Top Of The Order:
You Can t Spell rubles without Uber : At the Mercury News sister publication, the Oakland Tribune, there is literally a front-row seat to the growth of Uber. Right across the street from the Trib s offices stands the former Sears building, which Uber purchased last year and is in the process of renovating so that between 2,000 and 3,000 employees will be able to work there beginning in 2017. It s all part of Uber s expansion of its global headquarters.
The building is now covered almost entirely in a massive white, plastic sheath as work goes on. It s the kind of work that requires a lot of money to complete. And as that work continues, Uber might just want to add a Russian flag to the building s current facade.
That s because on Friday, LetterOne, an investment firm headed up by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, said it has invested $200 million in Uber. LetterOne has around $25 billion in assets; it plans on investing $3 billion in tech companies over the next few years.
What Uber plans to do with Fridman s cash isn t totally known. But, looking at the building that will soon be home to as many as 3,000 employees (but not Uber car drivers. They are still considered to be independent contractors), it wouldn t be surprising to see a lot more cement mixers, lumber and electrical supplies being unloaded on the street in the coming months.
Or, part of it might go toward paying the $28.5 million bill for a class-action suit Uber settled on Thursday.
Middle Innings:
But Does It Keep On Ticking?: If you bought someone an Apple Watch for Christmas, you probably made their day. And today, you probably wish you had waited to buy the thing.
It looks like Apple may be getting ready to clear the decks and unveil a new model of the Apple Watch. Big-name retailers such as Target and Best Buy this week began cutting $100 off the price of the Apple Watches they have on the shelves in a move that would suggest Apple wants to quickly move out the first generation of the smartwatch. Apple reportedly is going to have a company event in March in which it might show off a new model of its Apple Watch. And why not? It s already been speculated that Apple would unveil new watch bands, so it might as well bring out a new watch as well.
Apple is also expected to show off what is being called the iPhone 5se at the event, but no one really knows. The company has so far hasn t even said if it will even have an event next month.
Let s Just Call Them Frenemies : Netflix and Amazon are competitors in the race to spend the most money on video-streaming content and gain subscribers to watch hit original shows such as Marvel s Jessica Jones (Netflix) and Transparent (Amazon). Both companies also spent most of the recent Sundance Film Festival trying to outspend each other on new movies. But that doesn t mean they can t do business together, right?
As evidence of that, Netflix said it has moved all of its video-streaming operations to the cloud…And the cloud that comes in the form of Amazon Web Services. What this means is that Netflix s streaming business doesn t operate any of its own data centers. All those episodes of House of Cards are, in effect, coming from someplace else before they get to your TV, tablet or smartphone.
So, if you re watching Orange Is The New Black and Mozart In The Jungle suddenly appears, you know who to complain to.
Picasa, We Hardly Knew Ya: A long time ago (back in 2004) Google acquired Picasa, an online service for posting, sharing and editing photos. And then it really did nothing with it.
On Friday, Google said it was shutting down its Picasa service and moving any users and their pictures over to Google Photos, a service that is said to be better-suited for mobile devices. Last October, Google said its Photos (not to be confused with Apple s Photos program, which replaced iPhoto more than a year ago) had more than 100 million monthly users.
You might have seen Picasa pop up from time to time when you visited websites and it was given as an option to use it to print or upload photos from. And you may have thought, Picasso? Isn t that the guy who painted Guernica ? Well, know it wasn t. But you probably couldn t be blamed for not really knowing about Picasa, and now, you won t have to think about it ever again.
Bottom Of The Lineup:
Here s a look at how some leading Silicon Valley tech stocks did.
Movin On Up: Gainers included Rovi, up more than 16 percent, and Twitter, which rose more than 10 percent, as well as Cavium, Medivation and HP.
In The Red: Pandora Media trimmed its losses, but still ended the day down by 12 percent. Other declines came from FireEye, Zeltiq Aesthetics, LinkedIn and Workday.
The SV150 Index of Silicon Valley s biggest companies rose 17 points, or 1.3 percent, to 1,392.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index gave up almost 57 points, or 1.3 percent, to close at 4,190.
The blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average surged by 313 points, or 2 percent, to end the day at 15,925.
And the broad-based Standard & Poor s 500 Index fell 28 points, or 1.5 percent, to 1,871.
Quote Of The Day: If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? — Abraham Lincoln, born Feb. 12, 1809.
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Photo: A woman leaves the headquarters of Uber in San Francisco, Calif. on Dec. 16, 2014. (AP/Eric Risberg)
The post Biz Break: Uber gets more rubles to play with appeared first on SiliconBeat.
