caroline: this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, walmart's largest deal ever. the retail giant agrees to buy a 77% stake in flipkart, in an effort to ward off amazon. plus, a deal that will shake up the broadband market in europe. and uber critics. customers will hail flying taxis sooner than you think.

we will your hay from a top uber exact ahead. coming up, the battle for e-commerce supremacy has zeroed in on india. walmart has agreed to pay for a 77% stake in india's largest online retailer, flipkart. it is walmart's biggest deal ever as the retail giant looks to fend off amazon in the world's second most populous nation. the news came as a surprise announcement by the softbank ceo , who spoke to a room full of investors in tokyo before the deal was fully confirmed. for more on the deal, we are joined by matthew from bloomberg news in new york. amazing way that it was given to the public as a journalist, but what do you make of it? what is walmart buying into? matthew: they are buying into india.

this deal was about getting ahead in an e-commerce market that is exploding. india has the second largest population of internet users in the world. walmart needs to get ahead in to battle amazon around the world. it was slow to get into china. it does not want to make that same mistake again, so it was willing to spend that much money on a business that is really not profitable yet, and that's what you saw in the share reaction today. investors were cautious about this. the shares were down 4.5%, but they have recovered. caroline: just looking at the walmart capitalization of walmart, perhaps taking a hit. it continues to need to build up investor confidence. viewers can have a look at the separation and amazon's believe actor. line, you see amazon's market sector capitalization at almost 800 and

, but almost a quarter of that is where walmart currently languishes. clearly market cap is so much more for amazon, but the revenue is hardly anywhere in comparison to walmart. money has brought in more at bricks and mortar at the moment, but the belief is that amazon will keep getting that much bigger. the walmart be able to be the key player in asia? matthew: they want to be. this is definitely a battle taking place around the world. let's not forget the u.s., where walmart makes most of its money. another reason for the skepticism is that walmart's e-commerce business in the u.s. took a tumble in the holiday dpo, so that -- in the holiday eriod, so that raised investor concerns. you can look at the market caps on they and amazon's dust worth

walmart's. does dwarf walmart's. this is a necessary step. it might be a painful step as well. walmart was very cagey today in terms of saying when flipkart is ever going to turn a profit. it will help walmart from an e-commerce perspective, from an innovation perspective, and maybe even a talent perspective. caroline: what about a payments perspective? they are buying into that area of flipkart teed up. -- flipkart too. matthew: when you talk about what it is about flipkart that really impresses you, it is this mobile payment app that flipkart has. they have a couple of fashion sites as well that do particularly well.

walmart is getting into fashion in a deeper way. they are doing a deal with lord and taylor. for walmart, that really excites them. it's not just an e-commerce startup. there are elements and assets within flipkart that walmart things they could learn from and maybe even incorporate into their other international operations or even the u.s. says -- no onee will be better positioned in asia, says the ceo of walmart. thank you very much. meanwhile, one of the biggest startups on the planet has big plans. uber is holding its annual summit in los angeles, highlighting its plans to partner with flying cars. eric joins us with uber's chief product officer, jeff holden.

eric: we are here at this amazing flying cars -- the phrase i'm going to use -- conference. do we have a flying car right now? >> we definitely do not. this is the very beginning. this started as a deep investigation -- can we actually take the business model of ridesharing into the sky? no matter what you do on the ground, you are always limited by the fact that it is a two-dimensional road network, and there is so much more mobility bandwidth in the sky. we did a deep dive on this a year and a half or two years ago, and that kate this whole thing off. this is the second annual summit. uber is the convener here, bringing the software to it. you have five vehicle partners now. what are those vehicles? what do they look like? >> the vehicles are different

from what you might think of as an urban aviation aircraft, which would be a helicopter. , battery all electric powered aircraft, and that enables us to design a different kind of aircraft that is much more efficient and quieter, has smaller rotors instead of big rotors. we think it will be so quiet, it will blend into the soundscape of cities. it uses a fixed wing for cruise flight. eric: they sort of look like planes, but a lot of them have rotors. they have a system to take off and land, but they can do a cruise flight. it is optimized for this specific use case. 2020.your first goal is what do you want to have happen then? are two bank major milestones. one is demonstrator flights, which we will have by 2020.

these will not be commercial flights. dallas and los angeles are our large cities. in 2023, we want to start commercial flights. you will be able to push a button and get a flight. eric: wow, how confident can you be? i guess the biggest question is, what is the biggest barrier to that happening, the head technological, regulatory? jeff: it is hard to say. there are no barriers that i would consider showstoppers. there are fully funded vehicle programs running full speed ahead with capable partners. .oeing just acquired aurora these are very capable builders. on the regulatory front, you saw some of the discussion yesterday -- this is relatively new territory.

we had a fireside chat and discussed some of these things. there are new challenges that come with this kind of aircraft that will require different types of regulatory approaches. it's a different kind of aircraft, so we have to figure out how to certify that. but there is a lot more technology in the cockpit. they?how autonomous are right now the design is generally what? jeff: we will start with a private. the autonomy software will be there from day one. the pilot will be operating a fly by wire system to control all these flights. you can have multiple vehicles landing in the same area, right? jeff: exactly. we will go through high throughput situations. the vehicle will be operated by pilot, but it will be a different kind of control.

we will be running autonomy software that will make decisions, but not execute, and we will basically build a statistical case that it is safe, and only then will we transition to autonomy. eric: you are a future-looking guy. i am sure there are people at home and say this does not exist. what would you say to that ?erson jeff: a few things have happened that would make this confluence possible now. one is that battery technology got to the point to where you have enough density of energy and the battery that the battery can carry itself through the air with motors, and then you have to carry payload on top of that. we are well past that point. that enables a different kind of aircraft with low noise operation.

then there is the autonomy technology, the ability for fly by wire systems and so forth. that is the second piece you need. the third piece is the ridesharing business model. there are "popular mechanics" covers from years ago showing people taking off in their front yard. the original model will not work for this. talk yesterday about this -- at least when cars were invented, there were already roads. imagine if when the car came along, all there was were trees? eric: there is a lot to make happen at once. jeff: yeah. we have to build the sky ports. to fill the sky ports, there has to be enough people flying these things. ridesharing brings that because it is already a scale model, and we can incorporated into the apps overnight.

eric: what government has to get the ok for this to happen? between the faa and the european equivalent, they control 80% of the world's airspace, so it is important to have those two on board. eric: that's great. thank you very much. jeff: of course. john: that was eric newcomer -- caroline: that was eric newcomer in los angeles with uber's jeff holden. aming up, facebook announces major management shakeup, the biggest reshuffling since the company began. ♪

facebook named new

leaders for its key divisions, including whatsapp and messenger. it is the biggest reshuffling since the company's founding. facebook is looking to move past the cambridge analytic a controversy and keep the trust of its users. will the rest of 2018 pave the way for facebook's comeback? let's bring in an analyst from global x funds in new york. they have facebook and tencent among its holdings. and with us in london is alex webb. , is thiss this -- jay the sort of shoveling you will need to be seeing at facebook? >> social media companies are trying to move their leadership around to explore things like what chain and grow their product offering. if you look at how high growth been, there has been a lot

of pressure on these companies to continue to push into these exponential technologies where they just have to the kind of the leaders in the technology space. caroline: a mention of blockchain. it's interesting that we are seeing david marcus, the ceo of facebook.me to he is now leading this division. do we know much about it? >> not really, but what's interesting is the approach toward privacy and the ability to control your data. that with to square blockchain, which is distributed it all over the place. that is one of the biggest complaints. enthusiasts say europe is going to be behind on this because it is not technically popular anymore. caroline: so you think the ledger and the use of it can never be deleted -- well that hinder or help the fact that facebook is trying to become in terms ofgest

trust? alex: it is technically more transparent because your data will be in a ledger. it is an intriguing question because it does not have a simple answer. give us a sense of some of the other key moves. you mentioned the interest of blockchain. the new head of instagram? instagram perhaps has an opportunity to steal market share away from snap as it has its own trials and tribulations. jay: they are trying to segment the market. what you have seen from users on desktop andterms of mobile, it is migrating toward an older generation. and babyeeing gen xers boomers, where is millennials are -- they are kind of moving assets around with instagram being more

of a high-growth opportunity. it is funny to say, but the provisional facebook app is kind of long in the tooth, so they will be moving around resources to focus on the higher growth opportunities. caroline: what about the growth opportunities we saw in europe? .lex, you mentioned gdpr a much more stringent regulation is coming into play in the eu on may 25. having moved from san francisco to london, how do you think the social media landscape is adjusting to that? alex: the instagram pieces interesting, because outside of , we are not necessarily aware that instagram is owned by facebook. in europe, there is a huge amount of into the bank -- amount of antipathy towards monetizing data.

they have to find other ways to monetize their users, not just their data. charging for their new data services something they might be considering. with instagram, something interesting and perhaps a massive misstep is that when you open the snap at, the first page is to create content. on instagram, the first page is to consume content. that is a substantial difference in the way it is framed, and therefore how it is easier to monetize. caroline: talk about monetization. are we going to see a change, the way we monetize? jay: i don't think there is going to be a wholesale change. data is their most valuable asset. that is why twitter and facebook are free, because they are collecting data and monetizing it.

to expect them to change their model away from monetizing data is unrealistic. there is something they can do about making that data more secure and anonymous, and making people feel more comfortable with giving them their data. that has come to light in the last few weeks. it is their data capital, and they will continue to monetize it as much as they can, because it is incredibly valuable, what they know about it. alex: by offering a paid option, that will actually serve to underscore the value of the free option. -- they will not necessarily be making money from that, but it justifies more readily the consumer the value in this free product. caroline: fascinating. jay, great to get your perspective.

coming up, we speak with the ceo of the world's largest privately held some i company -- semi conductor company. that's next. ♪

caroline: globalfoundries is the world's largest privately held; dr. company. the company provides a variety of services to some of the worlds largest technology companies, including qualcomm. visited the lab in new york earlier this week and sat down with the ceo, tom caulfield, to talk about his priorities as the new chief executive. immense set of assets around the world, and part of our sustainability is getting better return on those assets. this team is,or let's take advantage of these assets we have deployed around the world, make sure we are

fulfilling the best products for , and itur customers will crank up our financial return. >> how do you get a better financial return? is threen for me, it things, productivity, cost reduction, and efficient manufacturing. >> but they were doing it before. tom: they were. maybe it is best suited for others to manufacture, and we assets in more value-added solutions. and the value we create, we have to do a better job of capturing that value. >> what kinds of products might you exit? tom: we have technologies and products that were four or five years ago and had a lot more value to our customers. we look to reapply those assets

on different features. for example, non-volatile memory. and into the portfolio for more value rich capability. >> if you are successful, you will take your return from what now into what in the future? bosshave to be careful, my may be listening. >> why has globalfoundries been such a challenging turnaround? tom: i think a piece of this has to do with integrating. remember, the whole reason globalfoundries came into existence was because amd needed being ae between product company and a manufacturing company. of us is when we make products, and we don't need real scale to make products. they spun off the manufacturing operations and gave birth to

globalfoundries. on day one, just because you spun it out does not mean you fixed the problem of scale, so immediately in organic growth was the play. it was important to get that scale. the organic investments here in ibm., and inorganic with the biggest problem with globalfoundries was getting the economic scale to complete, and we are starting to get to that -- to compete, and we are starting to get to that tipping point. vodafone isming up, challenging deutsche telekom on its home turf with a $22 billion deal for liberty media assets. what the deutsche telekom ceo has to say about its rival. and bloomberg technology is livestreaming on twitter.

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caroline: this is a "bloomberg technology". vodafone is checking up europe's fragmented idiot and telecom with a deal -- fragmented eurocom network. facing competition from digital players from news caused waves particularly in germany where rebukes fromdrawn its closest rival, deutsche telekom. take a listen. >> i think the deal is to delete

an acceptable. time where they were not about to sell the cable business in one piece. nowsold in three pieces and all three pieces are coming together under one and the roof of vodafone. the rule ofing germany with fiber infrastructure. ares see where vodafone going, are they willing to invest in rule areas -- rural areas? the media industry, almost 60% , isur market is monopolized this good for democracy or the media companies society? 25% of ourthat, households in germany are insufficient and there is no exit for deutsche telekom.

my last point is we have a fully regulated portugal telecom and the whole market where we are building infrastructure -- for deutsche telekom. it is not related in the kind they are on i level with us on future. something has to change in the regulatory environment, because if they are a giant in this environment, what does it mean for regulation? asking forwe are more going forward. we are fighting for fair competition for the industries of our customers. >> what are you specifically going to do about this? are you going to go to regulators about these complaints? >> i think there is no m&a

possibility in the market we are operating. what i would do is to make sure the a politician and leaders and authorities deciding on this deal understand the economic situation by this transaction. the nextasking for telecom, i am asking for a fair competition and possibility we are able to fight with the same weapons and send pricing and saint network infrastructure as they are going to be able to do so. let me ask about the merger you are pursuing in the u.s. with sprint. regulators in the past had an issue with this combination, why do you think it will go forward this time? >> the market has totally changed. if you see today, all the costs

charter are to announcing that they are going to a market that is having a fixed and mobile combination and shows the market is not just a pure mobile or pure fixed market, it is a conversion market. but we see is there is a need and the rule of america is anding competitive installing 5g infrastructure. and the capability to utilize this if researcher. and to build a five g infrastructure not only for big cities but especially for rural america. impassionedd deutsche telekom ceo. willow the vodafone deal

shake up, alex would want about what liberty media challenge could do alone. 18 billion.g deal, taking half of the deck in order to acquire this company in germany. weaker market competition in places like butnd that are promising, people talk about content in the u.s. we are seeing the carriers are moving with some speak into the content space. we see at&t who want to get time and comcast making a , it seemsquire skype\ logical to go for a big content player. he would be able to get a massive studio, but something might seemgate, that

like a logical play. he could boost his stake and encourage greater organization of smaller players. about thewere talking depth vodafone will take off of the hands of liberty global, i is, anding at the dd they have to be careful with how we play this. the weight thet deal's structure and what vodafone wants out of all of this. >> vodafone is trying to in germany and its easy start market there, and for other reasons like the connections they'll be getting through 5g. the way to have structured the debt is in trying to reduce the

likelihood it gets for that rating. is increasing its target to , and it is outside of the comfort range. by offering convertible debt against rated differently and more favorably by the agencies and also doesn't dilute in the short term and can buy back in a couple of years. caroline: let's talk about europe and consolidation. the u.s. is an enormous market where there are concerns about losing for players and becoming three. in europe there is an ongoing cross-country consolidation. you think regulators are going to let this happen? andhey haven't in the past,

there is a narrow and tight rope to tread. to get some more pricing power but also does and what it to be vodafone, it wants it to be someone else. it in france as well, there's a deal in the big question a mark. in germany the argument is it is tong from three operators two operators. caroline: let's see how the regulators react. bb.was alex we new features and upgrades from google's businesses. that is next.

this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: google introduced new products and technology upgrades at its annual conference this week, driving home it's superiority in artificial intelligence and commitment to augmented reality. with -- markut up up with their tech director. you get off the subway entrance to find where you are going and you turn to google

maps in the frustration is there were you're not sure where you are going. to situation is familiar where you get off the subway and figure out where you are and you walk 10 feet that way and see the blue dot move, and as gpsuse urban settings, doesn't always work reliably enough to figure out where you are. we are working on vps, a visual system where you and i would use with landmarks in the environment figure out where we are and navigate, using similar visual features to help you figure out where you are get you going. >> google is sitting on this asset.sive white has taken a long time? > it is about the culmination

of a number of technical investments coming together from to pay her vision to make sense of signs and things like the visual positioning system to help and for exact location. and the building out our map data set and that is many years in the making. areoday's announcements focused on mobile, anything about it will these of mobile phones rather than headphones? >> i think that things will happen in augmented reality in the coming years from but everyone has a smart phone and camera and there's enormous opportunity to improve products and improve user experiences using the device we already have. google lenses about that and exploration we showed in walking directions is like that and you will see more in the coming days. market isnk the vr five cartagena 10 years away from taking off? >> at don't have a crystal ball

that we see promising adoption of it. long-term promise and last week we unveiled a partnership with lenovo, which is our first standalone headset. d.c. the killer app -- where do you see the killer app? is one killer app that tips everything. it as a long ramp up and you will see breakthroughs in and around the area we talk about today like mapping and search where instead of trying to enter a long keyword-based search to figure out what the car in front of you is or that dog, you can show your phone and get answers instead of fighting with the blue dot to figure out where you are going. the phone can lead the way. >> is there potential for

, like using augmented reality and mapping to connect with businesses? aree think there opportunities, but it is so early and the focus for me and the team is getting the products right and making them useful and helpful to users in everyday life. if we can do that we can do other things in services and businesses. >> are you playing the harry potter game? >> i sure am, and i am a big fan of the franchise and the two together. that was off a bit vice president of vr and ar. and emily chang cut up with alphabet vp of news and cover how the company is fighting back .ake stories >> this is all done with

machines in our judgment in terms of what is the most important story of the day, you could think of it as crowdsourcing editors and we look at other news organizations and what they are covering and how they are covering it by you make that determination as to what the talks really are, so did a feeling that google news right now it will be about the administration decision with regards to the nuclear deal with iran. emily: algorithms and machines are the part of the people who create them and in the world a fake news you are focused on prioritizing authoritative sources. how are you making sure the decisions you make about those choices and sources are the right decisions? in assessing authority we use many signals to get to that point. and in those cases where not making specific decisions about

what sources good or bad. we as hundreds of signals the copies that and readings that we our results on your regular basis and give them good guidance in terms of how they evaluate specific articles in their level of expertise in reflect that and in our machines to continue to make the best judgments we can. but only what is the important story at any given time, but what are the best sources to be servicing to give us the right information about that story? emily: how would you rate your efforts to combat fake news since concerns about fake news has come front and center? >> as far as we are concerned we can always improve what we can do. what keeps us awake at night is the trust of our users. where presently evaluating and evolving our approaches to

security and we recently results against breaking news events. we shift our models towards authority in those times when news is breaking and attracts many bad actors. who want to make sure that rumor is not out run fact. in those cases we should even more forcefully towards authoritative sources. -- that ouroing lives aren't perfect, but it is up to us to evolve them so. we do the right thing. . emily: the primaries and midterm elections are happening, is anything specific you are doing to prevent misinformation, particularly around political campaigns, given what we saw with the last election? richard: absolutely.

thereto with elections i would take the same approach we are taking with breaking stories. they are important events that dropback actors as we know. we step up our approaches in those instances to better protect our systems to make sure we are servicing the right content against the search query or a specific story about an election in a congressional district in iowa. caroline: that was some of our conversation with google's phoebe of news. more on uber's flight car ambitions. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: and activist firm presented tesla shareholders was the carmaker to shake up its board.

ctw opposes the reelection of three board members were up for what next month from claims tesla has feared off the path of profits and says the board is beholden to ceo, elon musk. that had back to google's summit uber has five -- current aspirations and developing a flight vehicle for electric car taxes and released three sets of design ideas that pushes partners to experiment with new types of vehicles. eric newcomer is on the ground in los angeles and caught up with their founder. and futurepreneur launchpad and eric asked about the ability to pull off flying cars. friend, the chief officer

at amazon who created amazon prime when he was there and at uber created uber xm to burritos, the guy delivers. platform andlobal in the 50 million people per day and have the ability to do this. i believe the are going to pull it off and i can't wait. >> which we call this technology? car?t peter: i don't think it will be named flying car. in the early days of cars the called then horseless carriages. taxis, jeff isir using the term aerial ridesharing. car, yout not flying are going from a flight airport,

,n old abandoned parking garage you are in an autonomous uber or aerial transport. aerial ridesharing where you share the right with people in the air. any rivalry? you have a stake in underground transportation? peter: one thing that is clear is that you, me, everyone else has one thing in common. have 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and it is how you save your time. i have to airplanes and a safe wherever i can just avoid lax. thereng that gets me quicker, autonomous cars is going online right now and waymo is operating in 10 cities and we have aerial ride sharing dozens

of companies building these vehicles. we haveelon musk, fact of thee, matter is we announced, instead of getting out of your home, put on your vr goggles and go do your shopping. we will figure out how to save time. to me how muchng of the investment is in the private sector with transportation. a huge government endeavor and nasa is here and supportive but it seems like the heavy lifting -- peter: it is about risk-taking. you're not going to see the government doing this. the government will support and provide policy and eventually adopted but they are not going to invented or take the risk. >> how close is hyperloop one

instructing one of these partnerships? peter: in the middle east and asia, the programs are under development. richard branch came on as a chairman of the board and is blunted through the roof. we have amazing technology right outside of las vegas. my kids are never going to drive. hoppingoint-to-point or on the hyperloop one is the future. now, developing news. forfornia has wanted rooftop solar powers on new homes and become the first u.s. state to impose this shows you solar panels is less of a niche the potentialows future and the norm. that does it for "bloomberg

technology". tomorrow we have more highlights from the uber summit. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ is to meet election victory in malaysia, the biggest powershift in six decades and independence. betty: the result might be better news for investors and want malaysian etf plunging the lowest is february. haidi: mike pompeo has home from north korea with three u.s. detainees freed by kim jong-un's regime. betty: and 21st century fox earnings late and