Fourth quarter bottomline estimates. We will break down the results ahead of disneys highly anticipated streaming platform debut. But first, to our top stories. Facebook continues to struggle to regain trust over how it handles user data. But that has become more complicated. There has now been a leak of internal documents suggesting business considerations outweighed those privacy concerns. It is something that 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, as well as ben brody in washington. Sarah, let me start with you. You covered this story. What do we know from these leaked documents so far . 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. Internally, they are saying we need to cut off any apps that could potentially be competitive from our services, advertising, from our 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. So, its really interesting looking at these discussions. One thing that really stands out in these documents is how competitive they thought messaging apps were. They cut off we chat, line, and three asian messaging apps from using facebook for advertising. This is just a year before they ended up acquiring whatsapp for 19 billion. It ended up being 22 billion. That is something regulars will be extremely interested in when they develop the antitrust probe. Taylor and to get that regulator perspective, ben, walk me through how this further complicates facebooks relationship with washington, d. C. Ben i think sarah is exactly right. Those sorts of considerations, how did you view messaging apps . How are you evaluating them . Those are the things the ftc is going to be looking at. We should have a caveat here. You are not obligated to deal with your competitors. If federal and state and antitrust enforcers are not finding that this company was dominant and was abusing that dominance to perpetuate a monopoly, then theres no case here. But i think that they are going to be looking at these things. I always say, 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 in fact leaked out previously before, they ask the same questions we are asking right now. They are going to want to take a look at those. 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. We saw in california yesterday, they are actually going to court over document protection. Does that create the situation here possibly . Taylor ben, remind us again about that burden of proof. You could say, 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 . Ben right, exactly. Spinning is not against the law. The federal antitrust regulators , the federal trade commission, is going to be doing a rigorous economic analysis. What happens when facebook makes a particular business decision . Where do consumers go . What do competitors do . How much of the market share do they actually have . They are looking at all these things before they even get into a theory of harm, a case about a particular violation. It will take a long time for them to build those things up. They are going to interview third parties, they are going to look at economic models, they and look at complainers 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 really tantalizing question for them to look into now. Taylor sarah, this is further complicated by the fact that an anticompetitive, antitrust issue, but they are publicly touting data privacy. This is an antitrust issue, not data privacy, correct . Sarah its a little bit of both. As you know, when facebook cut off Developers Access to data from users friends, they did it only for certain developers. They white listed other developers. Thats one of the problems from problems at the heart of this lawsuit that got leaked. When we see instances like cambridge analytica, a direct result of these relationships so freely handing out that developer data, how they handled it, when, why is a huge issue with regards to the privacy front. So they dont do that anymore. But as facebook gets hammered on privacy issues, they are going to become more anticompetitive as a result. They are going to 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, it is Bloomberg Technologys sarah frier and then brody. And ben brody. Thank you. Expedia shares plummeting thursday after they close about 27 . They saw a decline in Revenue Growth in the Third Quarter. Verbo is the fastestgrowing category of the travel company and competing with airbnb and booking. Com. In an exclusive interview with the ceo, he discusses his outlook and strategy with bloombergs guy johnson and vonnie quinn. Take a listen. We did have a difficult quarter. That said, theres a lot of great things happening around expedia group. We had a lot of highlights. Volume from room nights are up 11 . We continue to see great strength on our Expedia Partner Solutions business. We continue to make great efforts on our customer centricity efforts. We did see direct channels up more than the overall business. And weve got a long way ahead of us. Guy lets talk about whats happening with the shortterm rental business. There seems to be a concern that you are struggling to make your message heard on google. How do you reduce reliance on Google Search . Guest i think overall, whether its our alternative accommodations in business or vrbo 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, weve got incredible loyalty programs. Hotels. Com, for example, just hit their 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. Vrbo itself, the alternative accommodations brand, has relaunched its new brand. They are looking at launching that in other regions around the world. Ultimately, we have seen good strength there. The vrbo brand itself has been up nicely doubledigit. We will continue to move along with our multichannel strategy that really isnt a strategy that is solely dependent on google. Vonnie how much more are you going to spend on marketing with vrbo . It is taking time to have this rebranding accepted and known by the public, particularly now with this new challenge of google putting hotel finder above the likes of vrbo in search. That makes it much more difficult for you. I think investors want to know when that will happen, how much it will cost for that to happen . Guest we will do it in a balanced way. We have that and digital television. We are seeing good results. As we roll out internationally, it in acontinue to do balanced way. Our alternative accommodation strategy isnt just about vrbo. We brought our partner facing teams closer together. We are now just 650 alternative accommodations offerings from on our corele brands. International expansion for us will be a real combined effort. Taylor that was expedia ceo mark okerstrom. Game makers activision, blizzard, and taketwo reporting earnings thursday. Activision reported Third Quarter earnings. The world of warcraft classic 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 in its most recent quarter. That increase was fueled by recent releases of borderlands three from Gearbox Software and publisher 2k, launched in september, and nba 2k20, the bestselling game in september. The maker of grand theft auto also raised its outlook for 2020. And coming up, the future of 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. She spoke to bloombergs max chafkin at the bloomberg year ahead event in new york. Take a listen. Guest whats really going to 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 prevention in meaningful ways with collaboration to Health Collaboration with Health Care Providers so the we can 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 focused in this industry. Max 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. Why dont you talk a little bit about that decision. Guest 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. As i moved to that action, i want to know that doctor can understand that and take action. Lastly, i want a comprehensive screening. For us, thats Affordable Access to nextgeneration sequencing technology, which provides a much more comprehensive understanding of genetic risks. Max so what does that mean . The whole genome . Put that into lehman into layman guest the original technology that was used for the First Company that entered was a technology 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 snips of it, but the whole gene really transforms our ability to include more people and understand many more risks. For us, thats why we chose a subscription model. It really aligns our interest with consumers. Ancestry health plus integrates a comprehensive Health History understanding with a comprehensive understanding of your genetic risks, looking at genes from nextgeneration sequencing, and there are 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. Now joining us is bloombergs max chafkin. He also had an interesting story about the u. S. Cto and controversial comments he made in lisbon. What did we learn today from what that cto said . Max he became cto in august. This is his first speech outside the u. S. It was in portugal at the web summit. The audience here was sort of interesting. A couple of things. Number one, he basically reamed china and huawei. He urged europeans to basically stay as far away from chinese Infrastructure Partners as possible, which is something the u. S. Has been saying for a long time. But its interesting he also met with someone earlier in the day and delivered the same message in person. You are seeing the Trump Administration reiterating the statement even as they are coming to some sort of trade deal with the Chinese Government. The thing that was a little more interesting to me is that he also kind of picked up on something Mark Zuckerberg brought up a couple weeks ago. He said, europe, 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 is going to create an opening for companies that maybe you are not going to like. You dont like facebook, but how would you like it if you had to deal with another company . He delivered this message to vestiger. 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 with chinese data privacy, how we are able to censor free speech, but we are also planed playing by their rules and they can turn over data to their government at any notice. How much of that as well is a bigger issue . Max 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. Despite the fact that the most theificant competitor in conversation might be jack dorsey. The real business competitor here for facebook is tiktok. Sheryl sandberg is right. Some of these critics are right haveat tiktok that there been reports there have been some reports of censorship, of basically a different point of view towards free speech. I think there is something to this critique of, you know, you manageske how facebook content, but you are really not going to like how a company closely aligned with the Chinese Government manages conte nt. Something else tangential to this is the political at issue. Is the political issue. Facebook said we are ok with basically misinformation in political ads. A lot of people, including some facebook employees, have pushed back strongly. You might see some adjustments. They are probably not going to change the policy overall, but there has been a willingness to negotiate on targeting. This book is not going to fact check political ads, but we will change the rule on who you can target that adds to or something along those lines. Taylor two great interviews and stories today. That was bloombergs max chafkin. Thank you for joining us. Coming up, a saudi spy plot. It 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. Check us out technology. And be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. This is bloomberg. Taylor the u. S. Government has charged two former twitter employees with helping the dissidents inon riyadh. Two of them are not arrested in the u. S. They wired hundreds of thousands of dollars. Bloomberg technologys bloomberg Bloomberg Technology skirt wagner joins us with the details. Give us the backstory on this. Kurt 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 in this case could have been critical of the saudi royal family. Taylor how much of this is two twitter employees going rogue versus twitter not doing enough and being implicated in all of this and eventually may be the ones held liable . Kurt sure. This was a few years ago and we are just learning about it now. It is a safe, question to ask our a to ask or 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 maybe 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 ir personal life in terms of the relationships they have. Certainly it is an expectation that twitter should be able to say we know who has access to what information. It is a little bit tougher to know that they are necessarily going to take that information and treat it 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 better job . Why arent these Tech Companies doing a better job of verifying what employees have access to that key special data, and why isnt it only a select few . Kurt thats a great question and one we have been asking over the last couple years. Facebook in particular has dealt with a lot of data privacy issues. Part of the thing is when the Companies First started, they were growing at such a rate that the idea of protecting and locking down that information was a secondary concern to building the products and adding more users. The idea that these places were open, open workforces, people can go in and have access to build the necessary features was just part of working there. Only recently did we realize it might be a problem. Taylor almost coincidentally, evercore analysts came out and cut the stock in part because they have underinvested in r d. This highlights that fact, and now we are seeing a play out. Seeing it play out. Is that part of the story as well . Kurt 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 a little bit coincidental perhaps that the news of these rogue employees comes out at the same time. It is 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 am not sure if they are totally related, but i do think a lot of compa