GOOG - Alphabet Inc.
| Previous close | 1,318.09 |
| Open | 1,277.50 |
| Bid | 1,301.24 x 1000 |
| Ask | 1,302.20 x 1200 |
| Day's range | 1,271.09 - 1,322.00 |
| 52-week range | 1,025.00 - 1,532.11 |
| Volume | 2,430,729 |
| Avg. volume | 1,556,367 |
| Market cap | 895.792B |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 1.04 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 26.54 |
| EPS (TTM) | 49.16 |
| Earnings date | N/A |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 1,616.37 |
- TechCrunch
Pinterest adds DoorDash exec and Caviar lead Gokul Rajaram to its board
Pinterest is bringing on a new board member. The company announced today it has appointed Gokul Rajaram, Caviar lead at soon-to-go-public DoorDash, to its board of directors and as a member of its Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. The addition signals Pinterest's desire to bring more digital advertising expertise to its board, given Rajaram's experience as product director of Ads at Facebook and product management director at Google AdSense.
- Reuters
Google employee who was at Zurich office tests positive for coronavirus
"The Zurich office, like all other offices, remains open", a Google spokesperson said. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Switzerland has risen to 15, and more than 100 people are in quarantine, government minister Alain Berset said. Google is further restricting its employee travel as concerns around the outbreak grow, Business Insider reported earlier in the day, citing a source familiar with the matter.
- Zacks
Tech Daily: Coronavirus, Google Win & More
The coronavirus scare is really hitting the market and tech stocks will likely hurt more than others.
- Investing.com
Alphabet A Stock Falls 3%
Investing.com - Alphabet A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Stock fell by 3.01% to trade at $1,275.17 by 10:02 (15:02 GMT) on Friday on the NASDAQ exchange.
- Bloomberg
Climate Fears About Cloud Computing Have Been Vastly Overstated
(Bloomberg) -- This has been the decade of the data center, which can be measured in a ten-fold increase in traffic and a 25-fold jump in worldwide storage. The surge was thought to come with a steep cost for the climate, since all those racks of servers run hot enough to require special cooling systems and vast amounts of energy. But data centers are rapidly becoming more energy efficient, and new research suggests there’s no longer a close link between more cloud computing and more energy use. A report published Thursday in Science credits the progress to better management, more efficient hardware and the rise of “hyperscale” data centers created by tech giants.Back in 2010, according to the report, data centers globally used about 194 terawatt-hours of electricity—about as much power as Iran used that year. By 2018 that figure had increased to 205 TWh. That’s a 6% rise in power use, in a period that saw data-center computing grow by 550%.The data-center industry’s 20% annual improvement in energy intensity dwarfs all other major parts of the economy. The power used today by data centers, 1% of the global total, is roughly the same as it was in 2010.This was an unexpected result. Analysts have extrapolated the incredible rise in cloud computing on to data-center electricity consumption “leading to unreliable predictions of current and future global data center energy use,” according to the report in Science. Instead of collecting and analyzing power-use data, some researchers had been taking the growth factor seen in data-center internet traffic and assuming energy use was growing just as quickly. This new research is the first major attempt to compile a bottom-up view of data-center energy use in a decade. Researchers based their work on reports published by Cisco Systems, Inc., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the International Energy Agency, among other sources.“We don’t have nationally reported statistics for data centers,” said Eric Masanet, lead author and a mechanical engineering professor at Northwestern University. That created a lot of work for him and his colleagues. “We don’t see these estimates come out very often.”In a blog post Thursday, Google celebrated the findings and touted the company’s own efforts at buying renewable power and cutting energy use. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure, wrote that Google can now harness about seven times as much computing power from the same amount of energy as it could five years ago. (Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., were not involved in the research by Masanet’s team or its funding.)Can the trend continue? The rise of hyperscale data centers and potential for better efficiency in storage means that computing and power use may continue to diverge, at least through the next doubling of data-center workloads, which is estimated to take 3 to 4 years. Masanet and his co-authors recommend policy changes to support continued efficiency gains. Government efforts such as the Energy Star program in the U.S. can include servers and networking equipment. Renewable energy can play an even bigger role in data centers through tax credits and procurement standards. Finally, there can be better data about data centers. “Data centers are becoming way too important to not rally more research behind them,” Masanet said.To contact the author of this story: Eric Roston in New York at eroston@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Aaron Rutkoff at arutkoff@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
TikTok Marketers Chase Billions of Views in Uncharted Terrain
(Bloomberg) -- In an October post on TikTok, digital magician and video star Zach King walks up to the counter at Chipotle to receive a burrito bowl with chips. After he pays, he jumps and his clothes change in an instant into astronaut gear. Soon, everything in the store is floating in apparent zero gravity.Another star, Brittany Broski -- known as “kombucha girl” -- posted on the video-sharing app around the same time, biting into a Chipotle burrito and then suddenly sporting a mad-scientist wig. The famous pomeranian, @jiffpom, turns into a vampire after touching Chipotle. All of these TikTok videos were tagged boorito, for a U.S. advertising campaign promoting $4 burritos on Halloween. It’s the most viral campaign Chipotle has ever done, based on one measure: the hashtag has 3.9 billion views on TikTok.That’s a surprising metric given that TikTok has been downloaded only about 145 million times in the U.S, according to Sensor Tower. The viral social media app, where people post funny videos set to music, won’t disclose what counts as a “view,” so it doesn’t necessarily mean 3.9 billion people saw a boorito post, or that they were in the market to purchase a burrito. Still, numbers that high are gratifying for marketing executives justifying their experiments on a relatively new social platform, without much other data to go on and few ways to target their messages to a tailored audience.“The numbers are massive,” said Tressie Lieberman, a vice president of digital marketing at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. It’s not the restaurant chain’s only campaign that has crossed the 1 billion threshold on TikTok. “I don’t know that any brand has ever gotten that on YouTube,” she added. The company said Boorito sales were 15% higher than a year earlier.TikTok, owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance Inc., built its U.S. presence off the 2017 purchase of a similar app, Musical.ly, which was popular with young teens. After an advertising blitz on Facebook and Snapchat, TikTok soared in the charts to become a sensation among a younger audience for its feel-good content. Now, marketers are starting to experiment. They mention it alongside Snapchat as a way to reach the elusive teen demographic, to build their preference for brands just as they’re achieving independent spending power. According to influencer analysis firm Captiv8, 69% of TikTok users are age 14 to 26.Still, venturing into TikTok ads can be complicated, and the return-on-investment unproven. One can’t simply run the same ad created for Facebook or YouTube. The format is skits, set to music, that work on a phone held vertically and repeat over and over. Brands can run a campaign to promote a hashtag, like boorito, which can cost around $150,000; they can pay to take over the homescreen of the app, which can cost $50,000 a day for a guaranteed 5 million views; or can even run a campaign with the ability to buy a product within the app, according to case studies reviewed by Captiv8. TikTok said prices fluctuate based on an advertiser’s goals. Any effort requires careful coordination with both the TikTok sales team and outside “creators” -- stars such as King and Broski, the TikTok equivalent of Instagram influencers, who are paid separately.If a brand is spending enough, they can get an introduction to the creators through the company. Other times advertisers have to find connections on their own or through an agency. Since the success of boorito, Chipotle pays TikTok stars special attention, sometimes catering food to a Los Angeles mansion known as the Hype House, which is full of skit-makers collaborating on projects.Any time a new social media platform starts reaching a mass audience, the people who were there first reap the biggest rewards. Charli D’Amelio, whom the New York Times recently called the “reigning queen” of TikTok, started her career there in the summer of 2019 and now has 30.6 million followers. Other previously unknown teens have also seen a dramatic rise.The same is becoming true for advertisers. Brands can pay to promote a hashtag challenge for more people to see it, in the hopes that TikTok’s users will create videos using the hashtag on their own, thereby increasing its reach. The National Football League saw more than 1 billion views for its WeReady hashtag ahead of the Super Bowl in early February. Makeup company MAC saw 2.6 billion views for the tag YouOwnIt.That enormous reach is possible, in part, because the TikTok sensation in the U.S. is so new that it doesn’t have many advertisers -- which means less competition for eyeballs and fewer constraints by the platform to limit or throttle an ad’s visibility.“This type of virality just does not happen on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube,” said Krishna Subramanian, cofounder of Captiv8. “Getting to those billions of views is something that’s happening frequently. It’s something we haven’t seen on any other platform for quite some time.” The amount the creators make is similar to what Instagram influencers make on that app’s disappearing stories product. The biggest stars -- such as Loren Gray, with 39.6 million followers -- can garner $175,000 for a single sponsored TikTok video, Subramanian said.TikTok is new enough that most advertisers are still learning what works on the service. Some have had early success. ELF Cosmetics created an original song for people to use in the background of their own videos, and there are 1.7 million videos on TikTok that use the song. It was so popular that it was even trending on Spotify. The associated hashtag, eyeslipsface, has 4.5 billion views.Anish Dalal, chief executive of digital-marketing company Sapphire Apps Media, has developed his own playbook for TikTok. In some cases, he’ll scour the app for new, popular music that users are uploading and use that same audio clip in his own ads. One current option is the ability to target an ad to TikTok users looking for a specific hashtag. Dalal creates a new hashtag for a brand’s campaign, and pays influencers to create dozens of videos using the hashtag. Once that hashtag is big enough to lure in regular users, he starts running ads targeting the hashtag.The clients we work with “were excited to try something new,” Dalal said. “What we tell brands is, this is essentially Instagram in the early days.”The first-mover advantage will be short-lived. TikTok is already testing a self-service advertising tool, which will make it possible for any brand to buy ads. Snapchat parent Snap Inc. went through a similar transition in 2017, moving from selling expensive ads with a personal touch to a model where anyone could buy them online. The prices for its ads dropped, but eventually the company started building more advertiser relationships and a more stable business.To be successful with that strategy, though, TikTok will have to build more targeting options and controls for advertisers, according to Meghan Myszkowski, head of North American social media advertising at the ad agency Essence. Showing an ad to everyone can translate to a larger viewership, but isn’t necessarily efficient. Brands may waste money showing ads to an irrelevant audience, or run the risk of their ad appearing directly before or after a video that it wouldn’t want to be associated with. TikTok lets its advertisers target using basic information like a user’s location and gender; it’s less granular than what is offered by TikTok’s larger rivals, Instagram and YouTube, where ads can be targeted to specific interests and purchasing behavior.But in order to improve TikTok’s targeting, the app will have to gather more detailed information about its users’ behavior -- something that may prove tricky, as the U.S. government scrutinizes the app’s Chinese ownership. American lawmakers have warned the app could be a security threat; TikTok has repeatedly said it’s not influenced by the Chinese government and rejects the idea that U.S. user data is vulnerable. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., better known as CFIUS, is reviewing ByteDance’s purchase of the business that became TikTok, Bloomberg News has reported.Essence ran some TikTok ads in the first half of 2019, but Myszkowski said the agency has pulled back until TikTok builds more advertiser controls.“With risk can come great return,” Myszkowski added. “If you’re willing to take the risk.”To contact the authors of this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.netKurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Ice Cream and Thai Curries Are About to Fly Through Irish Skies
(Bloomberg) -- In the suburbs of Dublin on a windy, overcast day in January, several alumni of Airbus and the U.K.’s Royal Air Force watched as a flying object, shaped a bit like a crouching frog, hovered about 10 meters (33 feet) up in the air.The craft, called MNA-1090, opened its cargo bay door, and lowered a package — about the size of a shoebox — to the ground on a string. The robotics engineers who’d helped design the vehicle opened the carton, looked inside, and smiled: the dozen-or-so pots of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream were still perfectly frozen.In late March, customers on the outskirts of Dublin, far from the dense metropolises that make services like Uber Eats and Deliveroo viable in terms of revenue, will get to try ordering food and drink the same way. Manna.aero built the MNA-1090 drone to be an airborne replacement for the human-and-bicycle formula used the world over by food-delivery apps, and is preparing to run a couple of hundred test flights per day over several weeks to lay the groundwork for a permanent service for small Irish towns. Ben & Jerry’s, U.K. food delivery firm Just Eat Plc, and local Irish restaurant chain Camile Thai are signed up to participate in the pilot that will take place at the University College Dublin campus.“In five years, it’s going to be the most normal thing you can imagine,” Manna Chief Executive Officer Bobby Healy says.If you live in a city, having a hot meal delivered to your doorstep in under an hour has never been easier or cheaper. For about the price of a small coffee, a human being will cycle to a restaurant, collect your freshly baked pizza and bring it to your apartment. Innovations in smartphones, mapping and gig-economy logistics have catalyzed growth of the sector, which research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates will be worth $200 billion by 2025.But the margins are tiny for the companies handling the delivery, and the competition fierce. In October, Grubhub Inc. executives told shareholders they didn’t believe it was even possible to generate significant profit from food delivery. The cost of paying people to drive food around was just too much, they said.Companies are looking for an alternative, and a roster of investors believe Healy might have a model that could work: a drones-as-a-service for restaurants and delivery apps.Here’s how Healy said it will work: Manna will partner with restaurants or food courts that have a high-throughput of orders and a small outdoor space to house a drone-loading team. The Manna craft itself is about the size of a computer printer and will carry meals weighing around 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in under three minutes, even in wind and rain.Upon arriving at its destination, the drone will hover and wait for the customer to accept delivery using an app, having indicated when ordering exactly where they want their food to land — on the lawn, an outdoor dining table or just in the driveway. The drone will descend and lower the food parcel that, Healy said, will still be “piping hot.”Manna’s vehicle has been designed to travel for 100 million hours without a problem, Healy said in an interview. But, alongside space for three 10-inch pizzas, it also has a backup battery and two parachutes, just in case.The 51-year-old Irish entrepreneur is a mobility veteran: In 2003, he sold off travel software firm Eland Technologies to industry titan Sita.Aero. He then helped build CarTrawler into a transportation platform used by more than 100 international airlines. Healy’s got some well-known names putting $5.2 million behind Manna, including billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Dynamo venture capital, and FFVC, among others.For food platforms, Manna says the service is more than just a gimmick — it will lower delivery costs and allow them to scale to currently under-served suburban areas in a profitable way. Healy said Manna’s drone delivery will cost platforms $3 to $5 per delivery.Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of online delivery platform iFood in Brazil, said the use of drones is a “great breakthrough” for the industry because of their efficiency and ability to travel relatively large distances. He said his company’s working with Sao Paulo-based Speedbird to reduce delivery time by combining the use of drones with bicycles and motorbikes.Uber’s testing a drone for food delivery in the San Diego area, and Alphabet Inc.’s Wing is already delivering coffee, food, medicine and household items directly to homes in Finland, Australia and the U.S. state of Virginia.Amazon.com Inc.’s also developing its Prime Air service, with a view to delivering parcels, not necessarily food, of up to five pounds via drone. The company’s bidding for a stake in the U.K.’s Deliveroo.Healy isn’t worried. He’s pitching Manna as a business-to-business company, where its drones are used by food delivery companies, not end consumers. To the entrepreneur, Wing isn’t his rival. “We’re arming their competitors.”Still, not everyone is so rosy about the drone delivery trend. In a sign of how divided views are on the technology, Dutch food delivery firm Takeaway.com NV — which recently bought Just Eat, one of Manna’s partners for the March pilot — said it thinks drone delivery for food is a “fantasy.”“We just don’t see any way how it can work currently from a technical perspective,” said Joris Wilton, a spokesman for Takeaway. “We will not be investing in developing it in-house.”Miki Kuusi, co-founder and CEO of Helsinki-based food delivery company Wolt, said his company has tested drone deliveries, but, “it’s been more PR than actually about a business case.”That partly has to do with complexities around picking up the food orders, he said. Drone services have to be deeply integrated with the restaurants to ensure that drones are loaded in the right way, something “most restaurants in a hectic environment are not equipped to do.”Then there’s the tricky issue of regulation. Airspace authorities have tightened restrictions on drone usage as their popularity with consumers and troublemakers has grown. People also express discomfort at the idea of machinery whizzing above their homes — both for privacy and safety reasons. Add to that the complexity of hauling hot food in the sky over several kilometres and it’s an uphill battle for any startup to launch a service.Healy recognizes that changing the industry won’t come overnight, given the need to safely test the technology, get approvals from regulators at each new stage as well as from the local communities.Still, he expects to have completed between 20,0000 and 50,000 successful deliveries by year-end.“With this industry it’s ‘crawl, walk, run,’” Healy said, “and we want to crawl for a little while, we want everyone to feel good about it.” To contact the author of this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at ndrozdiak1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Nate Lanxon at nlanxon@bloomberg.net, Amy ThomsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Microsoft Joins Apple, HP in Scrapping Outlooks on Virus
(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. became the latest tech giant to reduce its quarterly outlook based on the outbreak of a novel coronavirus that’s slowing production of computers and crimping sales of an array of consumer services and electronics.In a statement Wednesday, the company said it doesn’t expect to meet earlier guidance for fiscal third-quarter revenue in the Windows personal-computer software and Surface device business because the supply chain is returning to normal at a slower pace than expected. Last month, Microsoft gave a wider-than-usual sales target -- $10.75 billion to $11.15 billion -- for that division, citing uncertainty related to the spread of the deadly respiratory virus.The world’s largest software maker joins iPhone maker Apple Inc. and PC company HP Inc. in cutting estimates because of supply-chain disruptions related to the virus, known as Covid-19. Merchants who sell on Amazon.com Inc. also are trimming ad spending on the e-commerce giant’s marketplace, seeking to moderate demand amid worries they may run out of inventory of Chinese-made goods. Questions about the virus’ economic ripples had already sent the S&P 500 Index down by 6.6% this week; Microsoft’s acknowledgment that the PC market is being hit reinforces investor concerns about broader consequences, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.“It fans the flames on Corona worries,” Ives said. “Apple and Microsoft now confirm the negative impact the Street had feared.”In recent days, anxiety has mounted about the spread of the virus outside of China, where it originated. For the first time, more cases were reported in countries other than China in the past 24 hours, the World Health Organization said late Wednesday, a significant development as new cases spread around the globe, with South Korea, Italy and Iran particularly hard hit. Globally 2,771 have died and 81,317 people have been infected.As component makers and tech-gadget assembly companies in China continue to face production slowdowns due to quarantines and shuttered factories, U.S. technology companies are reported to be scrambling for alternatives. Microsoft and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are looking at manufacturing facilities in Vietnam and Thailand, the Nikkei Asian Review reported Wednesday.Microsoft shares declined about 2% in late trading following the announcement. The stock has fallen in four of the last five trading sessions, along with the broader market, on concerns that the spreading health crisis could hurt the global economy and the technology sector. The shares had been trading at all-time highs earlier this month. Shares of Intel Corp., the biggest PC chipmaker, and rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. also fell in extended trading, as did PC makers Dell Technologies Inc. and HP. Dell reports earnings Thursday.The reduced forecasts come as Covid-19’s impact spreads through global companies in a range of industries. Booking Holdings Inc. on Wednesday said room nights booked would drop 5% to 10% in the first quarter, compared with analysts’ estimates for an increase of 5%. The company said cancellations are rising.For Microsoft, demand for Windows operating-system software is strong and has been in line with the company’s forecasts, according to the statement. The rest of the company’s outlook for the current quarter remains unchanged. On average, analysts were predicting total sales of $34.6 billion for the period ending in March, according to estimates gathered by Bloomberg. The More Personal Computing unit typically generates more than a third of Microsoft’s annual sales.Microsoft will have to account for supply issues with its Surface devices and lost software sales from Windows on PCs made by other manufacturers who may be facing the same production and parts challenges in China. The Redmond, Washington-based company is also preparing to release a new generation of Xbox video-game consoles in the fall, and will need to work through setting the final production lines and then building up inventory ahead of that release, a process that could be affected by lingering shutdowns in China.The spread of the virus outside of China also raises the chances of impact of work shutdowns, quarantines, store closures, and conference and meeting cancellations in other countries where technology and other global firms have a significant presence.To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Etsy Gives Optimistic Annual Sales Forecast on Free Shipping
(Bloomberg) -- Etsy Inc. reported fourth-quarter gross merchandise sales that beat analyst estimates and gave an optimistic forecast for 2020, signaling the company’s free-shipping initiative has begun to pay off. Shares jumped more than 10% on the news.Gross merchandise sales, or GMS, a key metric for the e-commerce industry, increased 33% to $1.66 billion in the period ended Dec. 31, the Brooklyn, New York-based company said Wednesday in a statement. Revenue jumped 35% to $270 million. Analysts, on average, estimated $1.6 billion in GMS and $264.8 million in revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.For 2020, Etsy projected GMS, or the value of the products flowing through the website, of as much as $6.4 billion, compared with analysts’ projection of $6.04 billion. The company also said revenue would be $1.04 billion to $1.06 billion, which topped Wall Street’s projection of $1.02 billion.“Etsy.com and our sellers had a great holiday season,” Chief Executive Officer Josh Silverman said on a conference call. He said the company’s marketing efforts, including its holiday television campaign, helped drive those sales. Cyber Monday and Tuesday -- the days after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend --- saw the highest daily levels of gross merchandise sales ever for the company, he said.Net income declined to $31.3 million, or 25 cents a share, from $41.3 million, or 32 cents, in the period a year earlier.Prior to Wednesday’s results, there were doubts over Etsy’s free-shipping initiative for its U.S- based customers, which wasn’t progressing as planned. The company requires all sellers on its platform to offer free shipping for orders of more than $35 to be prioritized in search results. But sellers didn’t pass on 100% of the savings from free-shipping to buyers.Chief Financial Officer Rachel Glaser acknowledged the initiative’s shaky progress. Helping sellers better plan their pricing strategies to not absorb free shipping costs and expanding buyer knowledge about the program will take time, Glaser said on the call.The company also introduced a new advertising service in 2019, where Etsy uses sellers’ ad budgets to promote their brands on Etsy’s website and on Google Ads. It announced an update to the service Wednesday by introducing Offsite Ads, in which Etsy will use its budget to promote sellers’ brands on multiple platforms including Google, Facebook and Instagram. If sellers make a sale through such an ad, they pay a fee of 12-15% of the order value. The fee is capped at $100 per order.Etsy shares jumped to a high of $57.50 in extended trading after the results were released. The stock closed at $50.69 in New York and has declined 26% in the past 12 months.(Updates with CEO comments in the fourth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Nikitha Sattiraju in New York at nsattiraju@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Molly Schuetz at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Anne VanderMeyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Booking Shares Slip on Weak Guidance Linked to Coronavirus
(Bloomberg) -- Booking Holdings Inc. gave a bleak outlook for the first quarter due to the spreading coronavirus that’s put a damper on global travel.The Norwalk, Connecticut-based online travel operator said room nights booked would drop 5% to 10% in the first quarter. Analysts were looking for an increase of 5%, having already lowered their expectations from earlier projections of 8% growth in mid-January. The company also said revenue would decline as much as 7% in the current period from a year earlier.“The coronavirus has had a significant and negative impact across our business during the first quarter,” the company said in a statement Wednesday.Booking has seen an increase in cancellations, a reduction in new bookings and pressure on average daily rates from the virus, the company’s Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said on the earnings call. “As you will know, it’s not possible to predict where and to what degree outbreaks of the coronavirus will disrupt travel patterns,” he added. Booking expects growth declines will continue through March.The Covid-19 virus, which is on track to becoming a pandemic, sent the stock market tumbling 6% over two days earlier this week, and the travel sector is among those worst affected. Airlines have halted flights, hundreds of hotels have been shuttered and tourism reports estimate billions of dollars in visitor spending will be lost this year. The virus was first reported in China, but has since spread across Asia and into Europe and the Middle East. Its scale and spread has already dwarfed the SARS outbreak and health officials in the U.S. are bracing for an outbreak at home. Booking shares have dropped 19% this year and rival Expedia Group Inc., which has less direct exposure to China, has shed about 6%. Booking slid 2.4% in extended trading after the report.China is by far the world’s largest source of travel, with more international departures than any other country, said Nicholas Wyatt, head of research and analysis for travel and tourism at GlobalData. “This is an extremely difficult thing to put a number on because we don’t know how long it’s going to go on for, how long restrictions will be in place for or how long it will take for consumer confidence to return,” Wyatt said.More than 20% of Booking’s room nights were generated in the Asia-Pacific region last year, according to Cowen & Co. Kevin Kopelman, an analyst at the firm, said he expects “the whole year to be impacted.”But it’s not just China. Booking is also “heavily exposed to travel disruptions in Europe, where it has a room-night exposure of over 50%, while in China it’s about 15%,” through its partnership with Trip.com and ownership of Agoda, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Rik Stevens.A recent report from consulting firm Tourism Economics estimates the U.S. will lose 1.6 million visitors from China as a result of the coronavirus, a 28% drop for 2020.In the fourth quarter, before the virus erupted, Booking did better than expected. The company, formerly known as Priceline, reported revenue of $3.34 billion, topping the $3.27 billion analysts were projecting. Room nights booked grew by 12% in the period, the company said in a statement, compared with the average analyst projection for an increase of of 9.47%. Profit excluding some costs was $23.30 a share, also better than forecasts.Aside from the virus, Booking is also being squeezed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and home-share startup Airbnb Inc.Last year, Google redesigned its hotel search function which pushed online travel companies down in search results and means they are no longer getting as many free clicks from travelers. Earlier this month, Expedia Chairman Barry Diller said Google was an “existential” threat to online travel agents. Airbnb also is a formidable competitor as the dominant player in the alternative accommodation market, forcing Booking to pumping resources into its vacation rentals segment to keep up. This is the fastest growing part of its business and now makes up 20% of total revenue. Booking, which is most well-known in Europe, has been running brand campaigns in the U.S. to drive customers toward its non-hotel listings.(Updates with CFO comments in fourth paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Olivia Carville in New York at ocarville1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
Google defeats conservative nonprofit's YouTube censorship appeal
Google persuaded a federal appeals court on Wednesday to reject claims that YouTube illegally censors conservative content. In a 3-0 decision that could apply to platforms such as Facebook , the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle found that YouTube was not a public forum subject to First Amendment scrutiny by judges. It upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Google and YouTube by Prager University, a conservative nonprofit run by radio talk show host Dennis Prager.
- Bloomberg
Sustainable Investing Also Is Risk Management
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Investors’ personal values are fine when selecting stocks, but those values can also operate as a risk screen or a strategy to evaluate company risk, says this week's guest on Masters in Business, Brian Deese, global head of sustainable investing for BlackRock Inc., which manages more than $7 trillion in assets. Deese helps the firm use environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors as a risk measure across all of the firm's holdings.During the past few years, ESG has also been a source of alpha, generating above-market returns for investors. Whether this is driven by a heavier weighting in technology stocks among ESG funds or is a function of the positives of ESG is, arguably, unknown. We discuss how solar and wind have become the fast growing sustainable energy source in the U.S. Renewables, including hydro and nuclear, now account for more than 35% of U.S. energy production. The biggest changes coming in energy include efficiency improvements, decarbonization and electrifying transportation.Deese worked in the White House as President Barack Obama’s senior adviser for climate and energy policy. He helped to negotiate the Paris Climate Accord and was one of the key architects of the rescue plans for Chrysler and General Motors. His favorite books can be seen here; a transcript of our conversation is here.You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras, on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google, Bloomberg and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.Next week, we speak with fellow Bloomberg Opinion columnist Danielle DiMartino Booth, founder of Quill Intelligence, a research and analytics firm, and author of "Fed Up: An Insider’s Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America."To contact the author of this story: Barry Ritholtz at britholtz3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Spreading Virus Heaps Pressure on Bank of Korea: Decision Guide
(Bloomberg) -- The Bank of Korea is facing mounting pressure to cut its interest rates to a fresh record low as the coronavirus slams the brakes on early signs of a recovery in domestic demand and trade.Of 28 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, 18 expect the BOK to lower the policy rate by a quarter percentage point Thursday. The country’s soaring number of virus infections tipped the case toward action for many of them. The rest forecast no change.South Korea Coronavirus Cases May Peak at 10,000, JPMorgan SaysA rate cut would mark a sharp turnaround from the central bank’s guarded optimism little more than a month ago over the likelihood of the economy regaining momentum this year. It would also be a repetition of the BOK’s response to another virus outbreak in 2015.Economists arguing against a rate cut this week suggest the central bank will wait for the government to act first. The risks of fueling an overheating housing market, encouraging more household debt and putting more pressure on the currency are among the main reasons they give.Maximum AlertSouth Korea’s economy faces an emergency, according to President Moon Jae-in, who has put the country on the highest possible alert to fight the epidemic. The country now has more than 1,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, the most behind China. Across pockets of the country people are essentially trapped in their homes.Trade with China, Korea’s biggest export market, is down sharply, as its neighbor struggles to restore industrial capacity after virus factory closures. Fears of contagion and weakening consumer sentiment will curb spending and leisure activities both in China and Korea. Travel alerts on visiting South Korea could also hammer its tourism industry.Economists have been cutting their growth projections for Korea this year, with some now forecasting a quarter-on-quarter contraction in the first three months. At the meeting, the BOK will also revise its forecasts of 2.3% growth and 1% inflation for this year, with any downgrades reflecting the expected fallout from the virus.Should the bank hold off on a rate cut this time, the new projections may give an indication of the likelihood of action merely being delayed till the next meeting.Moon MoveThe Moon administration has already pledged action. Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said earlier this week that the government will work swiftly to put together an extra budget proposal, a stark reversal from earlier this month when he played down the possibility.Most economists think the planned government action won’t be enough to stop the BOK from showing its own extra commitment to support the economy as the epidemic spreads.The BOK acted with a rate cut when another coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, hit the nation in 2015. The economic toll is expected to be larger this time as the number of infections has easily surpassed the number of cases during MERS, though the number of fatalities is still much lower at this stage.“Korea is especially vulnerable to supply-chain disruption,” S&P’s Asia-Pacific chief economist Shaun Roache said in a report. “We expect the Bank of Korea to cut its policy rate twice this year to 0.75% with a substantial fiscal easing also helping to offset the external drag.”Comments by BOK chief Lee Ju-yeol after the decision should shed further light on the bank’s thinking. Reflecting efforts to minimize the spread of the virus, the governor’s media conference, usually held live at the bank’s Seoul headquarters, will be broadcast via YouTube with only a couple of press representatives present.\--With assistance from Whanwoong Choi.To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Kim in Seoul at skim609@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Jackson at pjackson53@bloomberg.net, Jiyeun LeeFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
Google to invest over $10 billion in 2020 on U.S. data centers, offices
"These investments will create thousands of jobs - including roles within Google, construction jobs in data centers and renewable energy facilities, and opportunities in local businesses in surrounding towns and communities," Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/continuing-grow-invest-across-america-2020 in a blog post. Last year, the company said it would spend over $13 billion on data centers and offices in the United States in 2019.
- Zacks
Forget Virus Scare, Buy Tech ETFs on the Dip
Wall Street is suffering a bloodbath on rising coronavirus scare, with tech stocks leading the slump. Use the dip in tech ETFs as a buying point.
- Bloomberg
U.S. Stock Market Appears Most Vulnerable to Virus Shock
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The stock market with the most to lose from a wider coronavirus outbreak is the one in the U.S.Global markets sold off on Monday and Tuesday on reports that authorities are struggling to contain the virus, which has now spread to more than 30 countries and increasingly threatens the global economy. Until this week, the declines in global stocks seemed to be driven by proximity to the virus’s epicenter in China, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that few markets will escape harm if the virus isn’t contained.What’s not clear is which stock markets would suffer the sharpest declines. That obviously depends on how the crisis unfolds — where the virus spreads, how many people are affected, the impact on regional economies and trading routes, and so forth. But it also depends on the extent to which markets have already digested the potential risks, and by that criterion, the U.S. stock market appears particularly vulnerable. To see stock investors at their most carefree, take a look at the NYSE FANG+ Index. It’s a pantheon of the Great Disruptors – 10 companies that many investors believe are poised to dominate their respective industries. In order of market value, they are Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., NVIDIA Corp., Netflix Inc., Tesla Inc., Baidu Inc. and Twitter Inc. As a group, they are among the most extravagantly priced stocks in history, even for growth stocks.By any measure of price relative to earnings, the FANG index is nearly as expensive as the Russell 1000 Growth Index was at the peak of the dot-com mania two decades ago — or even more so. The price-to-earnings ratio of the FANG index is 34 based on analysts’ estimates of this year’s earnings per share, which is just 6% cheaper than the comparable P/E ratio for the growth index in March 2000. Other measures are even less flattering. Based on last year’s earnings, the FANG index’s P/E ratio jumps to 55, or an 8% premium over the comparable ratio for the growth index. And using an average of inflation-adjusted earnings over the last 10 years, it jumps again to 73, or a 16% premium over the growth index.Investors value the FANG index’s revenue even more than its profits. The price-to-sales ratio of the FANG index is 5.9, or 41% higher than the growth index’s P/S ratio of 4.2 in March 2000. Suffice it to say, when it comes to the FANGs, the market appears to have little concern for the risks around coronavirus or anything else.The reason that’s a potential problem for the U.S. is that eight of the 10 stocks in the FANG index are American companies. Remember that stocks in broad-market gauges such as the S&P 500 Index or Russell 1000 Index are weighted based on their market value. Therefore, as the market value of the stocks in the FANG index has spiked relative to others, so has their weighting in broad-market indexes. Those eight U.S. stocks represent less than 1% of the Russell 1000 by number, but they now account for more than 13% of its market value. That more than anything else explains the wide gap in the valuation between U.S. and foreign stocks. The P/E ratio of the Russell 1000 is 29, based on an average of inflation-adjusted earnings over the last 10 years, which captures the growth of both earnings and stock prices during the decade. By comparison, the P/E ratio of the MSCI ACWI ex USA Index, a gauge of global stocks excluding the U.S., is 19. That’s a premium of 53% for U.S. over foreign stocks, the largest since the data series begins in 1998. If the virus turns out to be a serious and sustained threat to the global economy, markets are likely to rethink stock prices, including those of companies in the FANG index. And the higher the valuation, the greater the potential for downward revision. That may seem unlikely to investors who view the FANGs as the ultimate blue chips, capable of navigating any environment, but no company is an island. Apple, the largest of the FANGs by market value, has already warned that it will miss sales forecasts because of coronavirus-related disruptions in production and demand for its products.More important, blue chips don’t necessarily provide more safety, particularly when valuations are stretched. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, investors piled into U.S. growth stocks, driving up valuations of companies with fat profits, a key measure of quality. In the ensuing sell-off sparked by the 1973 oil crisis, the most profitable 30% of U.S. stocks, weighted by market value, tumbled 48% from January 1973 to September 1974, including dividends, according to numbers compiled by Dartmouth professor Ken French. Meanwhile, the cheapest 30% of U.S. stocks by price-to-book ratio, which are widely viewed as lower quality, declined 28% during the same period.It happened again during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. Investors’ renewed obsession with growth stocks drove up the valuations of highly profitable companies. In the ensuing bear market sparked by the collapse of internet companies, the most profitable 30% of U.S. stocks fell 32% from April 2000 to September 2002, while the cheapest 30% of U.S. stocks declined just 10%. So there’s a lot riding on whether the U.S. disruptors can navigate the risks around coronavirus, not just for their own investors but also for those betting on the broad U.S. stock market. It makes sense that overseas markets took the first hit, but if the virus isn’t contained soon, don’t be surprised if the U.S. stock market turns out to be hit the hardest.To contact the author of this story: Nir Kaissar at nkaissar1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Nir Kaissar is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the markets. He is the founder of Unison Advisors, an asset management firm. He has worked as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and a consultant at Ernst & Young. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Google Takeover Target Trimmed Assets to Avert FTC Review
(Bloomberg) -- Something unusual was underway in early 2010 at Invite Media, a Philadelphia-based advertising technology startup. Under normal circumstances, it collected money from marketers and used it to buy digital ads. But over two days that spring it suddenly began paying for a wave of ads without waiting for checks to come in, using its own money instead. The company also paid off all its outstanding bills regardless of their due dates, sending its bank account balances plunging.It would normally be irrational for a company to burn cash unnecessarily, but in this case burning cash was the whole point. Invite’s co-founders were finalizing a deal to sell the company to Google, and reducing Invite’s assets was a key part of their preparation. By drawing down its bank account, Invite could reduce its total assets to a low enough level that the companies could avoid submitting their deal for review to the Federal Trade Commission, according to three people familiar with its finances.“What we did was we collected as much accounts receivable as possible and immediately paid out everything we could so we didn’t have enough money on the books to trigger the FTC stuff,” Michael Provenzano, one of the company’s co-founders recalled in an interview. Provenzano said he effectively went to the company’s bank and said, “We need you to be okay with our account dropping to a dollar.”The strategy worked. Google bought the company for around $80 million in 2010. It didn’t ask the FTC for pre-approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, which requires that companies do so when making acquisitions large enough to raise competitive questions.Now that the market power of Google and other huge tech companies has come under new scrutiny, the FTC is re-examining hundreds of deals that, like Invite, didn’t spark its interest when they happened. Officials at the commission now say they may have missed the significance of some deals that were small enough to avoid Hart-Scott-Rodino review when they happened.FTC officials began scrutinizing these deals as far back as last fall, when they met with a representative from a startup that had been bought by a large tech company in a deal that wasn’t reviewed at the time but could be scrutinized now, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. Mark Rosenberg, a researcher at a Yale University antitrust group, pegged Invite as “absolutely a viable candidate” for review under the new special order. He also flagged Google’s acquisition of the Apture, Amazon’s purchase of Blink, and Facebook’s purchase of Beluga and Gowalla.The market for online display ads was a multibillion-dollar opportunity for Google, and its success in developing advertising technology was a primary way it became one of the world’s most valuable companies. Acquisitions were key to this transformation. Google purchased the advertising exchange DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2007, and the mobile advertising company AdMob for $750 million in 2009.Both deals prompted antitrust reviews, with accompanying costs. “The review meant we had eight months of limbo that ended up being really hard because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” AdMob founder Omar Hamoui said, according to an excerpt of the book “Mad Men of Mobile.” “I had gone from an overwhelming high to a crushingly disappointing low, which was extremely frustrating.”In retrospect, Invite had been serving as an important independent piece of the advertising market. As a startup, it had created a software tool, called a demand-side platform, to make it simpler for marketers to buy ads online. The service allowed them to shop for advertising space on multiple platforms at once. Ad purchasers didn’t need to go to Google for ads and Yahoo for banner ads – Invite could help marketers find the best deal at a given time and buy from either platform.After acquiring Invite, Google made the startup’s tech a core piece of its suite of ad tech tools. By doing this, Google removed the neutral layer that separated it from ad buyers, according to Bill Demas, who led one of Invite’s main competitors for many years. The edge Google got from combining tools like Invite into a single product amounted to an “unfair advantage,” he said. “It was a very prescient acquisition because it was done so early.”A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment. In an emailed statement, a Google spokeswoman said that “former Google employees have created more than 2,000 startups, including companies like Pinterest, Quip and Instagram - that’s orders of magnitude more than the number of companies we’ve acquired. We have a long track record of working constructively with regulators and answering questions they have about our business."Provenzano said he remembers being given a spreadsheet of tasks to accomplish before the deal could close. One of the key tasks: drawing down the company’s bank account. Provenzano was sure about how and why this was done, he said, “because I moved the money.”Provenzano said he couldn’t remember whether Google instructed Invite on how to avoid the additional scrutiny, nor could David Horowitz, an Invite board member. But Horowitz said the company would have taken its cues from Google. Another person close to the deal confirmed that the company worked to avoid Hart-Scott-Rodino review, but declined to speak on the record for fear of offending Google.It is legal for companies to lower the size of a deal or cut down on assets to avoid Hart-Scott-Rodino review, according to Paul Jin, a partner at the law firm Goodwin Procter. “It could cause the FTC to say I don’t like that, it’s suspicious,” he said, but he added that isn’t against the commission’s rules and is fairly common.Two of Invite’s four co-founders – Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg – founded another startup called FlatIron Health, with significant financial backing from Google Ventures. They sold it for $1.9 billion to healthcare giant Roche in 2018. Both declined to comment, as did Jason Harinstein, the man who helped drive the Invite acquisition for Google. He currently serves as FlatIron’s chief financial officer.It is not clear what the FTC hopes to achieve with its review of past acquisitions. The commission has held open the possibility of unwinding past deals. Given the ongoing investigations by the FTC and the Department of Justice, it may instead issue a report of its findings, according to Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan. That report could provide fodder for a larger investigation or for Congressional legislation, he said.Demas, the former Chief Executive Officer of Turn, the Invite competitor, said the deal “frightened” his team. But it took a few years for the consequences to play out, as Google integrated Invite’s software into its own codebase. Eventually, Google began to prevent competitors like Demas from selling its ad inventory, leading business to slow.There were concerns about Google’s market power at the time. The FTC conducted a wide-ranging investigation into Google’s search advertising business, but closed the case in January 2013 without fining the company. “The evidence did not demonstrate that Google’s actions in this area stifled competition in violation of U.S. law,” the FTC said at the time. Demas said that the FTC summoned him to Washington some months later to discuss Google, but nothing seemed to come of it. He said government officials are at a disadvantage trying to keep up with a field evolving as quickly as advertising technology. “They really knew their stuff,” said Demas, of the FTC lawyers he met with. “But you have to anticipate some of these moves.”Demas’s company struggled in the years after Google’s acquisition of Invite. Turn cut staff in 2015, and two years later sold itself to a subsidiary of a Singaporean telecommunications firm for about half the price of its valuation in 2013, when it had been considering an IPO.Invite’s co-founders felt they had lucked out by selling before Google bought one of its rivals, according to Provenzano. “I don't know what would have happened if we kept going forward. Obviously we would have been competing with Google,” he said. “Why go through that battle?”To contact the author of this story: Eric Newcomer in New York at enewcomer@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Brustein at jbrustein@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Toyota Invests $400 Million in Pony.ai to Deepen Driverless Pact
(Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp. invested $400 million in Pony.ai to strengthen its ties with the Chinese provider of driverless-car systems.The investment extends the companies’ partnership formed last year and pushes Pony.ai’s valuation to more than $3 billion, the startup said in a statement. The pact enables a “deeper integration” of Pony.ai’s technology with Toyota’s vehicles.“It will enable us to make the commercialization of autonomous-driving vehicles faster,” Pony.ai Chief Executive Officer James Peng said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We will put more money into building up the fleet.”Automakers are striking pacts with driverless-system providers to gain expertise and fend off competition from technology companies seeking to enter the transport business. For Pony.ai, a relationship with Toyota is a vote of confidence as it seeks to take on U.S. rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo.Pony.ai has two testing sites in California and it runs a pilot service with Hyundai Motor Co. in Irvine, Orange County, that provides rides to members of the public. On Wednesday, the company announced a service to City of Fremont employees, offering last-mile rides in its autonomous vehicles between a local transport hub and some of Fremont’s public buildings.Toyota required no exclusive access to the technology and is open to Pony.ai partnering with other automakers, Peng said.Last year, Toyota and Pony.ai announced a pilot project on public roads in Beijing and Shanghai, using Lexus RX vehicles and Pony.ai’s autonomous driving system. The companies now plan to explore further cooperation in mobility services.The coronavirus outbreak has had a “limited” impact on Pony.ai, which has resumed some testing and business operations in China, Peng said.Founded in 2016, Pony.ai’s investors also include Sequoia Capital China and IDG Capital. The total size of the newest funding round was $462 million, with existing investors putting in $62 million.To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Chunying Zhang in Shanghai at czhang714@bloomberg.net;Ed Ludlow in San Francisco at eludlow2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Ville Heiskanen, Angus WhitleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Tesla’s Autopilot, Cell Phone Use Blamed in 2018 Fatal Crash
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. crash investigators faulted Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot system and the driver’s distraction by a mobile device for a fatal accident in 2018 and called on Apple Inc. and other mobile phone makers to do more to keep motorists’ attention on the road.Tesla was heavily criticized for not doing enough to keep drivers from using its driver-assist function inappropriately. American regulators, which have guidelines but no firm rules for the emerging automated driving systems, were also attacked by the safety board.“It’s time to stop enabling drivers in any partially automated vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars, because they don’t have driverless cars,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.The hearing was a searing critique of how Tesla and other carmakers have introduced new technologies that automate aspects of driving but still require constant human supervision, and of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s light-touch approach to regulating the safety of those systems.Even though the Tesla SUV in the 2018 crash in northern California had previously veered toward a concrete barrier, the driver, an Apple employee, allowed the semi-autonomous system to essentially steer itself as it passed that same location and moved toward a highway barrier, the NTSB concluded. The driver failed to intervene because he was distracted, likely because he was playing a game on a mobile phone provided by his company, which lacked a policy prohibiting employees from using devices while driving, the NTSB found.The NTSB has for years issued warnings about distracted driving and its deadly toll on the roadways. During the hearing, it called on Apple and other mobile phone manufacturers to develop protections to prevent misuse of electronic devices behind the wheel as a default setting.The agency also urged the NHTSA to conduct a fresh evaluation of Autopilot and take enforcement action if necessary if the agency finds defects.“We urge Tesla to continue to work on improving their Autopilot technology and for NHTSA to fulfill its oversight responsibility to ensure that corrective action is taken when necessary,” Sumwalt said.The death of 38-year-old Apple engineer Walter Huang in March 2018 in Silicon Valley prompted the NTSB to issue its strongest findings to date on safety risks posed by automated driving systems and driver distraction by mobile devices.“Limitations within the Autopilot system caused the SUV to veer towards the area with a concrete barrier that it ultimately struck, which the driver didn’t attempt to stop due to distraction,” the board found.NTSB recommended that both mobile device manufacturers such as Apple, Google and Samsung Electronics Co., as well as employers more broadly, do more to combat distracted driving.Mobile phone manufacturers should lock out features on the devices as a default setting, rather than as an optional feature that must be activated manually, the NTSB said. Employers should adopt policies banning non-emergency mobile phone use by employees when behind the wheel.The NTSB posted a document on Monday in its public record on the crash showing Apple didn’t have a policy on distracted driving.“I checked around with various groups and we do not have a policy related to phone use and driving,” wrote an Apple representative in an email response to the NTSB, which was posted to the safety board’s public investigative files on Monday.An Apple spokesman said the company expects its employees to follow the law. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment but has said it has updated Autopilot in part to issue more frequent warnings to inattentive drivers and that its research shows drivers are safer using the system than not. Tesla has also repeatedly stressed that drivers must pay attention while using Autopilot.The combination of growing mobile device use in semi-autonomous cars, in which drivers can take their eyes off the road for long periods, is a combustible mix, said NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg.“What this crash illustrates is not only do we have the old kind of distraction” Lansberg said. Partly-automated driving systems present “yet another kind, which is the automation complacency of the system almost kind of always works, except when it doesn’t.”NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy criticized the NHTSA for issuing a recent statement saying it was trying to limit regulations to make cars more affordable.“What we should not do is lower the bar on safety,” Homendy said. “That shouldn’t even be considered for an agency that has the word safety in its name.”NHTSA said in a statement it was aware of the NTSB’s report and would review it. It also said distracted driving remains a concern and that drivers of every motor vehicle available currently on sale are required to remain in control at all times.It is also conducting more than a dozen of its own investigations into Tesla crashes linked to its semi-autonomous system known as Autopilot. Tesla is one of the leading developers of automated driving technology.Warnings to DriverHuang’s Tesla struck the concrete highway barrier at about 70 miles (113 kilometers) per hour. His hands weren’t detected on the steering wheel for about one-third of the drive and the car twice issued automated warnings to him.A protective barrier on the highway designed to reduce the crash impact wasn’t in place, the NTSB found.In addition, Tesla and government agencies haven’t bothered to respond to NTSB’s recommendations related to an earlier, similar crash.Smartphone manufacturers and software developers have taken some steps to address distracted driving. Apple’s iPhone, for example, has a feature to block text message and other notifications when driving that a user can activate in the phone’s settings.“The challenge is that they’re all passive systems. They require you as the owner of the phone to take that action, and many won’t or don’t because they don’t have to,” said Kelly Nantel, vice president of roadway safety at the National Safety Council.While the safety board stopped short of concluding that NHTSA’s lack of actions were part of the cause of the crash, it found that the regulator hadn’t done enough to set safety standards and called its approach to semi-automated vehicles “misguided.”Separately, the NTSB is prepared to cite the highway-safety regulator’s actions in another fatal Tesla crash as a contributing factor.In a March 2019 crash in Delray Beach, Florida, a Tesla drove into the side of a truck without braking, killing the driver. The conclusions of the investigation haven’t been published, but were read by Homendy during Tuesday’s meeting.(Updates with details from hearing, beginning in the fourth paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Alan Levin in Washington at alevin24@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Oracle Reveals Funding of Dark Money Group Fighting Big Tech
(Bloomberg) -- When the Internet Accountability Project popped up late last year and joined the growing crusade against Big Tech, the nonprofit group refused to say who was financing it.Turns out, at least one of its benefactors is Oracle Corp.Oracle donated between $25,000 and $99,999 last year to the internet project, according to a new political-giving report Oracle posted on its website. The group calls itself a conservative nonprofit advocating for tougher privacy rules and stronger antitrust enforcement against the internet giants.The IAP financing is just one part of an aggressive, and sometimes secretive, battle Oracle has been waging against its biggest rivals, including Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.Oracle spent years fighting to unseat Amazon as the front-runner for a lucrative Pentagon cloud contract, which was awarded to Microsoft Corp. in October.The Redwood City, California, company has also been locked in a decade-long legal dispute with Google, claiming the search-engine giant violated Oracle copyrights by including some Java programming code in the Android phone. Oracle acquired Java’s developer, Sun Microsystems Inc., in 2010.Earlier this month, IAP filed an amicus brief supporting Oracle’s position in the case. IAP said it wants to “ensure that Google respects the copyrights of Oracle and other innovators.” The U.S. Supreme Court on March 24 will hear oral arguments in the Google v. Oracle America case.The Trump administration on Feb. 19 also urged the Supreme Court to reject Google’s appeal in the case. Its brief appeared the same day that Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and chairman, hosted a high-dollar fundraiser at his Rancho Mirage estate for President Donald Trump. The event prompted about 300 Oracle employees to stage a protest the next day. The U.S. had previously supported Oracle as the case wound its way through the courts.Oracle’s donations disclosure reveals that it contributed to at least four other groups that filed supportive briefs in the Supreme Court case. Google has also donated money to at least 10 groups that have filed briefs on its behalf in the high court case.Oracle and Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the Oracle disclosure. Google declined to comment.IAP President Mike Davis said in a statement the group doesn’t disclose its financial backers but specified that Oracle didn’t fund its Supreme Court brief.The internet project was launched in September by Davis, a former aide to Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Rachel Bovard, a former aide to Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. The group aims to “lend a conservative voice to the calls for federal and state governments to rein in Big Tech before it is too late,” according to its website.The IAP is a Section 501(c)(4), known as a “social-welfare” organization. That designation means it isn’t required to disclose donors as long as it doesn’t spend more than half of its money on campaign advertisements or activities to sway an election.Among other policies, IAP supports curtailing Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which shields tech companies from liability for content that users post on their platforms. The clause saves tech companies from having to review content before it’s published online, and then shields them from lawsuits if that content turns out to be problematic.Earlier: Barr Takes Aim at Legal Shield Enjoyed by Google, FacebookIn interviews and on social media, IAP has supported Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has proposed that tech companies lose the legal immunity unless they can prove to the Federal Trade Commission that they treat their content in a politically neutral manner.Since September, IAP has tweeted at least 11 times about Hawley’s legislative efforts against Google and other tech companies. Other IAP tweets highlight instances in which Google-funded groups fought on the internet giant’s behalf.“Holy smokes you guys, DC is awash in @Google money,” Bovard tweeted in September.Davis, the group’s president, wrote last week on Townhall.com that Google’s battle with Oracle is “the poster child for what we at IAP call ‘the Great 21st Century Internet Heist.’” He said the company “is anathema to conservatives and everything we stand for,” without disclosing that his group is funded by Oracle.Earlier: It’s the Kochs vs. the Mercers in the Right’s Big Tech BrawlOracle claims Google owes it at least $8.8 billion for using the Java code without a license. Google argues it was fair to use parts of the programming language to help Android communicate more easily with other software.The case has split Silicon Valley by pitting software makers who favor stronger copyright protections against companies that rely on others’ code to produce new innovations.Other CampaignsIAP is far from the only anti-tech group Oracle has funded. It also gave between $25,000 and $99,999 to the Free and Fair Markets Initiative, according to the disclosure.Free and Fair Markets claims it is a grassroots coalition of businesses and advocacy groups fighting for a better economy. In practice, it has focused more on publicizing negative reports about Amazon. The Wall Street Journal reported that Oracle, Walmart Inc. and the Simon Property Group had financed the group.For the last two years, Oracle has also waged a multi-front battle against Amazon over the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud contract. The deal, which could be worth $10 billion over a decade, is designed to transition much of the Pentagon’s data into one commercially operated cloud system.For more: Oracle’s Catz Is Said to Talk Amazon Contract Row With TrumpAmazon was seen as the leading contender because it had already won a major cloud contract with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and had obtained high levels of security clearance. The move to Amazon’s cloud would have threatened Oracle’s legacy database business with the Defense Department.Oracle led a coalition of other tech companies, including Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., to oppose the Pentagon’s decision to award the contract to a sole bidder. In addition to lobbying Congress and the Trump administration, Oracle also filed -- and lost -- challenges through the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.Oracle is currently appealing a July ruling that it lacked standing to challenge the contract.(Updates with comment from IAP in paragraph 11)\--With assistance from Greg Stohr.To contact the reporters on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.net;Joe Light in Washington at jlight8@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.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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Tech Daily: Regulatory & More
The planned digital tax, a new bill that could impact encryption, developments on U.S. Google's antitrust case and Amazon's challenge of the JEDI contract and other news is covered in this article.
