August 7, 2020 ![]() By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles & AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco Good morning. 🏡 Going nowhere: Facebook has joined Google and Uber in extending its work-from-home guidance for U.S.-based employees through July 2021. Expect other companies to follow suit.
🚕 Sign of the times: Uber Eats, the company's food delivery business, brought in more revenue last quarter ($1.2b) than its core ride-hailing business ($790m).
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![]() Bloomberg/Getty 🇺🇸🇨🇳 Moving the Market President Trump moves to ban TikTok, WeChat
President Donald Trump signed two executive orders late last night that will prohibit U.S. citizens and companies from doing business with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and WeChat, the communications app owned by Tencent.
• The big picture: The orders, which go into effect in 45 days, are a major escalation by the U.S. against China and would effectively bar two of China's biggest tech firms from the U.S. market. They come as Microsoft is pursuing an acquisition of TikTok's U.S. business.
The details: In a statement, Trump said mobile applications developed and owned by companies in China "threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States" by making U.S. citizens data vulnerable to the Chinese Communist Party.
• Trump's order on TikTok, which applied to all business with ByteDance, formalizes a September 15 deadline that the White House has given to Microsoft and other companies that are pursuing an acquisition of TikTok's U.S. business.
• As for the order on WeChat, it wasn't clear whether the ban would apply specifically to the app or to all of Tencent's business, which includes investments in major U.S tech and gaming firms and lucrative broadcast deals with the major U.S. sports leagues.
• Even if the order is limited to WeChat, it would have implications for foreigners and members of the Chinese diaspora who rely on the app to communicate and do business with people in China. WeChat has 1.2 billion users, the vast majority of whom are in China.
Global view: "Tensions between the U.S. and China have already escalated to levels not seen in decades over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade," NYT's Ana Swanson, Mike Isaac and Paul Mozur report. "Many companies ... [are] unsure of whether these tensions will spill into a new Cold War."
• "The restrictions announced Thursday would also represent a further balkanization of the global internet, as nations continue to cut off foreign technology companies from one another’s markets."
• As I wrote back in 2018, this balkanization could give way to a bipolar future where the U.S. and China close their tech markets to one another and then use those services to fight for political and economic influence over the rest of the world.
Big in Beijing: "Shares of Tencent Holdings plunged as much as 10% on Friday," WSJ's Chong Koh Ping and Xie Yu report. "Tencent’s shares, which are listed in Hong Kong, started tumbling when the market opened and were down 6.8% by noon."
• "Just before the news, Tencent shares were trading near a record high and the company’s market capitalization had been close to that of Facebook."
Big in the Beltway: "With the U.S. election less than 90 days away, Trump is making his challenge of China a central theme of his campaign, where he trails Joe Biden in the polls," write Bloomberg's Saleha Mohsin, Shelly Banjo, Nick Wadhams and Justin Sink.
• Over on the Hill, the Senate has unanimously passed a bill to ban the use of TikTok on federal devices. The legislation, introduced by two Republican Senators, followed a similar move by the House.
![]() Samuel Corum/Getty 🌁 Big in the Bay Mark Zuckerberg talks TikTok
Mark Zuckerberg told staff yesterday that banning TikTok in the United States would set "a really bad long-term precedent" that could have "long-term consequences in other countries around the world," BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman report.
• The Facebook chief also pushed back against the conventional wisdom that a ban on TikTok would help Facebook, which this week launched its own version of the service called Instagram Reels.
• "A lot of people are out there saying that this helps Facebook and my reaction to that is only in the most narrow sense," he said. "Yes, they are a competitor this year, and this month ... but you don’t run a company for the next month or the next quarter."
Top talker: When asked by employees if he was interested in acquiring TikTok, Zuckerberg demurred, saying he never comments on merger and acquisition strategy during company-wide meetings.
💰 Money watch 💰
"Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth passed $100 billion for the first time Thursday after Facebook hit a record high on optimism about the release of its TikTok competitor Reels," Bloomberg's Jack Pitcher reports.
"The 36-year-old joins fellow tech titans Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as the only people in the world who currently have centibillionaire status, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index."
![]() Drew Angerer/Getty 📺 Moving Midtown Brian Roberts shelves NBC Sky World News
Brian Roberts' plan to create an NBC-Sky global news channel is being shelved after Comcast told UK-based employees that it was no longer viable in light of the coronavirus pandemic, sources familiar with the matter tell us, confirming an FT report.
• "Executives ... told staff hired for NBC Sky World News that its U.S. parent company could no longer support the London-based project," FT's Alex Barker reports. Their proposal "will now go to consultation with staff, who ... will be able to suggest alternative options."
• The channel, which Comcast unveiled in January, was originally expected to launch this summer with 10 new bureaus and 100 new employees. Comcast hit pause on the project back in April, but to date it has hired more than 50 staffers.
The big picture: NBC Sky World News was an ambitious bid to take on CNN International and the BBC in the global news business, and would have brought Comcast's two big media brands — NBCUniversal and Sky — into closer alignment.
• Roberts was personally excited about the plan. Deborah Turness, the NBC News International President, had told Variety that her boss lamented the fact "that although he had America’s number-one news brand ... it wasn’t global."
What's next: It's entirely possible that Roberts will try to resuscitate NBC Sky World News down the line in a post-pandemic world. But it won't be happening anytime soon.
• Bonus: "NBC News and Noticias Telemundo are combining resources on an ongoing basis for reports about the Latino community that will be presented in Spanish and English," LAT's Stephen Battaglio reports.
Market Links
• Zhang Yiming is under attack in China (Information)
• Mark Zuckerberg removes trolls, fake accounts (NBC)
• Rupert Murdoch sees a bright spot in Dow Jones (NYT)
• Robert Thomson may sell News Corp's Storyful (WSJ)
• Evan Spiegel adds voter registration to Snap (Axios)
⚽ What's next: The weekend. Champions League soccer resumes today at 12 p.m. PT with Manchester City vs. Real Madrid (CBS Sports, TUDN) and Juventus vs. Olympique Lyonnais (Galavision).
• Tomorrow at 12 p.m. PT: Barcelona vs. Napoli (CBS Sports, TUDN) and Bayern Munich vs. Chelsea (Galavision).
See you Monday.
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