The Briefing by Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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Recent Editions

Photo by Bloomberg

Cloudflare Complaint Pinpoints Amazon’s Antitrust Weak Spot

By Martin Peers · Jul 23, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 4 comments

Today’s blog post from top executives at Cloudflare blasting Amazon Web Services for the “egregious” fees it charges customers who move their data out of AWS’ servers raises an interesting question. Could the most fertile ground for pursuing antitrust action against Amazon lie in its cloud business, not the ecommerce business that gets all the... Today’s blog post from top executives at Cloudflare blasting Amazon Web Services for the “...

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Photo by Bloomberg

Snap, Twitter Show Digital Ad Market is Booming

By Martin Peers · Jul 22, 2021 4:59pm PDT

Digital advertising was on fire in the second quarter, judging by results from Twitter and Snap today. That implies next week’s reports from Facebook and Alphabet could be even stronger than anticipated.Snap reported a stunning 116% top line increase, lifting its quarterly revenue to nearly $1 billion dollars. That means Snap’s growth rate has... Digital advertising was on fire in the second quarter, judging by results from Twitter and Snap...

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo by Bloomberg.

Salesforce Faces Skeptical Wall Street as Slack Deal closes

By Martin Peers · Jul 21, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Salesforce completed its $27.7 billion purchase of Slack Technologies today, thus ending Slack’s roughly two-year sojourn as a public company. No one who bought Slack at the beginning would put it down as a barn burner of an investment. Slack shares began trading in June 2019 at just above $38 and the effective sales price is around $45.50. That... Salesforce completed its $27.7 billion purchase of Slack Technologies today, thus ending Slack’s...

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Photo by Bloomberg

Netflix’s Domestic Subscriber Dip Might Be Worse News for Rivals

By Martin Peers · Jul 20, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Photo by Bloomberg

Netflix’s Domestic Subscriber Dip Might Be Worse News for Rivals

By Martin Peers · Jul 20, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

Things are getting interesting in video streaming. Netflix reported today that it lost 430,000 subscribers in North America in the second quarter. On top of The Information’s report from a few weeks ago that Disney’s flagship service Disney+ has essentially flatlined in the U.S. this year, it implies the two of the biggest players have hit a... Things are getting interesting in video streaming. Netflix reported today that it lost 430,000...

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan. Photo by Bloomberg

Zoom’s Five9 Deal Begs Question of What Comes Next

By Martin Peers · Jul 19, 2021 5:01pm PDT

Zoom Video kicked off its long-expected expansion, unveiling plans to acquire contact center software provider Five9 Inc. for $14.7 billion in stock. That gives Zoom a second business to complement its original videoconferencing service, which proved vital for companies and consumers during the pandemic. Contact center software, which helps... Zoom Video kicked off its long-expected expansion, unveiling plans to acquire contact center...

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo by Bloomberg

Tech Earnings Kick Off Next Week—and Growth Numbers Will Be Big

By Martin Peers · Jul 16, 2021 5:05pm PDT

Fasten your seat belt. Next week kicks off the tech earnings season. And we’re in for some extraordinary numbers as companies report second-quarter results that compare with the pandemic-depressed period from a year ago. That will make for somewhat artificially inflated growth rates this time around that are sure to grab headlines. To get a real... Fasten your seat belt. Next week kicks off the tech earnings season. And we’re in for some...

Netflix's Los Angeles office building. Photo by Bloomberg

Netflix for Games Will Require Lots of Hard Work

By Martin Peers · Jul 15, 2021 5:10pm PDT · 3 comments

Netflix’s hiring of a former Facebook executive to oversee an expansion into gaming will be welcome news for investors who are fretting about the company’s ability to maintain its robust growth of the past few years. But no one should be under any illusions about the rocky road ahead for Netflix as it seeks to become a force in gaming. This... Netflix’s hiring of a former Facebook executive to oversee an expansion into gaming will be...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo by Bloomberg

Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Weapon in the Cloud

By Martin Peers · Jul 14, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo by Bloomberg

Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Weapon in the Cloud

By Martin Peers · Jul 14, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Microsoft struck a major blow in the cybersecurity wars today, with its decision to offer a cloud-based version of its Windows operating system. Windows 365, as it is dubbed, will make it easier for people to switch from outdated versions of Windows, those that are most likely to have software vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. That is... Microsoft struck a major blow in the cybersecurity wars today, with its decision to offer a...

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Photo by Bloomberg.

Netflix Stock Drifts Into Unusual Territory: Stagnation

By Martin Peers · Jul 13, 2021 5:00pm PDT

What’s the thing that investors fear far more than antitrust regulators? Slowing growth. That’s one takeaway from comparing the stock performance of Netflix this year with Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook. The stock prices of all four big tech giants, each under the crosshairs of U.S. and European antitrust regulators, are up between 10% and... What’s the thing that investors fear far more than antitrust regulators? Slowing growth. That’s...

Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy. Photo by Bloomberg

The Danger Posed by AWS’ Paper Pushing Culture

By Martin Peers · Jul 12, 2021 5:00pm PDT

If you want to understand the biggest threat facing Amazon today—and no, it's not new FTC chair Lina Khan—check out The Information’s story today about the bureaucratic creep at Amazon Web Services. One former AWS salesperson told our reporter, Kevin McLaughlin, that at AWS he was spending around 70% of his work hours on paperwork, including... If you want to understand the biggest threat facing Amazon today—and no, it's not new FTC chair...

The FTC Chair, Lina Khan. Photo by Bloomberg.

Why FTC’s Amazon-MGM Probe Is Based on Flawed Logic

By Martin Peers · Jul 9, 2021 5:00pm PDT

The Federal Trade Commission’s decision today to formally open an in-depth probe into Amazon’s $8.5 billion purchase of MGM signals just how much the Biden administration is changing the course of antitrust inquiries into tech. It’s not just about the obvious targets—Google’s self-evident dominance of the search market, for instance. Instead,... The Federal Trade Commission’s decision today to formally open an in-depth probe into Amazon’s...

Instacart's new CEO Fidji Simo. Photo by AP

Instacart’s Simo Hiring Caps Management Overhaul

By Martin Peers · Jul 8, 2021 5:07pm PDT

Instacart's new CEO Fidji Simo. Photo by AP

Instacart’s Simo Hiring Caps Management Overhaul

By Martin Peers · Jul 8, 2021 5:07pm PDT

Instacart’s hiring of Facebook’s Fidji Simo as CEO is a masterful stroke by the grocery delivery app, capping six months of executive hiring that has built out its management team ahead of an expected public debut later this year. It speaks well of Apoorva Mehta that he made way for Simo, a sign that he knows that building Instacart into a much... Instacart’s hiring of Facebook’s Fidji Simo as CEO is a masterful stroke by the grocery delivery...

Amazon's just-retired CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon’s Much Feared Day Two May Already Have Started

By Martin Peers · Jul 7, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

One of Jeff Bezos’ big fears about Amazon is the notion that it could one day enter “Day Two,” which he has defined as “stasis,” followed in close order by irrelevance and then death. By at least one measure, the size of Amazon’s senior management team, it looks like the sun has started to rise on Day Two. And that occurred even before Bezos... One of Jeff Bezos’ big fears about Amazon is the notion that it could one day enter “Day Two,”...

Didi's Beijing offices. Photo by Bloomberg.

The Real Lesson of Didi Global’s Stock Drop

By Martin Peers · Jul 6, 2021 5:00pm PDT

For a brief moment last week, it looked like Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Global was going to get away with a more successful IPO than that of its U.S. counterparts Uber and Lyft two years ago. That was until the Chinese government, with a weekend edict about data security, reminded the company who’s really in charge, lopping 20% off the value... For a brief moment last week, it looked like Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Global was going to...

Amazon's incoming CEO Andy Jassy. Photo by Bloomberg

What Andy Jassy Could Learn From Cook, Nadella and Pichai

By Martin Peers · Jul 2, 2021 5:01pm PDT

What a relief! Amazon revealed late today that Andy Jassy, who takes the reins as CEO on Tuesday, won’t have to search the cushions for coins. Amazon is granting him restricted stock that at today’s price is worth $214 million, an award several times bigger than the grants he’s been getting every couple of years as AWS chief. Jassy already has... What a relief! Amazon revealed late today that Andy Jassy, who takes the reins as CEO on Tuesday,...

Wall Street traders. Photo by Bloomberg.

Robinhood’s Rush to Go Public

By Martin Peers · Jul 1, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Wall Street traders. Photo by Bloomberg.

Robinhood’s Rush to Go Public

By Martin Peers · Jul 1, 2021 5:00pm PDT

It says something about the disconnect nowadays between rational thought and market activity on Wall Street that today, one day after Robinhood was fined $70 million by a financial industry regulator, it confirmed plans to go public. And its IPO filing highlights just how enmeshed the company is in regulatory investigations and litigation of one... It says something about the disconnect nowadays between rational thought and market activity on...

Didi's office in Hangzhou, China. Photo by Bloomberg.

Didi’s Uninspiring Public Debut

By Martin Peers · Jun 30, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 3 comments

Executives at Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global can relax. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange today and, hey, it went up! Not by much—1%—but that’s better than Uber achieved two years ago. Yes, when it comes to ride hailing and Wall Street, the bar for success is low.You can’t blame investors for being dubious about the... Executives at Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global can relax. The company went public on the...

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Photo by Bloomberg.

Uber Joins Tech Shift to More Remote Work

By Martin Peers · Jun 29, 2021 5:16pm PDT

Uber told employees today it will let people work remotely half the time, the latest example of a company fine-tuning its remote work policies as a return to the office gets closer. Uber’s policy, allowing more remote work than planned just a few months ago, is to go into effect in September. Based on anecdotal evidence, that month appears to be... Uber told employees today it will let people work remotely half the time, the latest example of a...

The FTC's Washington D.C. office. Photo by AP

Judge’s Facebook Ruling Embarrasses FTC, States

By Martin Peers · Jun 28, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission have egg on their faces after a federal judge ruled the agency, in its antitrust case against Facebook, hadn’t made the case the company had a monopoly. Even more embarrassing was the judge’s outright dismissal of a case filed by a group of 40 states. The FTC’s case wasn’t dismissed, in contrast, and the... Lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission have egg on their faces after a federal judge ruled the...

The European Commission's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. Photo by Bloomberg

Tech’s New Growth Industry: Antitrust Inquiries

By Martin Peers · Jun 25, 2021 5:00pm PDT

The European Commission's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. Photo by Bloomberg

Tech’s New Growth Industry: Antitrust Inquiries

By Martin Peers · Jun 25, 2021 5:00pm PDT

The role of big tech companies in creating jobs is often underappreciated. And we’re not just talking about software engineering jobs or chefs in fancy campus cafeterias. Given the proliferating number of tech-focused antitrust inquiries, particularly in Europe, it’s a good bet a lot of jobs are being created at European regulatory agencies and... The role of big tech companies in creating jobs is often underappreciated. And we’re not just...