Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News
Hours after hundreds of Uber drivers gathered to protest in New York City, hundreds more followed suit in San Francisco this afternoon.
The drivers are angry because Uber has slashed fares across the country over the course of the last month, resulting in reduced pay for drivers. Rates in San Francisco were cut by 10% last month, and by 15% in New York City on Friday. In Detroit, fares have fallen to $.35 an hour.
The drivers will be in hot demand this week in San Francisco, as the city's population swells due to Super Bowl-related festivities. Estimates say the Bay Area could see an influx of 1 million souls before Sunday's game, which is already putting a major strain on transportation systems — an advantage for the frustrated drivers.
In San Francisco, today's protest was organized by a group calling itself Uber Drivers United. Its elected leader, who goes by Mario, says the group's Facebook page has around 4,000 members. By his estimate, over 1,000 drivers joined Monday's protest; he says they plan to continue "shutting it down" — not turning the app on — until Sunday's big event.
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News
One of the drivers who participated in Monday's protest, Vic, received a ticket for excessive honking. Vic has been driving for Uber for 8 months. In the beginning, he said, the pay was good. But with the fare cuts, it's not enough.
"If you average it out, we're probably making 8 dollars an hour" he told BuzzFeed News. "That's why everybody is so upset."
In a comment regarding the situation in New York City, an Uber spokesperson told BuzzfeedNews, “We lowered prices to get more people using Uber, which is good for drivers because it means less time waiting around for trips.” (However, Uber drivers who spoke with BuzzFeed News directly contradicted the assertion that lower prices increases the amount of money they make.)
In an interview, Mario told BuzzFeed News that, since he became the leader of Uber Drivers United, his account has been deactivated. Other drivers who have participated in organizing the group have made similar complaints, he said. He said he's reached out to Shannon Liss-Riordan, the Boston-based attorney in the class action suit against Uber about the ride-hail company.
In an email, Liss-Riordan said her firm is sorting through hundreds of emails from drivers that have flooded her inbox in recent days. But, she wrote, "if Uber is deactivating drivers for engaging in organizing activity, I think that would also be a violation of the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act]."
In Seattle, the Teamsters union has been helping to organize app-based drivers, who won the right to collectively bargain at the end of last year. Mario told BuzzFeed News that drivers have reached out to both the Teamsters and the SEIU, but the response has been the same across the board — because of the contracts they signed with Uber, organized labor was unable to help.
"Everywhere we go it's the same thing," he said. "We can't do nothing for you.'"
Mario talks to reporters outside Uber's Market Street headquarters on Monday evening.
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News
Johana Bhuiyan contributed reporting.
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Rep. Katherine Clark, a U.S. lawmaker from Massachusetts working to make “swatting” a federal offense was herself targeted in a swatting hoax Sunday night.
After an anonymous call was made around 10:00 PM warning of "an active shooter" with "shots fired" in Clark's home, several police officers were dispatched to her residence, swarming the front of her house, she told BuzzFeed News.
"It was a very scary first moment, walking out into my front yard and seeing a number of police, some with long guns," Clark said. She was at home with her husband and her two teenaged sons at the time of the incident. While no one was harmed, Swatting is intended to illicit an aggressive, armed response from law enforcement.
A representative for the Melrose Police Department referred BuzzFeed News to a statement from Police Chief Michael Lyle. “It appears that someone was trying to elicit a police response by making a false report,” Lyle said. “We take incidents like this very seriously, and will conduct a thorough investigation.” The phone call that initiated the police response was anonymous and computer-generated.
Clark believes she was targeted because of her work speaking out against swatting, and gender-based online abuse.
Just three months ago, Clark introduced legislation in the House of Representatives to criminalize swatting. Under the proposed law, convicted perpetrators would face up to 20 years in prison and could face civil lawsuits. More than 400 swatting attacks occur each year, according to the FBI, with a cost to local law enforcement totaling as much as $100,000 per incident.
“No mother should have to answer the door to the police in the middle of the night and fear for her family’s safety simply because an anonymous person disagrees with her," Clark said. "This is the exact reason that I introduced the Interstate Swatting Hoax Act – I want perpetrators to know that there are legal repercussions to their actions, and I’m committed to giving law enforcement the tools to deter these dangerous crimes.”
Clark's Swatting bill is part of a bundle of policies designed to protect women and minorities from internet-enabled crimes that often go unpunished. Directing additional federal resources to investigate severe online threats and harassment and criminalizing the publication of non-consensual pornography are among Clark's recent initiatives on Capitol Hill.
Clark said she is even more determined to continue her work after her personal ordeal. "I didn't need extra motivation but it certainly provided that."
When markets open Tuesday, the impact of after hours trading is set to push the company above Apple into the number 1 slot.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Google is now set to become the world's most valuable company when markets open on Tuesday morning, after its stock rose more than 5% in after-hours trading Monday in the wake of its quarterly results.
Last August, Google dropped a major surprise, restructuring the company into new divisions under a parent company named Alphabet.
Today, for the first time, the Artist Formerly Known As Google reported financial results that distinguish between its core "Google" business (search and advertising, along with things like Maps, Android, YouTube, and Chrome) and the experimental businesses — think self-driving cars — that Alphabet is calling "other bets."
Yes, bets. That's the name of the category, and the numbers show why: Those other businesses lost $3.6 in 2015 and $1.9 billion in 2014. It sounds like a lot, but Google is one of the few companies capable of making losing bets for a long time: with just the $73 billion in cash and other securities it has on its balance sheet, Alphabet could pay for the Other Bets' losses at this level for 20 years.
"We believe that the trajectory of those losses in recent years is perhaps more important to investors than the actual level of those losses," Nomura analysts said in a note last week.
The total Alphabet business grew its revenues by 18% to $21.3 billion in the final three months of 2015, and made an operating profit of $4.4 billion. Like many big U.S. companies, Alphabet's revenues took a hit from the rising value of the US dollar, which reduces the value of revenue earned in foreign currencies. Had currency values stayed the same, Alphabet's revenue would have grown 24%, a difference of about $1 billion.
But the company also reported clouds on the horizon: the amount Google was able to charge advertisers for each click on an ad fell 13% in 2015 compared to 2014. While prices were down, the ad business was still roaring in 2015, with 31% more clicks on ads, in total, than the previous year.
Michael Nagle / Getty Images
The "other bets" include all the far-flung business Google (sorry, Alphabet) has acquired or invested in. Most have little to do with the world's largest advertising operation that Google runs, and which generates the overwhelming majority of the company's revenue. It includes life extension (Calico), glucose-monitoring contact lenses (Verily), two venture capital operations (Google Ventures and Google Capital), internet-connected home devices (Nest), and high speed internet (Fiber and Access).
"We're excited about the opportunities we have across Google and Other Bets to use technology to improve the lives of billions of people," Ruth Porat, Alphabet's chief financial officer said in a statement.
This new structure is supposed to give investors a better idea of how profitable Google's core business really is, without the massive spending on moonshot projects muddying the picture. It should also help reduce the uncertainty about how much Google is really investing in those businesses, which may not generate returns for years, if ever.
