, that is something investors will watch for the second half. emily: if you are curious, jeff bezos, who is the world's richest man, his net worth fell by 1% today. going into the quarter, there was speculation amazon's missed

earnings report would help push amazon pass that $1 trillion market cap. why did amazon not see this coming? >> i think it comes down to aws. i was watching closely to see the ratchet up in competition. i felt like there was a moment lingering out there. i did not a win in happen, but increased competition was going to increase that topline. again, we did not know if this was the one-month blip or something that might be sustained, but certainly something that could affect the margin profile as we go into the next few quarters. emily: thank you both. continuing to monitor the output that investor call that is under way as well as amazon's. the ceo on the company's after growth after a quarter that saw a big revenue beat.

>> every day, users go to youtube to learn new things. as a result, youtube is one of the world's most successful educational platforms. we see strong growth in a number of areas. creators continue to build engaged fan bases. channels of engaged subscribers grew by 70% year-over-year. emily: alphabet's cfo broke down the total cost of revenue. >> total cost was $70.3 billion, up 25% year on year. other costs of revenues on a consolidated basis was $10.1 billion, up 35% year on year. primarily driven by google-related expenses. emily: alphabet's cfo along with google's ceo continue to speak

on their earnings calls. new high-speed internet customers offset the loss of traditional cable tv subscribers. coming up, e-cigarette maker juul the latest company to feel washington's ire. we look at their testimony today. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: x activists from e-cigarette maker juul have been -- executives from e-cigarette maker juul. u.s. lawmakers scrutinizing the company's marketing.

the committee chair summed up lawmakers' concerns. >> the most important task ahead of us today is to help prevent youth e-cigarette use and nicotine addiction. to effectively do so, we must trace the origins that led to this epidemic, expose the health risks associated with vaping, and hold accountable anyone and everyone who knowingly put children in harm's way. emily: federal law bans the sale of e-cigarettes to those under 18. with more on what the hearings have revealed, our bloomberg tech reporter is with me. you watched the hearings today. how does this compare to the fiery big tex hearings last week? >> it was certainly a little testy at times. you can tell they were members of congress questioning these juul executives would very much

the point of trying to show they had lied about their earlier intent to market to teens, or at least now they were maybe trying to reframe it as pointing out all the ways juul has trying to prevent teen usage and youth usage of their products. other members of congress were more sympathetic to juul's stated mission of trying to help adult smokers shift from combustible cigarettes. juul executives said they never intended to market to children or youth under 18 and had been pushing for a ban of e-cigarettes for anyone under 21 and they had been making the product for adults and the youth epidemic is something they're very concerned about, and they would love to have no youth ever using the product. >> we have met with many of our sharpest critics and have sought

their suggestions for how they can improve. we are committed to cooperating with this committee, state attorneys general, and other officials who wish to examine our practices, and we are dedicated to learning from our mistakes and not repeating them. in doing so, we hope to run the -- earn the trust of this committee, congress, our regulators, our customers, and the american public. emily: he testified that they never intended for young people to use this, and yet, their flavors were, like, bubblegum, and, you know, things that certainly appeal to children. >> i don't know that they ever went very far with a flavor that resembled bubblegum. the popular flavors among kids are mango or cream or mint. part of the confusion about flavors sometimes comes from

counterfeit juul products or juul compatible products made by other companies that often have these more aggressively youth-focused flavors. juul has mentioned one of the efforts they take more seriously now is trying to crack down on counterfeit juul-like products . sometimes have these flavors that make parents concerned. emily: the ceo did not testify. why is that? >> that was a question that came up in the hearing. we did not really get a great answer. i think part of it -- it was still helpful to hear the cofounder speak. the chief administration officer was there. i think there was a relevance in asking, what was some of the original intent of the company? this was something that started years ago when james and his cofounder were graduate students

at stanford. they were both smokers and wondering how to create a product that is different from combustible cigarettes, which we know are a leading cause of the death? how do we create a product that is an alternative? they do have to be very careful. to be clear, juul is not meant to be a smoking cessation device. it has a very specific definition under the fda, so they often talk about juul as an alternative to cigarettes, but they had to be careful about how they framed the health benefits. emily: part of the problem is the fda has really lagged on regulating e-cigarettes. juul did hand over thousands of pages of documents and internal emails showing employees having early conversations. what do those reveal and what is next? >> the emails were particularly interesting to look at in the context of programs juul has done toward what they call youth education programs. those were meant to be programs

where juul would sponsor people to come into schools and camps, and they were meant to educate people on dangers of smoking and nicotine products. these were particularly controversial because they really mirrored how big tobacco did similar programs for education many years ago. you can see in these emails, juul employees expressing concern that what they plan to do has similarities to what phillip morris did decades ago. that was something that congress were particularly interested in trailing down on. like, how much did they know that these programs were something out of the playbook of big tobacco? emily: thank you for bringing us that reporting. coming up, apple cashes in its chips.

more details on its acquisition of intel's modem unit next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: apple is buying intel's struggling cellular unit in an effort to jumpstart 5g plans. apple hopes to eventually sever its reliance on qualcomm parts. for more, i want to bring in bloomberg's apple reporter from l.a. we knew that this was happening or in the works. now it is official. what do we know? >> we know today for sure apple is acquiring intel's modem unit, subject to close in the fourth

quarter. this is an infrastructure that will allow apple to jumpstart its own efforts to eventually replace intel's work and replace the work of qualcomm, who they just struck a licensing agreement with. emily: why did intel unload this if it is so valuable? >> the issues with intel's modem unit has been long chronicled. this was really the inferior company in the all-important modem business. the big ones were qualcomm and intel with qualcomm very much ahead. this is actually why apple struck the deal with qualcomm earlier this year. apple uses intel modems right now, but the fact of the matter is apple is intel's only relevant customer. intel is spending resources on keeping this unit alive just are apple, which from a business standpoint did not make sense.

emily: what kind of advantage does this give apple in the middle of a trade war, supply chain issues, and the desire to make its own chips? >> right, so, building modems is a very intense process. it comes down to two real important things. you need as many people with the engineering background to build modems as possible. you need the infrastructure, the wireless testing environments, and the partnerships with cell carriers, and the patents. intel had to of those things. apple is getting over 2200 engineers and the patents. we saw why patents were so important given a little cold war with qualcomm. what apple did already have was the devices to put these things in. the infrastructure for testing, the technological environment to build these modems -- they open ed an office in san diego recently.

emily: meantime, you're getting new dribbles from the supply chain, especially as they push towards the expected unveiling of new iphones later this year in the midst of the trade war and, you know, macroeconomic instability. what are suppliers planning for when it comes to volume? >> suppliers, according to our story, are anticipating iphone units in numbers between 75 million and 80 million. apple stopped reporting unit sales as those started to turn negative, so this will be either a really small increase, a really small decrease, but what i would call an average of flat, which is good news given the

pessimism around the iphone in the last several quarters. emily: i know you will be busy reporting everything we can expect to see in the new iphones. thank you. salesforce has unveiled a new partnership with alibaba group to enter the chinese software market. the move comes despite the u.s. china trade war. the software maker will use alibaba's cloud to sell its products. the san francisco-based company wants to double revenue by 2023. to recap our two big earnings stories, alphabet and amazon on opposite ends of the spectrum. amazon missed estimates, did not stop there. it saw the same reflected in its third-quarter guidance. it was a different story, however, for google as shares surged as revenue beat estimates. alphabet's ceo explained what revenues look like in this coming quarter. >> other income and expense was $3 billion, reflecting sizable gains, which are primarily

unrealized from investment they back g, gz, and more broadly alphabet. we provide more guidance in our press release. emily: big tech for the week. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology. this is bloomberg. ♪ hey! i'm bill slowsky jr.,

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