Technology

At the Code Conference tonight, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi spoke about the companyrelationship with drivers, autonomous driving, uberEATS having a $6 billion bookings run rate, taking over as CEO and flying taxis, obviously.

Just this week, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent subpoenas to Uber and Lyft seeking information on driver pay, benefits and classification info. Uber wasn&t available for comment at the time, but now it seems that the company is looking at ways to offer benefits and insurance to drivers. Specifically, Uber is looking at an economically-sound way to offer drivers a benefits and insurance package so that &this can be a safer way of living,& Khosrowshahi said.

And despite what former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in the past about needing to get rid of the driver, Khosrowshahi said he disagrees.

&The face of Uber is the person sitting in the front seat,& Khosrowshahi said. He added that it usually is a man driving, but that he would &love to have more women sitting in the front seat& because ita &great form of employment.&

Still, Uber is moving ahead with autonomous driving. Thatin light of the fatal car accident in Tempe, Arizona involving one of Uberautonomous vehicles.

&We will get back on the road over the summer,& Khosrowshahi said.

Uber also envisions licensing its technology — once itsafe enough — to third-parties and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Despite the high-profile lawsuit between Uber and Waymo over self-driving car technology, Khosrowshahi said he&d welcome Waymo to put its cars into its network.Regarding Uberrelationship with Waymo, Khosrowshahi said it&getting better.&

In addition to Ubercore driver business and autonomous driving, it has several other things going on for it. One of those is uberEATS, which Khosrowshahi said has a $6 billion run rate, is growing 200 percent and is the biggest food delivery company in the world, with the exception of those in China.

Uber also recently acquired JUMP Bikes for about $200 million, launched UberRENT, announced a public transportation partnership with Masabi and is working on flying cars via its Elevate program.

Just like residential and buildings have gone three-dimensional, Khosrowshahi said, &you&re going to have to build a third-dimension in terms of transportation.&

For Uber, Elevate is its &big bet& on that third-dimension of transportation, he said. The big plan with all of these modes of transportations — whether thatbike-sharing, ride-sharing, flight-sharing or whatnot — is to become a multi-modal transportation service.

&We want to be the Amazon for transportation,& Khosrowshahi said.

Earlier in the conversation, Khosrowshahi shed some light into how he had no idea he&d get the chief executive officer job at Uber. In fact, he said that while his wife thought he would get the job, he wasn&t as optimistic.

He also spoke about his relationship with Kalanick and how, early on, Khosrowshahi asked for space and Kalanick respected that.

&I consult with him the way I consult with the board,& Khosrowshahi said.

Moving forward, Khosrowshahi still has his eyes set on the second half of 2019 to go public.

&We&re on track,& he said.

Google has continued its slow and steady China strategy after it launched Files Go, a files management service for Android devices. The app launched to global markets last year but today it landed in China via four third-party app stores.

Named ‘Google 文件极客& in China, the app helps users keep within the storage limits of their device by suggesting files to delete if they need to free up space. It also includes feature for finding files and sharing them to local devices without an internet connection.Like a solid internet connection, keeping enough free space on a device is critical to it running efficiently and quickly which is Files Go aims to help.

Files Go was designed for India, where budget Android phones are mainstream,but interest in the app was so widespread that it was later launched worldwide. Indeed, the U.S. is now the third-largest market for the app, Josh Woodward, a product manager within Google‘Next Billion& team, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Given that global demand, bringing the app to China, where Google is testing out new strategies, makes plenty of sense. The launch also allows Google to work with third-party app stores for distribution since the Google Play Store is banned in China. It selected Tencent, Xiaomi, Huawei and Baidu and the experience issure to help Google figure out the lay of the land.

Googleservices remain banned in the country, but this is the third product launch it has made in China following the return of Google Translate last year and this weeklaunch of ARCore.

Google is slowing piecing together a strategy for China to ensure that it doesn&t miss out on the growth of technology in the worldlargest country.Itbeen months in the making through a series of gradual plays, but further evidence of those plans comestoday via a product launch.

Files Go — a file manager for Android devices released last year — has made its way to China today. Not a huge launch, for sure, but the mechanisms behind it provide insight into how Google may be thinking about the country, where it has been absent since 2010 afterredirecting its Chinese search service to Hong Kongin the face of government pressure.

For Files Go, Google is taking a partner-led approach to distribution because the Google Play Store does not operate in China. The companyis working with Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi andBaidu, each of which will stock the app in their independent app stores, which are amongthe countrymost prominent third-party stores.

Let that sink in a little: the creator of Android is using third-party Android app stores to distribute one of its products.

On the outside thatquite the scenario, but in China it makes perfect sense.

Therebeen regular media speculationin recent about Googledesire to return to China which, during its absence, has become the largest single market for smartphone users, andthe country with the most app downloadsand highest app revenue per year. Mostly the rumorshave centered around audacious strategies such as the return of the Google Play Store or the restoration of GoogleChinese search business, both of which would mean complying with demands from the Chinese government.

Then therethe politics. The U.S. and China are currently in an ongoing trade standoff that has spilled into tech, impacting deals, while Chinese premierXi Jinping has taken a protectionist approach to promoting local business and industries, in particular AI. XImore controversial policies, including the banning of VPNs, have put heat on Apple, which stands accused of colluding with authorities and preventing free speech in China.

Even when you remove the political issues, a full return is a tough challenge.Google would bestarting businesses almost from scratch in a highly competitive market where it has little brand recognition.

Ithardly surprising, then, that it hasn&t made big moves… yet at least.

Instead, it appears that the company is exploring more nimble approaches. There have been opportunistic product launches using established platforms, and generally Google seems intent atbuilding relationships and growing a local presence that allows its global business to tap into the talent and technology that China offers.

Files Go is the latest example, but already we&ve seen Google relaunch its Translate app in 2017 and more recently it brought its ARCore technology for augmented and virtual reality to China using partners, which include Xiaomi and Huawei.

Beyond products, Google is cultivating relationships, too.

It inked a wide-ranging patent deal with Tencent, China$500 billion tech giant which operates WeChat and more, and has made strategic investments to backAI startup XtalPi (alongside Tencent), live-streaming platform Chushou, and AI and hardware company Mobvoi. There have been events, too, including AlphaGothree-game battle withChinese grandmaster Ke Jie in Wuzhen, developer events in China and the forthcoming first Google Asia Demo Day, which takes places in Shanghai in September.

In addition to making friends in the right places, Google is also increasing its own presence on Chinese soil. The company opened an AI lab in Beijing to help access China-based talent, while it also unveiled a more modest presence in Shenzhen, Chinahardware capital, where it has a serviced office for staff. That hardware move ties into Googleacquisition of a chunk of HTCsmartphone division for $1.1 billion.

The strategy is no doubt in its early days, so nowis a good time to keep a keen eye on Googlemoves in this part of the world.