they need to do a better job of stitching that together. >> that was jason nolen.right back. ♪ >> i am cory johnson. this is the best of bloomberg west. google buying technology and patents from soft card, a service backed by three of the biggest wireless providers. att, verizon, and t-mobile. worked with google to preinstall its app. but is this going to help google take on apple pay? i talked with the ceo of the pay plan called zip mark. >> apple pay now has the first real competitor. i think if you look at the way that apple pay had been approaching the market they approached it in a sort of holistic kind of way. they lined up the bank, they lined up the hardware obviously , because that's what they do. and the consumer experience. and then they launched. and they're continuously adding issuers. they have some support from mastercard, etc.. google wallet is the early entrant didn't approach the market quite that way and i think what you're seeing now with this deal with soft card is the capitulation of the model that the mobile carriers are going to run with it.

i spoke with jason nolen. >> the biggest surprise to me was the free cash flow. $3 billion. and some of that was currency translation some was foreign tax. but a big component was the cost of separation. legal fees, consulting fees there's a lot of work that has to be done that separates these two companies. i think it's the right move long term but that was a big surprise to me. i didn't expect a billion-3. >> let's talk about this. it's very different than earnings. it's the money that the company collects. there's a lot of sort of back and forth stuff that goes on on the balance stuff that leads to that but it sounds like that didn't include the cost of layoffs. that could be more than that. >> that's right. so the earnings took a hit on translation. they priced in local curnsies in foreign markets. that is that's a function of math. when you lay people off you pay them severance. it saves the company money over the long term. we've argued they need to become a smaller and more focused company. >> but the free cash flow at hewlett-packard for the last year or two or 18 mo