Pinterest Meets Estimates, and Big Tech and Antitrust (Podcast)

big tech antitrust maybe better getting closer. Over the next hour, we will explore the American Innovation and Choice Act and how this could be the bill that gets enough bipartisan support to put big tech in its place, and how do you balance innovation and regulation when it comes to crypto. We will ask the former Assistant d o J Attorney General where he weighs in on this rapidly evolving debate.

All of that in a moment, But first I want to bring in role hit called Carney MKM Partners Managing Director. So row is this where we are that we're expecting such bad news when pinterest meets expectations and forecasts modest growth that the state shares go bonkers. I think it's a it's a fact. It's a function of two things. One is obviously the fundamentals, and I think equally important is Elliott's press release. Um, so expectations were low, they're

getting lower. Interest was trading as if it's going out of business, to be honest, not like a growth company. And now they jump over a very low bar. And I think the most important thing here is the third quarter of revenue outlook. Facebook is telling us sequential declines, Snap is telling us sequential declines in the revenues, and Pinterest comes along and says, okay, we might grow sequentially. So this is uh, this is something not what people

have expected. On top of that, Elliott gives you this presidentally is about Pinterest, them being the largest shareholder in pinterest. So I think a lot of bad news was priced in and here we here we are up twenty persons. You of course have a big leadership change that's happened at pincer as the co founder, longtime CEO Ben Silverman out Bill Ready of Google long time payments executive is in.

How do you see Pinterests challenges differing from what's facing Facebook and snap um Painters has always been a tweener. There is always a debate between are they a real social media company or are they a company that is just singularly focused on a single person's hobbies needs and going down the funnel of what they may want to buy to convert their hobbies and needs into want and

uh and put ads in front of them. So as we go down the funnel, Pinteress is doing what they need to do, putting shopping on the social media platform, putting payments, tagging along some of the bells and whistles along with it. But I think they've been doing it very slowly. If Bill Ready comes in, he has a very complimentary skill set. You talked about well he was advent more Bradery, now you talk about Google Commerce. So he's bringing a very commerce oriented skill set here. And

that's what probably is something to be excited about. And we'll be watching it from the sidelines here now Petters is of course it's a much smaller player than of course Meta, you know, even Snap and Twitter. But do you see what what's happening here as some sort of broader signal about what's happening in the broader economy or with digital adspent um. Broadly, we are quite certain the digital AdSpend is shifting slowly downwards, the pie shrinking in

there the pie. I think market share is shifting. For example, we think that Google is getting a little bit of extra market share away from so some of the social media platforms, as Google is more bottom of funlance, searches doing well. Search tends to do better in recessions, and tends to do better when advertisers getting very very cautious about end um. That's what is happening. But when Pinterest, it's a very small player, it could just be a play on Okay, what do you think some of the

suburban moms are thinking about holiday shopping? That could be they're not completely pessimistic about it. So that's if you look at engagement on Pinterest, I think that may be the only leading in data. But it's still too small for us to make a macro call right now. All right, you do cover Uber and Left. We're expecting their earnings out later this week as well. What are you looking for their um? Again? I think in terms of Uber, we prefer Uber versus Left, but both companies should have

should have earnings that should probably exceed expectations. I think the biggest kind of question mark. There are two question marks in front of investors. Do higher gas prices way on drivers? We think so yes? And how does that translate into driver incentives? That's been a very big debate. We think that's been a way on the staff tomorrow

for Uber. And the second question is with inflation, with consumer discretionaries spend with rising right share prices, how does that rain do on the share of wallet for right sharing? We think that is very basiliant. So with that, for that we give them a checkmouk a question amount for driving incentives? What we like heading into earnings tomorrow? All right, hit called Carney Mcam partners. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, we'll be across Uber, Lift and

many more companies reporting this week. We compete hard, we compete fairly. We try to be the best. We have fierce competition at the developers side and the customer SIDEBC vigorous competition. Our business model is advertising and we faced intense competition. We don't have a dominant share in any market. We have a policy against using individual seller data to compete with our private label. I would describe it as a street fight for market share in the smartphone business.

I've been clear that Instagram was a competitor. It wouldn't surprise me. Refilexus sometimes does promote our own products. Competition drives us to history shows that if we don't keep innovating, someone will replace every company here today Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pachai, and Tim Cook just two years ago testifying it a virtual hearing focused on big tech power in two years later, regulators and lawmakers are still considering rules

that will rain in big tech's biggest players. In an effort to boost competition and protect consumers, The American Innovation and Choice on Line Act would bar major platforms from giving advantages to their own products over those of rivals. This is the legislation proposed by Senators Clobuscher and Grassley last year. Joining me now David Kapatrick, founder and editor in chief of Teconomy, as well as bloombergs Emily Burnbaum in d C, who covers big tech anti tries, Emily,

let's start with you set the stage for us. Because there've been so many competing bills, so many competing approaches here but this one seems to be gaining steam. Talk to us about what klobus are actually have proposed and the status of it at this moment. Yeah. So there was a wide array of tech related anti trust build that passed the House Fishery Committee UH last year. Since then, the conversation is coalesced around. UM. This legislation you're talking about,

the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. UM. It would prevent the companies from UH giving preference to their own products. So for instance, on you know, Amazon, UH, Amazon's e commerce platform, it couldn't privilege its own private label products over UM products from small businesses that rely on its platform. UM. Right now. You know, there was a huge amount of momentum behind this legislation. UM. There was serious talk that

this legislation is going to get a vote this summer. UM, and Chuck Schumer himself had pledged to put it on the floor. UM in the early summer. It didn't happen. Now we have a week till August resets. It's not going to be happening this week. His office has confirmed, and we reported recently that he told a group of donors that it wasn't going to happen, but now people are looking to fall potentially in September. Um, this legislation might come to a vote, but that's a very unusual

time for bills to be considered a mid terms though. UM, it's all up in the air right now. Interested indeed, David, that big tech stance on big tech could become you know, a real issue for voters, uh in the November midterms after so many years of figuring out how to regulate them. What do you make of this particular bill and how it could impact these companies. First of all, I loved your montage at the beginning of the segment. It was

quite amusing. Uh. To be honest, I don't think even though surveys show that most consumers slash voters do feel that tech companies are too powerful, I don't think this kind of issue is anywhere near the top of the agenda for voters in general. So I think legislators do have to be careful as they're taking actions that might seem based on hearings they've had, etcetera, to be rational ones that they don't annoy the voters that put them

in office. Because the problem with regulating Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta etcetera. Is these services are essentially as present in people's lives as government itself, so you don't want to mess with them lightly. Now, I do think many of the things that were demonstrated in especially the House hearings were egregious. That quote from Bezos just based on reporting that we've seen elsewhere and some of the evidence that

the hearing is flat wrong. They do preference their own products at Amazon, so some things need to be fixed. But I just worry that we have a sledgehammer here and maybe we need like a very fine tooth nail, you know, and find nail in a very little hammer. Emily, what do you make of that? And and talk to us about how sentiment towards big tech has changed since. I mean, we're still too we're too long years now away from that, A lot has changed and it doesn't

look good for tech. Yeah, sentiment soured on the big tech companies, you know. It started souring in twenty six UM mostly related to concerns around than Facebook now Meta Um, and it's only continued to become more and more politically potent to UM, you know, put yourself in opposition to the major tech companies, you know, as part of a broader sort of anti corporate push UM during the Biden

administration and during the Biden presidency. UM. So uh at this point, UM, the major message that's being pushed by the tech companies is, um, this is not what your voters care about. Um. They are running um uh tens of millions of dollars worth of ads. We did account um this week. They've spent a hundred and twenty million

dollars on advertising, essentially trying to convince voters. Um, you know, Congress is trying to meddle in your phone while so many other more important things are going on, you know, inflation and uh, the and uh you know gas prices that affect you. Why are they looking at this and so Um It's yet to be seen if that's a winning argument, but it definitely was voting enough that Schumer

didn't put the those up for vote. Now, David, I want to get your thoughts on this latest action from the FTC suing Meta over its attempt to buy this fairly small VR company within unlimited. The FTC is now challenging this, and we've learned that, uh, the FTC filed this lawsuit because Lena Khan wanted to do it, even though her staff disagreed. What do you make of this that it seems the FTC, or at least Lena con is determined not to let Meta grow by acquisition like

it did with Instagram? And what's that? Really good question? But before I answer, I just want to make it clear I don't intend to echo industry talking points about this big bill. I do think the industry has made enormous errors and and there's huge resentment against big tech, big corporate generally, as as the other Emily said, but I just think it's very risky to just go after

these companies wholesale the way they're doing it. But back to Meta and within at the moment, I think that Meta has made so many mistakes and gotten so many people angry that there is going to be support for almost any pushback against that particular company, And to some extent, I think even on the other bill, one of the reasons so many legislators are so willing to go after the entire group of companies is because Meta slash Facebook's

crimes are really so vividly obvious that it seems justified to go after quote unquote big tech. But I think It's going to be very hard for Zuckerberg to get any kind of significant acquisition through with Lena khan Um in there. And certainly maybe he'll even succeed in ultimately achieving this acquisition, but everything is gonna encounter pushback. And

one other point I just want to make. Let's not forget what's happening in Europe with the Digital Markets Act Digital Services Act, which is very parallel to some of the efforts being made in the US, and which is further along legislative Absolutely, Europe is a whole another hour long show in itself. Emily, I gotta ask you, what are the chances the FTC can stop this latest Meta deal,

even though it is smaller scale. Yeah. I think a lot of experts looking at this particular lawsuit by the FTC are saying this is a very novel theory, um because essentially they're not challenging um. You know, they're not saying Meta is currently monopoly in the virtual reality space. Is saying that this acquisition could set the stage for them monopolize and get another market. This is a sort

of untested and a new way of approaching acquisitions. Um. So there's a lot the you know, there's a lot of people who are skeptical about how winning this argument could be under correct antitrust laws. But it's not even about blocking this particular acquisition. Um. It's it's more a show of course by Nina Kan's FTC. You know, she said, you have to bring cases even if you're not going to win them, because that's how, you know, if you

change practices within particular industries. Um. And that's how you kind of like, you know, put fear in companies that they make these kinds of acquisitions. Well, certainly an interesting step by the FTC, and we'll be watching to see how that one plays APT bloom Examily, bern Bam. Thank you, along with our Teconomy founder and editor in chief David Kirkpatrick. So much here to continue to discuss over months and

I'm sure years. Meantime, the White House has urged China not to escalate tensions in the with the US in response to how Speaker Nancy Pelosi's expected visit to Taiwan, signaling that the Biden administration is preparing for Beijing to retaliate. A Pelosi visit would be a landmark move by a US official and raise the risk of a military confrontation given China's view that Taiwan is part of its territory.

The White House detailed possible actions China could take in response to Pelosi's trip, including firing missiles into the Taiwan straight Pelosi's office has yet to officially confirm her visit and coming up Activision results also out. Where does it's deal with microstos stand will give you an update on that. Next, this is Bloomberg. Let's get back to earnings and shares

of Activision? Is there a touch higher in late training after the video GameMaker posted sales and been expectations, but had little to say about its pending deal with Microsoft or at Ludlow. Here with the top lines, let's talk about the numbers. First, Where are we so better than expected? Revenue one point six four billion dollars? Very nice, but context down fifteen percent from a year ago, Earnings half

what they were a year ago. And you know, it's a weird situation for Activision Blizzard right with depending acquisition. But the reality is that the video games instruced is not as strong right now as it was last year. You know Call of Duty Vanguard, which came out in the fall has performed poorly. That's had an impact on the company's finances, and frankly, we're all at home anymore.

I've stopped playing as much video games as many video games and some of their competitors, like Halo, for example, have just done better to gravitate what interest there is. How much of this has to do with uncertainty surrounding

the deal. I mean, this would be the biggest acquisition in the last year at least, and we don't know if it's going to happen or not, so I think merger arbitrary specialists that Bloomberg spoken to say the odds of it going through around sevent Bloomberg Intelligence think there's going to be tough, but it will ultimately go through. And if you look at the stock, you know it's game. Since the deals announced, it trades a significant discount to

the A share that were offered. But it's a mega deal, and you know, we always thought there would be regulatory scrutiny, and investors seem confident. But as we've learned with well, let's not go their Twitter and mask anything could happen with a deal of this size. Activision has also been dealing with some cultural issues. There's questions about the future of CEO Bobby Kolda stays on Microsoft or if this

deal is the start of his swansan. Yeah, And what analysts a point to is that Microsoft went into the deal with their eyes open, So it seems you know that they bought the company or said they would buy the company of the time that that was going through. The biggest kind of world card is one Lena can I think you were just discussing in the last blog as this sort of general appetite to look at big tech deals. In the first quarter, the FTC asked both

sides for evidence. We thought we'd get responses on Monday as part of earnings, but in the earnings statement they just said, Hey, as is normal, we're pending a deal. Sorry, can't comment, can't give you any more information. Maybe by the fourth quarters what bloom bag intelligence things will get

some more detail here. Well, its interest is to see, Lena can't scrutinizing a much smaller deal between Meta and uh, you know, a small VR company, and not to have the same kind of scrutiny of Microsoft and Activision yet that we know of. Yet again, we're in a pretty primary stage and the deal is on tracked close in June, which you know, given the new cycle, seems a very long way away. And don't think it. This isn't just us story. The cmn UK announced early July they're looking

at this. This is a global player. Activation has partners in China with Nettes. It's going to get a lot of attention alright, a lot at stake at Bloodlow. Thank you for that update. I think simply because you've been successful in a few different businesses doesn't somehow mean that you have a napped from market power. It just means you've been successful in a couple of different customer experiences. I look at the opportunity we provide. I look at

the skills people are learning through YouTube, you know. I feel like everywhere when I go talk to people and and providing access to information and knowledge, I think we'll end up being on the right side of history as well. I don't think big by itself is bad or but competition is good. And every business, in particular the businesses that are large and have high scale. The unintended consequences of your scale cannot be dealt after the fact. They

need to be dealt while you're scaling. Regulation will have an important role to play here. I think privacy regulation is important. In the areas like AI regulation will be important. Some thoughts there from my interviews with various big text CEOs in the last eighteen months. As big tech regulation is still pending in Washington, can Congress rain in these major platforms well. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act is Congress's first major effort to regulate big since the

inception of the Internet, and it has bipartisan support. Here's the bills leading Democratic sponsor, Senator Amy Klobuchar. At some point, if there's no competition, these companies are allowed to become these monopolistic, dominant um providers. And in the case of a t n T, no one wanted to destroy a t n T. They just wanted to make sure that new competitors can develop. Votes could come before November's mid terms, and if it passes, what does it mean for big tech? Really?

Let's discuss that and more with the Chamber of Progress founder and CEO. Adam Kovakovitch, a long time former Google executive and Charlotte's Laman competition policy director at Public Knowledge, an organization that works to promote freedom of expression and an open Internet. So Charlotte will start with you. What's your sense of this bill? Does it go far enough? Yes?

I think it would be a huge step forward. Of course, there is a lot more that we are hoping and happen in the future, but being able to stop the anti competitive discrimination that these companies are engaging in to prevent small competitors from getting a fair shot would make a huge difference towards promoting competition and making sure that consumers actually have access to the best products. Adam, would you agree or does this bill go too far? Respectfully disagree?

I I have great respect for Charlotte, but we disagree on this one. Look, I think this this bill is languishing for a pretty simple reason, which is that what it's proposing to do just isn't that popular if you look at another space, which is drugs. Right now, in contrast, Congress is on the verge of passing an extremely popular regulatory change over the objections of the pharmaceutical industry, which is allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. That's something that

voters have been clamoring for for decades. It's their pocketbooks. They've have senators about it at town hall meetings. Tech regulation isn't like that. I think we see the polls show that the public favors regulation of big tech platforms in general. But this bill does something in particular that's not particularly popular, which is banned big tech from offering

vertically integrated services like Google Maps, Amazon Basics. And it's always been clear why smaller companies like Yelp and Spotify and match would benefit from that law. But I think senators have sort of seen for themselves of the last couple of months that no voters are really marching on Washington to demand big changes to Google search results or Amazon Prime and and that's just the reality. Charlotte, how

do you respond to that? So I think it may not be yet a household discussion about um competition and antitrust, But I think what people notice is that these products are not serving them. They might not know that that is because of a lack of competition, because, uh, these gatekeepers don't have to face the new entrepreneurs who sometimes have better ideas, and that's why we're stuck with the

same old products. UM. So, I think, you know, people are learning, and that's part of the effort of advocacy for this legislation. People are learning what the root causes and that it's a lack of competition. But I think people are are familiar with the results of that lack of competition because they see it every day in these products that are no longer innovating in the way that we really should see in this space, Adam, We've seen big tech kind of stepping up its efforts to lobby

lawmakers as this bill inches closer. You've got Amazon News today hiring a top Republican Congressional aid on its lobbying side. You have Apple spending more on antitrust lobby lobbying than ever so fartherest here in Tim Cooke himself personally going to Washington. Just how scared is big tech of this

particular bill. Well, it's not something they love. And I think again there's a pretty simple reason, which is that if you look at the number of people in this country who are happy and satisfied with their iPhone, with their Google search results, with Amazon, we're talking about hundreds of millions of people. And I do think there is something about politics that sort of rewards, you know, kind of the vocal activists few over the kind of the

happy many. And I think that's one of the dynamics of this debate, that there's a lot of people who are not paying attention to this debate at all. What do I think would be pretty upset if they're those products change? And so I think in some ways the companies are kind of in this position, and it's not it's awkward, but they're in this position. Of course they're defending themselves, but they're also defending sort of they're happy

customers at the same time. What do you make of that argument, Charlotte, that you know, supporters of big tech or you know, regular people maybe actually wouldn't want these things to be happening if they understood what is to be fair a very complicated set of issues, right. I don't think that's right. I think the reason that the Czech companies don't like this legislation is that it's much

easier for them if they don't have to face fair competition. Um. Right now, they can rest on their laurels and they can use anti competitive tools to prova competition from getting a fair shot against them, and that is a lot

easier for them. I understand that, but I think consumers really would be better served by fair competition and by making sure that those alternatives that are out there or in cases you know, are unable to get funded, making sure that those alternatives actually get a chance to thrive. I think consumers will really benefit from those new innovations that we would see if there was fair competition in

this space. On that note, I'm curious what you both think of the FTC challenging Meta's attempts to buy this VR company within unlimited Uh. It sounds like Lena Khan moved forward with this challenge despite her staff recommending against it. Adam, is this, you know, the FTC trying to prevent Facebook slash Meta from resting on its laurels and not innovating and trying to innovate by buying instead of building. Look, I think the case is more rooted in politics than

the laws. You said. Her staff attorneys recommended against this case, and this is coming on a week right where Meta actually their revenue was down. Everythink everybody knows that they're facing pretty existential competition from TikTok, right, and so I think one of the things you see in this new case is that the FTC had to draw a very narrow market definition in order to make this argument that

the Meta was monopolizing. And they said that Meta was monopolizing when they called the market for VR fitness apps right, and they did something similar in their VR dedicated fitness apps. They did something similar in their case against Meta over the Instagram and WhatsApp uh deals, and the judge in that case said that they had failed to prove the market definition. I think in this case, I predict the judge is going to say they drew the market too narrowly.

It's a little bit like saying that, like fruit Loops has monopolized, you know, the market for rainbow colored fruity cereal. Well, that's not its own market right to compete. Competes against fruity pebbles and frosted flakes and lucky charms and bagels and English muffins, and judges know that, right. And so I think this case is is I think likely to fall into a similar trap of defining a market too narrowly. Charlotte,

what do you think about this FTC challenge? It certainly has a ring of of of of some skeptics who think maybe the Instagram and what's app deals should never have happened. So first, I really don't think we should read too much into this idea that the staff were overruled. UM. I worked at the FTC. I know that there are usually many staff involved in an investigation like this. UM. I think it's not at all clear from these unofficial leaks. Uh,

you know what the view of the staff was. And there's a lot of staff with their name on this complaint, so I think they stand behind it. UM. And I think it's a strong argument. Uh. I'm so glad to see that the FTC is UM not waiting to see UM, you know, not letting this one go by as they have so many times before. I imagine, uh, you know, ten years from now, maybe we'll be so glad that this was the merger where the FTC decided to step in.

It is a situation of uncertainty, and part of what I think is really needed to improve antitrust enforcement today is bringing those cases and situations of uncertainty, especially in tech markets, were not always going to be completely sure UM.

But what economists have seen is that the prior strategy of wave and see and UM not bringing a case in situations of uncertainty really lead to so many more mergers going through than should have, and the economic theory that new competitors were going to come in and compete away those monopoly rents just wasn't right. That's not what happened. It turns out that the costs of inaction are much

higher than the costs of action. So I think they're absolutely making the right decision here, and I was glad to see it. Interesting now there are some potential big concessions that big tech could make. We have seen some concessions over the last several weeks potentially to divert the spotlight. But one of those adam is Google potentially offering to spin off its ad business to fend off anti trust scrutiny. How likely is that. I don't know how likely that is.

I think one of the things that this is come up is in this context of this d j uh investigation supposedly of Google's ad tech business. One of the things that's interesting to me about that is that the Texas Attorney General already has a lawsuit that has pretty advanced against Google over the same topic. Uh, And so it's interesting to me to see that that that um, that kind of happening in parallel I don't know what to make in terms of kind of how that will unfold.

But um, but but we'll see if the d J takes that step. Given that the Texas a G is prosecuting, Sometimes to enforcers say well, you know that's an issue that another enforcement agency has already tackling, so well, you know, maybe maybe we focus on some other issue in our investigations. All right, Well, much here to continue to discuss. But thank you both for waning in Adam Kovakovitch of the Chamber of Progress as well as Charlotte Sliman Public Knowledge.

Appreciate it. Okay, coming up the regulation that could becoming to crypto making, Del Raheem, a partner at lath and Watkins and a former d o J Assistant Attorney General, is with us. Next this is Bloomberg. Instead of doing this regulation by enforcement, we should be looking at the legislative process. If you raise money from the public and and that public is anticipating based on your efforts, uh, some profit that comes into the securities laws. The laws

around determining what a security are is very complex. I would stay with talking to industry groups, I was like, we need to self regulate or the regulators are coming and when you look back, there was very little self regulation. We want to make sure that we have thoughtful regulatory frameworks so that these industries can survive and thrive. Let's take a view on another bursioning tech industry that is

primed for more regulation, and that is crypto. I want to bring in Making Del Rahee now partner at Latham and Watkins and former Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division under the Trump administration. He oversaw the review and resolution of hundreds of mergers and acquisition and played a vital role in building the Antitrust divisions engagement with its international counterparts. Making. Thank you so much for

joining us. I've wanted to interview you for a long time, and I'm so curious what you make of the debate uh in the crypto universe right now about how to balance innovation and regulation. Obviously, there's been a ton of volatility in this space, there have been bankruptcies, but also a ton of enthusiasm. What's the right balance? Well, thanks first of all for having me on. It's it's interesting there's this debate that you know, whenever you have a

foundational technology that could disrupt incumbent players. There's a big debate, and the legislative process is that it's a very slow process because you need a lot of education. You need to educate the policy members, the policy makers, members of Congress and others about exactly what it does and what should they be afraid of to get in there. Of course, I think the less regulation you have, especially at the infancy of a new technology, the greater, uh the innovation

that is going to be surrounding that. Of course, if there's abuses, that's when regulations should come in, but not to come in early at the early stages of developing a new foundational technology like blockchain. And so you've you've seen a lot of changes in the marketplace. Of course, it's largely related to cryptocurrencies rather than the broader space of blockchain that has many applications. So President Bind's Crypto Executive Order, for example, what's your view on that from

an antitrust perspective. Look, I think one of the very positive things about the executive Order it brings the whole of government. It it's the views of different folks looks

at competition area. The area that I'm very much concerned about is making sure that you know, regulation UH is not put in place where you have you know, static regulation x anti UH that puts UH you know, that puts shackles on the on the engineers and the business models rather than letting get developed into its full potential.

And what I'm hoping is that different aspects of the government. So, of course there's this very important role for the SEC and the CFTC and and those types of agencies that regulated from investment standpoint, but there's also an important role for the Departments of Commerce and Department of Justice, particularly the Antitrust Division, to ensure that the regulations will allow maximum competition and provide the greatest incentives for further innovation.

This is the technology that I think has uh infinite potential to really disrupt many areas and provide efficiencies that ultimately benefit consumers, such as lowering transaction costs. Sure, now we've seen firms like f t X take on a lot more of the market, striking deals left and right. Is that something that we should be worried about from an anti trust perspective or are there other red flags that you see? It's it's look, there's a market that's

just developing. So there's gonna be some winners, there's going to be some losers, and it's going to develop. Uh. You know, you're you're probably not fold enough like I am to remember back in two thousand, right at the height of the Internet bubble, where you had everything, you know, you PLoP the name added dot com to it, and all of a sudden, it's a billion dollar company. Not all of them survived because they didn't have all the essential elements. So I think the industry is going through

some changes. And some transactions are very good because it allows for some technologies or some engineers and other talent to be absorbed into something another entity that could be productive. So I don't I think every transaction needs to be looked at on its own specific facts and its own specific merits. And that's what the antitrust laws do. They don't look at it holistically about you know, a bunch of acquisitions, Uh, whether they're bad or good. We look

at the effects of that transaction. What's your view on the Klobuchar grass Lee bill designed to reign in big tech is not the correct framework by which big tech should be regulated. Look, I think it's it's a difficult one because there's the there's existing law, and there's a number of litigation that is that is ongoing, both in the United States and abroad, and I won't comment on that, but the legislative process whenever you are going to impact

ahead of time. Uh, this is really industrial policy. This is not really anti trust laws that are being proposed. You're making a policy judgment call about certain businesses. There's gonna be some harms because you're gonna lose some efficiencies when those business practices are precluded. Uh, And those are judgment calls that policy makers are making. There's gonna be some harm to consumers by some aspects of these bills.

And there's you know, for example, there's another legislation that makes illegal every merger that's worth folk that's worth over five billion dollars. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And some of these bills, they really need to be refined. There needs to be um a lot of debate about this. There isn't. I don't think the requisite amount of proper debate and the implications

of all these bills has been had there in Congress yet. Okay, then what's your view on the state of antitrust enforcement. More broadly, under the Biden administration, Look, President Biden came it. He issued an executive order from the White House to the agencies and also to every regulated regulated industry agency. Every executive branch has to look at it for competition purposes.

I think that's good. That is fine to look at, uh, you know, the competitive effects and impacts of your regulatory actions. What I don't like is that if particular industries are just targeted. I don't think that's that should be the goal.

And I hope that the two antitrust agencies, the enforcement agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, look at each case, each transaction, each company, and the effects of the conduct that they have, rather than trying to target you know, you pick your name, big tech, big health, big, whatever it might be. Big in a capitalist system is not bad big behaving badly as bad as I've in

a sophomoric way described once so quickly. What's your take on on Lena con and in her latest approach, we've learned about the FTC challenging metas attempt to acquire within unlimited a VR company, and obviously she's you know, she's certainly made it clear she wants to take on big, big tech quickly. Do you think that she is going

to succeed? Well, look, I had an old mentor, Jack M. Lenny, who was the head of the Motion Pictures of Association and a colorful guy, and once he told me making you can tell a man to go to hell getting him there's a whole different story. My experience in law enforcement is that you can say you know you're gonna break up any company you want, or any industry you've got to. You have to develop the facts, develop the law, and go prove it in court. That's not always very

easy to do. I think they have taken on their looked, taken a hard look at some cases. But I think, as they have found in the past year and a half, actually bringing specific cases and winning them in court, it's not as easy as saying, so you know why, because we're a country of law laws and there's precedent of the antitrust laws out there. I commend them for pushing the envelope within the boundaries of the ball, but I think success is going to be a challenge unless the

facts and the laws are there. That is a metaphor that I will remember. Thank you, Makon del Raheem, partner at Lataman Watkins, former d o J assistant attorney in general. Thank you for weighing in a Twitter shareholder hit Elon Musque with a class action lawsuit, effectively joining Twitter's bid to hold him to a forty four billion dollar deal. Investor Luigi Crispo calling out Musk's quote lane rationales for renegging on this contract, accusing the billionaire fabricating excuses to

get out of the buy up. He's seeking a court order compelling Musk to consummate that deal. And that does it. For this edition of Bloomberg techn Apology coming up tomorrow, we're gonna be sitting down with Uber CEO Dara Kazra Shy. We're gonna talk about earnings and his plans to turn Uber into a super app. Is it working? And don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Changing in San Francisco. This is Plumberg