UBER READY BOSS
Company’s woes don’t faze ‘Khos’
Uber is getting closer to signing up a new chief executive.
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Expedia, confirmed in interviews that he plans to take the top job at the embattled ride-hailing company, according to reports.
Khosrowshahi, who was offered the top Uber job on Sunday, told reporters on Tuesday he still has to finalize the contract before moving ahead.
Those discussions aren’t necessarily a cinch: Analysts have estimated that Khosrowshahi could cost Uber as much as $200 million if it buys out his stock options from Expedia, according to securities filings.
Meanwhile, just hours after Khosrowshahi did a round of media interviews, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Justice Department was investigating the company for bribing foreign officials.
“Are there difficulties? Are there complexities? Are there challenges? Absolutely, but that’s also what makes it fun,” Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg.
“Uber is a company that is a company that is redefining the transportation industry on a global basis; to be part of that story is something that is interesting and would be a real privilege,” he added.
Khosrowshahi’s hire would put an end the threemonth search for a replacement for Travis Kalanick, who co-founded the company but also landed it in sexual harassment scandals, a costly legal battle with Google over trade secrets and government probes of allegations that Uber has spied on regulators and customers alike.
“I am not in this to coast,” Khosrowshahi said Tuesday. “I’m in it to get my hands dirty and build a team and do something that people will look back on with tons of satisfaction.”
Since Uber’s board stripped Kalanick of the CEO title in June, the company has been scrambling to clean up its act.
Earlier on Tuesday, Uber disabled a controversial feature in its app that tracked users’ location for five minutes after they exited a vehicle — months after customers initially voiced complaints about the practice.
“While our efforts last fall around post-trip location were aimed at improving the user experience, our riders let us know we missed the mark,” Melanie Ensign, a spokeswoman for the company, told The Post.
“We took this feedback seriously and have been working hard to make things right.”
The company had previously said it tracked customers in order to “improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service and to enhance safety.”
Uber will update its settings in the coming weeks so users can opt out of being tracked after leaving a driver’s car, Ensign said. They can also choose to have the app never collect their location data.
The company may still be able to track people after a ride has ended if customers continue to allow it to always collect their location data, however.