leaving every competitor, threat and challenge outmaneuvered. comcast business outmaneuver. ♪ emily: i'm emily chang, and this is "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all are top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, russian bots take on u.s. gun control. russia's enduring and expanding twitter campaign against america. elon musk's spacex successfully launches a falcon 9 rocket this week in the company's first mission since millions tuned in earlier this month for a falcon heavy debut. uber rolls out its most affordable option to date, but there is a catch. we will explain.

but first, to our lead. russian bots were caught to be targeting certain hashtags, including gun control now, gun reform now, and parkland shooting. it is just one way to widen the divide among u.s. electorate on how to handle gun control, making compromise even more difficult. this has happened with past issues like the nfl anthem debate and the 2016 presidential election. this ultimately led to robert mueller's indictment of 13 russians for allegedly meddling in the u.s. elections. twitter and facebook are facing renewed pressure to do more to expose these bots and fake accounts. are the tech giants doing enough? we spoke to bloomberg technology's selina wang and tara maller, senior policy advisor for the counter extremism project from washington. tara: not only did you see that russian bots come out in full force after the horrific and tragic events in florida, but you also saw the robert mueller indictment, citing facebook thirtysomething times, twitter, and youtube all mentioned.

that is because the tech companies have a number of problems on their hands. the bots, which came out after the florida shooting, creating hashtags, trying to create division with divisive rhetoric and fake news conspiracy theories. this is not new. the real concern here is that the same tactic and strategy is going to be taken again in the midterm elections, and the same tactic is also taken by terrorist organizations who operate on these platforms. what you are seeing right now is another issue area, a tragic school shooting, that russia is trying to exploit across these platforms. they clearly have the ability to do so, despite the minor reforms that have been made. emily: selina, walk us through the tactics step by step. i spoke to the researcher of the hamilton 68 project, who has been tracking this, and he says it was almost exactly the same

as what happened in vegas. day one, these bots are taking the very innocuous tactic of tweeting and retweeting the breaking news. by day two, they are starting to tweet amplifications of the most extreme and divisive issues and opinions on gun control. by day three is when they start to promote conspiracy theories, and they want to start to destabilize american trust in the public institutions, saying that the government, the media, and the police are all lying to you. this is something that we have seen over and over again. you mentioned earlier the nfl anthem issue and the presidential election, so the fear is that this playbook will then be applied to the midterm elections coming up. emily: how big of a concern is it that this could move not just from sowing discord on social media but fabricating real-life events? we now know that the russians were behind creating a real-life islam protest in texas. as could we see more of that? tara: absolutely. this is right out of the russian

playbook. they are going to continue to repeat it. it doesn't require them to employ a lot of resources. it is easy and they have been effective. what really needs to happen is the tech companies need to take steps to not only get down content that violates their terms of service, but there are other measures that they can take. you aren't going to be able to control every individual writes online if they do not cross a particular threshold. having said that, on ad buying, there are specific measures that congress is pushing them to take going into the elections. on bots, tech companies say they are not in favor of it and are trying to cut down on it. why are there so many bots still operating on these platforms? that is a measure that if twitter was serious about, i've seen different levels of reporting, i think 15% of accounts are bots. 5% are what the tech companies claim. in any case, there are enough bots that are amplifying the messages of these fake news, russian propaganda, counterintelligence operations that may influence our midterm elections. if the companies are serious, there are clear measures that they can take to crack down on some of this that make a real dent in the problem. unfortunately, we have not seen

that happen yet as evidenced by what has been going on this week. emily: so, selina, you cover twitter extensively, and you know what they are doing and not doing. how are they actually cracking down here? we know a lot of bots have been kicked off, but there is still more than enough. selina: twitter is doing all that it can, but they have multiple constraints. this is a company that has had financial issues. they only recently just reported their first profitable quarter. they are dedicating as many engineers to the issue as we can, but we have not heard them actually take steps to hire new people to address the problem. another issue is that even though these algorithms that twitter has are getting better, these bots are changing their tactics much faster than twitter can keep up. i've spoken to many people on background who work at twitter or used to work at twitter to -- who describe it as a whack-a-mole problem. the moment twitter changes algorithms to address spam and bots, we see a new type of pattern emerge. that's the challenge that they are up against.

they have made steps for transparency. they're starting a center for transparency in political ads. they said in the 2018 elections, they will be working with candidates closely to make sure to try to keep it as free from russian meddling as possible. emily: tara, when you hear that twitter is doing all that it can, would you agree? do you think twitter can be doing more with the financial resources and power it has? tara: i think you hear that rhetoric coming out of all the three big players, twitter, facebook, and google. you hear them repeatedly claim that they do all that they can. if you look at these companies and the amount of money and the size of these companies, they are sort of technical wizards. they are able to do a lot with your data when they want to do a lot with your data, and i think they can do a lot more to address some of these problems that are hitting society, from terrorism to russian meddling in the elections to other nefarious foreign actors that are trying to meddle in various ways as well. particularly when the line is being crossed and i would argue that laws are potentially being violated, in terms of ad buying. if they don't fix that, that's going to continue to be a

violation of the real-world campaign election finance laws. i do not think the tech companies will have the luxury any longer of being able to operate in this free space where laws are being potentially violated and things that wouldn't fly in reality are able to fly online. i think what is going to happen here is that you are going to see not just the public start to get fed up with it, but you are seeing other parts of the private sector, most notably advertisers. you had the unilever executive a week or so ago threatening not to buy ads on these platforms because to be frank, ad companies don't want baby product ads or ben and jerry's ads running on platforms where there is jihadist content, russian bots undermining our elections. it is bad form for advertisers. i think you are going to hopefully see the tech companies step up. there have been a number of hearings on capitol hill, and i think you are seeing pressure out of the u.k. they grilled tech executives

here in d.c. emily: selina, robert mueller companies and individuals related to russian meddling in the u.s. election. how is that related to the activity we are seeing now? are these the same parties who were behind this? selina: what we are seeing from the indictment is what russia is doing is much more well-financed, well-organized, and sophisticated than what congress could have even imagined. i definitely think that creates some fear among lawmakers and these tech companies themselves. if they can be as well organized themselves to combat these issues. they had operatives in multiple countries. they had very sophisticated measures to try to cover their tracks. they were buying servers in the u.s., computers here, doing all sorts of very sophisticated tactics to cover up what they were doing. there are many tactics that these companies could employ that they are not doing. clint watts, who testified, from the foreign policy research institute, said that twitter should ban all social bots.

knowing what twitter's mission is, this is not something that they would do, but there are obviously more drastic measures that they could take. there also calls of these companies need to integrate and talk to each other more, and have some sort of shared database about these foreign influence network of bots, and figure out how to more easily and effectively target them together. emily: that was tara maller, senior policy advisor for the counterextremism project and bloomberg tech's selina wang. the federal communications commission officially published its order rolling back obama-era net neutrality rules in the "federal register." that is the federal government journal that lifts the agency rules. the move is likely to open a floodgate of legal challenges from parties opposing the changes that empower internet service providers. mozilla and vimeo have already filed legal challenges to the fcc's repeal. a loss for at&t in its proposed time warner deal.

this week, a judge ruled the justice department does not have to identify whether there were communications between the white house and attorney general jeff sessions. at&t has suggested that president trump's dislike of time warner cnn swayed the justice department's decision to oppose the takeover last year. an antitrust trial date has been set for march 19. still ahead, elon musk's spacex successfully deployed a satellite thursday and looks to offer broadband internet around the world. that story ahead. plus, facebook cofounder chris hughes on his new book, "fair shot," and how silicon valley can push back on income inequality. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: apple is in talks to buy long-term supplies of cobalt directly from miners for the first time. that's according to people familiar with the matter. it is one of the world's largest users of cobalt for in its gadgets. apple wants to ensure it has enough of the key battery

ingredient amid industry fears of a shortage driven by the electric car boom. the spacex rocket carrying three satellites roared into space thursday from the california coast. the falcon 9 deployed a spanish imaging satellite and two smaller test satellites for a system that would provide internet access to remote regions. we spoke with chad anderson, space angel's ceo, for more. chad: one is that it carried two of the test satellites for their mega-constellation. it's going to have 4000 plus satellites. it is delivering communications to earth. this is important for a few reasons. one, it is going to connect the other 3 billion like you mentioned. it is going to give people options to their current cable providers. most importantly, spacex is still going to mars, so this is going to be a key piece in their financial architecture that is going to get them there.

emily: talking about this effort to bring internet access to the farthest corners of the world. this is something that other internet entrepreneurs haven't shied away from like mark zuckerberg and google. how is what elon musk is doing different? chad: satellites provide an alternative in a way to deliver these communication services that go beyond uav-based and balloon-based things that we have seen previously. typically, these communication satellites are in geostationary orbit. that is very high up over a particular point on earth. these 4000 satellites going to be much closer to the earth, a which gives you a smaller distance that the signal needs to carry. this is going to be incredibly fast broadband connection to the farthest reaches of the planet, on par with new communications innovations coming online, like

5g. emily: each of these launches, also there are new learnings and progress when it comes to rocket reusability. what did we see happen here today? chad: this is very cool to see. spacex continues to push boundaries and keep us all interested. even in the shuttle and apollo years, we saw viewership start to fall off and it's because people want to see what is coming next, what progress are are making and what we are doing. spacex continues to push the envelope. today, the shield of the payload of the satellites came back to earth and they attempted to catch them with a giant net on a boat. while they missed, they came really close, and it seems like they've got a good plan to catch them next time. emily: you were at the national space council meeting. i know they talked about space entrepreneurship. there's a move toward the future of space travel as a commercial

rather than government endeavor. what kind of progress are you seeing there? chad: that's exactly right. it was good to be in the room yesterday to hear the conversations. it is really good to hear the emphasis on streamlining regulation and licensing. they have moved a lot of space operations and space oversight into the department of commerce, which is another key signal that the future of space is commercial. the overarching focus in that meeting was really about space entrepreneurship and how the government can continue to partner with them as a customer of service, rather than a benefactor or funding the development of new systems. emily: what is the mood, given the messaging coming from president trump about turning space into the next free-market paradise? chad: well, we have certainly all been working towards that for the last few years, so it's

good to have the government getting on board with that message. i think the data is starting to back up the story here in a major way. we have kind of reached a tipping point where the government has really started to sit up and pay attention. emily: we talked about this in the past, but as space becomes more commercial, what are the sort of safety concerns, regulatory concerns that you expect to see pop up? chad: there is a great one with the spacex launch today that we can talk about. they have three key challenges. one is the fcc licenses for spectrum. it's a scarce resource and how you send radiofrequency down to earth. how you bring this unprecedented amount of data back down to earth, and then also how do you navigate the ever increasingly crowded highways in space?

space is very big, but a lot of the key orbits are in demand, so how do you monitor all these things? they provide a lot of opportunities for startups. we are seeing startups addressing each one of these concerns with laser communications to bypass the radiofrequency spectrum, new ground stations that allow them to steer them electronically, you can do them for much smaller, much less upfront cost. and in debris tracking, we are seeing companies come in and really do this in a way that we have never seen before and a cost point that we have never seen before. being able to track to -- two centimeter objects and really give us a lot more situational awareness in space. emily: that was chad anderson, space angel's ceo. still ahead, facebook cofounder chris hughes joins us on his new

book, "fair shot: rethinking inequality and how we earn." why he says the american dream is on life support. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg radio app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: japan's softbank is working with nomura on what could be a $19 billion ipo of its domestic telecom business. according to people familiar with the matter, softbank may market most of the offering to japanese individuals. that ipo would be japan's largest in two decades. facebook cofounder chris hughes was at the epicenter of the start of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. since stepping away from facebook, hughes has become increasingly aware of wealth inequality in the united states. we caught up with him for a future episode of "bloomberg studio 1.0," and began a conversation on his new book on income inequality called, "fair shot." take a listen.

chris: i do think that my story is indicative of an unfairness at work in the american economy today. three years worth of work can lead to half a billion dollars in financial reward should give people pause, particularly in a moment where median wages have not budged in 40 years. we haven't created full-time jobs in a decade. we create part-time, contingent, flexible jobs. we talk a lot about robots in the future. work has come apart and income inequality is only getting worse. it is important to be honest about the unfairness at work in order to usher us into a conversation about how guaranteed income could restore the american dream. emily: just being devil's advocate, why should we listen to a 1%-er about what the solution should be? chris: i'm not here as a spokesperson for anybody but myself. i'm here to channel a lot of the conversation i've had over the past couple of years and a lot of the people i grew up with who tell me the american dream is on

life support. when you can't find $400 in the you will case of an emergency, which is what half of americans say, you can't find the gas money to go interview for a job, for child care, health care, all of these kinds of things. we know from the stats but the -- that the economy is fundamentally unfair. a lot of us on the left and right are casting about what can we actually do about it to change it? that is where i think the guaranteed income comes in as a powerful tool to address it. emily: as you came into wealth, how did that shape your ideas around inequality? did you have your own personal transition? chris: i think particularly in my case where we started facebook and facebook over the course of nearly a decade grew and grew and grew. i saw my own financial holdings grow and grow and grow from the first year that i was working there. for several years after, i was not at the company.

i was working on different projects, i was working for president obama, i was doing a lot of different things, and yet the wealth just kept growing. it gave me pause and made me say, what is the source of this wealth? is it the actions we are taking or also major economic forces that are happening behind the scenes? in a very personal way after facebook's ipo, my husband and i decided to give away the vast majority of this money, because it feels like it is the only way to address the unfairness that it created in the first place. emily: tell me about the discussion. chris: when you are fortunate and you come into this kind of wealth, you think about where did this come from, why did i get it, and what do i owe to other people? where i grew up and what i did with my family and what my husband did with his family, there's a sense that you should be always thinking about what you owe one another. emily: silicon valley has

created so many powerful tools and an incredible amount of wealth and some would say it also comes with a sense of entitlement for some of the richest people. do you think silicon valley is too arrogant these days? chris: i do think there is a sense, particularly among people who have made a lot of money, a lot of the time, and i'm not just speaking about silicon valley but just in general that it is all because of one's own actions. i think we tend to underestimate the power of these macroeconomic forces behind it all. things like automation, globalization, the rise of finance. i will give you an example. in facebook's case, over the course of the 10 years before it went public, facebook raised over $500 million in venture capital. that kind of financing was not possible 30 or 40 years ago. it is specifically because of financial changes that we made in the 1980's. it was to create an industry that is large enough to support

that at the same time everyone else's wages are flat. emily: in the meantime, uber has raised billions of dollars. chris: exactly, facebook isn't the only company. it's a trend. it's important to recognize there are many things that are happening in our culture, government, and in our society that are creating this wealth in addition to any one individual's contribution to it. emily: silicon valley often prides itself on being a meritocracy. do you think silicon valley is a meritocracy? chris: i think across the board in the america, we love the idea of meritocracy, this idea that one person can work their way up and be successful. mark zuckerberg said it in a speech at harvard the fact that he was able to learn how to code in high school was because his parents had jobs was an incredible "lucky break" that made it possible to be at harvard and to create facebook collectively.

i think it is a complex interplay between the role of luck and the role of work, and we need to be more honest that all these successes are a combination of both. emily: that was facebook cofounder chris hughes. coming up, one of the fastest growing cloud and data software firms just added a tech veteran to its board. we will speak with rubrik ceo and microsoft chair john thompson next. and a reminder -- all episodes of "bloomberg technology" are live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays. this is bloomberg. ♪ we use our phones and computers the same way these days.

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♪ emily: welcome back to the "best of bloomberg technology." i've emily chang. the data and cloud software company rubrik has grown rapidly since being launched in 2014. it hit unicorn status last year with a $1 billion plus valuation thanks to interest from investors like coastal and greylock. now it is picking up the momentum with the help of microsoft chair john thompson, who just joined the board and is advising the company. we spoke with rubrik ceo and cofounder. bipul: we built rubrik to have a single software fabric that goes from one premises to the cloud. this unique architecture has made rubrik into one of the largest enterprises for people

that want to manage their data. emily: you have seen so many technological shifts, what stood out to you as special here? john: my sense is that every 15 years or so there is an inflection point in every segment of our industry. no innovation had ever entered this particular segment for the last 15 to 20 years, so my view was it was time. when i got introduced to bipul, i thought why not make an investment into him? it is time for a change in the sector. emily: why is this versus what amazon or microsoft better than what they have to offer? bipul: just because applications run in the cloud does not mean that the need for data protection management goes away. both amazon and microsoft have a deeper partnership with rubrik and we go to the market together. emily: we hear the word

partnership a lot when talking about enterprise companies. who is going to own what? when does the partnership not make sense? when does it make sense to own as much territory as possible? john: let's be clear, the customer owns the data. neither microsoft, amazon, google, or anybody else, and particularly in the enterprise space should feel like they own the data. i think as time goes on, however, it will be an issue of who has the strongest share in the enterprise? clearly, microsoft has a pretty strong position. aws has done very well primarily with with early-stage companies looking for a cloud-based platform. for those enterprise customers who really want to move their data and apps to the cloud, they have chosen to opt for microsoft as opposed to other alternatives. i think it is a good thing for microsoft and for those clients as well. emily: what does it mean for the

up and comers like rubrik? john: rubrik is a hybrid, it acknowledges and recognizes that a certain amount of data is going to remain for some time and a certain amount is going to move to the cloud. the customer has a choice for where they want their data to reside. that is a good thing. emily: where do you see the cloud industry going? there is all this talk about hybrids, but at a certain point, again, it is about ownership, right? which cloud will be bigger, private cloud or public cloud? bipul: at rubrik the way that we think about our business, we want to manage customer data, but enterprise data, whatever it is on premisis or cloud, it really does not matter to us. what we're seeing in the marketplace is large enterprises are looking at public clouds and asking, how do i gain a

operational ability by going into the cloud? rubrik's growth is kind of based on the growth of the public cloud. we grew from zero employees 800 employees, $300 million annualized run rate. we just hired a new cfo and john joined me on the board to help us build a long-term thirty-year company. we are envisioning that various companies will want to run the application whether it is on premisis, on cloud, or both. we want to be the data management platform. emily: you are making a huge commitment to protect your customer's data. this is in age where data may be more unsafe than ever before? there is so many bad actors out there. john, how would you characterize this threat environment and the importance of protecting your data with a product like this? john: there is no question that the landscape has changed quite substantially since when i joined symantec back in 1999.

there are more experienced hackers attacking us and there are more geopolitical attacks that are going on, which are hard to separate from someone who is in it for profit, versus someone who is in it for intelligence, if you will. one of the things that rubrik has done is that they have integrated not just data management, but security management into the platform so customers get the benefit of both when they go to the rubrik platform, which is something i envisioned a few years ago for sure. emily: thanks to rubrik ceo and cofounder bipul sinha, as well as microsoft chairman john thompson. citigroup is a financial powerhouse as the fourth largest bank in the united states. within the walls is citiventures, a new incubator for internal startups that aims to compete with silicon valley

vc firms that have been around for decades. vanessa colella is leading the team as head of citiventures and chief intervention officer. she joined us along with bloomberg tech's selina wang. vanessa: we think it is really important at citigroup to constantly focus on bringing the outside in. how do we make sure we stay involved in cutting edge development? so much of that is being present where entrepreneurs are present. we work with entrepreneurs who might eventually want to be partners, but we also work with entrepreneurs who are thinking about expanding overseas, and using citigroup's global footprint to understand the market. it is all aimed at how do we bring in that outside diverse perspective back into the bank. a selina: you have e-commerce investments, machine learning data, analytics, so how would you describe the portfolio i you describe the portfolio strategy here, and is it shifting? vanessa: it is aimed at both

infrastructure type investments, so things like cybersecurity. that is incredibly important to the safety and soundness of the financial institutions. know but also, more and more are fin-tech commerce payments. selina: what do you think you have on the typical silicon valley vc's? nso: -- vanessa: we can really leverage the history of the company and help entrepreneurs build their businesses. what can you do to help them reach new consumers and reach new markets? distribution is a big challenge for many companies. i think there is a place for all different kinds of investors in

the ecosystem. what we find is that we tried to work with companies to not only help them grow, but help them learn to navigate working with a large, complex organization. it is not easy to know who makes the decisions or when to go in. we think of it as someone guiding you up a mountain. it is not enough to say to talk to selina when you get to the top. we do a lot of those ventures to help entrepreneurs meet success. selina: a lot of these companies are targeting aspects of traditional banks. how are you looking at the threat that these fin-tech's pose? vanessa: we don't think of it as a threat. what is really posing change is changes in technology and changes in customer

expectations. it opens opportunities for new players to come in. i think what you are seeing over the last several years is not just fin-tech come again, but incumbent banks and fin-tech working together to meet expectations. selina: we have heard people talking about how bitcoin is volatile. jamie dimon said it's a fraud, and he tried to take them back. -- that back. what is your position on bitcoin and blockchain is a future technology? vanessa: we have been experimenting with blockchain for over five years now. it is a very new technology and experimenting is the most important thing.

it is easy to say experiment with blockchain. it turns out when you're a big financial institution, you have to build a lot of internal capability and internal muscle, which we have done through investments in places like chain.com that are focused on helping large institutions figure out how to use the technology. we don't think that blockchain has any one single use. it is more about exploring multiple ways that it might help us deliver better for our clients. selina: what are some of those ways? i think a lot of people see blockchain as a panacea for all of a bank's problems. is it more like another tool in the software suite? vanessa: you have to think of it as a tool. last may, we released a blockchain tool. it is fundamentally a network distributed technology. it's not so that you can go off to your own conference room and experiment with.

it is one example that we have used is cocreated with our clients. we do not believe that we can go off and create products and services on our own and keep up with the pace of change. we believe we have to be working with clients co-creating and figuring out how to meet their needs. over the coming years and decades, we will all find that there are probably multiple uses of new technologies like blockchain to meet what clients need. emily: that was vanessa colella, head of citiventures and chief innovation officer. broadcom slightly lowered its offer for qualcomm to $79 per share this week after the target boosted its own bid for an xp. that is down from its best and final bid of $82. it said all other terms of the proposed deal remain unchanged.

qualcomm's response was that broadcom made an inadequate offer even worse. qualcomm shareholders vote on this next month. coming up, uber is launching its first new product in three years. details from a top uber executive are next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the "go it alone" campaign in japan is not working. that is with the ceo of the city in tokyo on tuesday, announcing he is now looking to forge partnerships with local taxi companies. he made it clear that japan's $16 billion taxi market is already high quality, but it could be more efficient. he traveled to india afterwards, where uber is competing against a local ride hailing startup, ola. in the u.s., after months of testing in san francisco, uber is officially launching a new feature, uber express pool. the first new product for the

company is bringing a change to the current model. is aimed to cut out the hassle of detours. the idea is to make pickups for drivers just as cheap as they are the passenger. uber's product manager, ethan stock, joins us to explain. ethan: we asked writers to walk a little and wait a little in order to have a much better ride. it's both more affordable because we can match more efficiently, and the ride tends to be straighter and faster. emily: how many trips in the u.s. are actually uber pool trips at this point? ethan: any moment we are going to cross one billion total uber pool trips. that is a milestone we are pretty proud of for a product that launched over three years ago. in the cities we are live in 16 cities, it makes up about 20% of the total ride. emily: what are the percentage of people who request these trips actually get matched?

ethan: i don't have those exact statistics, but we are trying to get three people in the car at the same time. i'm sure all of us have experienced those rides what we -- where we are the only passenger in the car on a pool. over time, it means that we cannot offer such an affordable price. what's great about the walking and waiting with express pool, is it increases our likelihood of making a high-quality match, which means that we can offer that affordable product over time. emily: gizmodo said honestly, just take a bus. how do you respond to that? ethan: that is actually a pretty good article that talks about the differences between express pool and a bus. public transit works really well on very high-capacity routes where you can run large

vehicles. express pool works much better because it is dynamic in terms of its timing and where it actual up and dynamic for the cross city journeys. there may be pickup and drop-off that last mile from a public transit option. emily: a lot of riders love it but a lot of drivers do not. how do you find a happy medium? ethan: drivers are working hard and would love to make more money, so we have actually introduced late last year pickup and drop-off fees specific to pool. looking at the nonmonetary component, there have been some things that we have done in terms of how we manage the service that made it less fun to be a driver. such as the routes and detours and backtracking you would see as we were trying to make a

match between 2 riders who were not necessarily most compatible. we wanted to make it better for riders and drivers as well, because if you feel uncomfortable sitting in the backseat of a shared ride your driver does not feel any better about that either. emily: how much money does uber actually make on uber pool? ethan: that is pretty difficult to break out. we are very pleased with the overall profitability of the company. some of the public financials we released recently showed that the curve is quite a nice one. we are very excited that by making bloomberg poll more efficient, -- uber pool more efficient, we can continue on a path to profitability towards a future idea. emily: how much does uber pool actually contribute to uber's profits? how much of this is driving a mission of more democratized transportation? i realize over is not a charity.

-- uber is not a charity. ethan: we're a very commercial business. what i love about uber is that the combination of the mission of making cities work better and provide transportation i think is going to be tremendously profitable business overtime. -- over time. pool is an obvious component of that. emily: as uber starts to look more like public transportation, how does the company think about city-run services? does this move you closer to bus systems in cities? ethan: there are things that we are very good at doing. one of them is providing highly dynamic transportation options. the other is building software. i think both of those things are wonderful compliments to a -- to what public transit agencies tend to do.

i think there are many different ways that we can partner with cities in the future. we have a pilot the city of -- with the city of cincinnati. we're starting to explore different ways that uber can complement public transit. not only in terms of coordinating it at data level, but in terms of uber taking on lower ridership routes that are are not efficient for public transit to run. emily: you joined uber 11 months ago. you kicked up a very long series of dramatic moments and leadership changes and now they have a new ceo. what has that been like for you as a new employee? what do you think about the new guard? ethan: i chose to join it about one year ago because i knew many good people there who were working very hard on the future of transportation. they were people i believed in

and it was a mission that excited me. we had a tumultuous year last year. what i am excited about is that a lot of that is in the rear view mirror. i think the new ceo has been phenomenal. i'm very excited to be working there. emily: that was ethan stock, uber product manager. coming up, carmakers looking to capitalize on your data. the possible regulatory hurdles they may possibly face. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: the auto industry is racing to a new connected future. one in which wireless connections in cars combined with artificial intelligence. it's spurring in car advertising software powered by personal data. but the question remains. can automakers profit off of all of the data they are capable of collecting without alienating

consumers or risking backlash from washington? we spoke with david welch. david: current companies collect a lot of data. your car knows a lot about you. it knows how many people are in the car, because the airbag sensors have to know who is seated, and where. seatbelt sensors on a beach that you are or aren't buckled in, it knows somebody is sitting in that seat and it probably knows the weight. the weight tells the car whether or not to beep at you. it knows where you've been and it might track your frequent destinations and might even suggest your home or work. if you are driving a certain route, it might say to stop for that sandwich, here is some specials on beer and wings, whatever that is. all that is possible. that's not really happening now. the car companies are not selling your data at this moment. they do work with some third parties, but they are not en masse selling your data.

they still aggregated data. it's here to to a limited extent, and it's absolutely coming. emily: we are talking about this being focused on the actual navigations screen. we have talked about distracted driving. is there a safety issue here? >> there could be. general motors has launched something where you can make restaurant reservations, or order coffee. simcity groups have already hyped up on this. they wondered if we are getting into the area of too much. is there a safety issue? gm has made the system pretty simple, so you don't have to spend a lot of time staring at it, but the safety groups are really starting to take notice. they are not in favor of it. emily: who are the big players trying to get in on this?

>> there has been a battle between the automakers and companies like google and apple. those systems right now, there is already a fight about how much data those systems can access. your apple phone will plug in and it will basically go on screen, but only certain apps will work with your car. that is the car companies way of keeping google from mining all of your data in the car. if you're using waze, it knows where you are and it does flash pop-up ads. -- ads on the screen of your phone. it does not have to get in the car itself to track your data and give you pop-up advertising or market to you or just know where you are. emily: have regulators weighed in on this yet?

david: not really. internet privacy is kind of the wild west. there are laws out there, but people are giving up a lot of their information for different services online and cars are kind of the same way. right now, car executives are saying they don't want to sell your individual data to marketers, they will not do that. a couple of them said they don't want to make that statement forever. they just said they are not doing that right now. emily: thanks to david welch. you can read this story on the bloomberg.com hyperdrive. it features our best reporting on the future of transport from teens across bloomberg. that does it for this edition of "best of bloomberg technology." tune in next week when we will be live from barcelona and mobile world conference. we will be speaking with the ceos of deutsche telekom and many more. tune in every day, 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco.

remember, all episodes of bloomberg technology are livestreaming on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> ♪ i-d-e-a, ideas ♪ ♪ >> there are artists whose work draws in when they are in front of the world, then all of a sudden a whole new journey starts. ♪ narrator: rana begum's