Pivot - Microsoft is more valuable than Apple again. Why?

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

Kara and Scott talk about Microsoft surpassing Apple. They also come to an agreement that “Republicans buy football teams and Democrats buy media properties”. In case you missed some recent headlines, Kara and Scott talk under-reported stories. China is unveiling a social credit surveillance system and it’s literally a ‘Black Mirror’ episode. Scott’s “win of the week” is NASA beating big tech to a Mars landing. Kara’s win is Google employees making bold statements about their company on her recent podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pivot is brought to you by our founding sponsor, Smart Water. What makes Smart Water delicious? It's pure, it's crisp, it's vapor distilled with electrolytes added for taste. Learn more at drinksmartwater.com. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network, and I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Hello, Scott.

How are you doing? How are you, Cara? In this freezing cold weather. I'm sorry. So you pulled out the ultimate excuse for being late. Yeah. Your kid forgot his lunch. Yes, and he guilted me.

Like, it was his fault, and then he blamed me for not reminding me, and then he got me to bring it to school. I just—and the whole—I'm an Uber driver, really, is what I am. I've become. Yeah, aren't we all? Yeah. Well, good. He's 13. I just—I don't know.

I just brought it. I just remembered when—I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, Scott. They'll take care of us when we're old, Kara. That's what we have to remember. Yeah. Someone has to take care of us when we're old. Yes. Well, I we have to remember. Yeah. Someone has to take care of us when we're old.

Yes. Well, I hope that's the case. I'm like—I was thinking that the other night. I'm like, I wonder if these two bozos are going to take care of me when I'm older. I wasn't certain. I'm not certain. One of them may be. The other I'm not—the other will just pay for it, which I'm fine, too.

That's fine, too. That's good, too. That works. Yeah. So what's going on this week? Well, there's a lot going on. I just reported a story yesterday that Lorraine Powell Jobs, who is the widow of Steve Jobs, but that's not her only criteria. She's also an entrepreneur. She's an investor.

She's done a ton of philanthropy. She bought a company called Pop-Up Magazines Productions, another media buy. I thought you might have some thoughts on all these zillionaires buying up properties. This is a really interesting property. She's been buying interesting properties. We've got Microsoft surpassing Apple. We've got all kinds of things. Tell me what you want to talk about. A lot of good stuff. A lot of good stuff. Well, it's interesting. The pop-up, that company, I had never heard of it before, but there's definitely a trend in what I would describe as Ritalin Retail, the Frosé Mansion or Museum of Pizza, and the notion that retail, in order to survive, needs to— The Frosé Mansion? Okay, go ahead.

Frosé Mansion. Let's go have rosé and explore our imagination and unleash the bounds of our creativity for $45 to drink champagne. Anyways, the key attribute in these things is scarcity, and that is you know the Museum of Ice Cream is going away. So this seems to be a trend. It's going to be a trend. It's going to have a lot of impact on retail, especially malls that are used to co-opting brands into signing 10-year commitments.

Right. And I think this is an example of it turning content into sort of this, you know, quote-unquote experiential retail. In terms of billionaires, I mean, this is just playing. It's just a show. I mean, I don't know if it's experiential retail. I'm not sure if that's. It's just, have you been to one? I'm going to take you to one. They're great. They're really show. I mean, I don't know if it's experiential retail. I'm not sure if that's... Have you been to one? I'm going to take you to one. They're great.

They're really great. I'd like that. You know what's interesting about them? Oh, so you've been to one. Describe it. Oh, I've been to tons. I've been to tons and tons. I love them. They started in San Francisco, and they sell out immediately because they're so delightful. It's a magazine acted out. Like, at one point,

one of them, Jenna Wortham, who works for the New York Times, she did a – she took one of her New York Times story and she did it in shadow puppets. And it was so entertaining that it was – it's delightful. And then they don't record it. So you can't see it again, which is kind of like most theater. But it's really – Again, scarcity. It's fun. It's fun and interesting and inventive and it always pushes you from a journalistic perspective.

Anyway, and then they have a magazine that they've distributed. You know how Sunday magazines are over at big newspaper chains because they cost so much. And so they make one that is inserted into the San Francisco Chronicle and certain readers of the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and some other places. And it's really great journalism. And they've won – they've gotten very close to several national magazine awards in a very short time. And they've won – I know we gave them an award when I'm on the board of the Livingston Awards. And they're just really a great little company.

But she had invested $10 million in them and now has picked up the rest. Wow. Yeah, so Republicans buy football teams and Democrats buy media companies. Right. What do you think of that? What do you think about big—I mean, people have owned—big people, big rich people have owned media forever. But what do you think of that trend?

I'm not—I actually think on the whole it's a good thing. I think organizations like the New York Times should be owned by a benign billionaire with the resources and the commitment to, you know, and they need to be checks and balances. But my sense is these organizations don't make great for-profit entities. So if a billionaire with deep pockets and a commitment to democracy and journalism comes in,

you know, I'm all good with that. What do you think? I think it's interesting because they're all tech people. Like Mark Benioff buys Time magazine. Lorraine Jobs, Powell Jobs, is buying – she bought a big piece of the Atlantic. She's bought a bunch of movie studios, really interesting ones, one called Macro, and it focuses on stories of people of color. She's bought into Axios. She's bought into Gimlet Media.

And then obviously Jeff Bezos. And so I think you're going to see – you're right. and then obviously Jeff Bezos. And so I think you're going to see, you're right, it's mostly tech people, which is really interesting to me because they're the people sort of ruining media at the same time, which is kind of ironic. But the fear is that these people are going to come in and turn it into their vehicle for personal use.

Which used to be the case. The Sheldon Adelson model. But I would argue both Rupert Murdoch, there was fear that Rupert Murdoch, you know, there was fear that Rupert Murdoch was going to ruin the Wall Street Journal. I think the Wall Street Journal

is as good as it's ever been and I think the Washington Post has actually made a lot of progress since Bezos bought it. So we're four rich people buying media,

in other words. Yeah, there you go. Okay, we're in agreement. How about it? I do worry about the idea. I mean, the thing is, when I do worry about it,

I think, oh my God, you know, the bankrupt zone, the Times, whoever on the Los Angeles Times, there has always been a rich family. And either they're good rich families like the Grams of the Washington Post or they're bad rich families, you know, like the Adelsons who meddle and do stuff with their properties. So there you have it. Yeah, but over the last 30 years, media has taken a lot of very rich families and turned them into just rich families. I don't think the Grams or the Sulzbergers have the economic influence they used to.

Yeah, that's the case. I think you're right. And they still have a tremendous commitment to journalism. But the Bancrofts who sold to Murdoch, they look like geniuses. They do. They sold at the top of the market.

That was a struggle if you remember that thing. I was at the journal at the time and I knew them pretty well. And it was, we had one of our conferences, our all things e-conference

that Rupert was at and some of the Bancroft people, the family. And it was really tense. It was super tense. Yeah. Because they fought.

I imagine you were one of the folks that was saying, no way. No, I wasn't. I wasn't. You said sell. I was, you know, it was interesting because, no, I thought they should sell, maybe not to him. I mean, at one point, I know the Washington Post was worried, the owners of the Washington Post were worried that Ruben Murdoch would try to buy the Washington Post, and so that's why they sort of sidled it up to Bezos, I think, in a lot of ways. I think they didn't want it being owned by Rupert Murdoch, for example.

Anyway, so that's the situation in media. What's interesting, another one is Microsoft surpassing Apple in market value. I thought you'd have some thoughts on that. Please eliminate me. Yeah, and it's not so much that Microsoft passed Apple. It's that Apple fell below Microsoft. And I think Satya Nadella, I would argue, is probably the tech CEO of the year. We'll explain that.

Has been a real visionary. Well, under Balmer, the company went sideways for a good 10, 15 years. Yes, yes. And then two, three years into the Nadella reign, and this company is, again, the most valuable company in the world, or at least it was briefly on Wednesday. And it goes to two things, and I think there's key learnings here for what I talk to my students about in terms of the careers they want to pursue. Sue. One is more just a financial that's smoothing out the lumps. And you haven't seen nearly the fall in Microsoft as you've seen in some of the other big tech. And that is the company's just more diversified. It has several distinct revenue streams, diversification, the markets like that. But more than anything, it's got the recurring revenue business model. And that is the ultimate

monogamous relationship between corporate America and an organization is the relationship between global corporations and Microsoft Office, who every year pony up hundreds of dollars per worker. And then the renewal rates are practically 100%. And the market just loves monogamy or specifically recurring revenue. And Microsoft for a long time has had just this tens of billions of dollars of recurring revenue in the form of Office. So, Nadella and Microsoft, as we're all barking at the moon and talking about Facebook and Apple, they just keep plugging along. It's really, it's incredible. He's an interesting guy. He's got a really interesting,

he's got sort of a tough family life too. His kids have some learning disabilities. And he's just one of these really interesting, quiet guys who I've known for a long, long time. And when he was a product, you know, he was running different products at Microsoft. And he was sort of the candidate nobody thought. They had all these big names for the head of Microsoft, and he sort of, again, sidled in there. And very quiet, very self-effacing.

And he had one little hiccup around when he said something wrong about women at one of the women's events. But in general, I think he's been a really solid person. And, you know, the era of Bomber was just, you know, I covered that whole thing and it was really, it was something to see. He would like, he kept saying, mobile's not going to be there. Who cares about cell phones? It just went on and on about really missed calls all over the place when I was covering that company. And so Bomber's a salesman at heart, really. He could be selling Xerox machines. He could sell anything, essentially.

But they really did need someone who was more of a technologist, more of, you know, pulled the politics out of it, pulled the just quiet and steady wins the race kind of personality. And I really, I actually like him personally. He's very, you know, he's sort of geeky, but he can talk to you. You know what I mean? Like he's a really, he's a very solid CEO that really is. He's very likable. Yeah, very much so.

And so it's interesting to think about that Microsoft now versus Microsoft 10 years ago, 15 years ago even. You know, what was interesting, the reason I want to sort of pivot to the idea is that, you know, this is a company that underwent an antitrust scrutiny and then, of course, lost in court. And they've managed to pull themselves back and get back in cloud. That's another thing that Amazon was sort of running away with. And what's interesting is this week Google's cloud had left Diane Greene. And I think there's probably some tension between, I know there is, there was some tension between her and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google.

Now, what's interesting about her is she's also on the board of Google, which is kind of an odd situation for, yeah. So she left and that was, and they replaced her with someone else, I think from Oracle. But Google has not kept up the same way in the cloud business that they should have and missed that turn, very much so, compared to Microsoft, which got it back, I think. Well, it's interesting you bring up the DOJ action against Microsoft in the late 90s, and I would argue that if the DOJ had moved in on Microsoft in the late 90s and said, stop killing small companies in the crib as you did with Netscape, that we'd all be saying, I don't know, bing it. They would have used their bundling and economic power to kill Google in the crib. And the object of every innovator's affection, Google, $750 billion in market cap, 75,000 great jobs created,

is a function of antitrust action. And we forget that antitrust can actually be oxygenating and also burn. Yes, absolutely. I think it was, you know, I think it was a big, that was a really interesting thing. I covered it for the Washington Post, that trial. And I just keep remembering that when Gates had that, when he was with the lawyers and he just messed up so badly. They were so arrogant. Like it just oozed out of that company. And it's certainly a different company now. It's absolutely.

And I think it's much more in Satya's image than it is in the two founders, really, which was Steve Ballmer, even though he wasn't, well, he was a founder, I think, and Bill Gates. So I think they're just plugging away at what they do, and they got out of the media business, speaking of that, like a lot of their MSN. That went on for far too long, and it was sad to watch. So it's interesting. They're an interesting sort of dark horse of a company. You think of Microsoft as so scary, but they actually seem very pleasant, right? Very pleasant.

But surpassing Apple, what do you think about that part? I thought you'd have a thought on Apple. So, look, Apple is turned into the iPhone and the seven doors. People talk about the services component, again, recurring revenue. But it's really, you know, Apple is, and it's an incredible problem to have, but the most profitable device in the history of business and probably the most transformative device, the iPhone, you know, the company is, if the iPhone sneezes, Apple's going to get a cold. And there's some insecurity and some wobbliness around people not replacing their iPhone as often. And I don't know if you saw the Supreme Court case. Explain that. Anti-competitive behavior.

Well, effectively, of all people, some iPhone users are saying that they have no choice and that Apple is making apps more expensive than they need to be because effectively Apple has a monopoly on it. And you have to go to the App Store and pay a 30 percent surcharge, which is what Apple charges. They take a 30 percent tax. And this all comes back to the same thing, and that is if you own the rails and you're shipping all the products and you get to see where every product's going, should you also own the businesses that you're shipping products to? Do you have insight? You have insight. If you're a platform, should you also be competing?

Like Amazon. You could say the same thing about Amazon. Against all of them. And going back to Microsoft, the reason why the DOJ moved in on Microsoft, when I would argue they had even less monopoly power than where Google and Facebook and Apple are right now is because, quite frankly, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates at that time were not nearly as likable. And they were also perceived as conservatives. And I'm convinced of being perceived as a progressive politically as the ultimate sheep's clothing. Oh, I don't know about that. Hello, Facebook. I mean, come on.

We as per, well, it's changing, no doubt about it. But well after, well after it should have, I think to date, it's interesting. Progressives, we're, you know, you and I are both progressives. We're perceived as nice, but weak. We're Alan Alda petting our Labrador, watching PBS. We're not a threat to anybody. I am. Whereas conservatives are,

except for you, whereas conservatives are generally stereotyped as smart but mean. So the perfect illusionist trick is to wrap yourself in a progressive blanket. And I think these companies have done that brilliantly. Whereas Microsoft, I mean, it's changed with the Gates Foundation, but largely, loosely speaking,

they were pretty unlikable. They were pretty unattractive. They were a pretty unattractive duo. They were very unlikable having covered them. Very unlikable, yeah. Yeah, so much. It's interesting. And so the DOJ moved in on them. Yeah.

Well, we'll see what's going to happen. And it's amazing we haven't talked for even a second about Facebook, but I will say again, Mark not appearing before the committee in Britain, which has a cache of emails, which are probably, once again, like, who's making these calls? And you know what? There's a deeper story here. MP, Member of Parliament, Damien Collins. Damien Collins.

I'm going to interview him. I'm going to interview Damien. Oh, that's going to be interesting because I'll tell you, Britain, the UK is going gangster on Facebook. Because think about what they did. They found documentation, or they think there was documents that might reveal damaging information against Facebook. They found the CEO of an app that was closed down by Facebook in 2015. They found out the CEO was going to be in the UK, and they had a sergeant at arms go over to his hotel and say, hey, we know you're here.

Give us this documentation. You have 24 hours. So if they can go that deep, if they're thinking that strategically and that meticulously about how to get information that Facebook doesn't want released, it was sealed by a California court, that information, the UK is coming for Facebook.

Yep. Yep. What are they going to do? It's going to be very interesting. Yeah. And, you know, think about it. What other tech CEO or what other

Fortune 500 CEO would refuse to testify in front of Canadian and British Parliament and not be fired? Well, that's another issue. Who else?

You know, I discussed that last week in my column. Yep. Yep. Who indeed? Someone who controls everything. that's who indeed. Anyway, it'll be interesting to watch that

development for sure. And I think they're coming to Capitol Hill again, right? A lot of these executives are coming back. Oh, that's right. Round two or round seven, I should say. Just a quick update. So you had a very interesting point. I think it

resonated with a lot of viewers last week that everyone's going after Cheryl. The knives are out. They continue to sharpen. But at the end of the day, it's the white dude that's responsible, and he seems everyone's just sort of – Not just him. Listen, there was a story in the Vanity Fair. Again, I was like, hey, there was a CFO here. There was a CLO here, the chief legal officer.

There was a CTO here, a chief technology officer. There was a head of like a really major executive. Their name, Chris Cox. Where is he? Do you know his name? I will tell it to you. He's just as powerful as Sheryl Sandberg. You know, I mean, it just, let me just say, there's a lot of other people here.

And again, I'm trying not, I'm saying she is absolutely, well, it's just you just don't hear anybody else's name. It's because we are so reductive about how we assign blame to people. And it's a group clusterfuck. That's my feeling. And that's how it should be looked at. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm asking for is equal crapping on these people, essentially. Equal crapping.

There you go. You heard it here. Under the law. It's the 29th Amendment. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break. Stay with us, and we'll be back soon with more. Pivot is brought to you by our founding sponsor, Smartwater. So we both run businesses, manage day-to-day, and now host a podcast.

I have a lot of podcasts. We're working hard,'m back with Scott Galloway on Pivot. We were talking about a wide range of things, including Microsoft and some other stories of the week. We're back. I'm back with Scott Galloway on Pivot. We were talking about a wide range of things, including Microsoft and some other stories of the week. But, Scott, you were in Florida last week. My kids were in Cuba, and I got a lecture on soft communism from them along with cigars. And it's safe to say I don't smoke cigars. A lot of us were not reading the news over the holiday.

But it doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of news happening, and there really was, besides everything Trump said. Like, there was so many things in that regard, which let's not go over. One of the things that I thought was interesting was this, you know, I banged this China drum, how frightening they are as a country from an internet point of view and from a surveillance point of view. And so this new story came out about China issuing citizen scores, you know, like credit scores. This was an episode of Black Mirror, by the way. And it's a national reputation system being developed like credit scores. And some internet companies, I'm trying to think, a firm does look at your social media thing to decide whether to give you money or not. But they're trying to assess their economic and social reputation. It makes them easier to do business.

Essentially, it's a reputation system, but to me, it's a form of mass surveillance that they've been doing already, and the citizens are quite welcoming to do it in how they shop, where they go. What do you think of this? I mean, I think it's inevitable, but what is your thoughts on this?

Because I am banging this drum on surveillance economies, and I think they're disturbing, becoming increasingly disturbing. Well, it's typically not the idea that freaks people out. It's when organizations get really good at it. And so the idea of – we've had a credit score, and we're a capitalist society, so we want private information on people's ability to pay their bills, which you could argue is a violation of their privacy. And you have a credit score from a very early age. They're starting it perfect. When this new system in China, you start at 1,000, I think it is. But it's really interesting. So for example, if you buy diapers, your credit score goes up because their assumption is you're responsible and you're taking care of

children if you buy video games your credit score goes down you get a dui that's a big hit and it what gets sort of scary though is that there's definitely sort of a social classification and real ramifications if you have a high social score your heating bills go down and you get invited to kind of fun soft communist fence by By the way, I love the term soft communism. What is that, MSNBC? No, that's hard socialism. No, he was trying to make it distinct. He didn't think – before he left, they said, I think Cuba is soft communism now because there's a lot of entrepreneurial activity, all this kind of stuff.

And he said he decided he came back. It was hard socialism. So it was interesting. There's a lot of people lecturing about the U.S. system. And at the same time, there's a lot of entrepreneurial activity. This is a 13-year-old using terms like hard socialism? My son is brilliant. He's like exhausting.

I'm actually sending him to debate school because he's quite sick. Oh, that's what you need. I know. I was thinking. A teenager at debate school. Yeah, he's going to go to debate school. Remind me to skip Thanksgiving at the Swisher's. He's really smart.

Oh, my gosh. He's brilliant.'s really smart. Oh, my gosh. He's brilliant. He really is. The other day, one of us was showing him a rock. It was in a museum, and we're like, oh, this rock is 450 million years old. Like, cool. Like, that kind of dumb mom thing. And he goes, mom, everything is 450 million years old. I was like, oh.

There you go. There you go. There you go. Take that. I mean, it was brilliant. It was brilliant. Anyway, let's get back to this China. I get it. I want to send my love here to all the stoicism schools.

So China is a very different situation in terms of, you know, in terms of monitoring its citizens. Do you think this is something that's going to happen here, or what's your thoughts? Well, it's, to a certain extent, I mean, we have a tendency, I think, we perceive China as scary. I think we have a bias against China. This could go a lot of bad places. But the economic, the underpinnings of this are that there's a trust deficit in China, and it's difficult to do business with someone who you can't do diligence on. And they think that that's holding back the economy. And when you think about,

I think it feeds into some interesting concepts. My colleague here at NYU, Arun Sundararajan, talks a lot about trust and identity. And Airbnb and Uber would not exist if we weren't able to have, if you will, identity that leads to a trust score. So you know who's getting in the back of your car, you know who's driving you, you know who is renting your apartment in the Castro through Airbnb. But the notion of identity

as a means of really getting to trust and attaching trust to an individual is key to economic growth. And that's the underlying, I mean, I sound like the economic ministry spokesperson for China right now, but I think the underlying, don't I? Yeah. The underlying motivation here is economic. I don't think they're trying to be big brother. I think they're trying to create more trust across their hundreds of millions of citizens with it that they want to incorporate into the economy. Now, could this lead bad places? Absolutely. But it's an interesting concept. And if, you know, the reality is we've been doing it here in the U.S. And if you're in New York or you're in London, you're on camera.

Yeah, that is true. But they're not really following Scott. They're not really following Scott. They just could follow Scott. They could use the cameras. I mean, we've all seen like, what's his name, that Matt Damon thing, born identity, born whatever, born whatever, every time there's a five-minute, one identity after another.

But, I mean, the idea that they can find you, certainly, but they don't do it as a system, as a generalized system, although you could be tracked, but you aren't particularly tracked. Yeah. So speaking of China, the bottom line is I think it's interesting. I don't think it's alarmed. I don't know if it does us any good to be alarmed because they're going to do whatever they want. That's a fair point. Let's talk about an American company thinking about putting a search engine in China.

Yes, yes, and the Google people that don't want them to do it. What's going on there? Well, they say the Google workers publicly signed a letter asking their company not to build this censored version of the search engine. The Google people are chatting away. Don't you love? I think I've unleashed something with my podcast a couple, two weeks ago with the Google organizers of the walkout.

I think it's interesting. I think they're still doing it. They're still moving forward with it. It's a really interesting time for a company like Google because this is an area of business. This is an area of information. They need the data. It's hard not to do it, but they cannot go in there

without doing a censored search engine. So they're going to have to compromise and be complicit in what's going on there. And that's that. And so it's just the, you know, what are the ethical underpinnings of business? And, you know, I don't know. I wouldn't do it, but they will.

So I don't know. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. I mean, one of the reasons that Apple is the most valuable company in the world is again. But they don't have the search engine. They don't.

They're making a product. Like it's a little different. Like they have it easier in a lot of ways. At the same time, I sometimes worry about things being made in China. I do. I'm like, hmm. Like do I – you know, there was that Bloomberg story, which I think Apple completely objected to and very, very loudly. But you wonder.

Like you're like, oh, God, who knows? Like, it makes you, it's not like alligators in the toilets, but it's sort of like, oh, God, they've got to be messing with our company. Alligators in the toilets, hard socialism. I love this. I know. Anyway, it's a really, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, I am more wary of China than you are, but you are obviously, you know, red, red, red. I'm going to call Joe McCarthy in a second on you as soon as we get off this podcast. There you go.

So go ahead. Is it a good business decision though? Is it because – Probably. Well, I'll ask you a question and it's a loaded question because I have an answer. What is the core competence of any economy that's growing faster than any economy in the world, which is China right now? What's the core competence? What's the core competence? What's the core competence?

What do they do better than anyone? What does an economy do? When an economy is growing faster than any other economy in the world, I would argue, I'm leading you, so I'll just get on with it, but I would argue the core competence of any economy growing much faster than any other economy, the one thing they do really well is theft. Okay.

And that is the core competence, in my opinion, of China right now is IP theft. And the notion they let tech companies come in just for long enough to steal their IP, they prop up a local entrepreneur, and they capture the value domestically, which, by the way, has been a smart move. Look at Italy, who let Google come in and went the Western way. What's happened to their newspapers, their job base, their talk space? Look at China that lets companies come in long enough just to figure out their IP, steal it, prop up a local competitor, boom.

I would argue that the Chinese way, while you could argue unethical, not Western, has probably worked out pretty well for China. By the way, same thing the U.S. did in the 18th and 19th century, stealing the IP for textile manufacturing out of Europe, even kidnapping artisans. It is the core competence of any economy that's growing faster than 6% or 7% a year is theft. And to bring it back to Google, I wonder if it's just a good business move. Why would they put their IP over there? It's not going to end well for them.

Yeah. Yep. I agree. I agree. I don't, you know, it'll be interesting. They were there. They actually had a very big business there. They had 26% of the search market there when they left.

But you're right. 26%. Something. It was higher than that. That's real. It was a real one. It was a real one. Anyway, wins and fails of the week.

I want to know what you think. What do you think the wins and fails of the week are? So I was really inspired by NASA's Mars Lander or Mars Rover Insight and just reading about the technological feat of landing a device, an instrument on Mars. Because if you have this device, you have this Lander Insight traveling 300 million miles. And then that's not the hard part. The hard part is it has to slow in seven minutes, and the NASA engineers call it the seven minutes of terror. But they have to slow this thing from 12,000 miles an hour to five miles an hour.

And the problem is the atmosphere is much thinner than the atmosphere here on Earth. Gravity turn, altitude 400 meters. Even with a parachute 10 times the diameter of a parachute on Earth, you still can't slow this thing beyond 200 or less than 200 miles an hour. So then you have to fire booster rockets at the exact right time and not slow it down too much because then you're not landing, you're launching. And if you put too much fuel in the lander, it ends up being heavier and dropping faster.

And meanwhile, controlling this from 300 miles away, and they actually automate it. Touchdown confirmed. So when you see this thing land, when you see American government and scientists, just as Bezos and Musk all sword fight with their dicks over how big are rockets and it's going to get to Mars first.

Don't, like, slip that in. We have. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, I couldn't help it. Right in there. But you have the government, you have engineers who've decided to go to work for one of the most inspiring organizations in the history of mankind, NASA, pulling off the near impossible. Sixty percent of lunar landings have failed.

They have splat into the Mars planet. So this was an exciting moment, not only for NASA, but for their international partners. And we forget how the space program really does bring different countries together. And we do feel more of a sense of collective humanity when things happen in space. So my win is the folks at NASA and InSight. I like all those movies about NASA, whether it's Hidden Figures or it's First Man or any of them. I love them all. That's what I like. Yeah, the Matt Damon film was really good too, The Martian.

Yeah, The Martian. Yes, I agree with you. I think it's really an astonishingly difficult thing to do and that they did this. It's all for the good of mankind, although I'm not going to Mars, Scott. I don't know if you are, but I'm not going to do that. Oh, that's ridiculous. Yeah, talk about weird. Newt Gingrich saying we're taking people to Mars.

I'd like to put Newt Gingrich on Mars. That would work for me. Yeah, there you go. I know him very well. It's like running for president. It's like running for president. Anybody who decides to do it or decides to go to Mars, by virtue of that, means they're disqualified to be president or go to Mars.

That would be a terrible, terrible life. But anyways, we're going to stick in San Francisco and New York. All right, okay, fine. I'm in D.C., Scott, by the way. Anyway, my win of the week is myself because I think I did two really good podcasts last week, one with the Google employees, as I said, who really did speak up. Well, hold on.

Win of the week myself? Yes, I'm going to say it because I did myself. Myself? Listen to me. The Google employees I interviewed, okay? I think the Google employees I interviewed showed, as I said, Facebook employees docile, although not this week. There was some really interesting back and forth around people of color at Facebook. I'm an employee who called them out very eloquently. Does that sound real to you? Does that sound fair? Is everyone just piling on? I think it's fair. I think it's fair. I think it's fair. You think it's fair? All the companies.

I don't know if it's particular. I think it's incredibly fair. That was one. But I thought these Google employees really went to the mat. They went to the mattresses, as they say. They really did. They spoke their mind. So let's listen to this tape from Stephanie Parker and Amar Ghaber. I read the scripted speech, and then I threw the paper away and I just spoke what was on my mind. I asked the crowd, where do you think Google got that $90 million they used to pay out Andy Rubin?

They got it from every time you worked late, every promotion you didn't get because they said there's not enough budget. You have to wait. It's from every contractor who came to work sick because they have no paid time off. These are conscious decisions that the company is making and abusers are getting rich off of our hard work. It's just not fair

and they completely know what they're doing. I'm an entry level engineer and I've got five years of industry experience before I got hired at Google. And even though these issues impact some groups more than others, they affect all of us. Just because the name of the company is a baby word doesn't mean that it's not greedy or exploitative. And the company doesn't care what race, gender, sexual orientation, age ability, national origin, religious belief, history of military service,

or job type you have, as long as you'll accept less than you're worth. All right, now you can see how intelligent and smart they are, Scott. See what I'm saying? They're very, they're really'm saying? They really did speak their mind, and I hope they can continue because their issues are very important, and I hope the Google executives are listening to them. I've been pummeling Google executives to listen to this podcast, at least so they understand. Anyway, Scott, thank you so much. You're going to Brazil?

Thank you, Carol. You're going to Brazil? What are you doing there, visiting your- I'm going to Brazil. Every year, I go with a bunch to Brazil? What are you doing there, visiting your— I'm going to Brazil. Every year I go with a bunch of buddies. We go surfing. Oh, you're kidding me. In the south of Brazil, or we pretend to surf. That's me and the waves holding on to a surfboard like a life preserver. Huh.

But it's a good time with friends. You're going surfing in Brazil? You know what I'm doing? I'm like interviewing—I have to interview Sam Altman on Monday in San Francisco, and then Barry Diller and Dara Kostrashahi and Andy Jassy in Vegas on the next day and then I have to come and oh my god

I don't have the right life I just interview men is this more not so humble bragging yes I'm just saying I love this Barry Diller yes I love

BD I love interviewing him it's so funny a lion of media that guy what does he do now is he retired no he's doing

he owns IAC he owns IAC he owns like Tinder he owns tons of stuff he still owns it he owns a lot of things He owns a lot of things. He owns a lot of things. He's like running.

He's quietly doing just fine over to the left over here. Doing his thing. Let me just say, Barry Diller is one of my favorite people to interview. He's really funny. And my favorite line from him, every time I interview him, he says something really outrageously fantastic. And there's two things. I've got to tell two Barry Diller stories. One, he was on stage at one of our All Things D conferences

and he was talking about Hollywood and the problems it's going to have dealing with the internet. And he totally foretold what was going to happen. This was many years before Netflix and everything else. And he said, I go, do you think the people of Hollywood have the ability to understand the internet? He goes, they're so inbred there, it's a wonder their children

have teeth. And he did it in that Barry Diller voice and then he They're so inbred there. It's a wonder their children have teeth. It was just the best. And he did it in that very Diller voice. And then he gave an eye roll, a fantastic eye roll. All right, Scott. Thank you so much. Have a great time in Brazil. Enjoy yourself.

Thanks, Sarah. And we'll talk next time. All right. Rebecca Sinanis produces his show. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. Join us next week for more of a breakdown on all things tech and business.

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