Of britains financial commitments, a guarantee of rights for e. U. Citizens in the u. K. , and the resolution of the border between Northern Ireland and the republic. The am very clear that up end of negotiations, we need to be clear not just about the brexit negotiation, how we withdraw, but what our future relationship will be. These negotiations are going to be tough. I want to ensure that we are free on a trade deal and our withdrawn arrangement so we know what both of those are when we leave the European Union. Yousef less than a week to go in the french president ial campaign. It Marine Le Pen appears to have taken a step back from her euro exit policy. There is no rush. She later told a newspaper that the euro is dead, but she wants to bang currencies. One for daily use by the population and one for international trade. The latest poll shows Emmanuel Macron supported by 59 of voters. The 10 trails with 41 . Lower Commodity Prices have helped push chinas official factory gauge lower in april, declining from a fiveyear high. From 51. 8ing pmi saws in march. That is amidst analysts expectations. The worlds secondlargest economy is poised to slow after unexpectedly picking up in the first three months of the year. 21st century fox teaming with blackstone to buy Tribune Media according to people familiar with the situation. This would rival a plan by sinclair broadcast group. The plan for an allcash bid is said to be funded by blackstone. Fox would contribute its tv station to the joint venture. We have some of these Asset Classes on the move off the back of the news of details of the Government Spending bill in the United States, a reminder that most of the european are shut for the main holiday. A fiftharyen trade up of 1 . Barrel. Per i am yousef gamal eldin. I will be back in half an hour. This is bloomberg. Caroline i am caroline hyde. This is the best of Bloomberg Technology, where we bring you all our top interviews from this week in tech. Coming up, the fcc chairman officially out with big plans to kill Net Neutrality as we know it. Ajit pai joins us for an extended interview. Plus, what a week for big tech earnings from alphabet, amazon, twitter, we will take into all the highlights. And a bloomberg scoop, dropbox hits a key milestone on its way to its ipo. Our exclusive with the ceo , drew houston ahead. , first to our lead. This week saw a showdown brewing in washington, cracking open the Net Neutrality debate. Federal Communications Chairman ajit pai unveiled his game plan for rolling back Net Neutrality rules at a speech wednesday in the nations capital. Passed in 2015 by a democratic majority fcc, the Net Neutrality rules aimed to prohibit Internet Service providers from favoring or discriminating against online applications, content, and services. Now, democratic senator Edward Markey from massachusetts responded to the chairmans pais appeals, saying, it makes no sense. We cannot keep the promise of Net Neutrality openness and freedom without the rules to ensure it. Chairman pai and the Trump Administration and the ceo should inspect a tsunami of resistance. Said the, they have rules as they stand have made a digital divide. We spoke to fcc chairman ajit pai from washington, d. C. Ajit this will be a political debate that will engage millions of people, but we are going to stay focused on the facts and the laws. The facts are americans by and large believe in an open internet, but they want to have an infrastructure investment. They want the next Generation Networks to be built out. And so i think what the fcc does , not need is heavyhanded regulation that saddle businesses with lots of rules that simply disincentive rises incentivize disincentivizes them from building those networks. That will be the course were charting henceforth. Caroline have you had commitments that if these rules are changed, they will invest . Im looking at the profits of at t, 14 billion. 8 billion if you are comcast, shares have risen since the original ruling of Net Neutrality. They dont seem to have really been hurt. Ajit if you look at the actual numbers with respect to investments, they are down 5. 6 for the top 12 broadband providers in this country. And that does not even include the smaller providers who are not included within that statistic. We have heard from a number of providers, cable, wireless, telephone and other providers who told us these title ii regulations, as they are called, are impeding them from executing on their business plans. They dont spend as much. They cant get as much financing. And as 22 isps told us, title ii hangs over our businesses like a black cloud. That is the kind of regulatory uncertainty and overreach that we want to remove. Because every american deserves better, faster, and cheaper internet, and i am committed to delivering it to them. Caroline so you take away some regulation and oversight. How can you therefore ensure the right rural areas are indeed provided for . Ajit two things, title ii takes us in the opposite direction and reduce competition and increase what is called digital redlining. So companies have more of an incentive to look at rural areas or lowincome urban areas and say, you know what, we are not going to get enough of the return on investment there, so lets not deploy. Secondly, we want to make sure everybody has Internet Access they need and want, so i have a very proactive, proconsumer agenda to promote Internet Access, especially for those on the wrong side of the digital divide. Caroline so you are taking some replacement regulation advice, you are looking for suggestions. What do you think will come to the fore when you ask for this sort of advice . Ajit that is precisely the reason why we started this conversation. As i said in my speech today, this is the beginning of the discussion, not the end, so we want to hear from the american public, what is the best way to preserve those core values of a free and open internet, of more competition, of greater investment in infrastructure . I think i am confident we will be able to find a way that will appeal to consumers in the time to come. Caroline you are talking about consumers, of course very worth , fighting for. You will hear their voices. Youve already heard the voices of perhaps smaller startups that might be affected by this. We have got 800 startups and investors led by y combinator, they are concerned about the rollback of Net Neutrality. You have also heard from the bigger players, the 40 proper top internet companies, voicing their discontent. The letter you received today from the 800 tech startups, say, rather than dismantling regulations that would allow the Startup Ecosystem to thrive, we urge you to focus instead on policies that would promote a stronger internet for everyone. How can you allay those sorts of fears . Ajit a free and open internet is what delivered unparalleled value for the american consumer. 20 years ago, who would have for seen that google, amazon, netflix would become household names not just here in the United States but around the world . They thrived because of the light touch regulatory approach that started in the Clinton Administration and proceeded through the bush and the first six years of the obama administration. That is precisely the kind of framework that i believe will promote startup entrepreneurship everywhere in this country Going Forward. And so i am committed to giving , them a chance to succeed, but title ii does not allow them or others to do that. Caroline then why are they so worried . Ajit a lot of people have stirred up a lot of hypothetical harms and hysteria based on what they think will happen. And if you looked at the fccs 2015 decision, you will look in vain to find any example of systemic market failure where Internet Service providers were acting to block access to lawful content, for example. And so, Going Forward, we wanted to take a factbased approach to figure out a way to preserve those core values, a free and open internet, allowing startups and entrepreneurs to thrive, and preserve investment in infrastructure and increased competition. Those are the kinds of things that will allow everyone in the internet economy to benefit. Caroline so thus far, the argument is more competition will basically promote the likes of at t and comcast to play by the rules and make it a fair and open internet for the content providers. Is there anyway you think this could be measured or should be measured . Are you going to look for any sort of oversight . I know that you dont want it to be heavyhanded, as you say. Ajit that is one of the reasons why we are going to be asking for public input on what the Regulatory Framework should be. We know that title ii is not the right answer, but as we will see, and i will be publicizing the entire text of my proposal tomorrow, we tee up a number of different ideas for how to do it. We ask the public, is there anything else we should be thinking about Going Forward . So i think there is a way to do it, and we will try to find the best way in the time to come. Caroline and therefore, when you go out there and start discussing, trying perhaps to bring some republicans as well as democrats into your line of thinking, what do you think will be the best way of getting certain democrats who are so against this on board or convinced . What is your key line of clarity, do you think . Because at the moment, as you say, you want to stick with the facts . Ajit look, we obviously are going to be doing more of a factbased approach than we did previously. But the bottom line is this, the arguments i am making today are precisely the arguments made by president clinton in the 1990s. The arguments that were made by clintons fcc chairman in the 1990s. The arguments that were made by Democratic Senators in the 1990s. This is not some radically political fringe argument i am trying to make. It is the light touch approach that served the United States well under democratic and republican administrations alike. And so i want to take the political heat out of this argument to the maximum extent possible. I understand it will be difficult to do, but at the end of the day, americans are best served with a light touch framework that focuses on the facts, adheres to the longstanding legal principles, and respects the basic principles of economics. The more heavily you regulate something, the less likely you are going to get more of it. Caroline now coming up, twitter , shares soared wednesday after the social network said user growth picked up in the First Quarter. We will dig into whether this growth will boost twitters bottom line, next. And a reminder that all episodes of Bloomberg Technology are now livestreaming on twitter. Check us out. It is at bloombergtechtv, weekdays 5 00 p. M. New york, 2 00 p. M. San francisco. This is bloomberg. Caroline twitter. It reported earnings this week. It finally seems to be addressing its biggest challenge attracting new users. The social network reported that average monthly active users rose 6 in the First Quarter compared to the same period last year. Now, this growth comes as twitter posted a year over year drop though in quarterly revenue. We held a deep dive and were joined by the Forrester Research director Melissa Parrish in new york and bloomberg editoratlarge cory johnson. Melissa to some degree, sure, it is a bit of a trump effect, but i would say it is more about seeing the name twitter in the press more than it is growth being directly attributed to the president. I think the name has been associated with Current Events more and more and more, especially in this last quarter, so sure, we can attribute some of it to the political events and current live events taking place and the conversation around to that. Caroline cory, whether it is trump or not, does this lure advertisers to start spending a little bit more with twitter . Cory we know the answer to that. The answer is no. I mean, user growth, great. 4 sequentially yearoveryear. The user growth has been pathetic at twitter and has been for quite a long time. If you look all the way back to the ipo, you see 27 user growth over 3. 5 years. That is not a big growth business. But you would think, well, at least they could pull money out of users . Yes, 2. 8 growth is better than it has been. A lot better than its been. It still stinks. It is still on a small base compared to facebook, compared even to instagram, we saw fresh numbers from today. So those user numbers are weak. But when you add to that their ability to monetize if users are not growing much, with all the data they said they would get about users and find out how to pull numbers out of that, what is the question . What is the revenue base and how fast is the revenue base growing . And the revenues were weak, down on a yearoveryear basis for the first time ever. But more importantly, the value of a twitter user is going down a lot. How much they can charge for each user is getting worse and worse. They cant blame it on international. International is still about 79 of the users. The advertisers are just not willing to pay to reach twitter users, and thats a real problem for this business. Caroline melissa, to corys point, there was a great quote in the bloomberg story saying, coming from wedbush securities, saying when facebook grows at four twitters a year, that tells you there is something really wrong here. Is there something really wrong, or are we just seeing a bit of changing of how they will be charging, and will revenue eventually pick up . Melissa i do think revenue will eventually pick up. But look, i am a marketing analyst rather than an analyst for investors or financial analyst. I think when i look at it, it is true. Revenues have been declining and that is a scary story to hear. But from my perspective, they are doing things that will be more appealing, make them more appealing, will make them more appealing to advertisers in the future. They are doing some hygiene. They are getting rid of some ad products that they know dont work. They are focusing on cleaning up some measurements. These are small things, admittedly, but they are things that look like they are going in the right direction. Are substantial changes really needed . Yes, i think so, both in terms of the core product and the ad products. I think we need to see some real innovation rather than some of the incremental changes, but from my perspective, the moves that they are putting in place should make them a bit more palatable to advertisers in the future, yes. Caroline that was Forrester Research director melissa parish and bloomberg editoratlarge cory johnson. And alphabet also out with earnings this week. They came on the heels of alphabets stock seeing record highs in trading. We dug into the report with mike bailey, the director of research. Take a listen. Mike we were surprised the stock is not up more. The earnings beat by about 4 , the stock is up 4 , so investors are treating this as the same company it was before the earnings came out. I think that in our minds, this is a higherquality company, and investors are not showing that in terms of rising sentiment. We are still as confident in alphabet as we were before the earnings came out. Caroline so mike is confident. Harry, i want to get your point of view here because i have been speaking to an executive at alphabet, and asking, look, what about the youtube controversy surrounding all of this, the backlash from advertisers, the slowing down of wanting to link yourself with certain videos . And they said, actually, look this would be a modest effect in , the mediumterm. In the longer term, we might actually see improvement as they change the business. But are there worries around this, harry . Harry in q1, it would not affect the business. The ad boycott only happened in the last month or so. And it really started in u. K. , and it is spreading to the u. S. If you look at youtube as an entity, most of its revenue is generated from the small to mid tale of advertisers, and it is the one stop shop for them. For the largest brand advertisers who really want to be in brandsafe places, youtube is a scary place to run, and it really was not built for those largescale brand advertisers. Now, youtube was sort of caught proverbially with its pants down where there is now a lot of , press around great advertising and great advertisers running against hate speech and other problematic content. But what you are seeing is that google is now having to approach this problem and deal with it, and i think there is a little bit of chinks in the armor of youtube Going Forward trying to deal with this. Caroline chinks in the armor, mike. You are not worried about youtube at all . Mike we are not too concerned. You know as i was actually , waiting to come on here, and i was watching you earlier with the commentary that google only expects a modest impact here. I think that is very telling. You know i think this was a , major blow to potential sentiment, a blow to the sort of the pr for google. And here they are, and it is only going to have a modest impact. So i think in our minds, they have done a good job of sort of identifying the problems and working to correct it. And our sense is google is seeing basically everything from the inside, not seeing a major major impact yet, so i would typically go with that commentary in terms of the forward impact. Caroline harry, if we are moving away