♪ caroline: i'm caroline hyde. ed: i'm ed ludlow. this is "bloomberg technology." caroline, tech earnings are here. texas instruments, microsoft, the market treading water until those numbers hit. caroline: this is why we look at what is already some hope as the futures market is already smelling it. let's talk about the headlines. microsoft rising after profit. cloud revenues eight estimates. ed: plus, the justice department and eight states are suing to break up google's ad business. caroline: senators blast ticketmaster's ceo about soaring ticket prices and a terrible customer experience. but first, let's check in on the customer experience for you and your markets today because it was an awful one for at least 4 stalks that overall did not get an opening action for the day. the s&p 500. what a tumult we had at the open. we had a technical glitch. we saw the s&p managed to trade flat after a tumultuous start. nasdaq under pressure, up 0.03%.

we are worried about these earnings that are starting to trickle out. and already perhaps we see reason for that to flip. the futures market is higher. bonds getting a bid amid that nervousness. yields are down. let's flip it over. i went to look at what is happening in terms of where it has in on the hour stretch. the ark etf. it has been on a roll, if fact, ready to have its best month since 2028 when she first roared into the scene. ark etf having its best month in about two years. ed: you can't get away from the earnings story, that is what we have been waiting for in the first three weeks of this year. texas instruments is so important because its chips go into so many things. quite a muted reaction in after-hours. in the fourth quarter we saw a decline in sales for the first time since 2020. you go to the first quarter

forecast, tepid relative to what the street was looking for. but they said, well there was weakness in markets, auto has been spared. microsoft was the first megacap to report. profit was the focus. strong fiscal second quarter. eps at $2.32 a share. above analysts' expectations. eps did not drop much from the same period a year ago as the street had been looking for. the broader story when we talk about the bottom line was the performance and strength in azure cloud. how often has that unit been in the headlines of late? that is where we will go straight to first with jefferies analyst brent hale who has a buy rating on microsoft, welcome to the show. welcome to the show, brent. simple question to start with, this is azure saving the day, isn't it? >> yes. azure is one component. office was also very good. i think the balance of growth and profitability is keeping microsoft alive. remember going into the fruit,

everybody was super fearful that satya nadella had shared tetra for two years and the u.s. was going to get worse. so they brought expectations down. but they delivered what was an okay quarter. no one was going to do back flips over these numbers. technology spend is slowing. it may get worse in the back half of the year. they have another quarter of tough comps. let's not break out the champagne glasses at this point. but relative to the fear, way better than expected. ed: that interesting point. when we look at azure the business, it is 100 basis points better than guided. you think about this idea, eps dropped 6.5%. the street was looking for a 7.5% drop year on year. when we look forward to the rest of the year, what is the story for microsoft with this broader economy, will it have to rely on the cloud business? brea: it's all about the cloud. there is no other story here.

as we go deeper into the year, this concept of i.t. budgets are shrinking, can microsoft do more with less? what we are hearing in a lot of the interviews is cio's are continuing to consolidate their spend on to microsoft. microsoft has been vicious about contract renewals. they do not budge when cio's try to renew. so relative to overall tech environment that is slowing and decaying, microsoft is going to do relatively better in that environment, and it is about consolidation and taking spared from other vendors. i think other vendors are in a way worse position. the portfolio, the durability of the revenue, the quality of its management team should be able to cut through this. but i think really, investors are trying to ask, what do i pay for the start that has $10 of earnings power and trading at a mid-20 multiple? it is not exactly cheap, not expensive, just right in the middle. i think that is a concern.

caroline: ok, so you're price target is to $80. -- is what takes us there? $280. what do you want to hear on the call? brent: i think we continue to want to hear about guidance, and nadella said that things may get worse inside the u.s.. what is happening in the u.s. market and the rest of the world? ultimately, convey, to double growth? they talked about double-digit growth for the margin improvement. can they hold that? overall everyone is all eyes on what is going to happen with overall growth for the rest of the year. caroline: brent, pleased to say you will be sticking with us. brent thill. hang on for a moment, because we have another key news of the day today just. the justice department and eight states, all suing google over

the search giant's ad dominance. emily in d.c. has the details. what overall is argument coming from the united states against google? emily: right. so today, the justice department and eight u.s. states announced their long-awaited case against google. they are alleging that google has abused its dominance in online marketing, that for every one dollar that advertisers spend on its litany of online advertising tools, google takes $.30, so essentially that they have hardened competition online, they have made life harder and more expensive for advertisers. this is the second case that the justice department has brought against google, and some experts say this is potentially a more winning case and i know everyone in the tech industry is what you really closely. caroline: we certainly are, including google, which has itself responded. emily, we thank you for

that. let's get the take from our jefferies analyst, and failed, who has a buy rating on alphabet. regulatory headwinds are abound for many a tech name, but google is saying there is not legal founding for this, do you agree? brent: every legal case that has come, they found a way around it. it hasn't slowed them down yet. i don't think this will slow them down. it's hard to handicap a case, to be honest. we have been living with regulatory headwinds on the internet for so long. it is really hard to handicap. i don't think this will have an impact. ultimately at the end of the day, google is providing a service that is helping us as a consumer get places and get items. i don't think this will have any impact on the business. there has been tons of legal scare tactics. right now it is hard to handicap. i think this is why google is trading at such a low multiple. there has been no precedents that had an issue on the core

business that has slowed them down. caroline: yeah. i mean, google said in a blog post that the lawsuit, quote, "attempts to pick winners and losers in a highly competitive advertising sector." they say, "it largely duplicates and unfounded lawsuit by the texas attorney general, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court." if it if they manage to win, it's a cost headache and perhaps also costing them in terms of a distraction. what do you worry about the opportunity cost here? brent: it is a distraction. they are focused on innovation. every other turn we hear of some legal case. it has not cost them any innovation. yet. ultimately, they broke up pieces of the business as a concern. but so far, we just have not seen it. so really, in our opinion, not much to say at this point other than it is a distraction. their job, and they have done

this very well, is keep their eyes on the road and have kept focused. ed: looking at the share reaction during tuesday's session, down 1.7% all told once the market had closed. this is a department, the doj, that looked at this end of the trump administration. it continues to look at it under the biden administration. when you are an analyst covering this stock, how much is the risk of serious action with serious results modeled into your price target? brent: it's modeled in because you have a multiple that is now trading at a very big discount. so i don't think anyone that is investing in internet names is investing right now with all the understanding that this is an issue. this is an issue for amazon, for microsoft, for facebook and meta. it goes across the board. so i don't see an issue that is going to create, at this point, a big concern. again, you have seen google's stock over the last decade continue to power higher. so we will keep an eye on it, we

are certainly cognizant of it, but so far, i don't think there is enough for us to hang our hat on anything at this point. ed: the other story dominating the headlines is layoffs. we cannot get away from alphabet and google being another company that is pulling back. what surprised caroline and i were some of the specific areas, even artificial intelligence, where competition with microsoft is heating up. what does that mean for alphabet? for alphabet's business, the action it has taken on headcount reduction? brent: they needed it. they hired in the mid-20% growth rate. this is pretty common. microsoft, amazon, everyone is taking action. the environment is slowing for tech. they all have to slow their headcount and they all have to effectively go through and really re-examine who they have hired. not everyone is going to work. in any business, right?. at least 5% of this is just removing hires that don't work. the other 5% plus is trimming. we are not discounting there is going to be potentially more

changes to head count. we think that is still open. we expect more cuts to happen across tech. i think this is the first wave. but i think this is very common, and to be honest, i think google should have acted faster. they were one of the last to jump in the cost cut pool. salesforce. you go through the list, everyone has already done it. caroline: they have indeed. we will see if moisture come. brent thill is a jefferies analyst. we will let him get to the call for analysts with microsoft coming up in 20 minutes. let's get to another key story that just broke, rupert murdoch is scrapping plans to a proposed merger between fox and news corp. murdoch sent plans to put back together a media empire that he split in 2013. but he indicated he and his son lachlan determined that the combination is not optimal for the shareholders of fox and newscorp. the murdoch family has a 39% voting stake in news corp. and

approximately 42% of fox. ed: more media movements. coming up, a union alleges youtube is trying to derail contract workers from organizing in texas. more details on that bloomberg story, next. ♪

caroline: banc of america. some stock compensation being

announced. for those earning up to $500,000 , they are not eligible to receive, once again, a pool of restricted stock. this is rewarding basically a majority of the entire employee base, which was up to 96% who were earning $500,000 or below. still sticking to that reward compensation to keep their talent, even though they saw some downdraft in their revenues in 2022. let's shift gears and talk about staff and relationships with executives elsewhere. alphabet apparently is illegally using return to office policies to derail youtube contract workers from organizing in texas. that is all according to a complaint filed by the alphabet workers union on tuesday. bloomberg's mark gurman joins us. mark. fascinating that we are seeing this move. who of youtube are trying to organize, what type of contract workers? mark: this is contractors

for youtube music. they are based in texas. they are alleging in this complaint that as soon as they started ramping up their unionization effort and they got calls to come back to the office and if they did not come back they might find themselves terminated. google is one of those companies that has its three day a week policy that they are enforcing. it is unclear how strictly they are enforcing it. in this case it seems to be pretty strict. ed: here in the bay area, lots of alphabet employees, lots of google employees. lots of them are contractors. that is what has been surprising, especially with the recent headlines around layoffs. that has become a flashpoint for the company. why is this an issue? mark: it is something that has come up from a lot of their full-time employees that have complained about this two tiered system where contract workers don't have the same benefits, the same equity as a regular google engineer might have. you were just talking about regulation with regtech

companies, it is sort of baked into. we were seeing this with apple with their retail employees, amazon with warehouse workers, microsoft with videogame employees. and now various parts of the google empire have been raising this issue around contract workers. in this complaint they explicitly said, no, alphabet, you are the joint employer. that is something that google alphabet has actually pushed back on in court filings and said, no, we are not the employer here, this is a contracted employee. caroline: dig into that more. because representatives of alphabet and cognizant did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ultimately, this is about the contractors being employed through cognizant and alphabet trying to say, we are a step removed here. mark: the tech industry has adopted this practice in recent decades. it will be interesting to see in layoffs, it is more like google, youtube, they still want to grow. youtube music still wants to

compete with spotify. they still want hundreds and thousands of employees out there that do what these workers in texas do, which is basically chrome through the library. ed: is there a specific job function that allows them to leverage this role in the return to office argument? mark: my understanding is these workers are not the content moderators that will screen for violent footage, they are looking at, this video is a music video, this is not. this video comes up from this label. right, these are all behind-the-scenes, ghost in the machine laborers that youtube relies on. my guess is they might have to rely on these people more now than they have just cut 12,000 full-time employees. ed: bloombergs mark bergen, thank you very much. i want to stick with alphabet and its research lab, deepmind. it is taking a hit outside the u.s. the ai unit will close its edmonton, alberta outpost and

lay off staff in the u.k. as part of the goal to cut costs. impacted engineers and researchers will be offered the option to relocate to other offices. for those in other roles, unfortunately they will be laid off. caroline: coming up, let's look at innovation coming from amazon, a five dollar a month subscription for generic drugs. the latest adventure coming from that e-commerce giant. this is bloomberg. ♪

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ed: so, you pay $139 a year for amazon prime in the u.s. would you pay another five

dollars a month or drug prescription service from amazon? the e-commerce giant has started rx pass. you have to be a prime member and you can order from a menu of generic medications which amazon says can treat more than 80 health conditions. rxpass is available in most u.s. states, but in california, pennsylvania and texas you will have to wait. the pitch, low-priced simple medications on a monthly basis, but you can't use government insurance. and is not clear what is new in amazon's subscription offering. the tech giant already offered amazon pharmacy since 2020, where prime users can pay for prescriptions using their insurance. or you can get discounts on medicine if you want to pay cash. this is a bloomberg story that caught our eye on tuesday morning. mostly because i thought i had heard it before -- amazon announced back in 2020 amazon pharmacy, where you can use insurance, and if you choose not to, you can pay a bit of cash

you get a big discount on drugs. this is very similar, but it seems to be that subscription part of it and there was a reaction today to this news. caroline: particularly from competitor stocks, which fell. good rx has been accompanied that time and time again when we have questioned the ceo, he has said amazon is not our threat. now analysts are saying, innovate. if you think about what amazon is offering, five dollars a month, it's not going to compete versus good rx if you are ordering just one drug. if you are ordering 1, 2, three, five dollars a month is really cheap. ed: but you can't use government insurance. and there is another part of that that is interesting, not available in the country's most popular states. amazon didn't give an explanation as to why, which i thought it was interesting. caroline: must be to do with regulation. signing off, crossing the t's

and dotting that i's. overall this is a company that has time and time again focused on how we can become more addicted to prime. seemingly by offering health care is the way to do it. coming up, more on google's lawsuit. what it means for the future of the advertising industry. we will get an insider perspective. david cohen will be with us. the ceo of an advertising bureau, will be with us. ed: musk testifying for a third day in the tesla fraud trial on the 2018 tweet. we will have all the details. he has been speaking for three days straight in san francisco. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> google has engaged in exclusionary conduct to severely weakened if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry. as detailed in our complaint, we allege google's anti-competitive conduct extends to three significant elements of the digital ad-buying process. caroline: the u.s. attorney general merrick garland speaking at a press conference tuesday. let's get back to that key story of the day, the u.s. lawsuit to break up google's ad unit. and let's bring in an expert in the space, david cohen, ceo of the interactive advertising bureau, an organization that develops industry standards, conducts research provides legal , support for the online advertising industry, more than 700 members, including google, but netflix, spotify. just off the back of your annual leadership meeting, david, i know you can't as if you are google, but everyone must have been discussing this. from your perspective, how does the advertising tech world currently function? is it a competitive space? david: it is great to be here. and thank you for the question.

we just posted 1200 folks in marco island across the digital system and we had two and a half days of conversation around privacy, public policy, address ability, the future of streaming healthy and supported , a ecosystem. i will tell you, from where we sit, and we go out to our membership every year with a survey, there is widespread belief that there is healthy competition. we have a very long tail in the internet ad ecosystem. we have millions of small businesses that rely on advertising. yes, we do have some larger players, but this news which broke today, i certainly did not see it. we have not died into it in anyway way, just finished our conference about two hours ago. but obviously, we will be closely watching. caroline: what was interesting is many have used the anecdote that this is like citibank or

goldman owning the new york stock exchange. how is it different? can you get is under the skin of how the infrastructure that alphabet owns and operates is different from say, a owning the nyse? david: there are lots of companies that own multiple parts of the ad tech ecosystem, of the supply chain, and the end beneficiary is consumers. consumers like convenience, they like lower prices, they like ad- supported, they like free information, entertainment, communications. it's there are lots of examples of this beyond just google. so i am not sure why it is just a google situation. folks do play on both sides of the equation. and the end recipient of that is a consumer winning. ed: the doj states, alleges, that alphabet or google in particular dominates the market for search, but also dominates the market for advertising technology.

you need an industry association for advertising. -- you lead an industry association for advertising. does google dominate the market for advertising technology? david: there was a report that recently came out in the wall street journal about a month ago that reported that between google and meta, they represent less than 50% of the ad supported ecosystem in the u.s. that is a change. that is a decrease over time. either there players that have significant influence and a significant share? yes. in lots of cases in the industry, whether you talk about detergent, chocolate, autos, there are lots of examples of leading players that have significant market share. i do not think the ad supported ecosystem is any different than other categories. ed: are the interactive advertising bureau ceo and i know that one thing on top of your mind right now is streaming. this weekend gone, our

correspondent in l.a. covering that industry interviewed the new ceo of , netflix. i am paraphrasing, but they basically said that they got to an ad supported tier when they realized they better get moving because of the competitive landscape. where do we stand with the streamers, those newer players and longer legacy players and how they are contributing to the marketplace? david: it represented a lot of our conversation over the past two and a half days. in fact, we had jeremy gorman from netflix as a speaker , and he talked about them getting into the ad supported streaming space. it is still early days. they have a minimum viable product and are excited about growing that, driving innovation and scale. there is absolutely no doubt that we are seeing a very, very quick shift from linear television to the streaming space. ad supported streaming is clearly where the action is. and there is honestly lots of competition in that area. we post something every year

which is basically a celebration of what is the opportunity in the streaming space, which is coming up in may of a general upfront season, when advertisers buy for the upcoming year. caroline: what does the environment seem like? everyone has been worrying, earnings are about to be upon us. and we are waiting to hear how these companies have navigated a slowing advertising environment. is that what people are seeing in that business? david: that is exactly the right word, slowing. we actually do research on this topic, we go out to the market and we interview buyers. we believe this year will be a growth year for the digital environment. but it will be a far slower growth year than it has been historically. overall we see the advertising space will grow about 6% in 2023. and there are areas that will decline. linear television as an example. there are places that will grow significantly -- ctv we have growing 4% year on year.

one second, that is coming off of a year of explosive growth in 2021 and 2022. so a year of growth, but a year of slowing growth. ed: a year of growth, but a year of slowing growth, something we have heard time and time again from this industry, caroline. david cohen, ceo of the interactive advertising bureau. thanks for joining us hot on the tails of your annual meeting. now, on to elon musk. who else? he told a jury that he was confident he could have pulled off his proposal 4.5 years ago to take tesla private, saying he has never had any trouble raising money for his companies. i want to get straight to my colleague in that san francisco courtroom who has been covering elon musk's testimony in the last three days. this is all about those tweets in 2018 to take tesla private. what was the take away from day three? >> looks like in day three and day two, it was almost like a tale of musks. two yesterday we saw musk who was mumbling, looking for words.

today we had a very competent musk took the stand. he was making very good eye contact with the jury. yesterday he admitted he did not get enough sleep, but he probably slept last night and was back in court today in full form. some of the takeaways today were musk basically touted to the jury his record when it came to investing or raising funds when it comes to investors. he said that every financing round that he has ever had and are his watch has been oversubscribed. he talks about how he had the best record in the world perhaps, of raising money when it came to investors. he said he was always truthful to investors, and that is why investors would just give him the money. we also had a lot of questioning from his own attorney, alex spiro. so i think it was a lot more comfortable. we had the attorney from the plaintiff side, who tried to land some of these gotcha moments but they did not quite happen.

although he did get musk to say that he hadn't previously talked about the spacex shares, which he said yesterday he would tap into to finance the deal. caroline: ultimately, taking a step back from malathi, is he doing enough of what is required of him to fight off the allegations of the shareholders? malathi: he came with these good catchphrases, talking about how he really cares about investors and wanting to do right by investors. he repeated how there was unequivocal support from saudi arabia and he believed saudi arabia was committed to this deal when he said "funding secured." so i think he definitely brought his a-game today. he definitely ensured there were not any punches that landed from the plaintiff's attorney except for a few here and there.

ed: this is probably the three days of this trial that everyone was most excited about, but we have a little way to go. what is left in this process? malathi: we have a few more witnesses lined up. this is a two-week trial. so, things are fluid. in fact, the judge was concerned that we are running behind schedule. i am guessing the trial could and the first week of february. we will have to see how long a jury takes to come up with a verdict on whether musk, what his thinking was behind these tweets. caroline: malecki nyack, we thank you so much, taking time out from the courtroom to come and speak with us. coming up, we have to get into the world of crypto. celsius might create a token of its own to get itself out of bankruptcy. what else is happening in the crypto space at the moment? we will talk about it with blockchain association's kristin smith. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> there were clearly interparty transactions and loans that were not well understood by the various stakeholders. and we will see what the courts have to say about that.

there is multiple entities that will likely file suit. the winklevoss brothers have said there is this pending. there is another one. we will see if the court forces disclosure of all this, and what that means for legal ramifications. ed: that was the vaneck head of digital assets talking about the commingling of assets in firms like ftx. today, bloomberg learned that celsius is considering a new token to repay creditors and exit bankruptcy. another headline that has caught my eye on the bloomberg in the last 24 hours, binance conceding it mistakenly placed user funds with its own reserves. a lot to parse over. let's bring in kristin smith, executive director of the blockchain association. i guess it is a group that you serve as a liaison between policymakers, industry participants. negative headlines, binance considers -- concedes using funds mistakenly stored with its

reserves, issuing a token makeup to creditors. [laughter] i mean, it is an impossible question. what is your reaction to those negative headlines? kristin: it has been a challenging year for the crypto industry. and we are continuing to see a lot of interesting headlines. i think if there's any silver lining to all of this, this has been a real educational opportunity, particularly for policymakers as they are trying to get up to speed on a very complex industry. i do think when we see headlines around binance, there are probably deeper details in the back story. binance.com is not u.s. operated, but it poses questions. how do users that are giving their assets to a third-party know that they are actually there? and i think some of the u.s. companies have some really innovative proof of reserve systems in order to do that. but all of this really gets back to a conversation about how do

you hold digital assets? cool. you can hold digital assets yourself, you don't have to rely on a third party. or if you are relying on the third-party, how do you know they are reliable. we are thinking this as one ongoing teachable moment at the blockchain association. caroline: teachable moment that continues to confound and amaze, the resolute optimism within a space where we see the new ceo of ftx going through a bankruptcy proceeding. talking about how they can resuscitate the product here in the u.s., and the token -- ed: jumping ahead. caroline: did you see the reaction 120% rise in ftt tokens , in 2023 because of that uplift. does that signal seeds of change? kristin: no. i am very skeptical of these tokens that are tied to a specific exchange or platform. i think real crypto assets operate decentralized crypto networks. and they are not tied to the

success of any single entity or firm. i think the activity that was happening around the ftt token was pure speculation. that token is not widely traded. in the u.s. i do not think that is necessarily the right answer. i think investors are looking to invest in crypto assets, they need to do their own research and understand what is the underlying network? because, at crypto industry is not here to build crypto tokens, where the price moves up and down. ed: why is that the buzz word? kristin: it is an important word. there are strong use cases around it. what we are trying to do with crypto networks is find an incentive for different parties that don't have any connection to come together and operate the infrastructure of a network. that is something that in order to have the economic incentive, you have to have a token.

if you are tokenizing something related to a specific company, that looks a lot more like a security and misses the point as to why we're building out crypto networks. caroline: are regulators missing the point or having to focus more on things they worry that are looking like securities? kristin: it depends on the regulator. a couple days ago there was a phenomenal speech, someone at -- from a commissioner at the fcc. she absolutely understands the power of decentralization and the need to find an appropriate way for this technology to be built out. if you look at other parts of government, though, maybe not so much. i guess that is good job security for me at the blockchain association because we have a never ending security education to do for our nations policymakers. it is a complicated space. there is a lot happening really fast. i do this all day long and can barely keep up with the development. it is hard to judge policymakers. but i do think what we saw last

time when we were talking about ftx, what that has done has really brought the crypto industry to the top of the fold on every major news outlet. i think that policymakers that before had dismissed this as something they had to pay attention to, our taking a really hard look and we will see a lot of discussion and debate in the next congress, and through the last half of the biden administration. ed: we have the house subcommittee on digital and financial assets -- forgive me for looking down at my screen for that one. [laughter] my reaction is the opposite. when does the industry look at itself and say when do we get better at self-policing? kristin: that is an excellent question, and these are conversations that are happening within the crypto industry right now. there is so much transparency as to what is going on in the crypto industry because most of this information is on the blockchain. and so when you're dealing with

these decentralized parties, there is a ton of information there. the challenge is you have to be able to translate that into something that is useful, and there are companies that are able to do that translation. what we need to do is figure out that there are a lot of good practices out there that different companies are doing. we need to make sure we are picking the best ones and sharing best practices across the industry. i think we can do a better job at south-policing, and that is definitely a focus of the industry right now. caroline: i will hold onto that word "useful." because when you go to a policymaker and say this is the most use case we are seeing at the moment, what is it? what is decentralizing assets in a useful manner now? kristin: one of my favorite projects, i sit on the board of their foundation, is the file coin foundation. filecoin is trying to do a decentralized version of amazon web services. you can hook up servers to the network, provide that service if you have storage, you can store

it in a way that is cheaper and decentralized. maybe that is not as sexy as the nft's out there today, but i t is an example of one that i think is very cool and will build a new infrastructure for the internet going forward. ed: the blockchain association executive director kristin smith , here with the two of us san francisco. thank you. coming up, the swifties get revenge as the ticketmaster ceo apologizes for extreme price gouging. shake it off. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> who would have thought that taylor swift lyrics will be quoted on capitol hill? well on tuesday, they were. there was a hearing. was it that bots were sucking up the tickets, or is it that there is too much control of one company, live nation? it controls a whole host of live venues across the united states, but it also owns ticketmaster, which is the only way to get a ticket when you are at that particular venue. people say there is not enough competition. seatgeek ceo says the only way to break up live nation and ticketmaster, that came together in 2010. this argument keeps coming back time and time again. pearl jam made this argument in the 1990's. it has been revisited on capitol

hill, and now, for the third straight time, they will digest whether competition will help you get your hands on the tickets that you want. who would have thought politicians would be quoting swift, not just you? people arguing there is too much consolidation in a space. we were just discussing the doj looking at google. everyone still looking at ticketmaster. ed: i will confide in you, i bought some tickets recently. they are often expensive and when you look at how you buy them, it is true. the bloomberg reporting shows that ticketmaster is often the only option, other than the secondary market. . it is what people have been talking about on instagram, twitter, taking to tiktok extra to vent about their experiences. it reminds you, why do we have oversight, why do we have this discussion on marketplace competition? caroline: and why do you have those select committees saying the only answer is to split the market. the competition is thin. it is interesting, on our own twitter poll, we want to you,

the audience and asked what he thought. and he said, whereas some are going to get my tickets? ed: and that is the answer, where else would i go? you start by going, which gig do i want to go to, which show her bedroom.? and you only have one option. caroline: at the moment, where else do i go is the winner on that poll. it seems to be a day in san francisco where we talked so much about earnings and also talked about so much about regulation and oversight. a real story of washington meets silicon valley at the moment. ed: it never goes away. caroline: that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." wednesday we have ark's tasha keeney on the show. ed: don't forget to check out our podcasts on, spotify or apple, whatever you get it. this is bloomberg. ♪

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