MSFT - Microsoft Corporation
| Previous Close | 185.35 |
| Open | 185.60 |
| Bid | 0.00 x 3100 |
| Ask | 0.00 x 900 |
| Day's Range | 185.50 - 187.70 |
| 52 Week Range | 106.29 - 190.70 |
| Volume | 27,853,113 |
| Avg. Volume | 25,516,396 |
| Market Cap | 1.439T |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 1.15 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 32.61 |
| EPS (TTM) | 5.74 |
| Earnings Date | Apr. 21, 2020 - Apr. 26, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 2.04 (1.09%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | Feb. 18, 2020 |
| 1y Target Est | 194.19 |
Reuters VideosJudge halts Pentagon deal with Microsoft
Did a personal vendetta between the President of the United States and the world’s richest man stop Amazon from winning a major Pentagon contract? A U.S. judge signaled, Thursday, she needs more time to decide. The judge granted Amazon’s request to temporarily halt the Pentagon from moving forward with a multi-billion dollar computing deal with Amazon rival, Microsoft. That’s after Amazon filed a lawsuit - claiming it lost the massive contract due to improper pressure from President Trump… who has repeatedly criticized the company AND founder Jeff Bezos… who also owns the Washington Post. (SOUNDBITE) U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, SAYING: "Amazon Washington Post just put out a fake article. (flash) The fake news, right. The fake news." Thursday’s ruling is a win for Amazon… although it does not indicate whether the company will ultimately get the court to reverse the Pentagon’s decision. Defense Secretary Mark Esper previously denied there was bias in the decision-making. Earlier this week, Amazon said it was seeking to depose Trump and Esper in its lawsuit. The cloud computing deal was set to begin on Friday. Microsoft said in a statement it was disappointed by the delay, but said it had confidence the Defense Department’s had made its choice fairly.
- Yahoo Finance
The 10 richest Americans are just beginning to take sides in the 2020 presidential race
The ten richest Americans have a combined wealth of well over half a trillion dollars. And we might only be beginning to feel the influence of all that buying power in the 2020 campaign.
- Bloomberg
Microsoft Takes Aim at Election Credibility With Wisconsin Software Test
(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. tested for the first time in a live election security software that executives say will help restore the trust of voters shaken by claims of fraud, hacking and disinformation in the 2016 election.The company piloted its solution to verify results, a system called ElectionGuard, with voters in Fulton, Wisconsin, who chose candidates Tuesday for state Supreme Court. The process aims to marry existing voting systems with advanced encryption and components of the Xbox game player to spit out data ensuring that ballots are counted.Research indicates “people don’t really trust the outcome of elections,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security & trust, said last week while previewing the ElectionGuard test. “When we saw the Russians attacking democracy through trying to influence elections around the world, not just in the U.S., we concluded this was a step we needed to take.“The Seattle-based software giant and local election officials expected about 500 voters in Fulton -- population 3,200 -- to cast ballots and test the system, which was not used to document official results. The system appeared to be operating glitch-free as polls approached the final hour of voting.Microsoft’s tool is one of many proposals to incorporate technology into American elections. From apps to tabulate caucus results to cloud-based voting platforms, election administrators are embracing 2020 as the year of testing novel technology.Proponents say gadgetry can improve accessibility, efficiency and the accuracy of election results, particularly strengthening the credibility of close races. Critics contend that devices connected to the internet can be hacked and used to attack that very credibility.This is where Microsoft said it has found a niche: hacking ElectionGuard wouldn’t accomplish anything, Burt said, because the tool doesn’t individually match a voter with the choices made, it just confirms that the voter’s ballot was tallied.Wisconsin’s election administrators contend tools like ElectionGuard are critical to reinvigorating citizen confidence because of the state’s complex voting systems. Wisconsin hosts about 1,850 autonomous voting jurisdictions, which all select their own voting equipment.The test of Microsoft’s system on Tuesday and the verification aspect is an “important step in involving the voters in that conversation,” said Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.While Fulton voters found it easy to use, they weren’t sure what problem it solved.“It’s a little bit different and I’m not sure everybody would be receptive to it” across the state, said Connie Zimmerman who has served as town clerk since 2006.While Burt is hopeful that ElectionGuard will be used widely by the 2022 mid-term elections, federal regulations stand in his way. The complex process of certifying voting systems has been under review since before the 2016 election. Without resolution, adoption could be difficult.Burt said Microsoft has been approached by overseas partners seeking to adopt the technology. By making the system open-source and free, election administrators outside the U.S. may be the first to push the technology beyond its initial pilot phase, he said.(Updates with comments about system in the 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Kim Chipman in Chicago at kchipman@bloomberg.net;Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Martin at amartin146@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Peter BlumbergFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Edison, Morse ... Watson? AI Poses Test of Who’s an Inventor
(Bloomberg) -- Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games.But are they inventors?Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who -- if anyone -- owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what’s eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries.“There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs,” said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept.”U.S. law says only humans can obtain patents, Iancu said. That’s why the patent office has been collecting comments on how to deal with inventions created through artificial intelligence and is expected to release a policy paper this year. Likewise, the World Intellectual Property Office, an agency within the United Nations, along with patent and copyright agencies around the world are also trying to figure out whether current laws or practices need to be revised for AI inventions.The debate comes as some of the largest global technology companies look to monetize massive investments in AI. Google’s chief executive officer, Sundar Pichai, has described AI as “more profound than fire or electricity.” Microsoft Corp. has invested $1 billion in the research company Open AI. Both companies have thousands of employees and researchers pushing to advance the state of the art and move AI innovations into products.International Business Machines Corp.’s supercomputer Watson is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a research lab to develop new applications of AI in different industries, and some of China’s biggest companies are giving American companies a run for their money in the field.The European Patent Office last month rejected applications by the owner of an AI “creativity machine” named Dabus, saying that there is a “clear legislative understanding that the inventor is a natural person.” In December, the U.K. Intellectual Property Office turned down similar petitions, noting AI was never contemplated when the law was written.“Increasingly, Fortune 100 companies have AI doing more and more autonomously and they’re not sure if they can find someone who would qualify as an inventor,” said Ryan Abbott, a law professor at the University of Surrey in England. “If you can’t get protection, people may not want to use AI to do these things.”Abbott and Stephen Thaler, founder of St. Louis-based Imagination Engines Inc., filed patent applications in numerous countries for a food container and a “device for attracting enhanced attention,” listing Thaler’s machine Dabus as the inventor.The goal, Abbott said, was to force patent offices to confront the issue. He advocates listing the computer that did the work as the inventor, with the business that owns the machine also owning any patent. It would ensure that companies can get a return on their investment, and maintain a level of honesty about whether it’s a machine or a human that’s doing the work, he said.Businesses “don’t really care who’s listed as an inventor but they do care if they can get a patent,” Abbott said. “We really didn’t design the law with this in mind, so what do we want to do about it?”Still, to many AI experts and researchers, the field is nowhere near advanced enough to consider the idea of an algorithm as an inventor.‘Just Computer Tools’“Listing an AI system as a co-inventor seems like a gimmick rather than a requirement,” said Oren Etzioni, head of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle. “We often use computers as critical tools in generating patentable technology, but we don’t list our tools as co-inventors. AI systems don’t have intellectual property rights -- they are just computer tools.”The current state of the art in AI should put this question off for a long time, said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, who suggested the debate might be more appropriate in a “century or two.” Researchers are “very far from artificial general intelligence like ‘The Terminator’.”It’s not just who’s listed as the inventor that is flummoxing patent agencies.Software thus far can’t follow the scientific method -- independently developing a hypothesis and then conducting tests to prove or disprove it. Instead, AI is more often used for “brute force,” where it would simply “churn through a bunch of possibilities and see what works,” said Dana Rao, general counsel for Adobe Inc.Human v. Machine“The question is not ‘Can a machine be an inventor?’ it’s ‘Can a machine invent?”’ Rao said. “It can’t in the traditional way we view invention.”A patent is awarded to something that is “new, useful and non-obvious.” Often, that means figuring out what a person with “ordinary skill” in the field would understand to be new -- for instance, a knowledgeable laboratory researcher. That analysis gets skewed when courts and patent offices have to compare the work of a software program that can analyze an exponentially greater number of options than even a large team of human researchers.“The bar is changing when you use AI,” said Kate Gaudry, a patent lawyer with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Washington. “However this is decided, we have to be consistent.”Iancu likened it to debates a century ago over awarding copyrights to photographs taken with a camera.“Somebody must have created the machine, somebody must have trained the machine and somebody must have pushed the ‘on’ button,” he said. “Do we think those activities are enough to count as human contributions to the invention process? If yes, the current law is enough.”Still, Rao said, there needs to be some way to help companies using AI to protect their ideas. That’s particularly true for copyrights on photographs created through a type of machine learning systems known as Generative Adversarial Networks.“If I want to create images to sell them, there needs to be ways of determining ownership,” Rao said.Abbott said one option would be similar to U.K. law where computer-generated artistic works are given a shorter copyright term than those created by a human. The U.S. requires copyright owners to be human, and famously denied a registration request on behalf a macaque monkey that had taken a “selfie” with a British nature photographer’s camera.The evolution of machine learning and neural networks means that, at some point, the role of humans in certain types of innovation will decrease. In those cases, who will own the inventions is a question that’s critical to companies using AI to develop new products.Iancu said he sees AI as full of promise, and notes that agencies have had to address such weighty questions before, such as genetically modified animals created in a lab, complex mathematics use for cryptography and synthetic DNA.“It’s one of these things where hopefully, the various jurisdictions around the world can discuss these issues before it’s too late, before we have to play catch up,” Iancu said.(Updates with copyright issues in fourth paragraph from the bottom.)To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net;Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, ;Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Top Stock Picks for Week of February 17, 2020
A Good Value Stock and a Company with Good Momentum.
- Bloomberg
Amazon Denies Unfair Advantage in Oracle Challenge of JEDI
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. is denying a Pentagon cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion was unfairly tailored for the e-commerce giant.In a court filing made public Monday, Amazon countered rival Oracle Corp.’s claims that bidding for the lucrative cloud deal was tainted by relationships between its employees and former Pentagon officials.Oracle is appealing a July ruling from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge of the cloud contract based on claims that the bidding violated procurement law and was marred by conflicts of interest. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud unit, has filed a separate lawsuit challenging its loss of the contract known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, which was awarded to Microsoft Corp. in October. Amazon claims it lost the bid after interference from the White House and is seeking to interview President Donald Trump in that case.Oracle’s lawsuit claims that Amazon offered two former Pentagon employees jobs at the company while they were working on the contract. In one case, Deap Ubhi, who had worked at Amazon before joining the government, allegedly helped craft the JEDI procurement for weeks after accepting a job offer in October 2017 from AWS, according to the lawsuit.Amazon argued that Oracle’s lawsuit is based on “suspicion and innuendo” and that neither employee that Amazon hired disclosed any “competitively useful” information to the company. Government lawyers have also argued in court that the employees’ input on the JEDI procurement was minimal.Representatives for the Pentagon and Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in July that the Pentagon’s contracting officer properly determined the relationships had no adverse impact on the integrity of the acquisition process and that Oracle didn’t have standing to challenge the contract. The Pentagon eliminated Oracle and International Business Machines Corp. from the competition in April 2019.Last week a federal judge temporarily blocked Microsoft from working on the Pentagon cloud project while Amazon’s lawsuit is litigated. The Pentagon’s JEDI project is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. The contract is worth as much as $10 billion over a decade.To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: NVIDIA, Cisco, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: NVIDIA, Cisco, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft
- Zacks
Microsoft, Tailored Brands, Everi, MGM Resorts International and Churchill Downs highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
Microsoft, Tailored Brands, Everi, MGM Resorts International and Churchill Downs highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
- Bloomberg
Elon Musk Calls Bill Gates Underwhelming After Billionaire Buys a Porsche
(Bloomberg) -- Bill Gates paid Tesla Inc. a compliment for coaxing the car industry to go electric. If he was expecting kind words in return from Elon Musk, he apparently shouldn’t have spoken about challenges that still lie ahead -- or about his new Porsche.Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp., spoke with a YouTube influencer last week about the challenges of reducing emissions to slow climate change. He called the passenger-car industry “one of the most hopeful” sectors taking action in this regard.“And certainly Tesla, if you had to name one company that’s helped drive that, it’s them,” Gates told YouTuber Marques Brownlee.Then Gates discussed recently buying a Porsche Taycan. While he called the electric sports car “very, very cool,” he acknowledged its premium price -- the initial Turbo S models start at $185,000 -- and said consumers still have to overcome anxieties about EVs offering limited range and taking longer to recharge. Gasoline-powered cars travel longer between quick refuels at stations that outnumber charging points.WANT MORE? Upgrade the luxury in your life with the Pursuits Weekly newsletter. The best in high-end autos, food, real estate, fashion, culture, and lifestyle delivered every Wednesday. When a Tesla enthusiast posted about being disappointed in Gates’s decision to buy a Taycan instead of a Tesla and his comments about range anxiety, Musk replied: “My conversations with Gates have been underwhelming tbh.”Musk, 48, is of course no stranger to tweeting dismissively about fellow billionaires. The Tesla chief executive officer questioned Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of artificial intelligence risks in 2017. Last year, he called Jeff Bezos a copycat after the Amazon.com Inc. CEO embarked on an internet-satellite project that could rival one that Musk’s closely held company SpaceX is pursuing.The Tesla CEO’s commentary on Porsche’s Taycan has been mixed. After chiding the sports car brand for using internal combustion engine nomenclature for the high-end version of its debut electric vehicle, he tweeted in September that it “does seem like a good car.”(Updates with Musk’s tweets on Taycan in last paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Trudell in New York at ctrudell1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Will DaviesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
20 years after dot-com peak, tech dominance keeps investors on edge
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Wall Street approaches the 20th anniversary of the piercing of the dot-com bubble, today's decade-old rally led by a few small players shows some similarities that cautious investors are keeping an eye on. March 11, 2000 marked the beginning of a crash of overly-inflated stocks that would last over two years, lead to the failure of investor favorites including Worldcom and Pets.com and take over 13 years for Wall Street to recover from.
ReutersGRAPHIC- 20 years after dot-com peak, tech dominance keeps investors on edge
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK, Feb 18 (Reuters) - As Wall Street approaches the 20th anniversary of the piercing of the dot-com bubble, today's decade-old rally led by a few small players shows some similarities that cautious investors are keeping an eye on. March 11, 2000 marked the beginning of a crash of overly-inflated stocks that would last over two years, lead to the failure of investor favorites including Worldcom and Pets.com and take over 13 years for Wall Street to recover from. Now, after hitting a record high on Feb. 13, the Nasdaq has reached over 9,700 points, almost double its high point in 2000 and about eight times the level of its trough in 2002.
- Zacks
Sony Breaks PS5 Pricing Tradition for Xbox Series X Launch
The impending launch of Xbox Series X by arch rival Microsoft forces Sony Corporation (SNE) to adopt a waiting game in its price-setting decision to avert being too overpriced.
- Yahoo Finance
Here's why Big Tech is winning the war against the government
The U.S. government has never been a model of consistency but lately the inconsistencies—foolish and otherwise—emerging from Washington directed at the tech industry have become truly mind-blowing.
- Bloomberg
Sony Is Struggling With PlayStation 5 Price Due to Costly Parts
(Bloomberg) -- Scarce components have pushed the manufacturing costs for Sony Corp.’s next PlayStation to around $450 per unit, forcing a difficult price-setting decision in its battle with Microsoft Corp., according to people with knowledge of the matter.The Japanese conglomerate is preparing to gradually replace the six-year-old PS4 console, releasing its PlayStation 5 the same holiday season its archrival debuts the upcoming Xbox Series X. Sony typically finalizes a console’s price in February of the release year, followed by mass production in the spring. With the PS5, the company is taking a wait-and-see approach, said the people, asking not to be named because the details are private.The PS4, released in 2013 at a retail price of $399, was estimated by IHS Markit to cost $381 to manufacture. With the $450 unit cost and a similar gross margin, the PlayStation 5’s retail price would have to be at least $470. That would be a hard sell to consumers, considering Sony’s most expensive machine now is the $399.99 PS4 Pro and is often discounted, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Damian Thong.“Consumers will benchmark their expectations based on the PS4 Pro and PS4,” Thong said. “If Sony prices above that, it would likely be to balance a need to offset higher materials cost, against risk to demand.”Sony declined to comment.The company’s biggest headache is ensuring a reliable supply of DRAM and NAND flash memory, with both in high demand as smartphone makers gear up for fifth-generation devices, according to people familiar with Sony’s operations. Samsung Electronics Co. just announced its Galaxy S20 product range, each variant of which will have 5G and a minimum of 12GB of RAM in the U.S.Videogame companies often sell hardware at thin margins or even at a loss because they profit from lucrative game software and recurring online subscription services. Sony’s Chief Executive Officer Kenichiro Yoshida has said the business should be judged by the number of active users, not the number of hardware units sold. Some Sony games staff think it should sell the new console at a loss if necessary to match Microsoft’s price, while other Sony executives would prefer to make money as the company did with the PS4.“We must keep PlayStation 5’s bill of materials under our control and we need to make the correct number of units in the initial production,” Sony’s Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said at an earnings briefing earlier this month.Most of the components for the console have been locked down, the people said, including the cooling system, which is unusually expensive at a few dollars per unit. Typically, companies would spend less than a dollar, but Sony opted to lavish more on making sure heat dissipation from the powerful chips housed inside the console isn’t an issue.The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has had no impact so far on preparations for PlayStation 5 production, they said. The company has yet to decided how many PlayStation 5 units it will make in the first year, they added.Separately, Sony plans to release a new version of the PlayStation VR virtual-reality headset, tentatively scheduled after the PlayStation 5 goes on sale, the people said.Sony has already canceled some previously planned features for a new mirrorless camera due this year owing to the constrained DRAM supply, several people with knowledge of the matter said.Sony executives are voicing patience about the next console’s pricing as they anticipate the transition to be a gradual one, said people familiar with its day-to-day operations. Many of the games launched for the PlayStation 5 will also be available to play on the predecessor machine, so revenue from software and related network services is expected to keep the business performance intact. Microsoft and Sony are both expanding their respective online subscription services, revenue from which may allow them greater flexibility on hardware pricing.People within the PlayStation business unit said a key factor in deciding the ultimate PlayStation 5 retail price will be where Microsoft sets its price for the next-generation Xbox Series X. Microsoft is widely expected to hold that information back until the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles in June.There is pressure from CFO Totoki for Sony to provide more transparency and information in the buildup to the PS5’s release, which has caused some consternation internally. Asked about when he expects Sony to provide guidance on the gaming business outlook for the new fiscal year, Totoki said the plan is no different from the recent past, meaning the guidance can be expected around the end of April.If the company takes longer than usual, analysts may look to its next investor relations meeting to glean hints about the new console’s retail price. The company held that meeting in late May last year.To contact the reporter on this story: Takashi Mochizuki in Tokyo at tmochizuki15@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov, Peter ElstromFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Judge Halts Microsoft Work on Cloud Deal After Amazon Suit
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge temporarily blocked Microsoft Corp. from working on a $10 billion Pentagon cloud-computing contract after Amazon.com Inc. asked for the delay, a surprise win for the company as it challenges the validity of the award over allegations that President Donald Trump interfered.The government can’t proceed with implementing the contract “until further order of the court,” according to the decision by U.S Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith. The judge ordered Amazon to pay $42 million in security, the minimum amount that the government had requested in the event of a delay. The judge’s full opinion was posted under seal.It’s unusual for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to pause work on a contract over the government’s objections. The ruling is a victory for Amazon, which faced an uphill battle in its bid to get the award overturned, procurement experts said.“The judge clearly sees some merit in Amazon’s challenge for the award to Microsoft.” said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.Pentagon spokesman Robert Carver said in a statement that the ruling unnecessarily delays implementation of the cloud contract and deprives “warfighters of a set of capabilities they urgently need.”Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said the company was “disappointed” in the ruling and reiterated that the Pentagon’s procurement process was fair. A representative for Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.Microsoft shares fell as much as 1% to a low of $182.87 after the report before closing down less than 1%. Amazon shares, which had been in negative territory, rose less than 1%.Microsoft in October won the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud contract, estimated to be worth as much as $10 billion over a decade. Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing division, filed a lawsuit in November alleging the Defense Department failed to fairly judge its bid for the contract because Trump viewed Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos as his “political enemy.”Amazon earlier asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to allow it to question Trump and top Pentagon leaders to seek additional evidence that might show political interference cost the company the cloud deal. Among the leaders Amazon seeks to depose are Trump, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s chief information officer.The e-commerce giant’s lawsuit chronicles a laundry list of comments and actions by Trump and the Defense Department that it claims show the Pentagon bowed to political pressure when awarding the deal to Microsoft. In one case, Amazon cites claims in a book by Mattis’ former speechwriter, Guy Snodgrass, that Trump told Mattis in the summer of 2018 to “screw Amazon” by locking it out of the bid. Mattis has criticized the book.But government lawyers argued in a filing made public on Wednesday that Amazon’s request to depose Trump was “particularly audacious” and unnecessary because the company had failed to offer enough evidence to support its claims of bias.The government also asked the court to reject Amazon’s request to temporarily block work on the contract, arguing that such a pause would compromise national security and drain taxpayer money. Government lawyers estimated in court papers that it would cost taxpayers between $5 million to $7 million for every month implementation was delayed.The Pentagon’s JEDI project is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. The Pentagon has already begun identifying programs that could be transitioned into the JEDI cloud environment.(Updates with comments from procurement experts beginning in third paragraph)\--With assistance from Tony Capaccio, Susan Decker and Spencer Soper.To contact the reporters on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.net;Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at btenerellabr@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Jon MorganFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Baystreet
Stocks Dip from All-Time Peaks
Equities in Toronto took a breather from Thursday’s all-time highs, as weakness in telecoms overcame ...
- Zacks
Nasdaq Bubble = Disruptive Growth + Demand Premium
Why Apple and Microsoft are trading at premium valuations and will carry the bull market higher.
- Reuters
Judge grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft's Pentagon contract work
A U.S. judge on Thursday granted Amazon.com Inc's request to temporarily halt the U.S. Department of Defense and Microsoft Corp from moving forward on an up-to-$10 billion (£8 billion) cloud computing deal that Amazon says reflected undue influence by President Donald Trump. Amazon, which had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, filed a lawsuit in November just weeks after the contract was awarded to Microsoft. Trump has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticized the company.
- TechCrunch
Judge temporarily halts work on JEDI contract until court can hear AWS protest
A sealed order from a judge today has halted the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI project in its tracks until AWS's protest of the contract award to Microsoft can be heard by the court. The United States, by and through the Department of Defense, its officers, agents, and employees, is hereby PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED from proceeding with contract activities under Contract No. HQ0034-20-D-0001, which was awarded under Solicitation No. HQ0034-18-R-0077, until further order of the court. The judge was not taking this lightly, adding that Amazon would have to put up $42 million bond to cover costs should it prove that the motion was filed wrongfully.
- Zacks
Tech Investing 101: Know, Buy, Hold Disruptive Growth
Investors who missed the great rallies in Apple and Microsoft have been wondering why, and wishing they listened to Dan Ives.
- Zacks
Tech Daily: FTC Investigation, Trump Testimony, MWC, More
The daily covers the FTC investigation of big tech for antitrust activity, Amazon's motion seeking Trump testimony, coronavirus impact on Apple's Chinese manufacturing and other stories.
