Big Technology Podcast - Zuck's Lucid Metaverse Vision, X CEO Bombs an Interview, Ex-FTC Chair on the Amazon Case

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Meta Connect, and Zuck's new vision for the Metaverse 2) Whether the Metaverse finally makes sense now 3) Alex's first purchase on Temu 4) Your questions + audio quality issues 5) TikTok takes center stage in the Republican debates 6) Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino's poor performance at Code 7) Did Yaccarino get sandbagged? 8) Amazon's new Anthropic deal, worth up to $4 billion 9) Our interview with Bill Kovacic, ex-FTC Chairman, on the Amazon case. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Is Meta's Metaverse vision finally making sense? Ex-CEO Linda Yakorino has a rough outing at code. There's plenty of generative AI news, including a massive new investment to talk about, and the former chair of the FTC joins us to talk about the agency's case against Amazon. A big, bold, awesome show coming up right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our typical cool-headed and nuanced format.

we have so much news to speak with you about everything from the new meta releases to the bomb at code that Linda Akarino delivered. And then we've spoken with the former chair of the FTC Bill Kovasik. It was a great interview. We'll play that after the break. Ranjan Roy enjoys us here. As always, Ranjan, welcome back to the show. It's flooding here in New York City, but the metaverse is back, so I'm still happy today. The city is totally underwater.

It almost feels like we should be putting. goggles on to zone out from what's happening and live in a Metaverse where our problems don't exist. Mark, we need the Metaverse. We need the Metaverse today. Ron John, you know that you were getting, you were getting, people were threading against you saying, ha ha, Ranjan said this Metaverse thing would never come to fruition and look at what Zuckerberg has invented. So this is your moment to apologize to all of our listeners for being anti-metaverse. Well, so let's look at what happened this week, Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed, and this is what I saw, the clips with Lex Friedman where it's essentially a photorealistic avatar three-dimensional thing. It looks like Mark

Zuckerberg. It's no more a legless being. It looks like real people interacting with each other. So maybe this metaverse actually, is it real? Is it all coming to fruition? And I was wrong? Do I have to apologize? Well, what do you think? I don't know. What was your take on this? Okay, first of all, just to go off of, I don't think you have to apologize. I think there's a fundamental barrier still in place, which having spoken with somebody who works in the industry this week to get their take on what happened, they basically said that, and I think this is so right, that people will not put on those goggles unless there's an extremely compelling use case to do it. So I think if it wasn't for the fact that they were filming a demo in VR when Mark Zuckerberg and Lex Friedman sat down, then they would not be having that conversation by default in VR. That was going to be through screens.

So I think we're still ways away from the form factor getting to the place where this is something that people actually want to do. That being said, the fact that you're even questioning whether you need to revise your perspective on the Metaverse indicates to me that meta did make a big. leap forward this week. And okay, we do joke about the avatars. There's a great tweet out there by this guy, Ryan Delk, that says 13 months of progress fueled by Zuck's unstoppable desire to prove the haters wrong with a side by side. And there's one photo of Zuckerberg looking like literally like the most embarrassing cartoon avatar you could ever create. And then like the next thing you see 13 months later is his actual freaking face in the metaverse. So clearly they have made some, yeah, he looks good. They've made some progress technologically. No doubt about.

that but what I thought was impressive at this week's event because they had an event in menlo park called connect and this was their event to sort of demonstrate their vision they shifted they made a very dramatic shift from virtual reality to augmented reality or people might want to call it mixed reality but let's be honest it was it was augmented reality and you went from a vision of like you're going to hang out in this like amorphous metaverse the sort of COVID fever dream with your friends as these like you know terrible cartoon avatars to something that actually like sounded compelling where Zuckerberg says pretty soon I think we're going to be at a point where you're going to be there physically with some of your friends and

others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms and they're just going to feel as present as everyone else or you're going to walk into a meeting and sit down at a table and they're going to be people who are physically there and people who are digitally there as holograms but they're also going to be sitting around the table with you and helping you get things done and then they're going to be a bunch of AI guys who embodied as holograms and helping you get stuff done too. So what they're putting together is this vision of mixed reality where you're wearing the headset. You're going to have an overlay on the real world. You're going to be able to beam other people in from virtually, you know, beam them in virtually from wherever they are. And then they're

going to be thinking, talking AIs that might be sitting there with you who have the embodied form in this mixed reality world. But they are, you know, AIs. And, you know, maybe they're to help be with certain tasks or whatever. I thought that this was the most coherent vision for the metaverse that they've put together, clearly inspired by Apple. I was just going to say, did you, did you just describe to me the Apple Vision Pro keynote event? Because that's what it sounded like. This was my reaction was that it is a shift powered by Apple. Like literally I think they have, we talked about it after the event, by the way, that they have Tim Cook to think. Killer Tim Cook back again and driving the conversation.

Even against the company named Meta is following his version of the Metaverse. It's absolutely true. I think they realize that Apple's great at marketing and great at setting the vision. And I think Meta bought it hook, line and sinker and said, you know what? If we mesh our vision with their vision, we might get something here. And I think they did it in a very, you know, they demonstrated it beautifully this week. now of course it comes down to there's going to be some barrier with the technology but they should figure that out yeah no i think again the seeing just visually and from their from their standpoint

understanding the power of visual communication in the marketing context i mean it looked good it looked real it's such a different offering now than what they're showing 13 months ago two years ago so it at least gives them a shot obviously what's real what's pure demo were a long way away from. I mean, the funny part for me was again, like, remember Lex Friedman again is finding himself as the kind of like key, uh, demo person in a large tech CEO, uh, communication. Remember, he sparred with Elon Musk in the cage match buildup. Right. So he's definitely finding his way into the center of all these, uh, conversations. I helped Elon put fear into Mark Zuckerberg's heart. Um, yeah. Maybe, maybe they, maybe they

cage match will be in those metaverse and then yeah everything will be okay yeah so i think that you're totally right that this is going to take quite some time for it to come to fruition but it is it's going from a place of like you know watching these demos and being like there's at like when mark Zuckerberg demoed what the metaverse was a few years ago i was like count me out i have zero interest in doing that but now like this idea of like being present and having people there and having ai's together and you know either deciding that you want to hang out together or play games together. I just still don't really know about work.

Maybe work together. Like, okay, that is a vision that I could see happening. Now, the real problem is the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be. It almost feels like you need to get quantum computing to work for these devices to actually, you know, be up to speed or maybe we need these room temperature superconductors, right? But it's like it's going to take some form of technological leap to be able to be in a place where this stuff is something that you're going to want to use, where you're not going to walk around with a battery pack or you when you're packing your bag on deciding what to bring

on the airport to the airport is it going to be worth the extra carry-on bag to have this device with you once those challenges are minimized you could see it coming to fruition but not not before then but it but it is interesting to me there's still the distinction with apple because remember apple and the vision pro was all about kind of being by yourself and doing computing things where meta is still like tripling down on social connection and people connecting people, which obviously is their whole kind of mission and mission statement. But it's definitely a difference because and I still buy the Apple Vision more that when I put out the only thing reason I would put on a headset is if I can have like 10 screens of

computing and play some insanely immersive game or do whatever, like just replacing computing versus it necessarily needs to be about connection. Because, again, connection, like getting that to technologically work feels like a much bigger challenge and much harder and further away for me. Yeah, no, I would agree with you. We'll see. I mean, Apple's Vision Pro is coming out. It's supposed to be coming out early next year. I'm still waiting on my iPhone that I ordered two weeks ago and it's supposed to still be.

It's mid-October. I guess people are buying a lot of those new iPhones. Oh, they are. I mean, I'm on the 15, and I have to say I made my first TEMU purchase. Wait, are you serious? I didn't buy the iPhone 15 on Timu but Amazon was like totally sold out of cases or the cases that I want like the one with the cardholder in the back

I'm ditching the wallet that's it I'm done with wallets so now I'm going to do one of those that's like kind of both like as a cardholder in the back and Amazon was sold out or just didn't have anything good and Timu had a great selection and I was like you know what? Get ready for a thousand emails a day saying you have been selected Alex I couldn't wait to talk to you about this I've already unsubscribe twice Timu emails me literally like three times an hour.

It is insane. They are breaking every email marketing protocol and probably law imaginable. Because no, I have unsubscribed off different emails and every time. And you can see because they have like insane sign up bonuses and discounts and stuff. But yeah, yeah. Every time this phone case moves an inch with UPS, they send me an email. It's unbelievable. It's like your case is now one block further than it was five minutes ago.

Email. By the way, here's some incentives to shop more. It's crazy. Shop more. But speaking of Chinese companies and apps, TikTok at the second Republican debate, did you see this? Oh, yes, I did. So, well, real quick, before we jump into that, I just want to let everybody know. There have been a few people who mentioned that our mics have sounded a little bit off, a little crackly.

It turns out it's not a mic issue. It was a stream yard issue. We were using Chrome with a shore mic, and that threw it off. That led to the crackling. You hear this week, both of our mics sound silky smooth. So for everybody that wrote in last week, I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. It's cool to hear that our listeners are engaged and listening in the AirPods or in the headphones. That will never be a problem again on the podcast, so we've taken care of that.

Also, one more bit of housekeeping before we get to this TikTok story. We do have a new policy where if you drop a five-star review on Apple and ask a question, we're going to address it. A couple of reviews came in last week, but the stars weren't up to par. So I know you folks were trying to get, maybe it was the Apple interface or whatever. It's got to be five stars. That's the rule. So another Sam Owen and Che listening. Folks, we're going to get to your questions this week, but in the future, please at least increase your ratings. So you don't end up downgrading the show and the charge as we get to your questions. So one of them was a request for interviews. We're going to reach out to those people. So thank

you know, there's Simone for dropping that out. And for Chay listening, you want us to fix the mics. Guess what? We fix the mics. Questions and dress. I appreciate listeners who appreciate good audio. Me too. I mean, that's what we're here to do.

We have the equipment. Yep. So anyway, we've solved this issue, no longer an issue. But thank you, everybody who's been concerned about it. We are dedicated to making sure it sounds good when you listen. Okay. That aside, Tick-Tac in the debates. Yes, I saw it.

Nikki Haley, basically, you know, debate murder. murdered Vivek Ramoswamy for his use of TikTok. He was like, oh, I'm trying to use the platform and reach young people. And she said, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber. So it is interesting that TikTok has become this flashpoint in the debates. But the thing that really struck me is the inescapability of TikTok today. Because after Nikki Haley went on the offensive on that front, a story came out that her daughter was using TikToks to do dances. Now, of course, we're not our children and we're not

our parents. But it did, it was an embarrassing moment, I think, for Haley. And her daughter ended up deleting her, her TikTok, or at least deactivating. You can't see it anymore. So, Ron, what do you think about this, this whole moment? As we are starting to build up to what I'm sure will be a eventful presidential campaign, I think TikTok's going to be one of the most interesting stories here because how do candidates leverage it? Do they leverage it? I mean, you have kind of the two sides of it. Where is the company going to fall in the overall discussion? I'm sure it's going to be a flashpoint. It's like one of the few agreed on topics by both sides of the political establishment. But do they use it? And how do they use it? And how do different

candidates use it? Because you kind of have to, given it drives culture nowadays. It drives like every I remember, I think it was Ryan Broderick's garbage days, had a number of great pieces on how Reddit used to drive culture before that, maybe Instagram, but now all memes come from TikTok, all conversation. It all starts there. So if you're a politician, you kind of have to use it, but will you? Yeah, it's ignore at your own risk, but it also sort of, it drives on the point of a lot of the detractors, which is just like this thing has definitely, it's, it's unavoidable. I mean, it's a fact of life in the U.S. right now, which will make it really tough to ban or force a sale or whatever because it has, there's power there. There is, I mean, legitimately it's accomplishing the goal. There's real soft power there. Yeah, no, and honestly, we are heading into, and from my side, the idea of a black box algorithm driving overall cultural conversation in a presidential campaign year is this terrifying thing.

Like I, I know we've talked about this in the past, and I still have predicted that at some point TikTok will be banned. But, I mean, I think we're heading into once we start to see what things start to go viral, and it's hopefully not Chris Christie saying Donald Duck, if any listeners saw that moment, which I did you see this where Chris Christie kind of like, I read about that. I didn't, I didn't actually watch the video. He kind of like looks at the camera and calls out to. Donald Trump and says like you're scared of being here. I like all the other candidates. I at least respect them, but you're scared. I'm going to call you Donald Duck. And it's so cringew that I honestly wonder if Chris Christie, if he was smart enough to kind of make a fool of himself knowing it would be memed and knowing it's so ridiculous that it's actually funny, he's kind of a player in this. He's kind of a fun. I think his social media game is

strong right now. Yeah, well, I just, I was just on the phone with Mark Cuban for a story I did for GQ. And Cresti and Haley are Cuban's people. So, all right, I think the two mean-worthy candidates. It really just goes to show you. Under President Vivek Ramoswami, though, this, this TikTok thing is just going to the moon man. Yeah, no, under President Ramoswami, I'm sure TikTok will be the most relevant social network. A secretary of defense. The, the interesting thing that I also saw this week was that, you know, people were like, you know, pointing out this. I guess it became a thing that people started talking about, like how, you know, the, the line people are saying is that TikTok will take your data and control your country through soft power. And then the reality of TikTok, which was a video of people who tied a hot dog to their waist and then thrust their with a rope and then thrust their waist in a way that they tried to catch the hot dog in their mouth. And it's kind of funny, just how, you know, it's always interesting to me how we juxtapose, like, you know, the fears of TikTok and the ridiculousness of TikTok. But that being said, it is, like you mentioned, I mean, it's where memes and culture is created.

So it is a real force. Yep. No, no. The hot dogs on the waist are just a distraction from the real, the real soft power. Or maybe that is the real soft power. Maybe that is. It's a way to have America show to the world what it actually. actually is, which is, I don't know, very talented athletes.

Very, very talented athletes. There is, speaking of cringe, there is a video going around of YouTube, no, an interview that Linda Yakorino did, the CEO of X did at code. Look, I think we try to be fair on the show. We're not here with an agenda. When things are good, we say it's good. When things are bad, we say it's bad. I don't think we're out to get anybody.

I don't think we're on a side. That being said, you know, let's just call it like it is. It was one of the worst CEO interviews I've ever seen in my life. It was conducted by Julia Borsden, who was here. She did a great job, I thought. She was composed. She asked tough questions, and they had brought a former Twitter head of safety on, who had been called out by Musk after Musk fired him.

And Yakorino just completely lost her composure. couldn't stop referencing the interview with the head of safety who had a lot of bad things to say about Elon Musk sounded. We've talked about her previous interview, right, evasive, but also this time just not like a CEO. And, you know, they asked Joe Namath, the legendary Jets quarterback, to evaluate the performance of Zach Wilson, their current quarterback, who stinks. And they asked him, was there anything positive?

to take out of that loss. And Namath just sits there on the interview and he goes, nothing. That was disgusting. And I was trying to think about like, what, is there anything positive to take out of Yakorino's appearance? And I really have one. I trend into Namath territory on this one. I have it.

Okay. It numbers her days at Twitter slash X. And that's a good thing for her, for everyone. Because it, I have never. seen something this bad, even, you know, like whatever, I think Slate called this a dumpster fire of an interview, but it really was. Like, to me, the most shocking part of it is she comes on stage. And again, as you said, so much of the interview is focused on kind of her annoyance with the fact that Yol Roth was interviewed 45 minutes before her. And she didn't have time to

respond. You are the CEO of a one of the most influential important. companies in the world, I can think of the CEOs of like five-person startups who could handle a bit of stress better than that. And to act annoyed and kind of, you know, impertinent around the idea that someone spoke badly of your company an hour before and not having had enough time to prepare is, I cannot believe she said that out loud. I cannot believe that this was actually the entire attitude throughout the interview. My other favorite part is much like I I still don't love to have to say meta as the name of the company, Facebook. She could not say, keep Twitter or X straight.

And it was so fascinating to watch. Like, you could see her really trying her hardest to say X. At one point she even said, and it was a good line. She was like, okay, and here's another positive from her. When she said, he worked at Twitter, like, X is the new thing or X is, you know, I'm really trying to distinguish between the two. but then she kept saying Twitter over and over so I think she caught herself once and she goes by the way I meant to do that oh yeah you're right I mean no but I honestly think everyone people it's

on YouTube watch that interview because it's it it'll be a nice part of this whole Twitter saga time capsule because it's it's honestly unlike any other CEO interview I think I've ever seen yeah I mean the thing is when you're up there you have an opportunity no matter what happened previously. No one was actually going to watch the Yoel interview. No, no. I didn't even, no idea it happened. And then, yeah, she came up. She had an opportunity to like present their best foot forward and talk about how it's not Twitter or sex and was just just. And the, and the first question from Julia, it was so clear that it wasn't, it was in no way attacking her. It was simply like, oh, you know, let's start it. So we just had Yoel on stage. He said these things, which obviously about

safety on the platform, which I have to imagine Linda Yacrino has prepared extensively. She's talking about-all-the-time about it. Yeah, I know. So you have your talking points ready on that. And then it almost felt like just a kind of natural segue to start the interview from whatever was on the stage before. But yeah, it was, it was something else. Okay. So I think that can, that's a consensus view that, you know, even if you're the biggest fan of Musk and Twitter, that that interview was a true disaster. Let's talk about the controversial part, though, the sandbagging, quote-unquote, right? So they let Linda Yaccarino know earlier that day that Yowel was going to be there. And he had been booked apparently the week before, and, you know, people are now saying

that they will no longer get high-profile interviews because, you know, they sort of brought her in, then, you know, quote-unquote, sandbagged Yakarino by putting someone on there who was going to say these terrible things about Musk right before she came on or right after because they gave her the option about whether or not to, whether or not to appear first or second. Do you think that, so what do you think about that? And do you think this is, you know, I guess some people might be saying, well, this is the end of the code conference. They're so good at bringing on high-profile CEOs. And this might make it harder to do. what's your perspective uh yeah so again and this is a bit insider media baseball i believe in terms of uh just you know what is the proper protocol around especially big CEOs and how a

event and slash conference slash publisher needs to approach it but again even like carers swisher had come out and she said that she had texted linda at 722 a m code folks followed up at 930 and then Linda's, her team even asked for a full hour between which they were given. So they're getting their demands met. And no questions. So they're getting their demands met. But again, you are the CEO of this giant influential company. Like you should be able to handle stress.

You work not for Elon Musk works for you, I guess, or you work with Elon Musk. Like clearly you should be able to handle some stress. Yeah, let's be honest. You should be able to handle some stress. So I think to me, the fact that he's, Elon Musk is making a big deal about it, she is making a big deal about it. Keras Wisher is trying to defend herself around it. I think it's, every time everyone makes that the point from their side, it makes her look worse because it's saying, I am so incapable of, unable to handle surprise. Unable to handle.

And it's not even surprise. You have an hour to try to refute or prepare and watch their interview and come up with whatever you. want to say. And all he's talking about is stuff that you should already have answers for because you are trying to convince every major advertiser to come on your platform and buy ad space. Like saying the platform is safe should be the speech she is given a thousand times. Right. The last thing I'll say about this is I agree with all that. I also think that it's undeniable that if he was booked the week before and you tell her the morning of, You waited because you thought that if you said that beforehand, she would cancel her appearance.

Oh, I mean, possibly. No, no, definitely. Yeah, yeah. But that being said, look, I agree. You're a CEO. You're being called up. Talk about your company. I don't care who goes before you.

Go ahead and handle it like a pro. No. So I completely agreed. I don't want to end up being monotone about Elon Musk and Twitter. Like, again, like I think there are. It's not black and white, totally, but this interview in particular was a huge tech news story. It was black and white. It was a poor showing.

And we'll see where it goes from there. The countdown is on. I don't think she's there certainly past the end of the year, but. Never know, man. Yeah. Never know. No, never know. But because at the end of the day, okay, this is the last thing I'll say about it.

At the end of the day, this stuff matters to some extent. What really matters is, and this is the headline that actually, okay, sorry, I'm going to take back my Joe Namath thing because the thing that matters is her relationships with brands. She's an advertising person. She's been selling media. Can she get brands on board? She says 90 of the top 100 advertisers have come back, 1,500 advertisers have come back since she's come on board. That's what she was brought on to do, not these interviews. And if she's doing a good job of that, then her longevity, she's going to have more time.

Yes, but major brand advertisers are seeing this and watching it. And people who probably have had like 30-year relationships with her and, you know, like I've looked at her as this force of nature and now we're seeing this. And it just becomes even more clear that she does not have a handle on the platform. And again, when we say, yeah, but if you're proctor and gamble, you're not going to be like, oh, Linda, that code interview wasn't good. I'm pulling my ads for whatever. No, no, but it's just you already are.

probably thinking that I don't feel comfortable with this platform, but maybe Linda is going to like pull this together and save it and I'm going to be happy investing in it. But in reality, you see that and you remember that she does not, she's not the one in charge. I think that's the biggest thing. It's just a reminder that she was not the one in charge. Are they going to be profitable starting next year or so they say? Yes, they will. We'll find out. Okay. Well, clearly it's not the end of that chapter. Let's quickly touch on is, oh, my God, there's so much generative AI news. So much generative AI news.

Let's just talk quickly about Amazon and Anthropic. Amazon is going to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic. And it's putting in $1.25 to start. It's going to get some ownership, of course. Anthropic is the company started by former open AI folks who felt that the company was not as safe or as open as it was telling us it was. and now they're doing this major move with Amazon. So it's good for Amazon.

There's no doubt about that, I think. Curious what you think. But then also, they had just done two funding rounds with Google. And they were Google clouds like primary partner. And now they're moving over to Amazon. How do you read all this, Ron, John? I think, so to me the most interesting part of this announcement was Amazon's strategy, at least publicly in all of this, was they were called the Switzerland of large language

models. The idea was really pitching Amazon and AWS would be this kind of neutral place versus a Microsoft, which it's kind of essentially chosen open AI as it's like an LLM of choice or AI provider of choice. So, you know, everyone's pairing up and Amazon saying, no, AWS, our differentiation is going to be, it's this neutral platform that can handle and work nicely with all different types of models. So they clearly, that was not the strategic choice. And they made very clear that Anthropic is going to become kind of the central part, which is interesting to me because it starts to, you start to understand that they realize maybe they do need to work that closely with one of these leading players, Anthropic, Open AI, you know, and there's only a few of them. So I think that was definitely interesting. The Google angle is pretty surprising and interesting as well, that after Google is kind of leading the charge,

investing in them and now just kind of gets thrown to the side. So, yeah, I think to me, this actually was a fun week because it really reminded us. Because I feel the whole generative AI hype has been waning in a good way. And people are actually getting down to the task of building things and actually working on products. So this is all very, very concrete things. And also, I think have you used Claude? Yes. Yeah, Anthropics chatbot, for listeners, it's a, it can take in much, much longer prompts.

I believe it's like up to 200,000 character. It's something you can basically feed it an entire book in the space of one prompt, which is very different from chat GPT. And so already it changes the way these tools can actually work because in the past, you would need to potentially fine tune a large language model to make it do what you wanted to do, whereas now in a prompt itself, you can hear as a hundred examples of what I would like you to output, use this to complete this task for me. So it actually, I've been using it a lot more. It's a really, really interesting tool. And it's a reminder, I think Anthropic

is going to be a player. Okay. I think we're coming up on time. So why do we call for here? We're going to address some of this stuff next week, including the fact that chat ChippyT can now see and talk and all the other news coming out on the generative AI front. But we do have an interview with Bill Kovic, the former chair of the FTC, that we want to bring to you. So we'll do that right after this break. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and

original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read the Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now they have a daily podcast called. the Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for the Hustled Daily show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast. And joining us live is William Kovac. He is a longtime former committee

member on the FTC and the former chair of the agency. So he has intricate knowledge of how the agency works, what its remit is, what laws it's working with. And it's a perfect time to speak with him because the FTC has just sued Amazon. And we want to dig into the case and not just pontificated about it, but I actually speak with someone who knows how this stuff works. Bill, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Alex. So can you just take us, bring us up to speed on what happened this week? The FTC did sue Amazon. What exactly are they suing over? And how How do you read the case? Yeah, the FTC and 17 state governments jointly filed a complaint against Amazon for

illegal monopolization. That's the theory under the U.S. antitrust laws that imposes discipline on what dominant enterprises can do. And the core of the offense is to show that the firm has a monopoly position and has either obtained it or maintained it through improper means. And the FTC and the states have identified several specific practices that they claim enabled Amazon to sustain a position of preeminence as the largest online marketplace in the United States, that they adopted a variety of strategies to prevent sellers on the platform from discounting

by offering better rates or lower prices through other channels. that Amazon also sought to bundle together its fulfillment services along with its platform services to ensure that all the firms that use the platform necessarily would use Amazon for fulfillment. And that Amazon also manipulated the presentation of sales offerings to elevate its own products, to subordinate the products of other sellers, to introduce. advertising that made it harder to go through the list of possibilities and identify alternatives and use this mechanism as a way to discipline companies that were not abiding by its preferences with respect to pricing. The relief requested in

the case involves foremost a prohibition on the behavior but the complaint on its own terms asked for other appropriate equitable relief and it specifically identifies structural remedies as being an option. So the FTC and the states have opened the door to the possibility of not simply conduct remedies, but controls on structure as well. Right. And we'll get into the remedies in a moment. I think what people who are detractors of this case might say is there's a good argument against everything that the FTC is mentioning here. When it comes to logistics, well, companies had a decision whether they wanted to sell through Amazon. They decided to do it because it was their business and make use of the logistics because that helped them get their product

out. Or in terms of Amazon prioritizing its own products that happens in grocery stores and retail shops across the world. So when you think about the FTC case that they're bringing, how do you sort of look at its strength here against some of the arguments that are going to be brought against it? Does it feel like a strong case to you? Because frankly, we've seen a lot of these FTC cases come against the tech giants go nowhere. And so I'm just trying to get a sense from, you know, from you, whether this one has a better potential to actually do some damage or not. There's some intriguing hints about the evidence that the FTC has. About 20% of the complaint, the complaint is over 170 pages.

It's a long, elaborate document. I wrote a lot. I'd say about 20% of it is redacted. So there are provocative moments where the FTC seems to be winding up. We're still going to wait to see what's been. behind the curtain. But some of the evidence suggests, for example, that the purpose of the anti-discounting policy

was to elevate the price to make sure no one was undercutting Amazon's price. Some of the quoted documents suggest that these strategies were chosen, even though they tended to undermine the user experience. So there's a suggestion in some of the quoted material that the aim of the strategy was most and foremost to limit rivals from developing and emerging and that came at the expense of the

user experience now the FTC of course in its complaint is going to put its better cards on the table but the contest in the litigation will deal one about whether or not Amazon faces significant competition for some of these online services but the second is whether or not this be behavior as the FTC claims came to the detriment of users and damage the ability of other firms to enter and expand. And Amazon's first and foremost argument is going to be that every single thing we did was to enhance the user experience. They're going to marshal all the arguments they can to show that what they've done consistently

over time tended to please the people who use the service, even though it might have made some of its rivals less happy. How do you feel about what the definition of the market that they're competing is? Because I was reading that they'll obviously say they compete in retail and are a tiny percentage of overall retail. Then even within online commerce, I think there are maybe 30%, 40%. But then online marketplace slash superstore, there's 70%. How do you read where that kind of definition battle will?

go. This is relying on a modern jurisprudence that suggests that within a broader realm of commerce, you can identify niches. And the courts accepted the idea that the niches could be competitively significant. So here again, the FTC is going to be trying, one assumes, to come forward with evidence that shows, first and foremost, that Amazon recognized these boundaries as being the real boundaries. that this was the real focus of competition. And much as the Department of Justice did with Microsoft

in the litigation in the late 1990s, the FTC will try to bring forward Amazon's own internal observations about where it faced competition and say that that conception of competition matches what we've got in the complaint. Amazon, as you just suggested, is going to say, one, we never believe that in, And second, to exclude this larger environment in which we operate, to ignore it, is to deny a competitive reality that governs what we do all the time.

So the effort to focus the camera very specifically on this stated market niche, the online marketplace, is going to be a subject of considerable debate and contention in the case. And the strength of the case ultimately will depend on what lies behind those redacted. passages, but also how effectively the FTC can, out of Amazon's own words, show that the FTC's version of commerce reflects what Amazon believed to be the case to. How do you read the remedies that they're looking for? I mean, you said at the beginning that one of the things they're looking for, the main thing they're looking for is to just not allow Amazon to do this stuff anymore. You know, people thought this was going to be the big case that's going to be the breakup Amazon case.

Now, you mentioned there's a structural element to it as well, which to me seems to indicate there might be some breakup possibility here. But I'm curious what you think about what the FTC is looking here, looking for here should it win. Yeah, the remedies are stated more ambiguously than say they are in the FTC's case against META for the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. In that complaint, the remedy paragraph very specifically says, our objectives, it's to create two or more competing social networks. It's flagged. It's right at the top of the mast. And the flag on the top of the mask says divestiture. In this complaint, it's simply listed as one of a range of options, which the government has done in the past. There's a tendency for prosecutors to mute some of their remedial. intentions to see how the evidence goes, and then to fully reveal their remedial purposes

once the trial is well underway or the liability phase is over. I guess what is important to recall is just the point you mentioned, Alex, which is that the FTC does and the states do include structural relief. The language in the complaint says, says an injunction and other equitable relief, including but not limited to structural remedies, which is the antitrust lingo for breakups. So it's included there for the purpose of being able to say we're not trying to surprise you. That is, we've given you an idea of what we might be trying to do. But it's interesting that it is not identified with the same emphasis as the remedial objective in the medicaid, which did involve mergers as a means of creating market power. And when you have mergers, the solution is

often the spin companies off. But if you go back to the entire debate surrounding Amazon from the FTC chair, Lena Kahn's earlier writings on this, and the public discussion about Amazon on the hill in the David Cicillini hearings in the fall of 2020 coming forward, the idea was the only way to remove their grip on this element of online commerce was to break them into two or more pieces. That objective has been understated in the complaint itself. It could come back to life, but it's intriguing that the FTC hasn't brought it forward at full volume. Why do you think they're giving up on that then? Not giving up, but maybe less convinced in their own minds that it's what they need or what would be achievable.

So I see the hesitation as reflecting a certain amount of doubt. You know, you and I have emailed in the past about FTC resourcing for the fact that the FTC is really under-resourced. Put us in, you know, you've been the chair of the FTC before. What do you think it means that the FTC is like looking down the barrel of an Amazon against a lawsuit against Amazon here. They, what do like the, how do their resources stack up against that of an Amazon and how do you think that impacts the case?

If Amazon were the only case, the FTC could staff it to match the other side punch for punch. It's not the only case. They're running the meta case, which is another bet your agency case. They are running very complicated and difficult merger cases, which also demand top talent. They are rolling out other significant initiatives such as their rulemaking involving non-compete clauses. They have a host of other matters, including a big health care case that they're running in Texas that they announced this week as well. The dilemma you and I have discussed before in emails is that the commission does not have the resources to handle more than X number of matters.

I don't know what the number X is, but we can imagine what. meta, what Facebook's predecessor meta would spend to avoid having to spin off Instagram? Can we imagine how much Amazon would be willing to spend to avoid disruption to its fundamental business model? Can we imagine how these extremely well-financed enterprises would spend? It's not that the FTC doesn't have capable people. The real rub is that you don't have enough experienced people to run cases so that you the danger is that you have extremely experienced formidable opponents bringing the very best talent in the legal profession and the economic consultancies against you and you come to a point we have to put a larger number of people

who are very bright great intellectual gifts but they're rookies they're relatively inexperienced that's a mismatch. I don't know what the magic number is for the number of cases that the FTC can run at this level with big litigation, big opponents like Microsoft and Microsoft Activision,

but my great concern is that as you add more matters to the agenda, you're going to get to the point where you are putting less experienced, the very capable people, into the battle against other terms, other teams that will overmatch you.

This is a fundamental problem with our competition system. It's a fundamental problem at the Department of Justice that we ask people to go to the moon, but we really are giving them the resources to get to Kansas City. And that is not a formula for success. And the unfortunate history of the FTC in the past is that you get to a point in which your commitments greatly outrun your capability to deliver,

and that's where cases start to fall apart. I can't predict a moment when the wheels come off of this one, but when I look at the aggregate, at the entire portfolio, this is a serious difficulty that the commission faces. Yeah, I mean, Kansas City is nice, but it ain't the moon. And that's going to be a problem with the FTC. It's a great place to go for barbecue by any measure. Excellent barbecue.

Yeah. And I would never tell someone to give up a trip to Kansas City. But when you are promising the moon and when your fan base and your supporters expect you to go there, a question you can ask is, with what? That you can't do this on the cheap. So how does this play out in the coming months? Is it obviously there's, I mean, the actual legal and court battle, the court of public opinion battle, like what happens next? And how can the FTC, even if it is under resource, try to push this through? The judge in the relatively near future is going to lay

out a schedule for the entire proceeding. And an interesting question is how much the judge is going to push the parties to go to trial relatively soon. In the Microsoft case, in 1998, the district judge was committed to run this case expeditiously. The case was filed in May of 1998. It went to trial in October of 1998. By contrast, the Google case, the DOJ is litigating now in Washington, that case was filed in the late in the autumn of 2020. And the case goes to trial in September 2023. The FTC's meta case, which was brought in late 2020, has a trial date that may come to May ripen in early 2024. Is this judge going to take the model

that the district judge used in Microsoft and said, I'm not waiting around. My docket allows me to take this on. We're going to go to trial early in 2024. We're going to move this along. You can't have 100 witnesses. You can have 20. You can't take six weeks to lay your case out. You've got three. I'll understand it over three weeks. period of time let's go so one crucial question is how soon is the court going to push the parties to go to trial here the trial might last six months or so add another four or five months for for

an opinion to be written an inevitable trip to the court of appeals after that if it's on a fast track we could have a trip through the court of appeals in three years if it's on a slow track five or six years so that's a that's a key judicial management decision coming up up initially a decision on the on the liability and then a separate proceeding on the remedy follows that so this is a little bit like and this is a problem with the antitrust system this is a bit like building an aircraft carrier that is you can't it takes so long that how's the industry going to evolve over time the leadership of the FTC its chair probably will not be in that job by the time this case finally lands We have elections coming up in the meantime.

You really cross your fingers if you're a prosecutor hoping that there will be the determination to carry it through in a timely matter. So the great fanfare that accompanied the launch today now sets in motion a fairly quiet process where for months, maybe a couple of years, the parties get to do additional discovery before the trial itself actually begins. Yeah, by the time the government wins this case, should they win it, you know, Timu could be the leading e-commerce solution in the U.S. I know that would make Ron John. This is a difficulty. This is exactly, Alex, this is a real difficulty for the case, which is as these other developments take place, the judge starts to wonder, what were we focusing on here? What's the point of this?

And especially when you get to the remedy issues. That is, what are we supposed to do with the remedy? Last question, last big question for me to you is one of the things that I hear coming out of the FTC is that, you know, people respect Lena Khan, but they also tend to think that she'll put ideology above pragmatism. And in the source of a lot of these cases hasn't been these case losses. She's lost a bunch of cases. The understanding I have it is it's been. that they've been, they haven't been structured in a way that lends them to victory as opposed to making a point. I'm curious, you know, you ran the FTC. Do you see that? And would you have

approached things any differently? I'd say what, what stands out first is that of the cases that were initiated during her chairmanship, she's lost two so far, both of the mergers. Two isn't a whole lot of data points yet. My colleagues who teach statistics say you need a bigger body of data to make a judgment. But what was striking in both of those cases is that the theory of harm was a little bit edgy. It was a little bit on the frontier against, again, well-financed and supported opponents. This case is a little bit more traditional. It doesn't seek to push the frontiers in quite the same way that those merger cases did. So in some ways, that reflects, that is perhaps realism, tempering ambition to some extent, that it's a more realistic case.

But I think a difficulty that she deals with is that in coming to the job, she promised an extraordinarily ambitious program and criticized her predecessors, people like me, for being a bit too timid maybe a lot too timid uh she doesn't use the word but some of her supporters use words like coward well not my favorite description of my time but the promise was to do not just more but much more so when you come in with that being the promise it's very hard to walk it back in practice if you've said you're going to take on the whole world and you start saying well maybe not right now not this one. I'm not going to pursue this one as aggressively. You start to sound like guys like me. That is, that's what your predecessor said about, about being, being cautious. So you've

painted yourself into a bit of a corner where you promise you're going to pick all of these fights and take them on, but you look at the resources you have and the capabilities you have and you realize, I can't fight them all. I can't fight them all in an extreme. ambitious way so I think in subtle and and and and less dramatic ways I see the Commission is trying to frame its cases and being in some sense less ambitious but a case that involves the the major online force that that Amazon is challenges its business model can hardly be said to be non-ambitious in any sense So it's a less ambitious, very ambitious monopolization case, which still makes it a great, a great management challenge for the agency.

And I think this is an instance in which the arguments that led you to power, the arguments that propelled you to power, can get in the way of exercising the power effectively. Yeah. My last point is my friends at Amazon are pretty chill right now. They don't seem to be breaking a sweat. They're not very worried, business as usual. Should they be a little bit more nervous, or do you kind of understand where they're coming from? I kind of understand where they're coming from. I think they probably realize, certainly management does, that you have to take all of these challenges, extremely seriously. The moment that you relax is the moment that you face a most unwelcome surprise. What can give them a basis for curtailing their anxiety, for avoiding panic, to have a clear-headed view is that defendants tend to enjoy the benefit of very favorable doctrine in the United States. U.S. doctrine doesn't tell dominant firms you can do anything you want but it gives them fairly broad freedom to pick business practices of their choosing

as long as they deliver a significant and unmistakable benefit to consumers and that's playing to amazon's strength in the case about what they're going to claim is the whole purpose for what they did so as they undertake this journey um they can they can take some comfort from the fact that Defendants generally come through this process, relatively unscathed, with the caution that NH trust trials are awkward and that it does open the curtain so that a lot of your internal business activities are open for you. Now, I'm an academic now. I love that. I like the fuller disclosure. I enjoy that, but that can be discomforting for the company. And by itself, fact that the lawsuit is out there along with others, I think can inhibit them in being perhaps

as active and agile adept as they've been in the past. The lawsuit tends to slow you down. More and more decisions get run through the lawyers. They have more of a role in the process so that even if you don't lose the case in the courtroom, there's a loss of speed and adaptability just because. the case is out there. And I think maybe an anxiety on my part that would match my concern about what happens in the courtroom is, is this case going to keep us from doing our job in a way that enables us to be effective?

Ron John, you good? Yeah, no, no. I think thinking about the remedies, thinking about which directions can go. I mean, it's a long road ahead here. But no, thank you again, William. No, thank you so much, Roger. And thanks, Alex. Really delighted to do this. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I'm sure our audience can be thrilled hearing from you and we hope to have you back. So thanks again for being here and enjoy your time in Europe. I look forward to next time. Thank you very much. Us too. Thanks everybody for listening. Thank you, Bill. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you.