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FTC Eyes Suit to Block Facebook Plan to Merge Apps
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. antitrust enforcers are considering going to court to stop Facebook Inc.’s plan to merge technology systems so that users can communicate across the company’s apps, according to a person familiar with the matter.The Federal Trade Commission is studying whether to seek a court order to block the company’s effort to enable messaging among users of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, said the person, who declined to be named because the investigation is confidential.Facebook’s integration plan, announced in January, has come under criticism from those who say the move would make it harder to break up Facebook as part of any antitrust case against the company. The FTC, the U.S. Justice Department and a group of states are investigating whether Facebook has violated antitrust laws.FTC Chairman Joe Simons signaled he agreed with that view in an interview with Bloomberg in August. Asked how difficult a breakup of Facebook would be once the services had been well integrated, he said it would make the case “very messy.”“It’s hard,” he said. “It’s really hard.”Simons told Bloomberg at the time that he’s willing to go to court to seek a breakup of a tech company. Any decision by the FTC to sue would need a majority vote by the five-member commission.Facebook shares fell as much as 4% after the Wall Street Journal reported on the FTC’s deliberations. The shares fell 2.7% to $196.75 in New York.Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wants to allow users of the messaging service on Instagram to chat with those using similar functions on WhatsApp and on the original Facebook site and app. Facebook says that would allow it to better view and control foreign election interference, the spread of terrorism and other content it deems bad. Currently users can’t communicate between services.The company has already begun to integrate messaging systems for Instagram, a photo app, with Facebook Messenger, Bloomberg has reported. The massive undertaking will stitch together the underlying technology and require corporate reorganization, but won’t change much about users’ interaction with the services.Critics including co-founder Chris Hughes have focused on Facebook’s ownership of the apps and its plans to knit them more tightly together. Such detractors have cast the integration as a source of danger to user privacy. They also say it would allow the company to further abuse its dominance and fend off enforcers’ attempts to curb its behavior.Facebook says it faces robust competition, even accounting for its ownership of the services.Many technological services are able to work together even when provided by different companies -- a concept known as interoperability. Users of Google’s email service, for instance, can easily communicate with friends who get their messages through Microsoft, and phones call one another regardless of wireless providers.Mobile chatting is not as well integrated, however. Those who study competition say that interoperability between rivals bolsters competition, but Facebook’s plan would allow the company’s apps to talk to one another rather than to outside services.The Justice Department has previously pushed back on the integration plan because it will involve encrypting Instagram and Messenger and make messages invisible to Facebook the way that already occurs on WhatsApp. The department, along with officials from Australia and the U.K., said in October that the company should pause its efforts until it can ensure lawful access to user communications. Facebook said in a letter released Tuesday that it rejected that call.The FTC’s investigation of Facebook, which became public in July, is examining in part whether the social media company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp should be unwound even though they were previously approved by the agency.Advocates for aggressive antitrust action against Facebook, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have argued both deals allowed Facebook to fend off emerging competition by acquiring platforms that posed a threat to its dominance. Warren has said she would seek to unwind both deals if elected president in 2020.(Updates with Facebook plan starting in fifth paragraph)\--With assistance from Kurt Wagner and Sarah Frier.To contact the reporters on this story: David McLaughlin in Washington at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net;Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at btenerellabr@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Paula DwyerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 22:20:14 +0000Read moreAlphabet Lawyer Sold $145 Million of Stock Before Page Exit
(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc. legal chief David Drummond unloaded about $145 million of stock -- his biggest share sale on record -- in the weeks before co-founder Larry Page stepped down as chief executive officer.Drummond sold $72 million of stock in early November and an additional $73 million on Dec. 2, regulatory filings show. The latter disposal occurred a day before the Google parent announced that Sundar Pichai would succeed Page as CEO and become Drummond’s boss.While he has sold stock periodically since joining the firm in 2002, Drummond has divested almost twice as much this year as he did in 2018. He was Google’s first lawyer and ran the search giant’s legal and corporate development arms for years before shifting to Alphabet in 2015.Last year, Drummond was accused of having had a relationship with a female employee in the legal department. The woman, Jennifer Blakely, later came forward, saying Drummond abandoned her and their child and repeatedly violated rules governing workplace relationships.Drummond, 56, has said the two underwent a difficult breakup and that he never started a relationship with anyone else at company.But the details, coupled with accusations of misconduct by other senior Google executives, gave more fuel to critics who said that the company hadn’t done enough to reform a culture where powerful men weren’t penalized for inappropriate relationships or sexual misconduct. Last year, thousands of Google employees worldwide walked off the job in protest.This year, Alphabet’s board began investigating how misconduct matters were handled. The company no longer requires that workers sign away their right to challenge it in court. Some other executives accused of misconduct have left the company.A Google spokeswoman declined to comment or to make Drummond available for comment.Insider sales are closely watched by some investors to gauge management’s confidence in the business. That said, executive stock sales are hardly unusual. Most public-company bosses receive the bulk of their compensation in equity and periodically dispose of some of it to diversify their wealth.Drummond, whose most recent transactions were made under a pre-arranged stock-trading plan, has sold about 120,000 shares worth roughly $157 million so far this year. Regulatory filings suggest he collected most of those shares by exercising stock options with expiration dates from December 2020 through April 2022. The sales figures don’t exclude the cost of exercising those options.Drummond married another Google employee earlier this year, according to Axios.(Updates with stock-trading plan in 10th paragraph)\--With assistance from Mark Bergen.To contact the reporters on this story: Anders Melin in New York at amelin3@bloomberg.net;Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, ;Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 21:37:51 +0000Read moreTech Giants and Oil Drive Fastest GDP Growth Among U.S. Counties
(Bloomberg) -- While the economy in Los Angeles County, home to Hollywood, topped the list as America’s biggest last year, the nation’s fastest-growing large county was to the north in Silicon Valley.The economy in Santa Clara County -- home to tech giants like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google -- expanded 10.2% to $316.5 billion, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department that included nearly 20 years of county-level GDP data.Not only was Santa Clara the fastest-growing among all counties with populations exceeding 500,000, but it was also the country’s fifth-largest by GDP. The top 10 counties by GDP accounted for 19% of U.S. GDP, when using the national figures.GDP represents the total value of goods and services produced over a specific time and can be used to gauge economic health. On the whole, 2,375 counties saw gains in real GDP last year, while economies shrank in 717 counties. GDP was unchanged in 21.Among medium counties, or those with a population between 100,000 and 500,000, activities centered around oil and gas extraction helped Canadian County, Oklahoma, grow 21%. The Texas counties of Reeves, Loving, Winkler and Martin -- the heart of the Permian Basin, which has driven growth in U.S. oil production -- all showed GDP growth of at least 39% in 2018.However, a slowdown this year in oil and gas well drilling reduces the chances for such a repeat performance for these energy-intensive areas.For counties with a population of fewer than 100,000, Jackson County, West Virginia, grew at a stunning 86.5% in 2018, with the construction industry leading the area’s growth. The gain coincided with construction activities related to TC Energy Corp.’s Mountaineer XPress natural gas pipeline. In contrast, GDP in Grant County, North Dakota, declined 44%, as farmers suffered from a drought.\--With assistance from Vince Golle and Dominic Carey.To contact the reporter on this story: Reade Pickert in Washington at epickert@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Lanman at slanman@bloomberg.net, Vince GolleFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 18:17:16 +0000Read moreApple Keeps Payments Tech for Itself and Europe Has Had Enough
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s digital wallet is expanding in Europe just as regulators crack down on the tech giant’s move into financial services.At issue is Apple’s role as a platform for other services. Spotify Technology SA already complained to antitrust regulators that Apple favors its own music service. Now banks and other payments providers say the company gives its Apple Pay service an unfair advantage by limiting access to a key component inside iPhones.“Access to technical interfaces is now a key competitive factor for payment systems,” Kerstin Altendorf, a spokeswoman for the Association of German Banks, said. “The same conditions should apply to all market participants.”The arguments leveled at Apple come as lawmakers and regulators look to curb the power of Silicon Valley technology platforms, including Google and Facebook Inc.European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has begun scrutinizing Apple Pay, and antitrust regulators in the Netherlands and France are concerned, too. In Germany, a law that kicks in Jan. 1 could force Apple to open up its payments technology more for competitors.This is all bad timing for Apple, which is relying more on digital services like Apple Pay to generate growth. Its digital wallet is linked with 900 banks in Europe already and the company plans to work with another 1,500. How well that goes will partly depend on the fight for access to Apple Pay tech.Vestager’s officials have sought industry feedback on how iPhones may favor Apple Pay over other payment solutions. While that hasn’t triggered a formal probe yet, Vestager said she’s heard “many, many concerns” over the service and how that might hamper competition for easy payments.Bad blood between Vestager and Apple won’t help either. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called one of Vestager’s decisions “political crap” when the EU ordered Apple to pay Ireland 13 billion euros in unpaid taxes.And Vestager’s concerns about Apple Pay are echoed by other antitrust regulators in the region. France’s antitrust regulator has warned about new entrants to quickly gaining dominant positions, and the Dutch regulator in October launched a market study to analyze the impact of big tech firms on its payments market.Germany is on the front lines of this battle. A law, kicking in Jan. 1, requires operators of digital money infrastructure to open up access to competitors for a reasonable fee. While Apple isn’t mentioned in the law, the company may be most exposed because Apple Pay relies on the iPhone’s near-field communications chip for slick in-store payments.Wireless payments are powered by so-called NFC chips, that let thousands use their phones to pour through subway ticket gates in London and Tokyo. The component also handles the wireless signals that allow Apple Pay users to wave their phones at store terminals for instant charges to a credit or debit card. Banks want the same functionality for their own iPhone apps and complain that Apple won’t give them access to the chip.Germany could force Apple’s hand. The new law requires “non-discriminatory access to the technical infrastructure” said Altendorf, the spokeswoman for the German bank association. That’s a step in the right direction, she added.Apple has already had to make changes to Apple Pay in response to an antitrust complaint in Europe. Swiss mobile payment app Twint contacted regulators because Apple’s wallet app kept automatically launching when customers tried to use Twint’s QR-based app at payment terminals. Apple last December agreed to implement a technical solution, deactivating NFC when the Twint app is open to stop Apple Pay interfering with its competitor’s service.Apple says it restricts access to the iPhone’s NFC chip as part of a system that encrypts users’ card information. Allowing competing mobile payments apps to access the NFC chip decoupled from Apple’s added layer of security could increase the risk of fraud and other security breaches, it said.Apple believes “deeply in competition,” it said in a statement, and the company has tried to make the service “the kind of seamless and convenient payment and wallet system that our users want and expect.”Customers can also still use alternative mobile payment options on Apple devices where transactions are processed through black-and-white QR codes instead of NFC technology.Security concerns may scupper these QR-based alternatives, which are used by Twint, Payconiq International SA and other Apple Pay rivals.QR codes can be easily spoofed, according to James Moar, an analyst at Juniper Research. “I don’t really see that as viable competition to Apple Pay in Europe at this point,” he said.\--With assistance from Mark Gurman and Sarah Syed.To contact the reporters on this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at ndrozdiak1@bloomberg.net;Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Alistair BarrFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000Read moreCan DuckDuckGo replace Google search while offering better privacy?
Can DuckDuckGo replace Google search while offering better privacy?The alternative search engine markets itself on protecting users’ privacy, but is it worth using?
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 08:00:01 +0000Read more