Morning Brew Daily
Meta Heading to Antitrust Trial Over IG, Whatsapp & Disney+ Rallies With 4.4M Subs
Fri, 15 Nov 2024
Episode 454: Whoa! It’s Ann and Kyle! They talk about Meta’s antitrust court case where the FTC wants to break up Instagram and WhatsApp from the social media giant. Then, Disney is the Stock of the Week after reporting strong earnings to its streaming business with the help from its parks and studio divisions. Is Bob Iger the GOAT? Meanwhile, electric vehicles are the Dog(s) of the Week after the Trump administration aims to kill Biden’s EV tax credit. Plus, the satirical news publication The Onion wins the bid to buy the controversial InfoWars. Lastly, the biggest headlines to get into your weekend. Visit https://www.sage.com/morningbrew for more! Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Hear more business news from Ann on After Earnings, wherever you get your podcasts Hear Kyle's work life debates on Per My Last Email, wherever you get your podcasts Get your Morning Brew Book of Crosswords HERE: shop.morningbrew.com Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Welcome Ann Berry! 03:00 - Meta Antitrust Trial 07:45 - Disney Streaming Up 12:30 - EVs Tax Credit Over? 18:30 - The Onion Takes Over Infowars 23:00 - Headlines To Know Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the Meta antitrust trial about?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Kyle Heggie. And I'm Anne Barry. Today, Meta is heading to an antitrust trial. What that means for their ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.
And Disney's latest earnings have investors excited. Have they finally gotten their streaming legs under them? It's Friday, November 15th.
Let's ride. So it is Friday, and we actually are making Morning Brew Daily history because there's no Neil. There's no Toby. They're slacking off. They're out somewhere having fun. It's me and Ann Barry locked in the studio. And Ann, the audience might know me a little bit, but they may not know you for Morning Brew Daily show. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Thanks, Carl. First of all, I miss Neil and Toby. So shout out to them. Who doesn't? So I am really involved here in brew markets where we are focusing on the hottest stories coming out of public stocks. And we do a ton of great work. We have a newsletter. We are building on social. Come find us on Instagram. Come find us on X. And there's a lot more to come. So working hard.
Chapter 2: How is Disney performing in the streaming market?
Also host, just like you do, another podcast here at Morning Brew. It's called After Earnings. That's where we have in-depth conversations with public company executives that retail investors often don't get to have. So we're trying to unpack that for folks.
I love it. Well, Anne is probably the smartest person at Morning Brew. So this is going to be a really fun conversation. We actually are talking a lot about earnings today. So you're going to be right in your sweet spot. And I have to compete with this accent. So I'm a little nervous, but let's get into it.
Yes, but before we get to all that, let's hear a word from our sponsor, Sage. Not the herb, but a tool that saves finance professionals a lot of time and money. Life as a CFO is stressful, and I was talking to our CFO here at The Brew, and he said that a lot of times CFOs call themselves chief figure outers.
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Chapter 3: What changes are coming for electric vehicle tax credits?
So if you want to do a little less searching on the ground for pieces and a little less guessing where those pieces go, check out Sage.
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We are about to find out who is stronger, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission or Mark Zuckerberg in his wife guy era. Now, why is that? It's because Meta must face trial over claims it overpaid in its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competitors. This strategy is often called buy or bury, no relation to the co-host and Barry, where a company basically says,
Now, for reference, Meta bought Instagram in 2012 for a cool $1 billion, and they bought WhatsApp in 2014 for 19 times that, for $19 billion. Now, the history of the case, the FTC and 48 states' attorneys general's. sued Meta in 2020 during the first Trump administration.
And the lawsuit was then refined under the Biden admin, which kind of highlights this seemingly bipartisan effort to curtail Meta's influence and more broadly, Big Tech's perceived monopolistic power. Meta had urged the judge to dismiss this entire case, saying it depended on an overly narrow view of social media markets.
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Chapter 4: What does The Onion's acquisition of InfoWars mean?
It didn't take into account competition from ByteDance's TikTok, Google's YouTube, X, and Microsoft's LinkedIn. Trump's return to the White House in January, it might bring some changes to this antitrust approach that the U.S. has had, although it's hard to predict how exactly his admin will act in practice. And do you think we have a serious threat to Meta here?
I don't think we do, actually. And for a couple of reasons. First of all, can we just touch on something you said right at the top there? Yes. You said the fact that Meta is now defending its purchasing overpaid. If you could buy Instagram for a billion dollars now.
It would be a great deal.
Amazing deal. Incredible deal. Deal of the century. So I thought that was just interesting to show how times have changed. So back to your question, which is... Is this going to happen? Look, we are looking at with the change administration, a change more likely than not in leadership of the Federal Trade Commission. You've had Lina Khan there. Technically, her term expired in September.
And so the question is, is she going to be reappointed? Probably not. So who is it going to be that's going to get appointed by the Senate? We don't know. And until we know, I don't think we know what's going to happen with this case. Just one person's view.
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Chapter 5: What are the key weekend headlines to know?
Yeah, and it's been interesting. I think Facebook or Meta at one time had maybe bipartisan zeal to attack it, maybe for different reasons. Now it seems like Zuckerberg and maybe the company are pivoting their PR. They're showing a different side of them. I'm not sure actually if there is. Still the same bipartisan anger towards Meta as there maybe used to be.
But also just against the backdrop, a lot of the big tech companies are getting sued. I think Amazon is facing an antitrust lawsuit. Apple is facing an antitrust lawsuit. Google is facing two antitrust lawsuits. So until we see what changes are going to happen in the administration, it might still be hunting season for big tech.
It's also interesting to see how with time elapsing, the definitions of the markets that these big tech companies are defending changes. So you just said it right. When this deal was done in the 2012 era, Meta was going after buying social assets. That was before TikTok exploded. It was before X exploded. It was before YouTube exploded.
So the argument today about who are we competing against, do we dominate the social market, different argument today than then. Same thing, let's take Google. Antitrust going after them because of search. I mean, do you use Google for search or are you using ChatGPT?
I mean, ChatGPT is definitely increasing. Plexity is big in the search space. I think your point about these markets change or consumer behavior changes. Maybe we don't even need to break them up. This is just a distraction allowing a little bit of sunlight in the market for these new emerging companies to take some share from these big tech companies. I will say,
I think Zuck, I mean, I don't think he wants his company to be broken up. But either way, he is loving life right now. He recorded a song with T-Pain to show how much he loved his wife because he met her. And they would play the song Get Low. So this guy's having a good time no matter what.
Also, how sweet is he with his wife? Didn't he get a sculpture commission? Oh, so sweet.
He's in his wife, Gaiera. I love it.
I also, and if somebody wanted to make a sculpture of me in a T-pain rendition, I would find that.
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