>> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to the late edition of "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang and we focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. let's get straight to the rundown. microsoft chair bill gates talks about his future and a conversation with bloomberg lp founder michael bloomberg. bloomberg has learned that amazon has acquired rights for an online paid tv service. how much could it affect? jelly, his first time serving as ceo of a startup in lessons biz

stone learned from twitter. will bill gates ever return to microsoft as ceo? we have the answer and a conversation between dates and a conversation with bloomberg lp founder tackle bloomberg later. amazon has been disrupting everything from e-commerce, shipping, groceries, and tv could be next. they're looking at starting an online paid tv service, some sort of expansion of amazon prime instant video but with life programming. they're reaching out to media companies to secure contents. verizon acquired intel tv technologies and sony is also planning a web taste service and this comes as amazon obtained a new patent for anticipatory shipping, to ship packages

before customers even clicked to buy. i went to get to jon erlichman, our senior west coast correspondent nla. what are we talking about here you go what is amazon trying to do? -- what are we talking about here? >> there's a battle taking place for control of the living room. we know that apple, google, sony, countless others want to win the battle and we know that amazon has shown a huge

willingness to get into the business of making hardware to keep you buying everything that made amazon what it is today whether that is coming out with the readers for e-books, the kindle fire to keep your shopping and the world of tablets, whether it is working on its own tv-like hockey puck, if you will. and they have amazon prime video, which you highlighted. they already give you the opportunity as an amazon customer to be watching contents of this would be the logical next step. it may be less of a competitive battle with the companies i mentioned and more so with the cable industry. how often do we talk about the frustration consumers have with the lack of change and innovation in the way you are able to watch television? these companies and the world of technology have seen a shift in the landscape in their seeing the amount of internet audio people are consuming and they're trying to position themselves as best as they can. >> in terms of what is out there, can you draw comparisons as to what this could look like? there would be live programming in addition to on demand. >> you highlight the deal that sony struck the day with intel

in the same bucket. internet-enabled paid tv service which is relatively easy to set up for the consumer and does exactly what you would see from a traditional package allowing you to watch live programming. one key to the content players. what are they willing to provide? pricing will be very important and they will not cut deals below what they already have and they will probably say that we all have to be on board. you have to have deals with all of the content players or multiple, before you can have the content. that could be the key sticking issue. >> i want to get to another story out of amazon. amazon obtained a new patent for anticipatory shipping and the idea is to ship packages before you actually buy them basically by using customer data and history to cut down the delivery time. how would amazon actually do that? a principal analyst at forrester

joins us now on skype from charlotte. how would this work as you understand it? >> one of the challenges is we don't really know yet but there are some things that were revealed in this patent application that are very interesting and could be telling. they will not put this in a for every single order that comes to your amazon prime. for instance, if there is a new block buster book release, say for instance another harry potter book homologue they would be able to do is take a look at all of the people who potentially have ordered within the series and who have often ordered on the release date and send those items to the nearest shipping destination where they

could be shipped and not actually label the product until it is essentially in the last mile. it appears that what they are doing is basically leaving the address field blank which means they would need to be significant integration with carriers in order to actually execute and make it happen. >> this would not involve you getting charged for something that you did not want? >> given that amazon is so customer-centric, i doubt we would ever see anything like that where they would just bill you. there was also some indication in the patent application that what they may do is proactively send you something as a surprise, something like that, which is very amazon. they send you something that you may have in your saved a shopping cart or something you may have come back to clicked on a number of times.

there are a number of privacy issues and how that would look to customers that have to naturally be taken into consideration but i think the idea is really to reduce the time it takes for a package to actually get to shoppers. unless you are paying for something like next day or second day, there is often a lag time and would something like this could do is potentially reduce some of that. >> i don't know what's crazier, trying to read my mind and potentially charge me money for it or starting a television service, a live tv station, or drones. >> i like the drones the best, but you are right. coming back to the tv example, let's talk about the service they already have, prime instant video. here radically it gets better. if i use it and amazon has a pretty good sense of who i am and suggest shows for me to watch. netflix talks all the time about the benefits of having the proprietary technology that

allows them to give you a better consumer experience. as you were just talking, amazon is all about the consumer. there is always going to be a level of creepiness but i think there is this huge level of opportunity if you are a come in a like amazon especially going back to the lead story, your cable grid has no idea what you want to watch when you want to watch it whereas a lot of these other companies born on the internet can do just that. >> when it comes to the retail side of this, how do you see this playing out? they have big drones, knowing what you want before you buy it. in reality, what are the next five years in terms of amazon e- commerce really look like? >> i think amazon has a lot going for it that are the same time, amazon boldly recognizes they have challenges ahead of

them. some of them are in the fact that they are extremely price competitive which makes them very attractive to customers, but they struggle with profitability as a company. they have a huge line item in the form of shipping costs. if there is any way for them to reduce some of those line items and even by a modest way by reducing the amount of time it takes for a package to get somewhere or being able to cut some of those costs, it would have a really favorable impact on amazon altogether. the challenge is as they continue to grow amazon prime, they make promises that the item will be there in two days and it is very expensive. that is why an initiative like this could be very interesting for them.

>> everybody wants their stuff as fast as they can get it. sucharita mulpuru, thank you, as well as jon erlichman. sitting down to talk about the future of microsoft with bill gates. hear what he had to say about his role at microsoft next. ♪

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. will bill gates ever return to be chairman of microsoft? we asked him that in a special conversation with the creator of bloomberg lp, michael bloomberg. they talked about everything from philanthropy to much more. i want to talk about the status of the microsoft ceo search and whether he's ever thought about going back to the helm. our anchor of "in the loop," betty liu, asked him how involved he is day-to-day. >> the foundation is the biggest part of my time but i put part-

time work in to help as a board member. >> how involved are you with the search for the new chief executive? >> the board is working on that. there's nothing new to say. it is a good board. >> do you feel a sense of urgency at all on this front? >> i feel that way. then again, you want to pick the best person. they will move at the right pace. >> we had the fortune of having the mayor come back to this company and we are very happy to have him back at bloomberg. bill, has that ever hit your vision in the future of ever going back to microsoft's full- time? >> my full-time job will be the foundation for the rest of my life. melinda and i are enjoying it.

i will not change that. i will help out part-time. >> that was betty liu with the founder of microsoft, bill gates, as well as the founder of bloomberg lp, michael bloomberg. he was a little bit away, not totally straightforward about his role. you think that categorically made it clear he's not going back? >> he's got other purposes in his life right now which he highlighted. i don't leave he's coming back at this point. >> what does that mean? >> wall street wants an outsider, someone that can come in and shake it up. everyone is hoping that you can

find a leader that has gone to one of those companies to potentially come back. >> he basically ran the google plus. >> he was one of the platform evangelists so his name has been brought up. we think the best chance on the inside is nardela, in the cloud business. he's gotten the server business back on track. he can probably do the best job but right now, the institutional investors want something from the outside. >> is the inside guy really a right choice given that microsoft has been struggling so much? maybe they need someone from the outside to change it up? >> that is why our clients want that. the server business is one of their best businesses with the

best margin profile. the cloud is something they have been working on and he's behind that. i think he's very capable. whoever comes in from the outside, it will take some time to look at what's going on. >> how involved do you think gates is in the search? >> more engaged than he let on in the interview. he cap talking about "the board" not meaning him. i believe he's very involved. >> what makes you think that? >> he's the engineering mastermind behind it. bill gates was there building the company. steve ballmer was the sales engine. when you look at what he has

created, there has only been two ceo's in the company and he is heavily involved with a lot of the decisions, more so than he let on during the interview. >> they said they would be making a decision early this year so i guess that leaves them anytime until june. brent thill from ubs, thanks. more between the conversation between bill gates and michael bloomberg, the founder of this company, coming up. ♪

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west." gideon yu, the president of the 49ers, is stepping down. gideon yu, a big force behind the tech savvy stadium in santa clara. we now know he is stepping down

as president. he will be replaced by the coo of the 49ers, a longtime lieutenant of jed york end we will bring you many development as we have them. turning out to the sitdown conversation between microsoft cofounder bill gates and michael bloomberg, the founder of bloomberg lp, they talked about their philanthropy in addition to technology. more of that conversation with betty liu. >> federal governments and state governments tend to move money around. cities are where you pick up the garbage, where you educate the kids, where you bring down crime, where you enact health measures about where you can see, where it's labeled, those kinds of things. and climate change has all been at the city level. we are trying to bring down crime and those are not done at

the federal and state level. >> you have such a huge arsenal of resources. how do you pick the causes that you get behind? >> the greatest inequity is how for children don't get to grow up and achieve their potential. we decided that most of the money is going to go to that cause. unfortunately there are things like new vaccines that will help those kids avoid getting sick and we are seeing progress.

5 are sent to the kids die before the engine five -- age of 5. we want to get that percentage down and match where we were in 1980. because there is this injustice, a lot of these things were not the and on at the level that they should be. you pick an area, develop expertise, and you go out and see the people. >> did someone trigger you to think about this area or was it just something lifelong? >> i think he listens to his wife. melinda has a lot of ideas, maternal health. we've been doing a number of things under her guidance to try to advance the causes of getting the kid to be born to survive the first couple days and then the next five years. there's lots of good ideas. you just have to look. you cannot do everything. you have to decide what your core competencies are. the bill and melinda foundation

administers funds and in other cases they give them. we probably do more donating and having others administer but we have a big group working on a lot of public health issues internally. >> when you were mayor, you had certain metrics by which you could measure success of your own project and initiatives. when you give money, how do you measure success? >> not everything will work quickly so you have to have nations. if you do something in the scientific world and it turns out to be a failure, in some senses, that's a success because you don't have to go by that path again. in the world i come from, you are labeled a failure and it's a wasted your money. that's not always the way science works. there's a lot of people around trying to apply metrics. in some cases you can and on

some you have to do it on faith. i know this will help and i'm willing to make that that. wait a while then give it the old college try. don't be stubborn but don't walk away too quickly either. >> what about you, bill? >> like the smoking group has come in and talk about how we will get the prevalence down. mike's group has led the way on that and it's going very well. in the science area, we back a lot of scientists so even if one approach fails, it's an important problem then we have a portfolio-type approach and the successes you have, like some new seeds where the farming productivity has doubled, that gives you the belief to just keep trying because you get to go out to these countries and actually meet the people who are growing more rice than they ever did before. >> bill gates, chairman and founder of microsoft, and bloomberg lp's founder and former new york city mayor mike

bloomberg with betty liu. biz stone working on a new search engine and he will tell us all about it next. ♪

>> you are watching "bloomberg west" where we focus on technology and the future of business. blackberry is hoping a real estate deal will help. ceo chen says it will allow them to invest in turnaround projects. sales keep falling at ibm for a seventh straight quarter. offsetting a slump in hardware. they're also forgoing annual bonuses. act of its investor dan loeb betting on a merger between t- mobile u.s. and the sprint. he says a marriage between the

two creates "the only real counterbalance to an industry dominated by at&t and verizon." the hedge fund has a stake in softbank, sprints daren't company. our smartphone photos of the future of search? it's a bet biz stone is making with jelly. he cofounded media and the obvious corporations or as a social media pioneer, why did he choose search? i sat down with him in the early

edition of "bloomberg west" today. >> it happened by accident. we were going on a walk-in we accidentally asked the question, what would we build if we had to build something that could answer any question. without we had this idea on our hands that we had to do. i really enjoyed helping people in the people help each other and i just could not get it out of my head. >> did you mean to start a company? >> not really. we were going to hack on it. this could be a really good all- around business. >> what kind of questions are people asking? >> it's early days. the three canonical types of questions we are seeing now are, should i buy this or this one?

two, how do i fix this or set this up? i'm confused. three, what is this? just, what am i looking at? twix you have to post a photo in order to ask a question. why is that? some need photos and some don't necessarily. it makes mobile what it is. most questions can be dramatically contextualized better with a photo. >> let's talk about what else is out there. what's missing from google? why are you trying to take them on?

>> and not necessarily trying to take them on. i'm trying to offer an alternative. there is some percentage of queries that are better answered by a human mind. the key thing as albert einstein saying information is not knowledge. it is just an ingredient and one thing that gets transmuted into the human mind into actual, applicable experience. >> i've been doing it. i have been using jelly a bit here and there.

i broke my carry-on luggage and i asked what i should i am right away i got like if teen different answers and they were all super helpful. -- i got 15 different answers. my husband was like, are you shopping? how many people were told i was asking this question? >> my cofounders name is ben finkle. we're jokingly calling this finkle rank. we are blending it together into one network and we are sending your query to a percentage of those people. some of the people you know got that question. >> that's what makes google so

great. you can be so anonymous. >> we thought it was better if you are not anonymous. then looking at other anonymous services, there were too many mean things that were possible. when you attach your name, you behave a little differently. >> does that inhibit the potential -- >> it might. we were willing to take that chance. if you're not comfortable asking the questions, then it's probably not the right service. >> you can say thank you but i wanted to ask some of these people more questions. why do you like this bag? tell me more. how long have you used that? is there a reason you cannot send a custom message? you don't

want it to be a messaging platform? >> we broke a lot of the accepted norms. we had an early prototype that was very discussion-based, back and forth. what we found his people were not getting their questions answered quickly enough or in a valuable enough away so we switched to this model where we just said, here's the question, answer, dismiss, or forwarded it to someone you think might know. we're sort of actively discouraging conversation because we feel there are plenty of other places to have them right now. that may change in the future, but right now that's how we are doing it. >> you say this is not a social network. why? >> we don't want them to think this is yet another social network.

the simplicity is it just takes advantage of what we've been building for the last 7-10 years, collecting followers, friends, contacts. it is kind of like -- why? to what and? and this is sort of a response to that. the answer why we been doing it is so we can all start helping each other. >> why can you not search other people's questions? i could have looked at what others have said about good luggage. >> actual information crossing may come in the future. it's so early that we don't have that much information to look through. down the line, we will probably build up a huge group of questions and answers and we may offer search across that what it's really early days. >> you are focusing on product and your coo is a former vp at twitter focusing on partnerships. are you thinking about partnerships down the line and how you turn this into a business? >> right off the bat, we are thinking of ourselves as being in the search business, there's a lot of opportunity that proves it's a good business to be in. >> display ads?

>> nothing like that. we don't want to get -- it sounds strange to anyone in the business world, but it is putting the cart before the horse dealing with this type of business because you need to build up that race and you need to prove there is value before you can really begin to think about how you want to offer more value in the form of revenue- generating product. we think there's a lot of opportunity in the search space mainly because there is an intense. when someone comes to jelly, they want something. when someone wants something, there's usually someone else wants to get their attention. >> more with biz stone, cofounder of twitter and now ceo of jelly. we will talk about his time at twitter and how it's influencing how he leads his new company. ♪

>> welcome back to "bloomberg

west." biz stone helped twitter get off the ground and since then, twitter has nabbed a 230 million users and raise more than $1 billion in an ipo. running his new company, jelly, i asked him on the yearly edition addition of "bloomberg west." take a listen. >> in three days, jelly had more accounts than it took one year twice the accounts it took one year to get at twitter. it is because of the services like twitter and facebook that just read the word. >> how do you keep up roof like this? >> you don't. we got featured in the apple app store and it was crazy. we had to remind people of is going to go like this. the way you have to do it is you have to build a system that has growth mechanisms in it and you

have to trust it will work. you don't want anything artificial. correct any mistakes you learned from twitter that you will not do with jelly? >> we are not going to go down all the time. [laughter] in a different world, we are able to use amazon web services to host everything. back in the early days of twitter, that was just a different animal. >> how is this different for you? >> i have some notoriety. i have the ability to get my

phone calls answered or make a big deal launching a new map and i think it certainly helps. >> twitter going public dredged up a lot of stories about the founding, lots of drama. the guy who kept the company going financially and according to the book, jack overhyped his role and you are the glue that cap twitter together. how fair was his portrayal? >> i think it was hundreds of hours of interviews so i think he was fairly thorough in his interviews. he had to make someone a bad guy. he had to make someone at fault. in that capacity, there's a little too much sharpness. there was stuff in there that i learned that i did not know.

i did not read the whole thing >> you have not read it yet? >> i'm too scatterbrained to read cover to cover. i just looked at my section and a few other things. there were meetings taken that i was not part of the, etc. >> looking at twitter today, there has been his history of a revolving door. how confident are you in the people who are leading twitter now? >> i'm very confident in them. they are doing a great job. we picked them. what i've always said, and i think this is true, that twitter needed who it needed at the time that it needed them. as it evolved, people switched roles. no matter how dramatic it was, people switch roles and they were in the right roles. look at where the company has come today and i think it's a

testament to it. >> the head of product just left and it set off some alarm bells because of twitters past. some people are saying twitter may be gun shy about launching new product and it's difficult to get it out the door. how do you see twitters ability to innovate in the future? there are a lot of things that has stayed the same for a long time and some things that are different. >> this is something that every company faces once they go public. we have to make dramatic, innovative moves on the product side but we have to be careful because now we have shareholders. i think the shareholders and everyone understands what twitter is as a company and that ecosystem in that they have to make bold product, maneuvers,

changes, and i think they will. >> speaking of shareholders, there are questions about when twitter will turn a profit. do those kinds of things concern you? >> i don't have to be concerned about those things. that's one of the reason we put dick in that position. >> this is the first time you are a ceo. how is it? >> it's great. i love it. the fact that i have kevin at my back really made all the difference. >> the former vice president of twitter that i mentioned. >> we were talking before about how i really did not intend to make this a company. i was telling kevin, one of my friends and trusted advisors, about the idea and he just said he was in. i thought that meant he liked the idea. what does that mean yeah go is it something the kids are saying what does that mean? is it something the kids are saying? well, with his help thomas i can make a good ceo. >> what is your ceo style? who do you look up to and

admire? >> evan, jack, dick. i like to steal their best rates and fold them into my own leadership skills but my main thing as a leader is to be as communicative as possible. i think that is like 50% or 75% of the job as ceo -- make sure everybody knows what they need to know. >> jelly it. is that the verb? >> i think you have to earn your verb status. >> biz stone, ceo of jelly and cofounder of twitter. hollywood is trying to capture the 18-24-year-old demographic but "philomena" is bucking the trend proving there are still money and more mature audiences. we will have more when

"bloomberg west" returns. ♪

>> welcome back. i'm emily chang. this is "bloomberg west." on paper, "philomena" does not screen block esther, but it's giving blockbuster something they do not always cap, a story that appears to cash rich mature audiences, to put it politely. jon erlichman caught up with steve coogan. award nominations aside, this is having a really good run at the box office. we just have the direct her on the show. what does this tell hollywood, the fact that it's doing so well? pica can flip upside down the typical view on filmmaking. it has generated $60 million in box office from the weinstein

company. this is the one film from them in the best picture category. steve coogan does a lot of funny material and this is more serious. they're figuring out what happened to a child she gave away for adoption. he did not get a lot on a green light for this. >> there is this notion that they are all obsessed to the 18- 24 market because that is where the money is. maybe the only reason i go to the cinema is because you make films for them. maybe if you start making films for a wider audience, they would show up. and i think "philomena" is an example of that because it's doing very well at the box

office and the. >> talking about this coveted 18-24-year-old demographic, there seems to be a belief that anyone wants to see a superhero film. ok, i'm not 24, but i still want to see a superhero film. >> here's a little bit more than that. >> avenue comedy, tragedy, horror, action. these demarcations are sometimes frustrating for a writer. "philomena" is a tragedy and in many ways a comedy, too. i think the best films are where you laugh and you cry. >> steve coogan feeling a bit of vindication. >> i cannot wait to see it. it's time for the bwest byte, one number that tells a whole lot. what do you have? >> $1 billion. chief operating officer of facebook, sheryl sandberg -- >> can we have some? >> on paper, $700 million in the stock with $300 million in stock

she has sold getting her to $1 billion. >> lots of billionaires on the show today. sheryl sandberg, biz stone. >> facebook is going to report its results in about a week or so. here's a company expected to see its revenue year-over-year increase by about 55%. there were a lot of naysayers on the story of facebook and now you've seen the stock go from $25 to near the neighborhood of $60. this is probably a smaller piece factoring into the pie. >> right. we will definitely be covering facebook earnings coming up. thanks so much for bringing us that. thank you all for watching this edition of the show.

we'll see you tomorrow. ♪

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