The Federal Communications Commission just killed net neutrality. The agency voted to repeal regulations that make the future of the internet and the way consumers use it a lot murkier. Andrew McCollum, CEO of Philo, an internet television company that recently introduced a streaming live TV service, joined us to share why he is worried about a world without net neutrality.
The FCC voted to reverse a 2015 decision by the Obama Administration that aimed to protect Americans on the internet. McCollum is concerned that without the regulations, services like Philo become prone to "unfair prioritization by internet providers." It's not only a loss for companies. He believes strong net neutrality rules also protect the consumer.
As a co-founder of Facebook, McCollum says he got a glimpse of how difficult it would be for companies to innovate in a world without protections for net neutrality. He shares that colleges that did not like Facebook would block students from gaining access because they acted as the internet providers. With such limitations, he questions whether an era of internet innovation is coming to a halt.
The gaming industry has been under the spotlight so far this year following some big mergers and acquisitions. This week featured earnings of three major gaming companies, but also Meta and for the latter, things are not doing too hot. Joining Cheddar News to break it all down was Kenny Rosenblatt, President and Co-Founder of Arkadium.
While it was a volatile week in tech as Meta experienced the biggest one-day drop in the history of the U.S. stock market, industry giant Amazon reported 40 percent growth — largely on the strength of the cloud. Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to break down how the e-commerce company stock managed to pop despite headwinds against its core retail business. "It's all about cloud because of sum of the parts, you could argue, amazon could be $3,500/$4,000 stock just based on cloud," he said. Ives also addressed the apparent the differing impact of Apple iOS changes on Facebook and Snapchat.
Following Ford's earnings miss, the stock price dropped despite a bullish outlook from the auto giant. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with ISeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to break down why investors may not be sold on the carmaker because of the ongoing factor of supply constraints. "The product is not an issue. There's really good product coming from them, including the electric vehicle side, and the demand is not an issue. There's plenty of demand, but nobody really has a solid grasp on when we're going to get past the supply chain issue," said Brauer.
Image-sharing app Pinterest reported big beats on its Q4 earnings for the top and bottom lines. The social platform surprised investors after seeing a decline in users while earnings and revenue were much higher than expected.
