Brussels, dawn. Legal briefs drawn

(With apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda, a spoof of Hamilton ‘s “Your Obedient Servant” imagining a conversation between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. Best read while playing the original song.)

How does Vestager, an arrogant economist, liberal
trilingual, commissioner
Somehow endorse telecom consolidation, her enemy
A field she’s opposed since her hiring
Just to keep me from acquiring?
I wanna be in the Zoom where it happens
The Zoom where it happens
The Zoom where it happens
You’ve kept me from the Zoom where it happens
For the last time

Dear Margrethe:

I am slow to smile
But I can code a line
As I reckon with the probes
Of your agency on mine
I look back on where I bombed
And in every place I checked
The only common thread has been your disrespect
Now you call me “gatekeeper”
Say I “put democracy at risk”
If you’ve got something to say, post online don’t send a floppy disk

I have the honor to be your obedient servant
M dot Zuck

Mr. CEO:

I am not the reason no one trusts your platform
No one knows what to believe
I will not equivocate in my investigation
I have always been happy to aggrieve
Even if I taxed what you think I taxed
You would need to cite a more specific instance
Here’s an itemized list of thirty tweets of your president

Sweet Jesus

Hey, I have not been fallin short
I am just a gal seeking to purport in the public court
Tryna do my best for our European Union, I don’t wanna cite
But I won’t back down from shining the light

I have the honor to be your obedient servant
M dot Vest

Careful how you go astray, good gal
Looking for me to pay, good gal
Answer for the TikToks I post in your feed or bombs away, good gal

Zuck your frown is Instagramable
I stand by what I stated indefatigable
You acquire only for yourself to beat competition
I can’t apologize because it’s my mission

Then stand, Margrethe
Brussels, dawn
legal briefs drawn

You’re on

I have the honor to be your obedient servant

A dot Vest

A dot Zuck

Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
[email protected]

This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Jonathan Vanian.Check out Eye on A.I., the A.I. Newsletter he writes weekly.

NEWSWORTHY

Driving off a cliff. Lyft’s  sales dropped 61% year-over-year to $339 million in its latest quarter, underscoring how the pandemic has devastated the online ride-hailing company’s business, CNBC reported. John Zimmer, the company’s president and co-founder, also said that Lyft may suspend ride-hailing services in California due to a ruling earlier this week that would require Lyft and Uber to convert its independent contractor drivers into full-time employees.

Housing losses. Airbnb’s sales fell 67% year-over-year to $335 million in its latest quarter also due to COVID-19, Bloomberg News reported citing unnamed sources. Still, the home-sharing service is aiming to go public by the end of the year, the report said. From the article: Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky had originally intended to initiate the listing process with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31. That was before Covid-19 closed borders, ground flights to a halt and left the company with more than $1 billion in cancellations.

The chips are falling. Cisco Systems  said its sales declined 9% year-over-year to $12.15 billion in its latest quarter and that its CFO Kelly Kramer is retiring, MarketWatch reported. Cisco’s shrinking sales and weak guidance that missed analyst projections sent the company’s shares plummeting over 6% in after-hours trading. The networking giant will institute a $1 billion cost-reduction plan that will include “voluntary retirement offerings for Cisco employees,” the report said.

It won’t hurt us. Tencent Holdings  said its sales grew 29% year-over-year to 114.9 billion yuan, or $16.5 billion, in its latest quarter, and asserted that the Chinese tech giant should be relatively unscathed financially despite any potential restrictions imposed by President Donald Trump on its WeChat app, The Wall Street Journal reported. From the article: The company generates less than 2% of revenue from the U.S., said Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell. The executive order “clearly covers the U.S. Jurisdiction, and consequently, we don’t see any impact on companies advertising on our platforms in China,” he said.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

It’s horrible. Not only does Reels fail in every way as a TikTok clone, but it’s confusing, frustrating and impossible to navigate. It’s like Instagram took all the current functionality on Stories (a tool to publish montages of photos and videos with added filters, text and music clips), and jammed them into a separate, new complicated interface for no reason. To me, it’s really unclear whom this feature is for.

Taylor Lorenz of The New York Times  shares her thoughts on Instagram’s new Reels service, which is very similar to the popular TikTok app.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Grab CEO Anthony Tan: What Southeast Asia is teaching us about a post-pandemic world—Anthony Tan

Another Airbnb house party ends in a shooting. What the company plans to do about it—Danielle Abril

Kamala Harris could be the best thing that ever happened to Big Tech—Jeff John Roberts

Here’s how much Microsoft’s new folding Duo phone costs and how to order it—Aaron Pressman

Zoom and face masks are giving cosmetics brands an eye lift—Rachel King

(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)

BEFORE YOU GO

Sarah Cooper made a name for herself by turning President Donald Trump’s many bizarre press comments and speeches into zany TikTok videos that have captivated the nation. Now, Cooper’s rising popularity has caught the attention of Netflix, which has rewarded her with her own comedy special, Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine. The new special will be directed by Natasha Lyonne and executive produced by Maya Rudolph, People reported.