♪ kurt: i'm kurt wagner in for emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, flamboyant leadership. wework is said to be in talks with t-mobile's john legere as new ceo. plus, hidden likes. more on instagram plans to hide likes to cut down on social media pressure. my interview with the head of instagram coming up. and, allegations of sexism.

steve wozniak among those complaining of gender bias for the new apple credit card and goldman sachs. the latest from goldman. first, to our top story. wework ceo's search is said to include t-mobile ceo john legere. john legere has ties to softbank. this comes at the same time as legere is pushing for a merger with sprint, whose owner is also softbank. walk us through the news of today. ellen: as we reported this morning, it seems like he is one of several names up for consideration for a ceo search fo for wework. this is something that has kind of been percolating. again, this may be a sign of softbank pulling the strings. we talked about -- they have a

lot of control over wework. they have strong ties over john legere. in an amusing twist, ties with the executive chairman who is a former sprint leader and someone who in the past has sparred publicly at times with john legere over telecom industry beefs they had. one of them even called the other a conman on twitter. it seems like his name is in the ring. kurt: it has been six weeks since newman stepped down. what has been going on at wework on the executive front? ellen: it has been a long six weeks. in late september, there was the upheaval. adam neumann stepped down. we had these co-ceo's, they come onto take the reins. pretty quickly, softbank installs the executive chairman.

it has been interesting to watch. he has been hands-on with addressing staff. sending out all staff emails, saying, if you have any concerns or questions, feel free to email me. he seemed very forward. at the same time, it seems the company is going forward with a multipronged search for a new ceo. one of them could be john legere, but they want to keep open the possibility for other names. kurt: we have been hearing a lot about layoffs. how important do you think it is to get a ceo in there during this transition period? this is someone who will have his or her first reputation with employees tied to a lot of transition stuff. how important is it to get an employee in quickly? ellen: they should probably pick one person and stick with it. a bit of whiplash going on.

as soon as adam steps down, it is pretty clear that they will be running the show, then there is a new person coming in. now, it seems like he is running the show. i'm sure they are reading the news today and they, when are we going to get some stability doing our jobs and building this , business? kurt: do you have a sense to how quickly we could get answers? ellen: no. as always with wework, these plans are up for changing. they do not really know. i assume they are trying to figure out the best past that best path forward to keep the company alive. kurt: what is the next step for this executive search? set the ceo search assigned. -- ceo search aside. what else are you paying attention to? ellen: their goal, which they stated publicly, is profitability. they are thinking, how do we convince people that this is a

business worth pursuing? even the softbank -- talk about how the core business is very valuable. this is a product people want to pay for. the company, its main priority is to try to cut expenses that may come in the form of layoffs. toting expenses and trying right-size the business, which means getting rid of a lot of ancillary lines they have and focus on making money. which was not something they focused on at all for the first nine years of their existence. kurt: making money is good for businesses, i am told. bloomberg's ellen huet, thank you for joining us. still ahead, goldman sachs is the target of a wall street probe into its credit algorithm. we will talk to the apple

cofounder, steve wozniak. he was among the first people to flag the issue. this is bloomberg. ♪

kurt: there is plenty of anxiety on social media, especially for people who feel the pressure of competing with other users. instagram is now looking to reduce that feeling on the photo sharing platform, and the facebook-owned company thinks the key is to remove the like counts on posts. it is already doing in countries like canada, japan, and brazil.

we spoke to the head of instagram, adam mosseri. instagram a little bit. we are really focused on young counts private, it may allow people to focus for a little bit more on what they care about. we have been testing this in a number of countries around the world. >> the idea being, if i can't see how many likes your photo gets, that might decrease my pressure around sharing myself? adam: you will be able to see how many likes your own photo gets but not how many likes other people's photos get. the idea is to reduce anxiety and social comparison, specifically with an eye towards young people. kurt: what are you seeing? is it changing the way people interact with instagram? adam: we are seeing different

things in different countries. we want to understand how it changes how people use instagram but more importantly, how it , changes how people feel. measuring how people feel is tricky. that is why the test has been running for so long and that is why it will take some time. >> you must feel that people are feeling better about instagram as a result of this. you wouldn't be rolling it out in other markets if not. adam: we are seeing encouraging data, which is why we are rolling it out further to try to learn how it works in other countries as well. we will see how it does in the u.s. kurt: are there other things that you guys are thinking about on the same front, either around metrics are some other way --und the way people share or some other way around the way people share that might change the feelings people have? adam: when you think about well-being and safety and

integrity more broadly, i think there are three areas. acute issues, things like hate speech and try to address them. the second is that we are trying to take issues we can lead on. like bullying for instance. we are trying to innovate. it disproportionally only affects young people -- disproportionately affects young people. we are trying to rethink some of the fundamentals about how instagram works. the combination of things, i hope, will change how people feel about what we do. none of this -- there is no one silver bullet. it is a broader cultural shift on how we think about what we do. kurt: that was adam mossari, the head of instagram. to discuss this further, i would like to bring in the cofounder of common sense media. why did you think when you saw that? -- what did you think when you saw that? jim: i would like to know where they were for the last five years.

we have been complaining to the folks at instagram and facebook for years about the comparison culture that kids are growing up in. instagram is one of the major culprits, if not the most important culprit. i thought it was nice to hear him finally to think about trying it in a few markets. the truth is, this is an enormous challenge for kids and teens today. facebook and instagram buried their heads in the sand on this issue. it is about time they started to do something. they should get rid of likes altogether. kurt: one thing that i wasn't super happy with the answer i got was, how is this changing user behavior? do you have a sense of what this does to the platform? jim: it is interesting because what they want is to keep you there, so they can make money via advertising. the truth is, they should be measuring the impact on the social and emotional health of kids, and on the mental health of kids. we see increasing anxiety among

kids and teens who spend a lot of time on social media. they are very late to the party, but at least they are doing something. kurt: the fact they are rolling it out in such big markets, brazil and the united states, do you get the sense that this could hurt facebook's business in any way? jim: no matter how much criticism facebook gets and how much their brand has been tarnished -- and people don't always associate instagram with facebook, but they should. their business has been incredibly strong. from a democracy standpoint or, in this case, a kids and family standpoint they are causing a , lot of harm. i would like to see adam be bolder. remove the likes and look at the behavior of people on the platform. kurt: should we take anything from the fact that this is instagram testing this and not facebook? why are we not seeing this on the bigger facebook platform? jim: because they are making so much money on facebook this way.

it keeps you there. method tried-and-true and a designed method to manipulate you and keep users there. they know that. the big thing here is the crisis of conscience at facebook, instagram, and in the broader tech industry. how should they be held responsible for some of the consequences of the platforms they have created? they are so late to try to take these issues on. it is a start. you look at what is going on in the political advertising realm. you have some of the major issues there as well. these guys should be under serious scrutiny and accountability from folks like common sense media. all of the viewing public. kurt: your brother, tom, is obviously running for president. i saw that he was the second-highest spender on facebook ads behind donald trump. what do you think about the policy they have, not fact checking politicians? do you think that is a problem? jim: i think it is a big problem

, and i think it is hypocritical. if that means that my brother or even our host, mike bloomberg, does not advertise on facebook, that would be fine. the first amendment does not apply to facebook. it applies to government entities. what they have said is, we will put lies on the air and we will try to moderate some of them, but basically, we will pretty much let anything go. if it means that my brother would have to stop advertising on facebook, too bad. if it means that mike bloomberg cannot take out ads on facebook, too bad. our democracy is more important than one amount of money that facebook can make from political ads. it is a very disappointing policy, particularly in light of twitter which has not , particularly been the best corporate citizen in the world. they should stop it now. kurt: do you think these changes by facebook, either their

policies around political ads whether changes to like counts, does that set standards in the industry? does that set the bar for everybody else? jim: i don't think so. if you speak to other corporate executives in the tech industry like i do, they are not big fans of facebook. they want facebook to be the demon. they are happy to have facebook criticized so their behavior is not criticized. i don't think facebook sets the bar for anybody now. their brand is so much lower in the public perception today. because of the hacking of the democracy, because of the challenges for kids and teens that we are describing. the problem is, they are the biggest platform when it comes to elections and also issues like likes. when they are not held responsible and they do not , change their behavior, we all lose as a society. kurt: thank you for your thoughts. jim stier of common sense media, thank you for joining us.

much more on "bloomberg technology" coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪

kurt: another top story we are following. bloomberg has learned that a wall street regulator is looking into goldman sachs' credit card practices after an entrepreneur alleged apple card algorithms discriminated against his wife. the card is a joint venture between apple and goldman. goldman said it is possible for two family members to receive significantly different credit decisions. joining us as the finance reporter. explain what is happening here and what we learned over the weekend. >> this all started a few days ago when david hanson, a tech entrepreneur, started complaining online about how he got a much higher credit limit than his wife, even though she has a better credit score, they share joint accounts,

effectively she has the same , spending power, yet his credit limit was 20 times higher. the post immediately got traction online. to add insult to injury, you had apple cofounder steve wozniak saying, i faced the same issue. before you know it, it got wall street regulators saying, we want to look into the credit assessment models to see what goes into the decision-making process to ensure that there is not any bias even if unintentional. kurt: who exactly is being investigated and by who? is this an apple issue, goldman sachs issue? who is under fire? >> this is an apple card. but the truth is, it is goldman sachs, a top wall street bank, they're responsible for all of the banking partnership. they determine the credit lines. the the new york department of financial services is a new york

regulator that oversees goldman. since it is goldman who is setting it up, goldman knew as the proprietary system, they said, we want to look into this black box and see what goes into the decision-making process just to make sure you are not reinforcing problems we've had with the credit assessment system for decades, frankly. kurt: thank you very much. as we mentioned earlier, this investigation was launched in response to a series of tweets by tech entrepreneur david hansen. one of those tweets said apple offers a credit card that bases assessments on a black box algorithm that six different reps across apple and gs have no visibility into. it is just the algorithm. david joins us now from los angeles. can you explain the process that led you to these tweets from late last week?

david: i signed up for the apple card as soon came out. out. soon it came i was excited about the fact that apple was going to launch a new credit card. my wife was excited for the card. she signed up shortly after i did. my application went through just fine and i got a reasonable credit limit assigned to me. my wife showed up shortly thereafter with the same financial information i used. the same household income, the same credit history. we have been married for eight years. we have the same credit cards, lines of credit. everything the same. she ends up with a credit limit that is unusually low, 20 times less then what mine was. we thought at first, this was a mistake. we can contact apple and ratify this. so we do. go through a series of reps, managers, escalations, and everyone keeps telling us, it is the algorithm. they don't know why it arrives at the verdicts it does.

the only thing they could tell us is, check back in six months. that struck both of us as patently unfair. we had the same financial situation. pay same capacity to ree loans. we should get the same treatment. unfortunately, what happens is that apple just washes their hands, they hand it to goldman sachs, essentially a subcontractor. no one signs up because it is issued by goldman sachs. they sign up because it is apple. we as consumers, we took them at their word. this gets handed over to goldman sachs, we go around in circles, and the best they can come up with is essentially to say that the assessment is individual. you can end up with different scores. no insight as to how they arrive at their verdict. we are left just screaming at a

black box, trying to appeal to humans inside of both of those organizations. the algorithm is apparently completely out of control, and it just spits out verdicts that we are supposed to take at face value? that is not right. we should have insight into the algorithm, be able to correct any errors the algorithm and inputs may entail, and then be able to review and compare the whole thing. otherwise, how would we know if this card is actually sexist? if apple and goldman sachs simply say, it is the algorithm we don't know what the inputs , are, but trust us. that this is a fair and impartial process. trust what? how has goldman sachs and the industry in general earned any trust from consumers to take them at their word? they haven't. kurt: let me hop in real quick. you in the process of working with customer service. have you heard from the companies' higher ups, either at apple or goldman sachs? has the fact that apple

cofounder steve wozniak has gotten involved, has that gotten a response to you about this issue? david: in part. on saturday, two apple managers called my wife to apologize for the algorithm. they gave her the vip bulb. they basically matched her credit limit to mine, not because they found out the algorithm was wrong, but because they clearly smelled there was a pr issue. they just said, now that this is a pr problem, here you go. your wife can have a 20x credit limit. that completely undermines the defense they have that this is an individual process. and that goldman sachs is in charge of the underwriting process. it was managers who called my wife, managers who told her from apple that she would be bumped on her limit. on sunday, after the new york regulator has gotten involved,

we got a lawyerly letter from goldman sachs that was clearly written, not to my wife, but to the new york regulators essentially saying, we do not discriminate on gender. they provided a few bits of information that did not add up. the timeline did not add up. this was them trying to cover up for regulators rather than answer the real questions. this is a black box algorithm. maybe now, the regulators are able to peek under the covers. why shouldn't all consumers be able to peek under the covers? why shouldn't we all be able to know the information we are being judged upon? it is like there is a secret court with secret evidence and you being judged on your worth. to be judged in that court and to find out, you are not worth one 20th of what your husband is, it is deeply offensive. kurt: thank you very much. thank you bring up a lot of

important points. that is david heinemeier hansson, founder of ruby on rails, thank you for being here. be sure to stick around. later this hour, we continue our discussion with the new apple card with apple cofounder steve wozniak. this is bloomberg. ♪

kurt: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm kurt wagner in for emily chang. now, we join shery ahn in new york and haidi stroud-watts in sydney to bring you the latest global tech news. let's take a look at the top global tech stories of the day. haidi? haidi: investor confidence in europe's e-scooter sharing market is not slowing down. sweden's technology announced it closed $85 million in new funding. this follows an october funding round of $60 million. tencent is entering the indian insurance market. the chinese giant bought a 10%

stake in indian online insurance aggregator policy bazaar. , the latest in the backing of the indian startup. it also invests in a ride-hailer and a food delivery platform. the deal was signed earlier this week. and, tesla is showing off its first batch of chinese-made cars. the model 3's were built in the shanghai giga-factory, which broke ground in january. it is working with local authorities to obtain manufacturing certification by year end. those are the top global tech stories we are watching. shery: another single day record for alibaba. the chinese tech giant racked up 38.3 billion in sales for the 24-hour marathon that is seen as a gauge for chinese consumer sentiment. an estimated half a billion shoppers bought something. joining us to discuss, jeff greenfield, cofounder of c3 metrics. great you happy with us. so, great record sales for

alibaba, yet investors don't seem too impressed. the stock actually fell. baird saying deceleration from 2018 levels. what is your take? jeff: it is definitely a deceleration compared, but the key is if you look at the growth since they started pushing on singles' day, it is incredible. we should not be too impressed with the dollars. the big story here is the data. how they are able to do it. when you look on comparison, when you look at the number of people alibaba shoppers have and you compare it to the u.s. population prime day and black , friday is actually not that far behind. the numbers are much huger, but there are so many more people. the big story is the data and what happens with the data for retailers in the u.s. kurt: jeff, i'm curious when you talk about that data, give us a sense of why that is so valuable to alibaba, especially in the

growing field of e-commerce players. what does that give them that someone like amazon might not get through prime day or do they? jeff: they do get that through prime day. the key is understanding data has an impact for advertisers. there's a lot of advertisers in the u.s. and a lot of big companies that traditionally do not have access to that data. for example, cpg companies. somebody like a cleaner or soap company do not have access to that data. advertisers are finally waking up. that is why you are seeing a lot of advertisers are jumping on board and realizing in order to get that data, they need to have a relationship with the consumer. if you look at tide, for example, they started acquiring cleaners around the country so , they can have that one to one relationship. for a lot of people in this country, their local cleaner is now called tide cleaner. the other side of that data, consumers today want a curated experience. they don't want to walk into a mall and have everything that is

for sale there. that is why we have seen companies like stitchfix start to explode like crazy. this idea that you could get exactly what fits you, exactly what you need, what is made for you to come to your home every month. that is what consumers today want. that is where retailers seem to kind of miss the message. if you walk into a mall today, you are walking into a graveyard of brands that have not caught up and taking advantage and looking forward to business intelligence. shery: when it comes to alibaba, there are always questions about what the single day sales means for the bottom line. there have been -- there has been accounting scrutiny over alibaba in the u.s. so, what do we know about how much this actually contributes to their business? jeff: great question because at the end of the day, in order to get that many consumers to purchase that large number of goods, there's a lot of deep discounting that goes on. across the world, consumers also want one thing. they want a huge bargain.

that is why sales are so big. that is a big question we are not going to find out today in terms of what is going to impact their bottom line. believe me, there's a lot of discounting that went on. kurt: jeff, you talked a lot about making sure this experience for consumers is moving towards this idea of being personalized. how do you align that with what we are seeing from social platforms like instagram or pinterest that is trying to be both spontaneous and also personalized at the same time? jeff: social platforms are a whole different aspect in terms of data. the big problem these platforms have is they can personalize as much as they want, but they are not actually selling anything. they are missing that link between commerce. think about it in terms of facebook. the only thing they are selling are ads. really they are really just selling your information. that is facebook, instagram. google themselves as well are also not selling anything at all. all they are selling is your information.

they are missing that link that amazon has. amazon has an amazing situation because not only do they have that data, not only are they excelling ads, they have goods they can sell as well. it would not surprise me when you start to look at facebook and google, with the amount of cash they have, that they would be looking to make some sort of acquisition for some sort of shopping platform. they need to have a direct connection to commerce in order to really take full advantage of all the data they actually have. shery: how are we expecting the single day performance to help when it comes to that hong kong ipo of $15 billion that can come any day now for alibaba? jeff: i think investors should be somewhat impressed with those numbers. they probably aren't that impressed if the growth was not as high as the years before. i think what is going to be interesting more than what happens with holy bubba is -- with alibaba is how does this

impressive number with singles' day, what does this do for the economy in the u.s. and what is going to happen in q4 as we move towards the shopping season here? are we going to see about a 25% jump? we should. or if we don't see as much of a jump, what that tells us is alibaba is really taking better advantage of their data than the retailers in the u.s. are. shery: all about that data and analytics. jeff: it is. shery: thank you so much for that. that was jeff greenfield joining us of c3 metrics. plenty more ahead. this is bloomberg. ♪

kurt: back to our coverage of goldman sachs making headlines over the weekend. bloomberg was first to report the wall street bank is being investigated for alleged discrimination over its apple card algorithm.

social media postings in recent days by a tech entrepreneur and apple cofounder steve wozniak complaining about the unequal treatment of their wives ignited a firestorm that has engulfed the two giants of silicon valley and wall street. steve joins us now from san jose, california. thanks for being here. can you walk me through what happened over the weekend? steve: i am very thankful what david was on saying. i did not really go out and try to promote anything. i don't do that, promote issues. i saw a post, a tweet by david about he and his wife having different limits. my wife and i encountered the -- encountered that months ago and found out through phone calls on the number that is on your apple card and apple wallet, i could not get anyone to listen. they would say maybe in three to six months, that sort of thing. i posted it to be a little side feature of the article. and, it became -- i don't know. i didn't expect all these results. funny thing is goldman sachs has

, been phoning us and doing some incredible things in a very short time. they have introduced this card. it is their first credit card and that is something hard to do , for the first time. i have been there. not to have everything in place support wise for some time is understandable, but they are going out of the way just like apple would. there were a lot of article saying it was alleging gender bias as the only possible explanation. my wife thought that at first. i didn't. i never used those words because i know that apple itself is the least biased of all the companies, the least discriminatory. we are the only big company in the united states that guarantees equal pay for equal work by gender. that was out of the thing. it was goldman sachs -- they have listened. maybe because i got involved. i don't like to get special privilege because of my past. they got involved, and they thought it out, and they will make the changes very soon that

will allow you to get to a human. i don't believe looking into the algorithm is a solution. i don't believe that changing the algorithm is the solution. i think it is somehow being able to get individual attention in cases the algorithm misses. kurt: you did mention part of the problem is when you are trying to get someone on customer support for a company this size, it can be really hard. you said it is too big. were you talking about goldman sachs, apple or a little bit of both? steve: i am talking about all the big companies. apple is actually very good because you've got personal support, human to human support in the stores with the employees, the apple geniuses. apple does a really good job of making good support available. i decided a long time ago that having a good product is not as valuable as having good support for whatever you get. kurt: obviously, when you choose to weigh in on something like this especially apple related, it will probably get a lot of attention. you said you were surprised by how much attention those tweets got.

you also mentioned the response you got from goldman sachs. did you hear from apple as well? steve: i don't think we heard from apple directly. they were contacting my wife who contacted them months ago and called the phone number. i guess they had her number to call. they said they are going to have their standard number by the end of the week. now they are telling us by tomorrow. it will actually go through to support people. the idea is to get to humans. you cannot expect instant solutions because there might be too much income, too much demand and not enough supply for a while. they are talking exactly right. the way apple would handle something like this. we are going to support the customers. i believe in the customer getting respect over the company having power, and because they have authority they can be right when they are really wrong. kurt: you mentioned this is not necessarily just in algorithm

issue. that there might be other solutions. but, its starts with the algorithm. do you think this is reflective of the challenges broader the -- broader in the tech industry right now? steve: a lot of things algorithms cannot handle that are different from a human. the dumbest human in the world could easily look at and come up with solutions including a lot of self-driving issues. kurt: what are the other areas right now where you feel like a.i. and these algorithms are really a problem, at least in terms of starting some of these issues? steve: everywhere we have learned we can apply computers -- we call it a.i. -- we apply computers to avoid humans having to be hired and paid to do the job of supporting people. that is what the gig economies are doing. i was hundreds of messages and calls a day for some door dasher. to get my phone number, emails, texts, no way to get to the company to explain my problem.

unless maybe i got an account. i don't need another account with my name going on more lists. you cannot get through the to the humans when you need to and when a human would solve it. kurt: it does feel ironic that a lot of these big tech problems are kind of requiring human solutions, right? do you think the tech companies, apple included, are doing enough to grow those kind of customer service workforces? what do they need to do to get up to the standard you expect from them? steve: i have always seen apple as one of the best of all the companies i deal with. even for normal, the average joes, the normal person. i don't get products from apple free. i stand in line like everyone else. i order them online early. i just want to be in a real -- i just meant do not -- i just do not want to be in a real privileged category. if somebody offers me something, i will be polite and take it, but i don't want to use my privilege like i am more important than any other people. i don't act like that in my

life. if you study me, i am very different in that way. kurt: what about regulations? can some of this be solved by the government stepping in and telling these big tech companies, if you are going to use a.i. to solve some problems, we are going to put new rules or guardrails around that? steve: it goes back to what i was saying -- i always favor the consumer over the producer, the big companies, the ones that have power and wealth. i want the consumer to be respected. they are not going to be taking -- they are not going to get taken care of by the companies making their own decisions. the companies work for themselves. only government can step in to handle the masses. anything from road construction on. it is not going to happen at the private company level. we will take care of the problems ourselves. no, i don't buy that. kurt: one of the things that stood out for me was you are still a current apple employee and i did not realize that. i'm curious, what are you doing at apple these days? steve: nothing officially. i get a small paycheck. i am the only person who has

gotten a paycheck every week since we started the company. $50 a week in the bank or whatever. kurt: that sounds like a nice gig. let me know when you figure out how i can sign up for one of those. it sounds like you are not then working on the new a.r. glasses. there was a report coming out but augmented reality glasses maybe coming out in the next few years from apple. i'm curious what you think about the a.r. space more broadly. is this going to be the new version of the phone wars we have been experiencing for the past couple of decades? steve: as for working at apple and stuff like that, i'm so outgoing and honest, it is hard to be working on projects inside. you have to get a lot of that up and i never have. as far as a.r., it is going to be a contestant. who knows what makes it forever in all of our lives and what doesn't? we'll see. at least a.r., like v.r., has a good start with gaming and that is where personal computers

started. i don't read analysts and financial pages. my wife actually handles all the money in our house. she does not have that good a credit card limit. kurt: when you talk about a.r. in the future, will this be a battle over the hardware itself? assuming a lot of these companies are building glasses. is it a battle over the hardware or whoever controls the operating system on the glasses that will win out? steve: i hope like apple days in the macintosh days, making the hardware and software working together. companies that do that, both the hardware and software. i think the hardware is key because a.r. requires specialized hardware. i'm just waiting for the big one that really hits and everyone has to have it. we'll wait. kurt: that is steve wozniak, current apple employee. steve, thank you so much for joining us. coming up, elon musk gets closer

to his vision of a space-based broadband internet. the launch of another batch of satellites. we will have the latest next. this is bloomberg. ♪

kurt: the ceo of uber calls the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi a mistake by the saudi government. dara khosrowshahi compared it to uber's accident with a self-driving car. khosrowshahi later backtracked and called khashoggi's death reprehensible. uber co-founder travis kalanick has sold 20% of his stock in the ride-hailing company. according to a regulatory filing, the shares were worth 547 million.

the trade came after a 180-day lockup period, restricting inside or early investor sales. shares of uber have fallen 30% -- have fallen 40% since the ipo. kalanick owns a 4.6% stake in the company. now spacex just launched its , second batch of satellites on monday. another step towards elon musk's vision for worldwide network of space-based internet. the rocket was launched from cape canaveral air force station in florida. spacex launched its first batch of satellites back in may. joining us to discuss is dana hull. tell us about today's launch and why this was significant. dana: elon musk has a vision of space-based internet. to do that, they need to put thousands of satellites in space , and they are doing it in batches of 60. the first 60 went up in may, the second batch was today. they hope to do for more launches in the next six months and they hope to start service

, in the northern u.s. and parts of canada next year. kurt: what is the space-based networking? is this a new idea? dana: the idea is faster, more reliable internet access from space. you talk to anybody who has internet in the u.s., even in cities, there is lots of glitches. there are huge swaths of rural america that do not have broadband at all. oneweb, bezos is looking at a space-based internet system to improve service. kurt: do you imagine spacex may someday be my comcast competitor or a partner with an existing player? dana: i would imagine it would be a competitor. spacex is looking at this as a source of revenue for them. they need to create a lot of revenue if they want to create a human colony on mars. they are not going to get there from the launch provider. kurt: i was going to ask about the business motivations. this will pay for the mars colony it sounds like. dana: yes. you want to have an internet on

mars also, right? it is two-for-one. revenue for the company as it continues to grow and eventually , internet to everyone. kurt: i know you said they will send these in multiple batches. is there any realistic timeline for when something like this might be readily available? dana: spacex has said they hope to begin targeted service in 2020. musk always sets very ambitious deadlines, does not always meet them. if they are working, once they get enough up there they can , begin a trial period. kurt: it seems like these rocket launches are really routine for spacex right now. it sounds dismissive, but that is how it feels. how does it feel to you? is this becoming the kind of thing where they are able to do this with their eyes closed? dana: kind of. i remember two or three years ago when they were trying to land a rocket on the drone ship for the first time. every time they would try, they would miss it or it would land and explode. now, they are landing these landings and increasingly

reusing and recycling the rocket. the rocket that launched today had already flown three previous times. it is becoming very routine. kurt: i know they deliver a lot of satellites for clients to space as well. do you get the sense at all that spacex's decision to do this on their own, does that pose a competitive threat to the people they previously done business with? dana: it is interesting because they are one of the leading launch providers for the world's global satellite providers. now they are launching their own , satellites. i think it is different when you look at the big satellites that the military and commercial operators use versus the smaller satellites that spacex is starting to string together. kurt: is there anybody in the industry trying to do something similar to this? i think you mentioned the blue origin earlier on. are there governments attempting to do this same thing? dana: oneweb is trying to do this and bezos is very interested. it is actually an amazon project.

kurt: similar ties to bezos, but not really. dana: yeah. kurt: thank you very much, dana hull. thank you for joining us. amazon plans to launch a new supermarket chain, and it will be distinct from the whole foods brand it bought two years ago. the launch is a sign that amazon wants a slice of the grocery market beyond high-end, organic food. the first store will be in the woodland hills section of los angeles. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." don't forget, "bloomberg technology" is livestreaming on twitter. check us out, @technology. be sure to follow our global breaking news network, @tictoc, on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> this is "bloomberg daybreak: middle east." protesters are causing disruption again. the hang seng is flat after yesterday's disruption. we're live at the city center this hour. manus: brexit cheerleader nigel for rog pledges not to fight the ruling conservatives at next month's election. the next meeting just weeks away, opec and partners are shown note if it is for