Uber settles with Chicago, Microsoft offers Sony Call of Duty deal, Facebook threatens to pull news
Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman reports on notable business headlines which include Uber reaching a $10 million settlement with the city of Chicago for non-consented listings, Microsoft offering Sony a 10-year Call of Duty deal, and Meta threatening to pull news from Facebook.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Let's get down to business now with some other headlines we're watching. Uber has reached a $10 million settlement with the city of Chicago for listing its restaurants without their consent, as well as charging excess commission fees. Over $5 million of that will go toward paying back damages to Chicago restaurants that were charged commissions above Chicago's emergency fee cap.
Half a million will go to restaurants listed without permission. And they'll also be eligible for commission waivers. Chicago will receive $1 and 1/2 million as well for the cost of its investigation into the matter. Restaurant owners can apply for relief online. Chicago has similar ongoing cases against Grubhub and DoorDash.
As regulators examine the potential antitrust issues that could result from Microsoft's $69 billion Activision Blizzard purchase, Microsoft President Brad Smith-- no relation-- said the company offered PlayStation maker Sony a 10-year contract to make each new release of "Call of Duty" available on its console at the same time as Xbox. Smith says any move to make the game unavailable on Sony's console would be, quote, "economically irrational," given the popularity of cross-play.
Meta is now threatening to pull news from Facebook in the US if Congress were to pass a bill to help publishers team up to negotiate payments from tech companies. He responded by saying it'll consider removing news altogether, rather than submit to government mandated negotiations that it says unfairly disregard value the company provides to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.
The bill would aim to help local publishers that don't feel they have the size to negotiate with Meta. Large national outlets like "The New York Times" or "Wall Street Journal" would not be covered in that. By the way, that would be part of that defense spending authorization bill.
And shares of Narcan-maker Emergent Biosolutions, they are moving a little bit lower after the US Food and Drug Administration fast tracked its application for an over-the-counter version of its opioid reversal nasal spray Narcan. Its expected approval date is now March 29, 2023 with a priority review given because of the swelling overdose crisis driven by the rise of newer and more powerful forms of the opioid fentanyl.
