He is a longtime google veteran. Google is famous for mapping the earth but the satellite images can be up to three years old. We are looking at the startups trying to change that. Our top story today, the two biggest Cable Operators in the country are joining forces in a deal that analysts say is nothing short of shocking. Comcast agreed to by Time Warner Cable. It faces a lengthy Regulatory Approval process. Comcast will have sealed this dominance over the cable industry. Jon erlichman is with us from l. A. , peter cook is in washington dc with the political angle. I will start with jon. How did this happen . This interest from charter, to get bigger in a world where we have a lot of options. It has to get bigger, more meaningful to people. Obviously, charter had this great interest in doing this deal. Time warner wanted charter to pay more money. The possibility of comcast acquiring some of the assets of Time Warner Cable. Along the lines, they ultimately decided that comcast was the better move for them. Getting bigger than everybody else and having control over markets like new york, los angeles, chicago, philadelphia, the d c area. They are the biggest cable player in the united states. Is this deal going to go through . Peter, the regulators made it clear with at t and tmobile that they wanted more wireless carriers. Will it be different with Cable Companies . It will be different because they are different businesses. The government is going to scrutinize this very carefully. You get number one and number two joining together, it raises a lot of flags in d. C. Because there is a full spectrum of competition now not only from satellite providers but also from google, things over the internet, a lot of folks i am talking to think this will be looked at differently. But they will ask a lot of comcast. They will ask them to divest subscribers to see if it puts them over the 30 million mark. That has been the magic number in terms of cable eyeballs. Neutrality, things like that. Programming rights. It will be a difficult process and it is not a done deal. Comcast making the case in favor of this from a competitive standpoint. The conditions may be very painful for comcast. We spoke to the former president of cnn and i want you to take a listen to what he had to say about this deal. These companies have to get as big as possible as fast as possible to keep the programming cost down, to create even more economies of scale and marketing. All of that stuff. Alex, we have been talking to apple about a new deal with apple tv. What does this mean for innovation in the cable industry . There is an argument it will speed it up because Comcast Technology is already superior than Time Warner Cable. If you make them bigger, you give them more resources, bigger scale, and you can get more customers on the same page as far as expediting the way that people watch television. Comcast has x1, x2, stateoftheart video guides that look a lot more like netflix or amazon prime than the 1985 cable grid. Add customers to that and it is possible many more people will have a more advanced television experience then today. Take another listen to something that Jonathan Klein had to say about monopolies impacting innovation. The downfall of monopolies is that they take their audience for granted. That is an enormous opportunity for newcomers to come in. Time warner cable sees apple and they would love to be able to say to time warner customers, dont leave us. We have this new apple thing. The problem is apple doesnt have content relationships. What does this mean for apple . I found myself thinking about Walter Isaacsons book about steve jobs. The comment where steve, who was not big on paying for cable, decided i am going to sign up for comcast. After signing up, he called the ceo and robert said, i thought he was going to say it was pretty cool. Steve told me that it sucks. Comcast has some cool technology. They think about a more innovative service. Most of us view the Cable Companies as slow, trying to squeeze us for money, and have been hoping that there might be some new great type of tv watching experience that is much more like the experience you have on your phone. That is why a lot of people have been pointing to apple. The challenge that apple faces is breaking up that cable ecosystem. Being able to sign competitively priced deals with all the content players that are similar to the ones the Cable Companies already have. You also did a big interview with disney chairman and ceo disney owns abc and comcast owns nbc. Lets take a look at what eiger had to tell you in that interview. Whether there is consolidation or the ownership of the existing multichannel business changes, we will be as in demand as we have been. You cant go through a subscriber without offering our product. It doesnt really mean that much to us. Given comcast owns nbc, it adds another wrinkle into this whole potential deal. How does that play into this . Its a big factor. They are not just a straight cable player, they are a content provider as well. It is one of the factors that make regulators look at this differently and why the stakes here matter far more than just cable eyeballs. It has to do with the programming side of things. The cost there. The content decree that they signed with the government when they took on nbc, they agreed to do certain things in that deal. Promoting more competition in terms of programming. We expect that they will have the follow that same roadmap in this deal. They might even exceed that to win regulators approval. Does this deal become too painful on that front . It might become less attractive to them. They are making the case this is competitive. They have done some of those things. Comcast overcame regulatory hurdles when they bought Nbc Universal initially. How did this all play out . One important thing is that there is no breakup fee in this deal. You can interpret that several ways. That is a little bit of confidence on both Time Warner Cable and comcast that it will get done. If regulators step in and block this, neither side would be paying anything. It also blocks out charter because i think charter would have seen that breakup fee and said if Time Warner Cable has to pay comcast, maybe we can make a case to shareholders that we are the better option. Without the fee, it will be difficult for charter to get in here. They cannot pay 160 a share. It is probably a better than 5050 chance that comcast will proceed and divest some subscribers and move forward with the deal. Comcast speaking on a Conference Call right now. David saying that this does not reduce consumer choice. We will continue to follow this deal to the very end. Alec sherman, peter cook, jon erlichman, thank you all. Dropbox reportedly hiring its first coo. More on why the Company Takes the head of googles motorola division, next. You can watch us on your phone, tablet, bloomberg. Com, and apple tv as well. Welcome back to bloomberg west. Cisco has reported a drop in sales and profit in the second quarter. Sales fell 8 . Profit dropped 55 . Being hurt by slowing sales outside of the united states. Ceo John Chambers sees big things ahead for cisco and the socalled internet of things. The connected car and connected home realm. Here is what he told in the loop earlier today. This is where the Tipping Point is going to occur, and the internet of everything. At the Consumer Electronics show just a couple months ago at the World Economic forum, it was the Top Technology topic. When google bought nest, the Consumer Companies said, i get it. Chambers said the internet of things could be a 19 trillion market over the next decade. Dropbox has reportedly hired its first coo according to wall street journal. Dennis woodside, the former ceo of googles motorola division is reportedly joining dropbox as chief operating officer. Dropbox brought in a 250 million funding round, funding the company to 10 billion. They work with Companies Like yelp, foursquare, and dropboxs biggest competitor. Also, jon erlichman. Is this more of a coup for Dennis Woodside or for dropbox . You have to look at it as a coup for dropbox, for sure. They need to get more enterprise ready and look like a larger company. They have 315 employees. They need to have a little more gray hair. Greg is not an old guy, but i think he brings that to the table. What does Dennis Woodside bring to online storage . He has worked a lot at global expansion. It dropbox wants to be an international company. He spends time thinking about mobile and mobile is huge. I think if you think about a company that needs to go public, you think about Sheryl Sandberg joining facebook and eric schmidt joining google back in the day. A need someone who has been around the block a little bit more than true. Maybe some adult supervision, too. Who is the winner here . You asked me if woodside was going to stay at lenovo, and i think i said yes. It can be tough. Here is somebody that was a long time google executive that got a big opportunity with the motorola deal to basically be coo because there was this need for a certain amount of independence. With android, motorola is just one of the partners despite it being owned by google at the time. It has to be tough to see the business that you are running sold to somebody else. I think it creates an opportunity. To build on what you were saying, here is somebody that over the last year has really gotten a lot of stage time. To be able to do those presentations. To your point, those things that make Sheryl Sandberg a very valuable part of the onetwo punch that is Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of facebook. And you wonder if you will become a more public face for dropbox as they head down on business box, their biggest competitor recently filed for ipo. Is dropbox trying to get ready . Absolutely. When you have the capital, the evaluation, the next logical step is an ipo. You need to bring people around the table to prepare for that. How competitive is it to find the best coo . There are a couple of challenges. One is getting someone from the organization to recruit talented people. It is like the coaching tree. The assistant coaches going to bring the other assistant coaches with him. Recruiting someone out of google like facebook did with cheryl, and my dropbox has done with greg, there are other people that might look at dropbox as a career move. When Mark Zuckerberg recruited cheryl, it took many months. They had dinner over 20 times. This seems to happen very quickly. Jon erlichman, do you think Dennis Woodside knew this was coming with lenovo . Had they been talking to dropbox for a while . Dropbox is one that google respects. Google is an inquisitive company and looks at a lot of businesses. Sometimes they get jealous of other businesses and they end up buying them. Or the longest time, there was a view that google might buy that business. That kind of put this move different from microsoft looking for a new ceo. There was a challenge finding who could be the next great leader. Dropbox is a fastgrowing company that google does very well. Maybe this is an exciting one to jump on myself. Google has some products that compete with dropbox. Google drive. Thank you for joining us and being here on bloomberg west. Are you sick of social media spoiling your olympics . If you dont have time to watch the games during the workday, we will tell you about a new app that can help you. You can watch it streaming on your tablet, phone, and bloomberg. Com. Welcome back to bloomberg west. It has probably happened to you. The Olympic Event you wanted to see got spoiled on twitter. Maybe you didnt get to the last episode of breaking bad before someone on facebook told you what happened. A new app has a solution for that. Spoiler shield blocks post from facebook and twitter feeds. The ceo and cofounder of spoiler shield. How does this work . It is free for iphone and android and blocks any spoiler on facebook or twitter when you access our app. We have over 50 Television Shows along with sports. You mentioned the olympics. We have nfl, baseball, nba, and we add more. How does it block things in real time . Are people constantly monitoring anything that can possibly be spoiled . We have developed a proprietary algorithm with the help of very smart math phds designed to block spoilers and let other things through. It takes into account the latest s and developments. When shaun white competes in snowboarding and that event happens in sochi 12 hours before im able to see it, in real time, what is your algorithm doing . It is factoring the latest developments, hashtags, who won gold, and it is tuned to be able to block out any spoiling information. If you want to see a post that is blocked, you double tap to reveal it. What about movies . We launch with tv and sports. We are continuing to add sports, movies, and the Academy Awards that will be on march 2. Do you ever make mistakes . I am thinking about how this algorithm might work. It has to be quite specific to something that can be spoiled and not just the oscars in general. That is why we have worked really hard on the Technology Side to improve it. It works extremely well. We have been fortunate to bring on a great team to work on the algorithm side and we are consistently improving in on a daytoday basis. Spoiler shield, josh schultz, the ceo and cofounder joining us from l. A. Cant startups take a sharper picture of the earth than google . Well explain next on bloomberg west. Youre watching bloomberg west where we focus on technology and the future of business. Im emily chang with your top headlines. Motorola mobility will be profitable in just a few quarters. The ceo says that the Company Plans to relaunch the motorola brand in china and emerging markets. Lenovo is working to get approval for the 2. 9 billion deal to buy most of Motorola Mobility from google. The price wars are heating up between a wireless carriers and Verizon Wireless is offering new discounts. Under the more everything plan, they are doubling monthly data allowances for certain customers offering 20 a month discounts. Verizon trying to keep up with at t, sprint, and tmobile. Are new cars the key to twitters growth . Users are twice as likely to buy a new car as the average u. S. Household. Twitter might be aiming for a larger piece of the auto Advertising Market worth more than 15 billion a year. Google is famous for mapping the earth, but sometimes the images are up to three years old. What do businesses that need to know how much corn is growing in iowa right now or how many boats are docked in the San Francisco bay do . They might turn to startups. Skybox imaging and planet labs are trying to become like a google for the earth. They wrote about the race to map the earth in this weeks edition of bloomberg businessweek. Ashley, i thought google had this market cornered. How can a startup do better than them . Google and microsoft buy their images for google maps from a handful of companies that have satellites circling the earth. Startups have cheaper, smaller satellites. They want dozens that are photographing at all times. Is this a valuable market . How many people are willing to pay for a day old image of the earth . That is the question. The big guys have better quality. Huge satellites and physics states that the bigger your telescope, the better the image is going to be. Skybox imaging can do a meter resolution per pixel. Planet glass is not quite as good, about five to seven meters. If you can photograph the earth, 24 7, provide realtime images, there might be uses for this kind of technology. Why are they getting more competitive now . Companies are playing off of the breakthroughs we have seen with the iphone and all types of Consumer Electronics. You can build a smaller, more powerful, more liable satellite cheaper. Before, they cost hundreds of millions of dollars and these might cost 5 million because electronics got that much better. I mentioned corn and boats at the top. What are some of the uses and who needs it . There are people that are talking about if you are a farmer, you want to know the exact time that you should plan your field and when you should harvest a stone weather conditions youre seeing based on the weather conditions youre seeing. There are guys monitoring the parking lots of retailers to see how many cars are going in and out during the shopping season. Skybox has also developed its own software to track where they store oil in saudi arabia to see Oil Production on a daily basis. Planet labs versus skybox, who do you see winning . They are sort of going after different things. Planet labs already has 28 satellites. Skybox is the more mature company. But they are both getting going to see if the market wants this technology. Ultimately, will google be the biggest customer . Maybe microsoft, they will start complimenting their apps with these realtime images. Google maps is one to three years old. Youre talking about stuff that would be new every single day. Ashlee vance, check out that story in business week. Turning now to George Washington universitys Planet Forward that help innovative ernest is officially dedicating the solar generating station today. Praised by the Obama Administration as a major landmark in the rise of solar energy. Frank has more. There is a new energy craze heating up in california. Solar thermal. It turns the suns rays into grid ready electricity to compete with coal. In the mojave desert, this is now the Worlds Largest solar thermal plant. It uses the bright hot desert sun to make steam. The steam comes down to the turbine that turns generators to make electricity. 200,000 mirrors reflect on energy towers. We happen to be using the suns energy to drive it. It can power more than 140,000 homes in california. Tom doyle says using the suns energy instead of coal is like taking 72,000 polluting cars off of the road. This is an opportunity to promote a technology internationally to drive down Greenhouse Gases. He says the landscape is a perfect location but there are not many places like this in the u. S. Markets like saudi arabia that have 54 gigawatts of Solar Projects is an Excellent Market opportunity for this type of technology. At 2 billion, the collaboration is a serious investment. Backed by google and the department of energy, among others. It is more expensive and doesnt generate power when the sun doesnt shine. What it is designed to deliver energy when it is needed most. The highest price point is when the plant is performing the best. This technology is proven. They are facing a lot of competition from photovoltaic whose prices have dropped 80 in the last five years. The golden state is getting a big boost from solar and maybe moving the Planet Forward. Im frank cesno. Visit planetforward. Org to submit an idea that you like. Or visit bloomberg. Com sustainability. More on how the social network is planning to get employees to work, next. And of course, you can watch us streaming on your phone, tablet, or bloomberg. Com. There is a whole bloomberg experience on apple tv. Welcome back to bloomberg west. Shuttle buses facing rocky roads and facebook is seeking refuge in calmer waters. The latest tech giant to test an employee Ferry Service from San Francisco to redwood city. Facebook, google, and others with growing opposition to commuter buses. Protesters have blockaded buses as they try to take employees from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley. It is part of the income equality and gentrification debate raging in San Francisco. Someone that represents 376 Silicon Valley companies and is a native of san jose is president and ceo of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group founded by david packard, the cofounder of hewlettpackard. Carl, what do you think of a facebook Ferry Service . It is great to be back on bloomberg west. I am impressed with companies trying to not only meet the commute needs of their employees, but the good that can do for all of us in our very congested region. If youre taking a bus and putting 50 workers on the bus, that is 50 cars not spewing out Greenhouse Gases and putting brake lights right in front of the rest of us in our already busy streets and roads and highway system. There are positive reasons why companies are doing this. But it is a complex issue. One of the issues in our region in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is the incredibly high cost of housing and living that we have to deal with. If you look at great Companies Like google and facebook, they have tried to champion Housing Developments close to their campuses. Often losing in their local cities and towns around them because people dont want more housing. But how do you have places for your workers and others in our society to live that is close to their places of employment . This is a very complex issue. It is incredibly complex. I recently interviewed the metro head tom perkins who compared the war on americas 1 to the persecution of jews in nazi germany. This is what he had to say about class warfare. I feel that as a class, we are beginning to engage in class warfare. I think the rich, as a class, are threatened through higher taxes and higher regulation. What do you make of his comments . I have never met mr. Perkins and i would not share his point of view. The key is that we all live in this region together. The Leadership Groups role has been to find the problem and then find Workable Solutions that serve all of us. I will give you a quick example. 15 years ago, we formed the Housing Action coalition. Not just employers, but the broad base of our community. Environment of groups, neighborhoods, Faith Community members, labor partners, trying to advocate for homes that are well built, appropriately located, and relatively affordable in such a high cost marketplace. Most of the homes that we advocate for throughout the region are not even for our own workers. They are for those that serve us in retail. Senior citizens. Those with kids. Others that are so important for a vibrant and just society. That is how we try to build the homes that we all need. We will continue to do that. We formed the most Innovative Housing trust in the united states. It helps not only workers looking to buy that first home, but to build affordable rental homes and homeless shelters, transitional housing, and assistance. Is a facebook ferry putting a bandaid on a larger problem . It is still parallel transportation systems, one that the tech elite can take that nobody else can. The challenge in the bay area that you well know, emily, is that we have incredible traffic congestion. We have homes that very few of us, whether you are in the Technology Company or not, can afford. Let alone the prices of rental homes. We need to find solutions to those challenges. Carl, should tech Companies Like facebook and google contribute more to Public Transportation . They are. We all are. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group has led every successful sales tax measure. 10 billion in investment. Because of businesstobusiness sales, Companies Collectively pay . 50 of every sales tax dollar collected. When you compete globally, you cant pass those costs off to consumers. Not only on traffic congestion, the condition of our roads and transit systems, but the Affordable Housing issues we try to tackle. We were to define the problem and address the solution with real ways that benefit all of us. We need to stress that we need a we society, not us versus them. We benefit most when we work together. The debate certainly isnt going away. Paul guardino, thank you for joining us on bloomberg west. Kevin hart is one of the hottest acts in hollywood. What is the secret of his success . We will ask the producer of his hit movie next on bloomberg west. Welcome back to bloomberg west. Im emily chang. Comedian kevin hart is one of hollywoods biggest names and he has two movies in theaters right now. About last night. And ride along. What is his secret other than the fact he is hilarious . Jon erlichman spoke with will packer that produced both movies. Listen. It has not happened since gravity. I think it is resonating with audiences in a real and broadway. I think it is a film that is comedy and there hasnt been a comedy in a while and hollywood. I think kevin hart, it is time. He is someone that i have had the opportunity to work with multiple times. I know his skill set and i think this was a good film to showcase what kevin does best. He partnered with ice cube to give you that perfect buddy comedy action comedy chemistry. You have to have that chemistry. He and cube were great. I think it is a good film. Audiences see that. That is why it is continuing to perform. Talking about kevin hart, what you had together moving from ride along to about last night, how big do you think his career could get . The sky is the limit for kevin. He is somebody that will not be outworked. He has a tremendous work ethic. It is interesting because the Opening Weekend of ride along and it looks like we were going to have a recordbreaking opening, we were up at 7 00 a. M. To start shooting promo spots for about last night. That tells you a little bit about his mentality. He is somebody that no matter what i asked, he is ready to perform and ready to give his all. This guy is only going to get bigger. In todays age of social media and celebrities, it is about knowing everything about them and you still cant get enough. Kevin is a constant content generator. He has something going on instagram, twitter, facebook, he is interacting with fans and he continues to be engaging. It allows him to continue to expand. Is one thing to dominate at the box office and another thing to make profitable movies. The budget for ride along was 20 million. It sounds profitable to me. Do films need to be made for 100 million . Some films do. I have had success making moderately or lowbudget films. We were probably a little bit under the budget that you named, actually. The average budget still is about 40 million or maybe 50 million. They need to have scope and visual effects and scifi. Not every film needs that. The name of the game is profitability. The model i have had fortunate success with is a film that has an audience and satisfies that audience. And does so without having to have the trappings that mega budget movies have. Youve got to figure it across his 500 Million Worldwide to be successful by the time we look at what was spent. My film in the 20s, we crossed 93 million in the first three weeks. I prefer to look at that kind of a model and i like to have proportionate success. That is what is making Hollywood Pay attention. You mentioned the value of social media and helping ones brand. What about where movies are going . Netflix saying that after conquering television, maybe we will make original movies. Do you want your movies to always begin and live in the theater before they go somewhere else . Are you thinking of new platforms . I think each movie is different. As a filmmaker, i make films for the largescreen format presentation. As a producer, i have to understand that the way consumers are consuming content is different than it was even two years ago. A generation doesnt mind watching content on smartphones or tablets. Ultimately, you will always have the largescreen presentation of movies. But i think smart producers and filmmakers and studios will understand the netflixs of the world are not going anywhere. The vod model, the small screen model, you have to make content that audiences want to see. Jon erlichman joins us from l. A. I was thinking about the day of this cable deal, they should have hired kevin hart to help with the presentation of it. I know you dont like the Cable Companies and have some fun with it put a little bit of spice in this dry story of cable consolidation. He is also the voice of waze. He is pretty good at telling me to turn left. Youre right. Thank you for watching. We will see you tomorrow. The following is an advertisement for star vista entertainment. Listen to the music. Even the nights are better