Media giantal disney beats Fourth Quarter bottomline estimates. We will break down the results ahead of disneys highly anticipated streaming platform debut. Stories. R top facebook continues to struggle to read and trust over how it handles user data. That has become more complicated. There has now been a leak of internal documents suggesting business considerations outweighed those privacy concerns. It is something facebook publicly touted when it decided five years ago to cut off tens of thousands of developers from its platform. To discuss, im joined by Bloomberg Technologys sarah frier and ben brody in washington. Let me start with you, sarah. You covered this story. What do we know from these documents . Reporter the documents give us this interesting internal picture in a way we really havent seen before of how these decisions are made and the difference between how they are discussed internally and how the company explains them externally. And internally, they are saying we need to cut off any apps that could potentially be competitive from our services, advertising, developer tools. Externally, they are saying we really need to increase the privacy of our platform, so we dont want these third parties to have access to this data. Its really interesting looking at these discussions. One thing that really stands out in these documents is how competitive they thought messaging apps were. Off we chat, line, and another asian messaging app from using facebook for advertising. This is just a year before they ended up acquiring whatsapp for 19 billion. That is something regulars will be extremely interested in when they develop the antitrust probe. Thisr walk me through how further complicates facebooks relationship with washington, d. C. Reporter i think sarah is exactly right. How did you view messaging apps . How are you evaluating them . Those are the things the ftc will be looking at. We should have a caveat here. You are not obligated to deal with competitors. If federal and state and antitrust enforcers are not finding the company was dominant and abusing the dominance to perpetuate a monopoly, then theres no case here. But i think that they are going to be looking at these things. Antitrust regulators are just like us, but with subpoena power. When they read a news story like this and they see these kinds of documents, and some of these documents have leaked out previously before, they ask the same questions we are asking right now. They want to take a look at those are they want to maybe take depositions. That is that much more the lawyers will have to say hold on a minute, we can produce some of this, we cant produce other things. In california yesterday, they are actually going to court over document protection. Taylor remind us again about that burden of proof. To play devils advocate, you could say you have a right to protect your own business interests, a right to not deal with competitors, that we are a forprofit company and we should protect our own interests. What is that burden of proof . Reporter exactly. Spinning is not against the law. The federal antitrust regulators will be doing a rigorous economic analysis. What happens when facebook makes a particular business decision. Where do consumers go. . Hat do competitors do how much of the market share do they have. They are looking at all these things before they even get into a case about a particular violation. It will take a long time for them to build those things up. They will interview third parties and look at economic models. They will look at experts from both sides. It will take a long time for that to build up. We dont know necessarily where its going to go, but i think what this represents is a tantalizing question for them to look into now. Taylor this is further complicated by the fact that this feels like an antitrust, anticompetitive issue, but they are publicly touting data privacy. Not is an antitrust issue, data privacy, correct . Reporter its a little bit of both. When facebook cut off Developers Access to data from users friends, they did it only for certain developers. They waitlisted other developers. Thats one of the problems from the heart of this lawsuit that got leaked. When we see instances like cambridge analytica, a direct result of them freely handing out developer data, how they handled it and when and why is a huge issue with regards to the privacy front, because they dont do that anymore. But as facebook gets hammered on privacy issues, they are going to become more anticompetitive as a result. They will be in charge of their data and keeping it as close to the chest as possible and not letting other people get a slice of that dominance. Taylor tying it all together, sarah frier for Bloomberg Technology and ben brody p thank you. Expedia shares plummeting thursday after they close about 27 . They saw a decline in Revenue Growth in the third quarter. Rbo is thee fastestgrowing part of the company competing with airbnb and booking. Com. And an exclusive interview with the ceo, he discusses his outlook and strategy with bloombergs guy johnson and connie quinn. We did have a difficult quarter. That said, theres a lot of great things happening around expedia group. Volume from room nights are up 11 . We continue to see great strength on our expedia Partnership Solutions business. We continue to make great efforts on the customer efforts. We did see direct channels up more than the overall business. We have a long run ahead of us. Reporter lets talk about whats happening with the shortterm rental business. Concern thato be a you are struggling to make your message heard on google. How do you reduce reliance on Google Search . Whether its alternative accommodations in business or vr bo or other core brands, a lot of it is the strategies we have in place which is making sure we have great products for customers, that we build a Loyal Customer relationships, incredible loyalty programs. Hotels. Com for example just hit the 50 million loyalty member. Expedia has a good rewards loyalty program. Its about good rewards and services for customers and thats what we are aimed at doing. Bo itself, the alternative accommodations brand, has relaunched. They are looking at launching that in other regions around the world. Ultimately, we have seen good strength. The brand itself has been up nicely doubledigit. We will continue to move along with our multichannel strategy that really isnt a strategy only dependent on google. Reporter how much more are you going to spend on marketing with vrbo . It is taking time to have rebranding accepted and getting known to the public, particularly with google now putting hotel funder above the likes of vrbo in search. That makes it difficult. I think investors want to know when will that have been and how much will it cost . We will do it in a balanced way. We have that and Digital Television and the u. S. And digital, we are seeing good results. As we roll out internationally, it will be balanced. The alternative accommodation strategy isnt just about vrbo. We brought partner facing teams closer together. We are now just 650 alternative accommodations offerings from vrbo available for our core brands. International expansion for us will be a real combined effort. That was expedia ceo mark okerstrom. Game makers activision, blizzard, and taketwo reporting earnings thursday. Classicd of warcraft and call of duty coming off a dismal year in part due to a controversial decision to temporarily ban a player for making pro hong kong statements. Taketwo also saw a revenue bump quarter. St recent that was fueled by recent releases of borderlands three from Gearbox Software and publisher 2k, launched in september, and nba 2k 20, the bestselling game in september. The maker of grand theft auto also raised outlook for 2020. Ofing up, the future genealogy and its role in the wider health care system. That is our conversation with the ancestry president and ceo, next. This is bloomberg. Taylor providing genetic data will empower consumers and improve their health care. That is according to the ancestry president and ceo. The company has faced criticism about the value of the dna data they provide, but the ceo says it will advance health care and give providers more information about their patients. At theke to Max Chafkin Bloomberg year ahead event in new york. Take a listen. Towhats really going advance the industry is not a focus on technology or lab reports, but how do we get consumers to Better Health outcomes . For us, if we can understand actual genetic risks that can help us get on the path to meaningful ways with collaboration to Health Care Providers so the we can live healthier lives, that is where we are adding value and solving problems, so thats where we think the future needs to be on this industry. Reporter so what is the business here . Historically, these have been oneoff tests, but my understanding is you are moving towards sort of a subscription model. We want to talk a little bit about that decision. We didnt want to be another lab report provider. If we were going to go on this, it needed to live to the standard we hold ourselves, a personal discovery to enrich lives. We needed to get people from insights to action. We focused on what Consumers Want most. Actionable insights, access to genetic counseling services, this is new, i have questions, i want support. I want a seamless connection. Mazzei moved to that action, i want to know that dr. Can understand it. Lastly, i want a comprehensive screening. Thats Affordable Access to nextgeneration sequencing technology that provides a much more comprehensive understanding of genetic risks. Reporter so what does that mean . The whole genome . The original technology that was used for the First Company a technologywas also used for ancestral research. But as we go into the field of health, being able to look at the whole of genome, not just snippets of it, transforms our ability to include more people and understand many more risks. For us, thats why we chose a subscription model. And align our interests with consumers. Ancestry health plus integrates a comprehensive Health History understanding with a comprehensive understanding of genetic risks, looking at your genes, and more and more applicable insights to deliver to consumers. There are many more to come to help us put consumers on an empowered path to preventative health. Taylor that was ancestry president and ceo margo georgiadis. Joining us is max chafkin. He had an interesting story about the u. S. Cto and controversial comments he made in lisbon. What did we learn from what that cto said . Reporter yes, he became cto in august. This is his first speech outside the u. S. It was in portugal at the web summit. The audience was sort of interesting. A couple of things. Number one, he basically reamed huawei. D he urged europeans to stay away from trainees Infrastructure Partners as much as possible, which is something the u. S. Has been saying for a long time. But its interesting he also met. She delivered the same message in person. You are seeing the Trump Administration reiterating the statement even as they are coming to a trade deal with the Chinese Government. The thing that was a little more interesting to me is that he also kind of picked out up on something Mark Zuckerberg brought up a couple weeks ago. Urope, you need to be careful if you regulate these Big Technology companies, meaning big American Technology companies, too much, that will create an opening for chinese companies. That will create an opening that you might not like. You dont like facebook, but how would you like it if you had to deal with another company . He delivered the message to vestige her. Investiture also delivered a summit the next day and was supercritical of facebook. There is definitely a divide. Taylor i like that you brought up facebook because we heard a similar thing from sheryl sandberg, the coo at the year ahead event. She said not only are we dealing privacy, howdata we are able to censor free speech, but we are also planed by their rules and they can turn over data to their government at any notice. How much of that is a bigger issue . Reporter i think this is a big deal both in terms of facebooks business, because tictoc, that is the most significant competitor facebook has. It is not twitter. The real business competitor here for facebook. Sheryl sandberg is right. Some reports are disputed and there is some nuance of censorship of basically a different point of view towards free speech. I think there is something to this critique. How facebooke manages contact content, but somethingwant to like closely aligned with the Chinese Government either. Something else tangential to this is the political at issue. Facebook said we are ok with basically misinformation. A lot of people, including facebook employees, have pushed back strongly. You might see some adjustments. You are not going to change the policy overall, but there has willingness to negotiate on targets. We will change the rule on who you can target that adds to or something along those lines. Taylor great interviews today. That was bloombergs max chafkin. Thank you for joining us. Coming up, a saudi spy plot. Turns out former twitter employees may have been using the service to spy on users for the country. Thats next. And Bloomberg Technology is livestreaming on twitter. Be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. This is bloomberg. Taylor taylor the u. S. Government has charged two former twitter employees with helping the site days in riyadh. Helping the saudis in riyadh. Two of them are not arrested in the u. S. Prosecutors want to find out why. Bloomberg technologys kurt wegner joins us with the details. Give us the backstory on this. The claim here is that these employees were basically using their position inside the company to look up information on account holders. As you know want twitter, you can be anonymous. You can pretty much say anything you want and people wont necessarily know its you. If youre in the building and you have access to the emails or the phone numbers and personal information linked to those accounts, you might be able to place an identity to an account that could have been critical of the saudi royal family. Is two how much of this twitter employees going rogue versus twitter not doing enough and being implicated in all of this and eventually may be the ones held liable . Reporter this was a few years ago and we are just learning about it now. In my opinion, it is a fair question to ask. What did twitter know at the time . What should we have learned from them a couple years back . At the same time, its a little unfair or may be unrealistic to expect these companies that have thousands of employees globally to know what each and every one of them might be doing in the personal life in terms of their relationships. Certainly it is an expectation that twitter should be able to say we know who has access to what information. Its a little tougher to know that they are necessarily going to take that information and treated in the way they should be treating it inside the company and also when they go home at the end of the day. Taylor why arent we doing a job . R why arent these Tech Companies doing a better job of verifying what employees have access to special data, and why isnt it only a select few . Reporter thats a great question and one we have been asking over the last couple years. Facebook in particular has dealt issues. Ot of privacy part of it is when the Companies First started, they were growing at such a rate that the idea of protecting and locking down information was a secondary productso building the and adding more users. The idea that these places were workforces, people can go in and have access to build necessary futures was just part of working there. Only recently did we realize it might be a problem. Taylor taylor coincidentally, ever core analysts came out and cut the stock in part because they have underinvested in r d. Fact, andights that now we are seeing a play out. That is part of the story as well. Reporter i think you can always criticize companies for not doing enough on security. I think thats probably a fair criticism, especially for twitter. It seems coincidental perhaps that the news of these rogue employees comes out at the same time. As a little tough to say twitter, if only you invested an extra 1 million, you would have stopped these spies from doing what they are doing. I do think a lot of companies, and facebook again, they are putting a ton of money into security of users and i think the rest of the Tech Industry will probably have to follow suit. Taylor that was kurt wagoner for Bloomberg Technology. Thank you for joining us. Coming up, disney shares soaring after reporting fourthquarter earnings. The Earnings Call currently underway. Lets listen into what bob iger had to say about disney plus. This is bloomberg. We are still relatively small in terms of the scope of things, a number of subscribers, but i think the best way for me to characterize it would be to say we were enthusiastic about what we saw the consumer reaction to be. We certainly feel good about the product going to the marketplace next week. We will know a lot more in just a few days. Taylor this is Bloomberg Technology global link where we daybreakberg australia to bring you global news. Lets take a look at those top global tech stories we are watching. Google the board of parent alphabet is investigating how the Company Handled claims of Sexual Harassment and misconduct against some of its executives. According to cnbc, the probe includes behavior of chief legal officer david drummond. Plus, it has previously been reported that google reportedly founder andy rubin to leave over a relationship with another employee. Netflix is vowing to spend more on programming in the face of increased competition the biggest streaming service expects to spend 15 billion this year, more than any of its rivals. Ceo Reed Hastings said netflix is just getting started. He said the company has been strong in series and now was getting strong in movies. Those are the top global tech stories of the day. Taylor disney shares are up in leg trading late trading after reporting earnings. Keynsiders report reporting. Porter bibbs tech analyst who has been watching these companies for so many years. Numbers, for good sure. For sure, but it was the dominance at the box office the prop those numbers up. What does that mean moving ahead . The theatrical movie industry is not going to last more than wherer 10 years, but disney has positioned itself, it will be the dominant content producer, distributor and streaming Going Forward and the market has finally caught up to bob iger and realized disney owns the space. Taylor we could talk about the Earnings Call at numbers, but in san francisco, no one cares. We just want to know about that disney . They are going to lose money for at least four years, maybe a little longer. They are talking about reaching by 2024 bob iger has said they will have 50 million paid subscribers. The very smart thing he did right away was price it at an irresistible level. If you are a parent and do not subscribe to disney plus, i think your kids will probably leave home. It has so much recognizable and irresistible content. No one can touch the huge amount of Library Material bob iger is. Aking available its a real bargain, and hes thrown in espn and hulu. Kathleen what kind of revenue, what kind of profit and positioning can this for disney . It will become the biggest profit spinner four or five years from now, but right now, its going to lose money. It lost almost 1 billion last year just in the start up and each year until it breaks even, it will lose several billion dollars, but that is development cost, and that is actually money well spent. Theor we are hearing on Earnings Call from ceo bob iger, who is coming out and saying there is no floor insight for cable subscriptions. How much of a headwind from cable subscriptions can be offset from a rise in streaming . It is not the cable subscribers that are the concern. It is the retransmission fees worth millions of dollars to disney and other content providers. Just on abc alone, hes going to start to lose literally billions of dollars from retransmission because of the serious cable cord cutting that has been ongoing and will only accelerate. You are still very positive on the stock . Is this a stock you own . We have been in and out of disney, and i think what has happened is disney has gone from a day traders stock and market influence rumor driven stock to being a value stock, and that is where the market is going to find a huge appreciation in investing in disney over the long haul. Kathleen as you said, it never hurts to have your brand, your logo known by so many children around the world. Here is a little number you ought to keep in mind disney has a p e today of 17 times. The only other Media Company of any other comparable size and content, quality is comcast. They are also 17 times. P e. Ix has a 92 p t they have announced they are going to spend 15 billion this year and more next year, they are not going to make a profit, and that 92 times, somebody is going to pick them up. Mediatechrter bibb of capital, thank you for joining us. Much more ahead. This is bloomberg. Taylor with just under one euro election,he 2020 u. S. Facebooks coo told Bloomberg News think this time around will not be the same. We think the 2020 election is a massive test for us, and it should be. Elections have changed. We have changed as a company. If you look back to 2016, of course we were not prepared for state actors. This new, more insidious stuff, we were totally unprepared. We never thought of it. We missed it. Everyone missed it. Thats different now. Taylor speaking of being prepared for 20 20, think of the following scenario deepfake videos, self driving buses killing voters, chaos in the polls. Thats what went on on tuesday not in the actual elections. Rather, it was a simulation to see who would win when it comes to safeguarding an election. The event, dubbed operation blackout, was run by a Cyber Security firm. Now, cyber reasons chief strategy officer, and Bloomberg Technologys cybersecurity reporter. What was the scenario behind this simulation . Thanks for having me on. The vulnerability of elections, not just through hacking of the elections system itself, and not just through social media, which are the obvious things we like to think about, but looking at a broader scope of how Critical Infrastructure actually can influence the mobility of influencew mayhem can the viability and credibility of the election. We have created a simulation, which is a fully immersive exercise of a red team that are hackers trying to disrupt the election, and a blue team of defenders that are trying to respond and put together a strategy while innovating in real time as the simulation goes on. Taylor as we look at how important these simulations are, it really highlights vulnerabilities. All week long in our election series, we have been talking about vulnerability. Where are we most vulnerable . As we have talked about, the u. S. Election system is about 8000 different counties at the local level trying to protect the integrity and security of the American Election apparatus. The closer you get to the ground, to Rural Communities in swing states where i. T. Support is perhaps minimal and you have county clerks who spend most of their year issuing marriage licenses and zoning permits, to then ask them to protect the integrity of an election is quite a lot, so that is probably where the greatest amount of attention and energy is necessary. It is unclear if that is actually happening. Taylor we have team red and team blue. Team read is the hackers. How did they perform . Team the hackers team put together a scenario of first of all attacking Critical Infrastructure, acknowledging every single Critical Infrastructure is actually the election infrastructure, attacking Autonomous Vehicles as well as traffic lights, Public Transportation and other means of Critical Infrastructure power, gas, and others, to either demobilize specific segments of the cities that were identified as swaying into one side of the vote, and by that actually impacting the election. The blue side, which consisted of cyberreason, fbi, secret service, Arlington Police department, and other organizations, put together a Defense Strategy trying to think as broad as possible and then reacting in real time to the simulation. What this made them do is start thinking beyond their traditional thought process and it allows them later on to sort of absorb what happened in the exercise and have some Lessons Learned so they can prepare in peace time towards election day itself. How realistic do some of these scenarios sound . Some of them sound a little outlandish, but are they useful exercises . I think absolutely. Any exercise is a useful exercise at this point because we dont know what sort of attack is waiting at some point in 2020, right . We know what occurred in 2016, that Russian Hackers years sequence attacks to attack phishingand used expeditions to get into florida, but we do not know what is waiting in 2020, so playing out as many scenarios as possible is a good idea. Taylor how do we switch from going to the defensive and protecting ourselves versus going on the offense of and getting out in front of this . Aren a way, both things tied together. We need to put together a strategy that puts ourselves first of all in the shoes of the attackers, understanding what are all the possibilities at the to be able to attack Critical Infrastructure that needs to be defended, and then, ining some proactive action order to go hunt for these threats before they get to Critical Infrastructure. What we are trying to do in collaboration with those organizations is in them and teach them what hunting is all about and how to come together and collaborate so the Defense Strategy is cohesive. Taylor finally, what are our best tools . Improving auditors, electronic and paper voting together, using blockchain, which we talked about yesterday . Trailsink the paper being developed across the country would be the best tool. The trouble is that different Election Administrators and cybersecurity experts disagree on the best way to create that paper trail. Markingplaces, ballot devices are being embraced where there is some semblance of a l, but its credibility could be called into question. Other regions are depending on hand marked paper ballots you feed into a scanner to create an auditable trail so that if there is a hack, if there is an exploit, there is a way to tell if the intent of the voter is being reflected in the final result. Taylor thank you both for joining us. Thiels vc, peter firm is being sued for 16 Million Dollars by its former general counsel. We will hear from the plaintiff next. This is bloomberg. Taylor the Venture Capital firm founded by billionaire peter thiel is being sued by its former top lawyer. Companyges the wrongfully terminated her and retaliated against her for calling out alleged wrongdoing at the company. She joins us now. Outline your claims for us. Thank you for having me. Founder hasause the been abusing the trust and money of investors. Fixing the tried firm from within, including by urging peter thiel to use his power to shut down fraud. That did not work. Byy retaliated against me smearing my name in the press and by filing two separate lawsuits against me in delaware and in texas, states where i have never worked, in an effort me. Ntimidate as you can tell, it has not worked. The question of what he has done het needed to be reported, raised a second fund two years annual locked in massive at Cash Management fees from investors on the pretext he would use those fees to find great Tech Companies to invest the capital. Instead, he virtually eliminated the investment team, pocketed the Management Fees and lied to investors about it. Taylor to be fair, i want to bring up the response we have and read it out loud. Theis the allegation allegations in the complaint are false. Documents reveal she personally approved these fee disclosures and repeatedly stated that aj had the highest integrity. They are confident that will be proven in court. Do you have a response to that statement . To be fair, the document discloses full Management Fees. The lie about Management Fees is that he was telling investors he had waived 100 of the Management Fees charged to fund to investors in 2017. I first witnessed and tell the lie to peter thiel at his home in january of this year after peter had accused him of having broken mitzvot having broken il through his grade. I heard from another investor he was telling the same lie. He told her he wanted to remind her he had waived all 2017 Management Fees so funds for investors did not pay Management Fees for that entire year. That is false. Taylor some of the issues broadly going on in the vc world valuations. E high the problem is a valuation is what any investor says it is because theres no Public Market for price discovery, so how do you go about proving that in court . Reasonable minds can absolutely differ on what a reasonable valuation is for a private tech company, but when ajay, peter, and paul legate, who served on the board and was very in touch with the issue when all three of them agreed that the company is worth zero, its probably worth zero . Why did you name peter thiel in the suit . Its a great question. Peter is not a partner or officer but a large investor and for a long time he and other investors were being lied to. He eventually did learn the truth and did nothing. Im not accusing peter of any actual wrongdoing. I would never suggest peter lend himself to fraud, but i disagree with the final action he did take, which was to choose to do nothing. When i brought these concerns to him, when he learned of the fraud that was ongoing, he chose not to act. He chose not to exercise his power that could have shut down the fraud, and he was the only person who had the power to shut down the fraud. Thats why i went to the government. Taylor you are a lawyer by trade, so you know how these things work. What is your ideal outcome . The most immediate outcome im looking for is for the government investigation to continue without further interference. Beyond that, we will see. Taylor thank you so much for joining us. Finally this hour, we get another look at disney, which is according earnings on thursday. The media giant beat on both the. Op and bottom line we are pleased to announce additional distribution partnerships with amazon fire, samsung, and lg. Disney will also be available in a bundle with espn plus and adsupported hulu for 12. 99 a month. Theor with more details on call is Chris Palmeri in los angeles. Yorkie takeaway from that call . Disney is always able to pull a rabbit out of the hat or, i guess, a mouse in this case. They beats down, but expectations. Espn profits were down. Tv overall was down profitwise, but once again, its Film Division just soaring. Theme parks, Consumer Products saving the day. People are going to look at these numbers and cheer. Taylor i want to talk about the details of the earnings, but frankly, here in san francisco, you know we just want to know about the streaming numbers. What new information have we streaming . Disneys quick lots of things. They announced a lot of new partnerships. I think amazon is the second most popular streaming device, so they are just making it very broadly appealing to a lot of people. Something like 19 million verizon customers could potentially get the product free which launches on tuesday. They are out of their way to get accessible to every possible consumer. Taylor it was interesting that when we look at disneys strategy, they are looking at spending 1 billion on new shows and films. They have some of the old classics, but now they have to work on building up that new original content. Does disney have the Balance Sheet and capital to really do that . They do, but one of the realities is that disneys profits are going to be challenged. All these new businesses do not start to show profit until 2020 3, 2024, five years from now. They just said on the call the direct to consumer business lost 700 40 million in the Current Quarter and will lose 800 million in the next quarter. Ongoing billions of dollars of losses as they pit it to this new media. Taylor finally, i do want to end on some of the other news. Utside of streaming we are getting headlines about attendance at the parks and studios. Your key thoughts on that . This was a challenge. We reported earlier that star wars land attendance fell. Now theyre saying things are not so bad, they raise prices, people are coming, they are making money on parks overall, so that was good news. They still have some headwinds. Hong kong theme park profits way down with the protests there. Taylor Chris Palmeri jumping over to save us after getting off of that Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us. That doesnt this edition of open Bloomberg Technology. It for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Be sure to follow our global breaking news network at tictoc on twitter. This is bloomberg. Sophie good morning. Im Sophie Kamaruddin in hong kong. We are under an hour away from market opens in hong kong and south korea. Kathleen good evening from Bloomberg Global headquarters in new york. Im kathleen hays. Welcome to daybreak asia. Sophie our top stories this friday the u. S. And china say they will remove tariffs as a trade deal approaches, but both sides say negotiations are making progress. Investors are not so sure