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that's our little tribute to "game of thrones" after last night's season finale. i'm jon fortt. joining us is dan porter, former ceo of omg pop and head of digital with william morris endeavor, and as always, kayla tausche. buildings were a little tall for silicon valley, but i love that. that's fun. >> they are so good at what they do. just when you think it's not going to get better than the "orange is the new black" or the "full house" open, they come up with something amazing. makes me want to watch "game of thrones." i don't quite yet. >> let's start by talking alibaba. dan porter arguably has the best timed exit since cinderella.

alibaba releasing new details about its ipo. the company revealed its board nominees as well as the 27-member partnership that's going to control the chinese e-commerce behemoth. the partnership has the exclusive ability to nominate a majority of the board, effectively ensuring it's going to control the company, not the public shareholders. yahoo! a big alibaba shareholder, taking a hit on the news, maybe on some of the numbers in here. kayla, what did you see in there? >> first of all, they detailed who will be on the board. we have some familiar names that i just want to mention right off the top. jerry yang who was an alibaba director up until 2012. he is expected to rejoin the board, of course, yahoo! co-founder. but then michael evans who was goldman sachs's former vice chairman, head of emerging markets, head of global growth markets, he's very familiar with asia. former goldman sachs exec will be on the board as well. the rest of the nominees to the board mostly alibaba executives. here's why i think yahoo! shares are down today. that is because for the first

time we're seeing the first quarter numbers for alibaba. and as you might have expected, those were a little bit weaker than maybe the street had thought. here's why. of course, the fourth quarter numbers include singles day, which is 11/11. that day had record sales numbers for alibaba. and basically the expectation is as that day and as that quarter get more popular, that's something like black friday that hasn't been in existence forever. as that gets more popular, that fourth quarter will have a little bit more seasonality. so when you look at the revenue, they're actually down 36% from q4. they're down 34% on the net income side, even though they are up pretty sharply year over year. and alibaba added a new quote saying our rapid growth has masked the seasonality that might otherwise be apparent in our results of operations. if our growth slows, we expect that the seasonality in our business may become more pronounced. you want to see an even keel. and when you see these sharp

roller-coasterlike earnings, jon, it leads you to think margins and growth are coming down. you have a lot of eggs in the basket in the fourth quarter here. >> that's a concern. dan, i seem to remember right around the time when zynga bought omg pop, they were going public. lots of people were wondering how much gas is there left in this car essentially. and for zynga, not a lot. how much attention should we pay to these kinds of numbers that come out shortly before a company is going public? >> i think they're important. you have two things here. one is you've got huge internal growth in china, but you can't grow forever. and it's not like you don't have competitors who really are much stronger in mobile. and dominate. and the second is you're trying to build a brand for shareholders to hold your stock outside of china. and if there's this perception that they don't get the rest of the world or anything else like that, you've got to make big moves. some people have said maybe alibaba should have bought the clippers, right?

like maybe you should do something to show your brand outside so that people care because they're the people who are buying and selling your stock. >> well, they did buy a stake in a chinese soccer team. >> but the point was that continued almost like a provincial thing. who knows who that soccer team is outside china, and who care, really? you've got to world to care. >> the numbers that were disclosed very early this morning did show a giant uptick in mobile. but you have two schools of thought on that. one, this is a mature company. this is a roughly $200 billion market cap company, what we're talking about right now. the fact that they are late to the mobile kick, does that worry you, or does that make you think, hey, there's still more upside to come because they haven't been able to monetize that as much as some other companies have? >> it worries me. it's not unlike, as you mentioned, with zynga. you wait so long to have an ipo that you've maxed out a huge part of your growth curve. and then just a switch to mobile, it's just very, very different skill set.

now, of course, they could do a dominant acquisition, and they could totally change that. but it's a different mentality in terms of how you develop product, how you support product and everything else like that. >> yeah. they certainly got a lot of resources to do whatever they want. up second, apple ceo tim cook with a big profile in "the new york times," focusing on the mark he's leaving on the company. the big takeaway, cook is less involved with product innovation than steve jobs was, more involved with big culture changes, assembling a team that could maybe replace jobs, social responsibility, environmentalism at play here. johnny iv's take, he says honestly, i don't think anything's changed. it was hard tore steve. it is hard for tim. some parts of the piece that struck me as maybe a little unfair, the suggestion that steve jobs never would have released software like the health app without releasing hardware at the same time. did "the times" completely forget about itunes which came out before the ipod, about ipod,

iphoto? it's kind of unfair, i thought. a lot of interesting pieces. what did you think, dan? did you see it? >> look, it's a pretty tough game to come after, you know, somebody like steve jobs. and all you can do is basically play to your own strengths, which is what tim cook has done. and i think what you see is, you see a more open apple. you see -- he can't be steve jobs, so he brings in, you know, the woman from burberry's, the beats team and all of this stuff around him. and i think that that -- you know, that's the best that you can possibly expect, except from the press perspective, they still want to know, and they want to know more and more about is this guy who's contained of back and back. and it's a very interesting dynamic. it kind of relates to the alibaba thing. you need somebody out front who is your person because that's what sells the story. >> people close to cook in the article were talking about how cook is not trying to single-handedly replace jobs. he's trying to replace him with five people. so he talks about angela aarons, the beats guys coming in as well

and saying that he's really trying to build this brain trust to support him as deputies as a lower level because he is aware that he is not maybe the visionary that jobs was. but there was an interesting analogy that i liked where they said jobs is to john lennon as tim cook is to ringo. >> is that ever -- >> ringo is still a beatle. >> yes, but is that ever a compliment? of all the beatles to compare him to, i know he keeps the rhythm. that's important. but i mean, dan, do you want to be called ringo? >> i don't want to be called ringo. sorry, ringo. >> it's always sorry, ringo. moving on, m&a, sandisk buying fusion io for a little over $1 billion in an attempt to ulg up. fusion io shares jumping more than 22% on the news this morning. sandisk shares up, too, as a matter of fact. joining us now, first on cnbc is

s sandisk president and ceo, sanjay mehrotra. >> let me just tell you i have a bad cold, so please bear me. >> thanks for joining us. i want to jump into some of the fundamentals. fusion io had a lot of technology, facebook and apple have been among the biggest customers, but they couldn't seem to maintain momentum and growth and profitability. how does the combination with sandisk solve that? >> fusion io has tremendous solutions offerings to help enterprise data applications. and with the combination of sandisk and fusion io, sandisk will be able to provide the ability. sandisk has technology, large scale of operations. we have tremendous storage and systems and solutions and software expertise, combining all of this with fusion io business, we really will be able to bring compelling propositions

to our customer with the broadest portfolio solutions offering in the industry backed by sandisk, large scale of operation and flash memory technology leadership. >> i'm looking at the competition. micron was up better than 2% today. so is violin memory. it seems like a bet on the part of investors that some of those competitors are going to have to bulk up to compete with you. what kind of scale do you think is going to be necessary to really compete in enterprise flash storage? do you think some of your competitors might have to acquire also? >> you know, clearly, you need a broad portfolio of solutions. sandisk with the acquisition of fusion io will have thefolio en. you need strong go-to-market capabilities as well which we will be able to have together with fusion io. and you definitely need vertical integration. we have said before that really when in this marketplace, you have to have strong vertical

integration. so we believe that we will have what it takes to really work closely with our customers, to understand their growing needs of i.t. infrastructure challenges and really bring compelling solutions to them. we believe we will be best positioned in the industry for leadership in the enterprise segment. >> sanjay, your deal was for 1125 per fusion io share. the stock traded as high as 11.61 this morning which would indicate the market might think they're a higher bid out there. are you prepared to get into a bidding war? do you expect there would be any other bids coming out? >> no, i'm not going to speculate on that. what i will tell you is that clearly the transaction here really brings a compelling value for fusion io shareholders as well as for sandisk shareholders. >> sanjay, you kind of babe ruthlike predicted that this acquisition's going to allow you to have a billion-dollar

enterprise flash business by 2015, whereas before you had said by 2016. what trends do you see there out in the marketplace? what kind of demand that gives you that kind of confidence? i mean, was fusion io sort of unable to get the flash supply it needed? are you able to provide that? what gives you that confidence? >> you know, clearly, the demand for enterprise storage is growing because cloud computing is being disruptive, helping businesses really bring out new transformative business models and services. consumers with billions of devices worldwide using them to create data. this is all really requiring tremendous need for fast processing of data. and this is where flash is being disruptive in the data centers. we have the vision of flash transform data centers. and this is where bringing our solutions with our strong base of flash memory supply, assuring our customers continuity of

supply really positions us very well for leadership in this market space. and earlier we had said that in 2016 our enterprise storage business will become a billion-plus business. and remember, we just started in this market segment in 2011 time frame. so on a rapid clip of growth. and now we look at that becoming a billion-plus business in 2015. fusion io is a market leader in pcie segment, a segment of enterprise storage. and sandisk has strong business and enterprise storage with s.a.s., and now we'll have the broadest solutions offerings to accelerate our growth in enterprise storage. >> well, big move for you guys, sending shockwaves through the storage industry. sanjay mehrotra, thanks for joining us first. >> thank you for having me on the show, jon. we want to get you a check on the markets this morning. just nearly two hours into the trade, we had positive data on the empire state manufacturing front. also nahb saw builder sentiment

rise. then you saw the imf cut its growth forecast for the u.s. to 2%, and that is what turned the markets lower. the dow down by 18 points. the s&p down just shy of 1%, the nasdaq down by just about 5 points. we're also watching crude oil. that's been mixed as the markets are watching the violence in iraq continuing to rattle global markets on the stock and the commodity front. militants capturing another city in northern iraq. ayman mohyeldin is on the ground in iraq. what's the latest there this morning? >> reporter: yet another day and another town that has fallen into the hands of isis, the islamic group that now controls parts of syria and iraq. now, the latest town that's fallen in their control is just north of mosul. they've also captured the iraqi national army's most senior military officer along with his men after they managed to overrun the governor building in that town. it gives you an indication that their offensive still continues.

they're also getting a lot of support from the local population in many of these towns that they are overrunning. in addition to that, there are still skirmishes in the city of tikrit which is an area that the iraqi military has tried to make some pushes in the past 48 hours to reclaim some of that territory. but right now, the upper hand, at least, seems to be with the al qaeda-linked militants that are overrunning these towns. they now control at least several towns and cities in four different governorates. the iraqi air force for its part has been launching some airstrikes in some areas that they believe these militants are hiding out in, but it does not yet change the balance of the fighting on the ground. the iraqi government is turning to civilians for help. they have called on thousands of young shia men to join militias to fight alongside the iraqi government in trying to repel the control that's been made by some of the al qaeda-linked militant groups. perhaps one of the more disturbing things that's emerged from over the weekend, isis group posted on its website images of what it says are iraqi

army soldiers they killed and buried in mass graves. nbc has not been independently capable of verifying that just yet, but it is a troubling sign that the next chapter of the violence in this country could perhaps be very brutal and even push this country more towards civil war. kayla? >> all right, thanks so much for that latest update. ayman mohyeldin of nbc news over in iraq. we want to send it over to dominic chu for a quick "market flash." >> we're talking about medtronic. the stock is gyrating between positive and negative on news it will buy ireland-based medical devices maker covidien. now, wedbush analysts are calling it a very poor deal for medtronic shareholders. as it says there, quote, is a significant post-yield execution risk. shares down about 1%, well off its highs. it's one of the best performers on the s&p.

you can see off its highs, still up, though, about 21% on the day. back over to you guys. >> all right. thanks so much for that. coming up, never tweet alone. self-help for your 99 social media problems. google's nest is all grown up. and apple, twitter and yahoo! all in cannes along with our own john steinberg and kara swisher. "squawk alley" en france next. and i loved every minute of it. but then you grow up and there's no going back. but it's okay, it's just a new kind of adventure. and really, who wants to look backwards when you can look forward? my motheit's delicious. toffee in the world. so now we've turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea

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the cannes festival is kicking off in france where

media, marketing and tech executives including marissa meyer, sheryl sandberg and the head of "daily mail" north america are gathering. john steinberg, i've never seen somebody go through so many titles in such a short period of time. this is a great one. how did it all come together? just over the weekend? >> reporter: well, not so many, jon. just buzzfeed after four years and on to "daily mail" now. i started talking to these guys after i left buzzfeed and the traffic is spectacular. 170 million monthly uniques, 56 million in the u.s. a tremendous nexus of celebrity, pop culture and eck braing news content. we've always admired the traffic and the scale. i just fell in love with martin and the rest of the team. >> so john, my understanding is that you will single-handedly be bringing the quizzes and the gifts to "daily mail," is that correct? >> kayla, no, that's not correct. i will be taking the special

sauce of the "daily mail" and broadening it to the advertising community. the past three years they've done a huge investment in editorial and ads and business, and now is the opportunity to scale that with new editorial products, new ad products, more video, more mobile. you know, it's already on a huge upward curve. and i just want to accelerate that even more with the team. >> you say special sauce and "daily mail," is that the site with that bar on the right-hand side that's kind of gossipy, kind of risque? is that the one? >> that is the one, jon. and everybody loves it. and you love it, too. and that is the hallmark of the "daily mail" is all that amazing celebrity coverage. tons of pictures, the shots that others don't have. we cover like nobody else. look, we even have kim kardashian coming to our kickoff party on wednesday night. she loves the site so much, she's coming to party with us. that's a hallmark of the "mail." >> pulling out the big guns. >> those who know the site know it's hard to get your life back.

i want to ask you weights going on on the ground at the festival. you have been a proponent of the droney which is the drone selfie for some time. now it appears that twitter is unveiling more of a commercialized version of this. i'm just wondering, do you think that this will ever go beyond robotics enthusiasts? will it ever have more than a niche audience? >> you see, kayla, never doubt me, when i tell you about these crazy techie things and you make fun of me. i was talking about dronies weeks ago. now twitter is using them in a promotional stunt. i think it's a lot of fun where you can do a drony. i do know the drones are going to be a real thing. i do think that we're going to walk out into the street in five to six to seven years and drones are going to be delivering packages and moving things around and taking pictures. i think it's a real thing. >> i mean, what else are you seeing out there that's maybe surprising you? i mean, we are stuck here in new york city. you're out there in cannes.

what's going on? >> well, you know, jon, cannes is really a hustle. it's a hustle for meetings. yes, it's a beautiful location. but you can see, i mean, there's all those boats out there that are taken over by different brand. google has tents on the beach. some of the agencies take over hotel lobbies. and it's all because they want to meet with clients. they want to meet with publis r publishers, secure up-front deals. for our massive, this is where massive amounts of inventory gets transacts and new products get introduced which is way it's all about the product meetings and main stage where silverman, pinterest or sheryl sandberg presents, it's icing. the cake is really the meetings. >> jon, your bud day dan hedy d. how's it going? >> yes. dan p. >> what's the buzz on native advertising? obviously you guys at buzzfeed kind of knocked that out of the park. are we finally going to make the leap from -- >> yes. >> -- banners, or tell us about it.

>> i think the big talk here is these 360-degree packages. i mean, everybody seems to be going market now with a package that includes high-impact display, native, video and custom content. when you walk the streets, everybody doing that kind of offering. so i think it really is about taking budget from television, taking budget from outdoor and solving all of the advertising needs. and that has to work on mobile as well. native is basically the best unit on mobile, which is why you're hearing it so much in the conversation in every meeting that's going on here. >> well, have fun out there, jon. don't work too hard, and we'll look forward to what you're going to do over there at "daily mail." >> i'm working very hard. this is just a fake thing behind me. they just put this on a blue screen. i'm working so hard. >> i can see the beads of sweat. it's awful. coming up, the graduating class of disrupters 2013. before we reveal the list tomorrow, we've got it next on "squawk alley." don't police it. and when weathe,

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all right. welcome back to "squawk alley." check out shares of general electric, at session lows, down by nearly a percent. siemen's made a bid for energy assets. the expectation is ge will either have to raise its bid or just go away. ge shares down by we'll call it near a percent on the session today, jon. back over to you guys. >> thanks, dom. tomorrow we officially unveil the cnbc disruptor 50, the world's most innovative private companies. check out one company that won't make the list this year. >> reporter: last year we identified nest labs smart thermostat as a potential world-changing technology. google agrees. it plunked down $3.2 billion

cast for nest in january. >> for us it was really about scare, infrastructure and changing the world and allowing our team to do what they do best. >> reporter: nest suffered a recent setback with a recall of defective smoke alarms, but it's hard at work to connect devices throughout your home and make them smarter. who will be next? find out when we reveal the 2014 cnbc disruptor 50. >> i've got one of those nests at home. pretty disruptive. thanks to dan porter for joining us this morning, former ceo of omgpop. it was fun. >> thanks. >> we'll have you back again soon, dan. good to see you. as we're watching losses accelerate here in the u.s. markets, we want to bring in simon hobbs across the pond just moments before that close. hey, simon. >> okay. so negative territory in europe. possibly iraq is weighing. if you took a weighted average, it's down about 0.4%. it's the second day that we've had declined there. some of the weaker banks also affected by comments in a german newspaper from a member of the ecb saying that the stress test may actually be too tough as

people try to outdo what's happening in the united states. as we play through the week, the euro will be key for many people. just stuck above $1.35 in the wake of the ecb action which is more or less where it was on the lows in february. the big question, will you get a sizeable break below, or are you basically still range bound? that's critical for a lot of people in the asset markets as to how they think other elements will react. interesting that greenpeace has today had to apologize to its supporters after one of its own staff lost $5.2 million, trading the euro last year. obviously in the wrong direction. he has subsequently been fired. picking up the that em that we had for the first hour of the show, the hour before when we were talking to goldman's about asset allocation and how popular investing in europe is, or the belief that europe will outperform for the next year. this came out from morgan stanley this morning after they held a seminar with 36 senior investors from around the world. europe is the most favorite start followed by japan. albeit with lessor lower

expectations than you had previously. before they were looking for 10% to 20% return in europe. now the argument is you'll get 0% to 10%. guys, back to you. coming up, we are back where apple's johnny ive is set to speak. he's speaking here, in "the new york times," all over the place. we'll talk about his comments on tim cook and apple with kara swisher when we come back. with all the opinions about stocks out there, how do you know which ones to follow? the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's weighted based on how accurate they've been in the past. i'm howard spielberg of fidelity investments. the equity summary score is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. ♪

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welcome back. take a look at the stock market right now. just two hours into trading right now. and you can see the dow is down by 45 points. the nasdaq down by about 11.5 points and the s&p off 4 points. the s&p actually had its biggest weekly loss last week since april as a lot of the strife in iraq is starting to weigh on the markets. so we will continue to watch that. of course, the market is basically parsing what was positive data and weighing it against what is an escalating situation in iraq. we will have more on the markets and more on the cannes festival. first, rick santelli, what are you watching today? >> well, kayla, you know, stewards are different than masters. central banks around the globe should be stewards of their economies and help steer.

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grows more tense, pushing oil prices even higher, we're live in the country with the very latest on where we stand. and why uber's valuation is way too rich according to the man wall stres entruet entrusts the numbers. why greenpeace learns more than ever today why money doesn't grow on trees. you're not going to believe this one. all that and much more straight ahead, top of the hour on the "halftime" show. malia obama has a new job. the first daughter is reportedly working as a production assistant for a tv series produced by steven spielberg starring halle berry. maybe she can use some of spielberg's special effects to make those approval numbers for her dad go up. >> ooh, that's harsh. she turns 16 at the beginning of july. >> summer internship. i was a camp counselor. >> i can see that. >> yeah, second graders. >> i can see that.

i was a lifeguard. what can we do? >> we were not working for steven spielberg. we we degresigress. we want to get to rick santelli. rick, what was your first job? >> my first job was a busboy, and i really enjoyed it. there's nothing like meeting people when there's food around. the food of the marketplace, gdp. it is big news this morning that the imf is weighing in on the notion that gdp is going to be less, but they didn't do anything earth shattering. it's actually pretty easy. if wepy that the first quarter is going to be revised in the neighborhood close to getting right around the boundaries of minus 2%, well, the three quarters left, let's say they're 4, 4, 4. that's going to be 2.5% gdp. if we come in instead of 4, 4, 4, we come in 3, 3, 3, that's going to be 1.75. obviously what the imf did was beefed it up. instead of 333, if you make it 3.25, each quarter for the rest

of the year, you snug up close to 2%. that's what they're focusing in on. it's like a lot of those companies when a stock's at 200 and they give you this earth-shattering claim, they've upgraded the stock to a goal of $2, $210, whatever it is, you get what i'm saying. this isn't really significant. this is just history and a little math. now, where it does get interesting, though, is when you consider that mr. carney and the bank of england are normalizing, the u.s. are normalizing rates. but normalizing rates doesn't mean that they're going to normalize to the extent they used to be before the crisis any time soon. or as the joke around this trading floor is, you don't need 200,000 to garner it. ben bernanke, some of these famous dinners that he's hosting for big bucks talking about how he doesn't believe interest rates are ever going to get to levels like 4% again when it comes to fed funds. many would agree with him, but there's always those black swans and unexpected fat tails. now, as for central banks being

stewards versus masters of the financial universe, this is a topic that everybody needs to pay close attention to. because just because rates are normalizing, that isn't the issue. the issue is whether it's the deep pocket, the decision-makers of last resort, that global central banks -- and i'm not just talking the biggies with what's going on in japan or the uk or the eurozone or the u.s. i'm talking about all the other hundreds of central banks out there and all the economies, small, medium and large because whether it's the people's bank of china, that entity and their sovereign wealth or their expansion of credit that's gone off the charts the last five years, to me, what we're looking at is a bureaucracy that has evolved. we need to go back to either one pillar or two pillar. you know, either maximum employment or price stability. but to make this the next branch of unelected government i think makes everybody in the financial investing community nervous.

they might not speak out about it enough, but you have to remember, many large investors have made a lot of money in the past. but all that seems to be changing. think vix here. kayla. back to you. >> all right, thanks so much for that, rick. we'll be watching that. coming up, the author of business networking tome never eat alone out aa new version of the book updated for the digital age. that's next on "squawk alley." (vo) watching. waiting. for that moment, where right place meets right time.

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there's a new edition out of the networking book "never eat alone." in it, the author promises us that we can learn how to teach social networking or turn social networking into solid gold. keith is with me, now running his own institute for changing behavior in the workplace, clients include ebay, bank of america and general motors. good morning. >> good morning, simon. thank you. >> the premise of this book like the old book seems to be that if your success depends on relationships, you need to get a relationship action plan. >> indeed. all of our success breeds relationships. i mean, think about this. whether you're climbing up through an organization, the individuals around you will determine whether or not you get that next promotion. if you're the ceo of a company, i remember years ago asking bill gates a simple question. who are the 500 people most critical in the growth of microsoft, internally or

externally? it's about people. >> and how has social media changed that? what's the difference now ten years on? >> well, ten years from now, what's been interesting is social media has become very transactional for people. people are bumping into facebook, with likes and connections. but they're feeling like they're slipping away in terms of the authenticity of the relationship. and the re-release of this book is saying that technology does not have to lead to decreasing relationships and increasing connections. but instead we can be much more authentic through the social media. >> so don't ever polish your profiles, don't jockey for attention, join conversations rather than initiating them. but at the end of the day, still a face-to-face meeting you say ranks far higher. >> no question. but then again, you can also build those face-to-face relationships online prior. there are many people that i built very strong relationships with that have started online, but you've got to be authentic. you've got to be authentic and generous. one of the things that we talk about so much in "never eat alone" is people don't have time

to build relationships with you unless you lead with generosity. what's in it for them? lead in terms of being a generous outreach to everybody. >> now, i know you. i've watched you present here no all street a few hundred yards away to one of the big banks. your client list is impressive. ebay and general motors is also on your list. general motors has a terrible problem according to the ceo mary barra with regard to corporate culture. >> organizations don't change people. what has to happen is people change people. and what i can tell you is that mark royce and allen beatty responsible for north america, these two individuals have redefined the relationship with dealership redefined the relationship with their own sales force. >> what does that mean in practice? have you been involved in that? >> we have been a part of a transformation that we're very proud of at general motors in north america. >> how do you do that? put them all in a room? what do you do? >> well, it starts with them certainly in a large room, me

giving a speech on stage but more importantly mark is standing in front of individuals talking about his vision that resonates with his people. people follow individuals. leadership isn't about anything other than an individual with a group of folks following them or not. and to change a culture, you've got to open yourself up. you've got to be transparent. you've got to be the kind of individual that people want to follow. and i have to tell you that those two individuals, mark royce and allen beatty at general motors, i have watched them and individuals want to follow them as individuals. >> keith, good to see you. thank you very much. keith ferrazzi, the author of "never eat alone." now out to mary thompson with some news on gm. >> general electric, jon, general electric saying it will not be getting into a bidding war over alsymptom. gm has bid for alstom the french

firm. making a joint bid for alstom, a number of its assets including some kind of broad alliance mitsubishi and alstom and a cash injection. in a statement ge said their offer brings together two great companies so they can keep with the best technology on a global scale. it is better for alstom than carving up its assets. ge goes on to say they've made progress including proposing alliances in energy and transportation. ge also saying it would add 1,000 jobs. their job guarantees in the proposed bid from mitsubishi and siemen's. again, ge saying it will not engage in a bidding war for alstom. back to you. >> thanks for that news on ge. now let's take it back to france where kara swisher has spotted search sharks on google beach and a yahoo! rickshaw. did you get in? i know you were concerned whether it was going for a long

ride off a short pier. >> reporter: yeah, yeah. i was scared there was a button that you push and i'd be knocked out the top. i might land into a pile of ad execs who are on the beach. that was okay. anyway, here i am. >> so what are you seeing out there? i mean, originally, this is an advertising conference. now they're calling it -- it's all about creativity, these conferences, sort of expanding their mandate. >> right. >> more interesting people there, just because of what we see happening with the convergence of tech and content? what are you seeing? >> well, i'm seeing a boat full of people drinking on a yacht right now, but actually, what it is, it's bringing together creative people with online people with others. you know, in the industry. and i think there's a heavy dose of online here. cheryl sandberg is here, marissa maier is here. everybody from the internet space. ben horowitz is here and ben silverman from pinterest. they're all talking about the convergence with these creative people who get a bunch of awards here and things like that. so it's interesting.

you know, the idea of how the internet can be creative. and that's sort of a theme that is pulling through this thing. >> kara has long been famous for being a boondoggle. you said that you can hold your alcohol better than those executives so they'd better watch out. but i'm wondering to what extent this is evolving to actually be a breeding ground for deals and for discussions about real business moves going forward. >> well, i think definitely in europe in this area. google has a huge presence. that was a joke. i did an instagram about it, but they take a beach over and they serve -- you know, they do all kinds of googly things and they have smoothies. you know, their ad sales people are there trying to sell ads to procter & gambles and the coca-colas and things like that. so there's lots of activity going on, business. pinterest has a suite that they're bringing in executives. i mean, i think it's an area for cmos and lots of businesses including the internet business meet and have a good time. and it's in the south of france.

so it is a bit of a boondoggle in that regard. >> so kara, i know you saw this "new york times" piece on apple and tim cook. what did you think? interesting that apple seems to be rolling out johnny ive now, bono quoted on apple's strategy? >> yep. >> what did you take away from it? anything new or interesting about the way apple's trying to craft things? >> no, i thought it was an interesting piece. it didn't have a lot of news in it. i don't know if you thought that. but i thought it didn't have a lot of news. but they're trying to move tim into the center of the action a little more. but in a more inclusive way, the way they just announced all those things in bringing developers closer in. so what you're seeing is a little more of an apple where there's more voices and more people. we had johnny -- i'm sorry, we had eddie q at our conference and jimmy. so you're going to see a lot more characters the way you do in other internet companies. they've got a lot of characters there. so i think it will be interesting to see how much tim moves to the forefront and how much johnny, eddie and all the others, executives there, craig

federici, things like that. >> kara, this conference being in europe, obviously one of the big talkers over the last couple months was this idea that google would be looking to spend $20 billion to $30 billion on deals abroad. i'm wondering if there's been any scuttle on what the company could be looking at? >> you know, it's interesting, i'm looking into that today. there's a whole bunch of things going on there. they have a huge presence here, google does. and aurora who runs their sales is on stage. you know, i think they've got a lot of choices here. google's very inquisitive. i would suspect in the advertising space but you never know where they're going to strike. they could buy drones, rocket ships, cars. i suspect two areas, youtube has a very big spending budget. you might see a lot in video. and two, oddly enough, andy ruben over in robots and things like that. he's got a big budget apparently to spend. >> finally, kara, serious question. if steve jobs was john lennon

and johnny ive is paul mccartney, is tim cook ringo? i mean, who is he? george harrison? what do you think? >> oh, oh! i'm not -- i'm not -- george harrison if i had to pick, but i'm not going to do that. that's an interesting question. but who gets to be ringo? although ringo's a great drummer. i'm not going to pick that one, jon. i'm not walking into that one. >> but you said george harrison. >> he is a great drummer. but he's ringo, compared. george harrison. george harrison. george harrison i'll go with, all right? >> we're glad to see you. you had some issues. for anyone who follows you on twitter, they know you didn't have an easy time getting to the south of france. how is lufthansa at the end of the day? >> fantastic. it took them a while. i was testing out social media to see if they'd respond. a lot slower than virgin atlantic. one person saved the day. i got a lot of response, which was fun. >> those airline tweets always draw the sympathy. it's good stuff.

kara swisher, thanks. a target on their back. fresh details from the retailer's computer problems next. weekdays are for rising to the challenge. they're the days to take care of business. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters. with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to meet your needs.

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we've got fresh details from target's computer issues. courtney reagan joins us from a target in edgewater, new jersey. courtney. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, jop. so we all know that last night target had this glitch, impacting its payment processing system. that means credit and debit card transactions either could not go through or were very, very slow. target now says that it was because of a defect in a network device. that's hardware. target not giving me the make or model of the hardware, exactly what it was, other than saying it was a defect and a network device that has caused the problem. though it has since been resolved. target, again, reiterating this has nothing to do with any kind of security or hacking issue of any kind. it did last for about four hours, but target is not quantifying exactly how many

stores were impacted. it's actually unclear if target even knows themselves how many stores were impacted. though we know it did hit at least five states. target did give its managers at each store discretion to make the guests comfortable in whatever way they needed to, whether that was issuing coupons or free starbucks for those locations that this it-that's also been resolved. target saying they are not going to further any statements because the entire glitch has been revolved permanently, not just a patch, but it's been completely resolved. again, it was the result of a defect in a network device. and that was what happened with target last night. back to you guys. >> hey, court, if we've still got you, how often does this sort of thing happen? is this getting extra attention because of the things that happened over the holidays, or is this something that never happens to walmart or everybody else? real quick. >> reporter: it occasionally happens, but target is certainly under extra, extra-special sort of caution from consumers that

are already frustrated about what happened to them over the holiday season. so it's going to take a bigger hit to its brand and shopping experience than perhaps if it would have happened to another retailer that didn't just so recently have something happen at that point of sale system. back to you guys. >> thanks, court. that's it for "squawk alley" as we hit noon time on the east coast. let's get right to the "fast money halftime report." >> thanks so much, jon. welcome to the "halftime show." the game plan, oil shock, we are live in iraq with the latest as oil markets around the world remain on edge. not so uber. the dean evaluation on why the private popular car service isn't worth fearly what everyone thinks. worst trade of the day. how the nonprofit greenpeace is learning an age-old lesson today that money doesn't grow on trees. let's meet today's starting lineup. joe, steph, josh and peter on the desk with us today. we do begin with our eyes once again on iraq and the continued surge in the price of oil. today wti crude topping $107 a