Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 4

• Uber enables global e-hailing through Alipay to fend against Lyft/Didi alliance: Starting today, Uber riders from China won’t have to worry about language barriers or currency when traveling outside of the country. Now, riders will be able to pay for and hail a ride in the Alipay app in the more than 400 cities in which Uber operates. It’s an extension of Uber’s existing partnership with the company, which initially only allowed passengers in China to pay for their rides using Alipay. The move comes just a few weeks after Lyft and China’s Didi launched a similar integration that allows Didi riders to hail a Lyft in the U.S. using the Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi) app, and vice versa. That partnership is part of a larger global ride-hail alliance that also includes South East Asia’s Grab and India’s Ola. The clear winner in this entire situation is Alipay’s affiliate company, Alibaba. That’s because the Chinese e-commerce company is playing both sides of the fence — Alibaba is an investor in both Didi and Lyft, and Ant Financial, which operates Alipay, has had this partnership with Uber since 2014. It’s certainly true that Alibaba has a higher stake in Lyft and Didi beating out Uber, but the transportation industry isn’t a zero-sum game. Since there’s room for both sides to coexist, Alibaba can afford to put bets on Didi and Lyft, and Uber too. But Alipay may be playing favorites. According to company SVP of business Emil Michael, Uber will be the primary featured transportation app on Alipay’s platform outside of the U.S. Alipay is essentially promoting Uber to its 450 million users.

• Instagram is selling a new type of video ad: Instagram has been pushing users to create more video content. Now it’s pushing advertisers to create more video ads. Instagram announced Tuesday that it will soon roll out video carousel ads, a move that will let advertisers share up to five separate videos with one single ad purchase. Each video can be up to 60 seconds long. Instagram already sells carousel ads, the kinds of ads that let users swipe between different pages (often called cards). But video functionality wasn’t available until now. The change aligns with Instagram’s conscious push into video more broadly, a strategy reminiscent of Facebook’s video push a few years back. Instagram is adding video featuresand making video more prominent in search in hopes users will watch more of it. It’s essentially feeding people what it wants them to consume — and video can be good business. If users expect to see videos when they open Instagram, then video ads, which are typically more lucrative than static ads, won’t feel out of place. These new video ads are now in beta and will roll out to all advertisers in the “coming weeks,” according to a company spokesperson.

• Amazon, Web Giants Shift to Report Real Cost of Equity Pay: For more than a decade, technology companies doled out heaps of stock to recruit top talent -- then pretended this wasn’t a normal part of doing business by reporting profit numbers that subtracted the cost. That’s changing as the industry grows up and responds to pressure from regulators and investors. Amazon.com Inc. started breaking out stock-based compensation in the results of its different businesses in the first quarter. This is “the way we now evaluate our business performance and manage our operations,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts after the earnings report last week. Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner had a similar message. From now on, he said he’ll talk about the social network’s results and other metrics based on U.S. standards known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, which include equity-based pay costs, instead of a mix of GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. “We view it as a real expense,” he said. Some technology companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Intel Corp., already take this approach, but many don’t. If the shift to focusing on the real bottom line catches on more broadly, it could slice billions of dollars off the reported profits and official forecasts that underpin the technology sector’s lofty market valuations. Facebook stock trades at about 35 times estimated earnings over the next 12 months. Add in equity compensation expense and that price-to-earnings ratio jumps to 50, according to a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysis. Amazon would trade at 122 times projected profit, rather than a multiple of 63. Using GAAP numbers, Alphabet Inc. would trade at 26 times forecast profit, versus 21 times, Bernstein estimates. The change also highlights the struggles of smaller Internet companies like Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. to generate GAAP earnings. Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet may have high stock valuations, but they are also very profitable by GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Twitter shares trade at about 36 times estimated profit, but including stock-based compensation analysts expect it to have a loss over the next 12 months, Bernstein research shows. “Some companies have been egregious with stock compensation,” Fish said, citing LinkedIn, which has relatively high equity-based pay compared to its revenue and earnings. LinkedIn shares have declined 44 percent this year, while rival social network Facebook is up 13 percent.

• Google, Fiat Chrysler to partner on self-driving minivans: Alphabet Inc's Google unit and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV have agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker, the companies said Tuesday. The deal marks the first time that Google has worked directly with an automaker "to integrate its self-driving system, including its sensors and software, into a passenger vehicle," the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Google and Fiat Chrysler engineers will work together to fit Google's autonomous driving technology into the Pacifica minivan. Some engineers for both companies will work together at a facility in Southeast Michigan, where Fiat Chrysler has its major North American engineering center, the companies said. Google said it is not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, however, and the vehicles will not be offered for sale to the public. The agreement between Google and Fiat Chrysler comes as rival technology and auto companies are accelerating efforts to master the complex hardware and artificial intelligence systems required to allow vehicles to pilot themselves.

• Match Group revenue beats as Tinder attracts more paid users: Dating website operator Match Group Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Tuesday, as its popular dating app Tinder attracted more paying users. The company's shares rose 7.3 percent to $11.98 in after-hours trading. Match Group, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, gets bulk of its revenue from membership fees and paid features. The company said its average paid-member count jumped 36 percent to 5.1 million in the first quarter ended March 31, also helped by the acquisition of PlentyOfFish. Match Group, majority owned by media mogul Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, agreed to buy Vancouver-based PlentyOfFish for $575 million in July last year. Tinder surpassed 1 million paid members during the quarter. The Dallas-based company's dating business, its biggest, which includes apps such as Tinder, recorded a 24 percent rise in revenue to $260.4 million. Total revenue rose 21.4 percent to $285.3 million. Revenue from the company's non-dating business, which includes educational websites Princeton Review and Tutor.com, was flat at $24.9 million. Up to Tuesday's close of $11.16, Match Group's shares had fallen 7 percent since the company went public in November.