Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - Mailbag: Google and Antitrust Festivus, Credit Card Dominance, AI for Movies and Writing, Shohei’s Contract

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Epic vs. Google spawns a victory lap for Ben and some obligatory arguments with Andrew, a closer look at the FinTech revolution that never quite materialized, and the AI possibilities in journalism and Hollywood. At the end: Shohei Ohtani's bizarre contract, a Christmas song correction, and a call to emailers for year-end awards categories.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Doing well, Andrew. The holiday spirit in two regards. Number one, it is, it is Christmas is coming soon. There are strategically plus gifts that are available. There is a link in your show notes.

One month options, six month options, one year options are available to bless people with our dulcet tones. They're not yet, not yet in the hurricane. as it were. But number two, there is another important holiday that is coming up. Do you know what it is? Oh, boy. No, I don't. I'm not even going to hazard a guest here. Hit me. Festivist. Have you heard of this? So I'm familiar with it. I mean, as far as I know, it's Seinfeld joke. Is it something more than that? I don't know. If it's more than just the Seinfeld episode, I have no idea what Festifus is. Wait, we have to establish some ground rules here. Have you watched Seinfeld? Of course I've watched Seinfeld.

Yeah. I didn't know how young you were. Just to make sure that we're on the same page here. Yes, Festivus is a holiday that originally was Seinfeld. And it entails the airing of grievances. Oh, boy. And so I'm just saying I'm ready for Christmas and I'm ready for Festivis. So let's get started.

All right. Let's air some grievances. Speaking of the holidays, I do have one programming note. Next week is going to be our final two pods of 2023 and at least one. One of those shows is going to be a holiday mailbag. So if you've got questions... Are you lying to our listeners again? So I don't want to lie to our listeners.

I want one of those shows to be a holiday mailbag. We will guarantee there will be one. If a CEO gets fired next week, we will do an extra podcast to make sure we get to a mailback. How's that? I thought you were going to guarantee that we ignore the CEO news and just stick with stupid holiday questions. If any CEOs get fired and subsequently rehired, we will both. Both cover that. And then we will also do a Melvick episode.

You know, I am a little sad. There's no way we will top last year's holiday episode, which led off with a question asking for the best tech gifts you could give for Christmas. And you answered the best gift you can give at Christmas is no gift at all. An agreement between adults to not give any gifts whatsoever. That's the Christmas spirit you're getting here on Sharp Tech. The festive spirit. Let's air some grievances. So on that note, we'll dive in. Alex says, Sharp, can you get Ben to explain why Epic wins versus Google and loses versus Apple? Or maybe you could explain, Smiley Face. On the face, it seems like these lawsuits should be the same, but clearly there are crucial differences. So, Ben, I have a big picture observation on the Google versus Epic story. But, you know, you know,

You wrote about this explicitly today. So number one, everybody should go read the Stratory Update because I don't want to spend 45 minutes talking about Epic versus Google here. But just in brief, yeah, I'm pretty sure. But I mean, because it gets pretty technical. You start weaving in, you know, the Kodak precedent and questions about tying and the future of that law. But as far as the technical differences between Apple and Google and these lawsuits, That is pretty interesting to me. So can you give people a brief explanation of why this case was different?

Well, number one, you're denying me my festivist celebration because part of the whole bit is the technical aspects of the cases do matter. And my grievance is with the sort of anti-big tech antitrust lobby, which has come at me for years and years as being a big tech, apologist because I would point out that, for example, the case of the Microsoft Activision case was doomed to failure. Or I would say that the Apple Epic case was going to lose. Or I would say that lots of cases that they proposed did not hold up under US antitrust law. And my point was you needed to make different cases or more generally, you needed to make different laws. Because the fundamental nature of technology and the way it works and the way that aggregation market works, entail controlling demand, not controlling supply, require a different approach legally.

And it has irked me for years and years to be told that to have my arguments completely dismissed as being just a hack for the big tech companies. That is my irritation. And the whole point about this case is, yes, I wrote about it today. I also wrote about it when it was filed. And when it was filed, I said there's a good chance Google loses this case. And I wrote that before, and I wrote that before the Apple One came down. I said Apple's going to win and Google might lose.

And the reason I did that was not because I thought it was good or bad from like a moral perspective. Generally speaking, I think Apple's control of the app store is very problematic for lots of reasons that we talked about. That's a different question than whether it is going to stand up in court or not. And so number one, my airing of grievances is that I was right. And I find it you're really in the festive spirit here. Yeah. No, I find it more rewarding to be right about Google losing in this case because that is like bald-faced evidence that I'm not out here being a shill for the tech companies.

I'm actually trying to understand the issues at case. And you had situations where members of the Biden and I trustee, particularly Timu, are out here writing articles. They're calling me hacks on Twitter. They're like all of which are deleted, maybe stand behind your words, writing these long articles on Medium, completely misunderstanding what I wrote, saying people are stupid for listening to me. Maybe it's not so smart to be taking antitrust advisement from some random blogger in Taiwan. And guess what? You're wrong again and again and again. And I was right. So leaving aside the

whole gatekeeping sort of bit, which was so inherent in those pieces and those comments, like at some point, are we going to go back and have an accounting of who actually understood what was going on and who didn't? And that's why the technical details do matter. They are actually critical to understanding this case. In this case, the reason why Kodak matters, you mentioned, the reason why Verizon v. Trinco matters, the reason why Aspen skiing matters is it is extremely well established in Supreme Court jurisprudence that you can exert control on the aftermarket for your products if customers understand that control before they buy your product.

Everyone knows Apple controls the App Store. There's been no changing of the rules. There's no treating different companies differently. This is a very important reason why Apple has stuck to that. And so when you buy an iPhone, you understand that the App Store market is controlled by Apple. Customers know what they are getting into. That provides them antitrust protection in this market. And this was very easy to understand if you were actually motivated by being correct,

instead of being motivated by ideology. And I find it very rich that I was accused of being corrupt and of being a shill by people who are so ideologically blinded that they were professors of law and did not understand basic Supreme Court precedent. Okay, that's fair. We're now going to move away from the grievance, the angry Benvoys. I was just getting started. I was just getting started. So in this case, though, the whole point is Google is going in. and they are trying to sort, like, they're not selling an integrated ecosystem.

Apple is selling total control. That's what they're selling. And because of that, they can exert that control. It's on the tin. When you buy an iPhone, you know what you're getting. Google's not doing that. Google is going in and selling openness. And then they're going in and cutting all these deals, which, by the way, is like a word-for-word violation of the Sherman

I Trust Agreement, which talks about contractual arrangements to maintain monopoly power. exactly what Google was doing. They were making deals with game studios to not build their own stores or to not go to other stores. They were framed as investments, but they were just basically monetary giveaways. They were cutting revenue share deals with OEMs to not watch their own store or in the case like the Galaxy store to basically be the Google store with a different name on it. And then they completely diminished anyway. They were cutting deals left and right to maintain dominance in this space. Yeah. I think you put it well on strategory today. where you said Google was trying to have its cake and eat it to have its cake.

They were selling themselves as the open source model where anybody can build and then also trying to exert all this control and take their pound of flesh just like Apple does. And when you step back, some of the arrangements they were making with other players in the app space and the developers, it was just sort of brazenly illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act. So it's not surprising that this went against Google. Apple bears a cost for their approach. By doing the fully integrated approach, Apple is limited in their total addressable market. Like, that's why the iPhone started out having all the smartphone share. If you mark the sort of the modern share of smartphones as being basically the iPhone watch because it was so different than what came before.

It obviously was defined what came afterwards. They were dominant and then they lost share. And the reason they lost share is because they were determined to only sell this high-end fully integrated experience. And the price of that is you're not selling super cheap phones. You're not getting access to all these Chinese manufacturers and Samsung and all these other ones that were out there building phones. Google took the Microsoft route, which is we're going to be a horizontal software company. We're going to license our software or quote unquote open source it so everyone can use it. But they wanted Apple's control.

They wanted Apple's profits. You don't get to do both. Like there is a market mechanism constraining Apple, which is the fact is just the, by being a single unitary provider, you are limited in how much of the market you can serve. Like now, this is because phones are physical devices, right? The whole thing with just as an aside, the whole thing with aggregators is because zero transaction costs, you can actually scale to the whole world. So you can be a Google that actually does serve everyone in that space. But when you're dealing with physical goods, there's a natural constraint, you know, which is you can't actually make all the phones. You can't actually have all the stores.

You can't actually reach everyone. There's actual physical constraints to your dominance. And the fact the iPhone is as dominant as it is is remarkable given those constraints, but it's still not as dominant as it could be if iOS were licensed. Like if Apple had licensed iOS, we would probably have iOS everywhere. It would be the only device. But if that were the case, Apple would absolutely be constrained in what they could do on devices that they don't sell. That's right. And so Google, they pursued that route and they were rewarded by Android being the largest operating system.

But because they're exerting control on external entities via contracts to limit competition, that is against the law. That's always been against the law. Yes. Well, I want to read this quote from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. He says, it's a great day for all developers to see that the Sherman Antitrust Act works in the new era of tech monopolies. We've not had a major antitrust verdict against a tech company that meant change and benefits for everybody since the 1990s with the USV Microsoft back in the early days of the internet. So this is an awesome thing and it's much needed by the industry, which is being strange. by a few gatekeepers imposing insane amounts of control and extracting huge taxes,

which not only raise prices for consumers, but also make a lot of kinds of products just unviable. Preach Mr. Sweeney, nothing better than the smell of antitrust enforcement in the morning. Which, by the way, was brought by a private entity. This case was sitting there. Where's your troop? Why are they bringing dumb cases? Well, so here's the other thing that I find interesting about this case.

And I'll tell you something about the law, Ben. You want to know what's important in a courtroom? Sure. You ready for a little education here? Yes, I'm ready to gatekeep me. Evidence is important in a courtroom. And it was important in this case, you know? And Sweeney, this is in an interview to, he's talking to Sean Hollister of the verge.

she says, the thing with Apple is all of their antitrust trickery is internal to the company. They use their store, their payments. They force developers to all have the same terms. They force OEMs and carriers to all have the same terms. Whereas Google, to achieve things with Android, they were going around and paying off game developers, dozens of game developers to not compete. And they're paying off dozens of carriers and OEMs to not compete. And when all of these different companies do deals together,

lots of people put things in writing, and it's right there for everybody to read and see plainly. I think the Apple case would be no less interesting if we could see all of their internal thoughts and deliberations, but Apple was not putting it in writing, whereas Google was. And so aside from the Apple case, I do think this bears on all the other antitrust challenges around the country involving big tech. No. No. God bless Tim Sweeney for taking on these cases. This is totally wrong. The reason why Apple succeeds is because what they are doing is legal. Like you could you could do discovery on Apple. What's their discovery going to be? We control everything. We are selling to the customer that we control everything. That's exactly what's going on. And that is protected. Like if you, if you sell the entire widget, if you from the day one, you're clear that we control the aftermarket, you can do to the aftermarket whatever you want to do.

Again, maybe you think that's wrong, but then you need to change the law. Google did not control the aftermarket. They were, again, because of the strategy they chose of being a horizontal operating system provider. The difference is not the evidence you could get or not get. The difference is what was legal and what was not legal. You could do discovery on Apple up and down. Epic did discovery on Apple up and down. And they lost inappropriately so.

And the point there is that the law under-currence. law, that was what was going to happen. And under current law, what Google was doing was wrong. And to your point, yes, evidence does matters, but so does actually breaking the law. Sure. I'm just saying, and this is why I said, aside from the Apple case, just in general, we don't talk enough about actual evidence on this podcast when we're having the antitrust discussions. And with Google, it sounded like the evidence against Google was pretty damning in this case. And by the end of it, you had the judge lecturing Google. I said, I'm going to get to the bottom of who is responsible for what was deemed destruction of evidence. And there was an adverse inference.

It just was really bad all around for them. And it's worth keeping in mind with the other DOJ Google cases, as well as the Amazon FTC case. Like when there are emails that events like clear any competitive intent, it makes it a much harder road for any of these companies to hoe. And it's why it's worthwhile trying to get them in a courtroom. I appreciate you giving more opportunity to grievances, but I just completely disagree. I think that it's easy to find evidence when companies are doing something wrong. Like, I will go back to Google and another point that Timu can be bothered to read about. I strongly endorsed the EU's case against Google for Android for the exact same reasons.

Google was using contracts to control OEMs to limit them doing other operating systems. And my point in that case is you can't contractually compel behavior in this way when you're the dominant player. And sure, there's lots of deleted WhatsApp messages. And that is definitely going to be an issue for the judge to bring up. But this is all downstream from the core conduct, which was illegal. This idea that, oh, we would have won the other cases. We just couldn't find evidence. this is like the tail wagging the dog.

There's such a certainty that everything these companies are doing is a violation of antitrust. And this has been, this is why I have grievances. I actually think some stuff is and some stuff isn't. And it's worth actually understanding the issues at play so you can determine if they are or not. And to paint either side or to paint someone trying to be precise as an ideologue and corrupt, it speaks to your own sort of point. of you. Okay. Yeah. Well, I think if you look at the market definition in the Apple case versus the market definition here, that made it much harder to win the Apple case, whereas a lot more favorable in the Google situation. And so that's going to continue to be contested as we go.

I think the market definition were fairly similar. I mean, this gets to the one thing that does tie together between the two cases, no pun intended, an accidental pun, which is this sort of tying question. Like all the first like eight counts or nine counts that the jury was asked to decide on all fell under this point, which was was Google sort of violating the Sherman Act with these agreements. And yes, they were. The question though is does that actually matter? Right. Like if these companies went out and started the alternative game stores and all those sorts of things, would it actually matter?

Because like to how valuable is the network effects and the fact of being in Google play sort of XYZ, right? This ties into our discussion about the Apple case with the default search, like when people just switch to Google and like how many would not? How much is that worth? Like, and so this is a very fair, this is a fair question to put to me just to be super clear. My argument is that Google wins because they're better. Then the question is, well, why do they pay to make sure they're default? And again, I think you go back to things like Google Maps. They can still be better and yet still lose customers because defaults do matter.

But that's a very interesting discussion to have. And I think it's a discussion you could have about if there were other app stores, to what extent would they matter? Is Google just, is Google giving away margin for no reason? Like, what's the actual answer here? That is on one side. This tying question is much more interesting because the tying question is, can Google tie placement in the Play Store to using Google billing? And saying that those are sort of two different markets. And obviously Google does all that.

The question is, is the business justification worth it, which is this is the most efficient way to, you know, garner a license for IP? That's the exact same argument Apple made. And that's a good argument to have. We discussed in the context of unity. Like, it actually is a real challenge. If you're dealing with millions of developers or hundreds of thousands of developers, how do you efficiently collect your fee in a way that preserves the consumer benefit of their business? being a bigger market, an open market. Again, a sort of interesting discussion to have,

but the reason this matters is this tying bit is analogous to the Apple part, which Apple does, there is the payment bit and there is the store bit. Is there a justified reason to sort of tie those together? And the reason that matters in this case is the jury said it is not justified to tie them together, which it follows that the remedy, which, you know, TBD, is that Google can't tie them together. That an app should. be able to be in the Google Play store and not use Google Play billing. And that's what Epic really wants.

That's what everyone wants. Then you get the benefit of Google's network effect with the Play Store. You get to be in the main place consumers expect apps, but you don't have to use Google's billing system, which raises a further question, which is, how does Google charge then? Apple's out here like auditing developers in the Netherlands to make sure they get their fair share. Is that good? Is that actually scalable? Is that useful?

Is Google going to do that? Is they're going to go out and like pursue every last time? So this is the bit of the case that is definitely fuzzier. And I think a case where having a jury was beneficial relative to a judge, I'm not sure to what extent jurors really thought through like what is another way to do this. Again, I don't, I wasn't in the jury room. I'm just sort of imagining. Whereas I think there was more consideration given of that in the Apple case.

But it also matters because this is what, this is the real victory for. developers if they don't have to go through Google payments, and it's the one that is also potentially applicable to Apple. Well, okay. And so I'm just looking at the market definition, just to make sure that I'm not misreading it. Apple argued that the relevant market is all digital video games. And what the court decided was that the relevant market was digital mobile gaming transactions in Epic v. Apple, whereas Epic succeeded in limiting it to Android transactions in the Epic v. Google case, which is actually like a crucial distinction

and what Google is going to argue on appeal is that Apple should be included in this market as they, as it's evaluated whether Android has monopoly power. Am I misunderstanding that? No, you're right. No, you're right. That's a good, that's a good correction. I think you are right now that I didn't review the market definition point. I wasn't right with it yesterday.

But now that you mentioned that does sound right. And I agree. That will be a point at appeal. and that was something that was definitely in Epic's favor. I would, so I grant you the point completely. I would just add to it that even if that market definition were used in the Apple case, I still think Apple, I still think Apple would have won for all the reasons I just articulated. And I think Google got its ass kicked here in large part because they were destroying evidence

and playing all sorts of games for several years on end. And then a lot of it came out in this courtroom. And that's. You don't think they lost because they were wrong? I think Apple's wrong too. So I think both these companies. Under what Supreme Court precedent is Apple wrong? I think if you ask, is Apple extracting more fees than it should be able to and charging irrational prices to developers?

The answer there is yes. Can you prosecute that under existing law? So just to be clear, making far above your marginal cost is inherently wrong? No. why would you interpret it that way? Of course not. But I, no, this is my whole, well, this is my whole pushback. Like, Apple can charge extraordinary prices because consumers are willingly choosing their, their ecosystem, right? I mean, again, I come here as someone who has big problems

with the app store because I see it being very destructive to innovation. But Apple can charge a huge premium for their phones because they're highly differentiated. I mean, we can charge a huge premium or marginal cost. This podcast is zero marginal cost. We're charging for it, right? I mean, like, I am allergic to high margin being dispositive as far as antitrust behavior goes. And this is exactly my pushback about these cases in general. And my pushback to you would be that it isn't some kind of moral judgment to say that what Apple is doing is illegal under antitrust law.

They have monopoly power. I would define the market that Apple is overseeing as iOS apps, and they have the market power to charge whatever they want. They have monopoly power under that definition. If they are engaging in the sort of conduct that then restricts competition and inhibits new entrance into the market, then that is problematic and illegal. And so it's not a judgment against them. It's not illegal.

You can say it should be illegal. But there is just no. That's right. It should be illegal. That's fine. Yes. Thank you. But this, I think that matters, right?

Because this is the whole reason why I've been so perturbed. I have argued consistently it should be illegal, but it's not illegal. But you just sat there saying, oh, well, you just asked me. You're like, well, do you believe you should ever be able to make high margins from? You were out here making absolute statement. Again, like we are. I do think my point is I think the deep to go back to our initial point I think the details matter and just the reason why I want to celebrate festivis is I feel I have consistently said from day one of trajectory the app store should be different what I have not said is that the law says it should be different and because of that I've been called corrupt and a shill and that bothers me and and the fact that this case came along in which I argue not only it should be wrong, but it is wrong and it was held to be wrong.

I would hope makes the point that I'm not a big tech show. I'm not being paid off. I'm not corrupt. All these allegations have been made against me. Details actually do matter. And word choice does matter. So I am, so yes, I am kind of being a jerk on this side of the line. But I think that's kind of my whole, that's the spirit of the season.

I guess so. I was not prepared for the spirit of the season here. But look, I mean, I think it's squishy with every case you're talking about here. And so you go back to the Google Apple case that is not going to be decided until like May or June at this point. Google has monopoly power in search and therefore that limits some of what they can do in the same way that Google was limited here because of the distinctions they have from the technical setup that Apple has. and they aren't able to enter into all these different agreements that obviously restrain trade. And I, so like to go back to the last episode, you expect Google to win that case. I'll take the other side of that bet because they clearly have monopoly power.

Yeah, I will say that one. Yeah, just to be just to like sort of be wishy-washy here, I would tip it 7030 to Google. I wouldn't be shocked if they lost. I actually, and this, it's funny. some of my irritation and angst comes from when I wrote about this case. And I basically wrote in the case. I'm like, I kind of hope the DOJ wins here. I don't think they're going to.

But the core thing that bothers me about that case and it ties directly into this is I do have a big problem with these contractual arrangements in general. Beyond the fact they're by the letter of the law, sort of illegal by the Sherman Antitrust Act, I just, my view is that the power of aggregation is so. strong that it doesn't matter what you do legally. We've seen this in Europe again and again where they try to come up with these remediation. They all fail because they don't actually understand the source of the market power. I don't think you can like directly undo aggregation effects. What you need to do is put it in a very tightly constrained box,

which is let that virtuous cycle run, but don't let that virtual cycle be extended via contractual arrangements. And to the extent that, and so that's, is kind of, what the DOJ case is about. That's kind of what this is about. To the extent that the DOJ case, if it succeeds, I'm okay with that. I think it, I think it is much more, much closer legally, number one. But number two, if it fails, I think it, it highlights a very clear and distinct law that could be written, which is about contractual arrangements by these sort of dominant players that, that, that Marshall demand. And so that's why I think that case is actually particularly

interesting, no matter which way it was decided. Because either, I think it will be a, I think it will be justifiable in either direction. If they win, I think it'll be good broadly. And if they lose, I think response of Congress will be pretty clear about what should be done. Yes. Well, we shall see. We unfortunately have to wait a long time for that case to be decided. But I enjoy the Festivist energy from you, certainly. And I, the one question that I think is unanswerable right now. I know, I know I should be on a podcast like griping about this, but it does burn, right? Like you're out here doing your best and you're being called corrupt because for when. Well, so it's difficult.

As it takes men, when you're right, you don't really get very much credit. And when you are saying something that is polarizing or controversial or inconvenient in the moment, you take all sorts of abuse. And then there's not necessarily like the full circle moment where everybody's say, oh, you know what? You had it right all along. Well, the reason why this one is pretty good, Microsoft wins the Activision case. Being right doesn't matter.

You could still be an industry chill and be right, right? So it's very satisfying to be right about an industry company losing when you said they would, like they deserve to lose. So anyhow, there you go. I'll stop with the griping. It's out of my system mostly. Well, and with Google. Be careful with your word choice, Andrew.

Just as we project forward, I am very. very curious to see how much of a domino effect this has with Google. There are a bunch of distinct cases, obviously. But like when we were talking on the last show, I realized afterward, I mentioned the Apple case. And I was like, well, there are several different antitrust challenges facing Google right now. And once you lose, it becomes easier for judges in other jurisdictions to rule against you. And so we'll see. certainly not a great time for Google to have an adverse verdict like this.

And just to go back to your point earlier about the market definition one, I'm glad you call that out because you're right. And we do have a discrepancy here. You're exactly right to call that out. That is a discrepancy that at some point ought to be resolved. And it could very well be resolved in a way that goes against Apple. This is the part that does apply to Apple. Is this to your exactly about market definition?

and this question of tying as far as app store payments go. And to me, that's the biggest part of this case. Like, you know, that is going to be the biggest question marks sort of going forward. Okay. Well, departing from Google World here, Kim says, Ben, you haven't posted on fintech in a while, but I thought Apple's recent earnings report had something in it to consider. Services, which includes payments, hit an all-time record as a percentage of overall revenue. On the call, CFO Luca Maystery didn't break out specifically what they take in from payments,

but he did mention the category as seeing notable growth. It seems tapped to pay with mobile wallets for both iOS and Android has accelerated since the pandemic. That said, what was once seen as the inroad for new fintech entrance has instead simply locked in the incumbent players, as consumers have loaded their favorite rewards cards into the mobile wallets. And if anything, Apple and Google, via mobile and browser wallets, have reduced the friction for Visa and MasterCard, rather than enable the new entrants to go around the traditional card networks. Consumers love their reward cards, and with ZERP now gone, it seems unlikely that the FinTech startups will be able to match such generous rewards programs. So where are we in the FinTech revolution and have Apple and Google found the perfect partners in Visa and MasterCard, rather than that? the Valley startups. Ben, do you have any thoughts on the fintech revolution and where

things stand right now? No, Kim is articulating where I didn't write very much about the fintech revolution because I didn't really believe in it. I mean, I did. So I, one point. So you could foresee this. Well, yeah. So I'll take a being right point and I'll take up being wrong point on this one. So the being right point was I was always skeptical of any payment replacing credit cards. Actually, when I just made that bit about the Delta having to be much better, I first wrote that on checkery in the context of credit cards saying like, look, you're not, you're not going to replace this. The reason, you know, credit cards are pretty awesome. And you like, and so the, so number one, on more scale, you can offer better rewards to people. So it's hard to break in. People like rewards,

right? Yeah. And this is one of those situations. This is actually one of the issues with, with, with Sweeney's argument relative to the app store. One of the issues with the app store is the argument about consumer harm actually kind of falls apart at close when you look at it closely. So theoretically, the argument is that because of the 30% premium developers have to charge higher prices so consumers are paying more. The reality that we've seen from the app store is prices go to zero because the reality of massive competition, because there's basically zero, there's limitation on joining the app store, so competition is massive, is that prices go to zero. So the point that consumers are, or go to $1 or whatever it might be.

So there's actually, it's very difficult to make a justified with numbers argument that consumers are being harmed. This is why actually I think the most damaging case for regularly in the app store was, it was several years ago. I can't remember what the case was called, but relied on the Illinois brick precedent. Are you familiar with this? I'm not, no. So the Illinois brick precedent basically said that only one person in the value chain could be liable for an antitrust violation. like you can't just like keep going up the chain and everyone is sort of liable. It sort of stops somewhere.

And in this case, it basically was about who is harmed by the app store. Is it developers or consumers? And the decision was that developers are not harmed because they're downstream from the consumers. It was like analyzing the structure of the market. I thought that case was poorly decided, poorly understood because of the way it structured the market. And it only left the door open for a case being brought based on consumer. harm. When, if you're going to bring any successful case for the app store, I think it needed to be based on developer harm. But that meant you had to get the structure of the market correct. And Apple

argued that because they're in between developers and consumers, that developers were like a step removed and so they weren't whatever, which is like sort of technically correct, but also Apple out of this will turn around and argue the exact opposite with developers set the prices. They do all these sorts of things. Developers, they're dealing with customers, right? They are absolutely trying to have their cake and eat it too. So this that case is actually one of the OG App Store cases. And I think it was a disaster for regulating the App Store because it set a precedent for organizing the structure of the App Store market that meant consumers could bring a case, but not developers. And there's, it's very hard to compile evidence that consumers are actually harmed.

Anyhow, that the digression here that applies here is. And that by the way, that same. challenge plays out across antitrust and tech right now. It plays out right here with credit cards, right? Who is harmed by credit card fees? The merchants are, right? Right. I feel this very much.

I paid like I paid astronomical amounts of money over the 10 years of checkery in credit card fees, but by far my biggest expense, right? Consumers don't feel that. And it doesn't affect my pricing decisions, to be honest, right? It may be on the margins, like annual plans versus monthly plans, you actually don't lose as much for the discount on annual plan, you're only charging once, which reduces your credit card fees.

And so- Show people how the sausage is made here, yeah. Right. And so all this ties into the reason why I've always been extremely skeptical of the credit cards being replaced. Consumers love them. They're super convenient. And not only are the solutions out there not astronomically better,

they're usually worse. Like I'm going to show a QR code or whatever might be, right? And then Apple and Google, and this was the other part of my thesis, we're absolutely going to make credit cards better. And that has succeeded. This is where I have to take the being wrong point. So Apple keeps like a 25 basis points or something

of every credit card transaction that is made through Apple pay. And they just pocket it, right? So you make $100, you make $100 purchase. Apple takes like, I want to say like $2.5 out of that. I might have my decimal point out, but I think that's what it is. And my argument was that, Apple should spend that percentage and give it to merchants to incentivize them to move to new

payment terminals that accepted Apple Pay because then they could sort of like really dominate this market. And corner the market, yeah. And they didn't. And then it seemed like Apple Pay was like really slow and like, mad, Apple Pay just wants all the profit. They should have like actually spent the money here to really make inroads. And that was totally wrong.

It did take a while. But we fast forward like approaching a decade. And Apple Pay is increasingly available everywhere. In Taiwan, it's like, in part because Taiwan, and this is one of the points I made that original credit card article, in countries that transition to credit cards later, they're now more advanced just because they came online with newer technology, right? The U.S. was like doing those slider things with credit cards, right? Because there's a lot of expense that goes into replacing terminals, replacing all these

sorts of things, bringing it online. The later a country transitions, the better their baseline of equipment is going to be. But, you know, by and large, you can get away increasingly, and it varies on market. with just your phone. You don't need a credit card at all. And Apple is in a phenomenal position in this regard. And guess what? They are keeping those basis points.

And they never gave them away. And they were patient. And they waited for the market to come with them. And they were totally right. And I was totally wrong to criticize them for that. Yes. Well, and you also were the first person who taught me how to use Apple pay in 2021. And it certainly really, really late.

It was really late. But it's been great ever since. So, so, sorry. Good for Apple. So I just want to make sure I understand. So I introduced you to a wireless Apple technology that you realized was much better and sort of was, you know. Absolutely. Listen, man, I'm not opposed to Apple making gobs and gobs of money.

Apple will be fine. I'm just saying they don't. No, no. I'm referring to Apple wireless technology specifically. So you, you see the allure for credit cards. but you don't see the allure for AirPods. I mean, just not to be, that's a stated explicitly. I thought we were circling back to the app store and the margin argument.

Yeah. Oh, you didn't see that one coming out. That was the, I took, I picked up the Festivist pole and just sort of banged you upside the head with that one. Here's the thing. There are real benefits to owning the hardware, a fully integrated experience. One of the benefits is that you can just impose changes on millions and millions of people who didn't ask. to be forced to use wireless technology for the rest of their lives. And then be hailed by nerds like Ben Thompson for decades to come.

At what a success. The AirPods have been. What a thriving business. Luca Maistrey and his services revenue is just off the charts these days. No, no. AirPods are hardware revenue. I know as soon as I said that. God damn it.

I told you you have to be careful with your words today, Andrew. I'm all over it. Festivist. Here we are. That's right. But actually, Apple's control of the NFC chip is wildly uncompetitive, anti-competitive in my mind. You like, what, why do you get actual competition in payments?

Like, let apps other than Apple pay use the NFC chip to do wireless payments, right? Europe is pushing on this point. I think it might be opening or open up. There's something happening in other parts of the world. But like that is a great example of, again, now I haven't died into the law around this point. But from a what should happen, I think Apple's control of NFC is wildly anti-competitive. And I do wish we had more market definitions in line with like the reality of the market is there's only two. And if you treat it as some sort of valid competition, then both sides get away with everything.

For eternity. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. So here's another example of is wrong. I'm not saying it's illegal. Is wrong and should be different.

Yes. Good clarification there. We're keeping everything thematic today. Probably deviate here. Two questions on the future of AI content. Anthony says, after listening to your episode last week, I couldn't help but think that Ben's premise about the internet getting worse due to AI is rooted in a presupposition that AI generated written content will not improve.

Is it not possible that with advances in AI's capabilities, eventually AI and AGI will become capable of producing top-tier written content at massive scale. For example, think Strateree-level pieces, but for other industries like banking, airlines, etc. What do you think? P.S., don't worry, even if AGI starts writing and podcasting about tech, my subscription dollars are safe with you. My podcast players, year in review, let me know I listen to 82 hours of Sharp Tech this year. amazing. If anybody out there can beat Anthony, then please email at sharp tech.fm, hit us up.

82 hours is truly nuts. Thank you, Anthony. Do you have thoughts here, Ben? Well, number one, if AI is this much better, I think the way this plays out is not that the structure of the market stays that it is, which is these disparate websites indexed by Google. It's that it becomes integrated into Google, right? This is sort of the bit I talked about where if AGI becomes this good, the way that will play out is all your answers will be on Google. And Google's AI will be that good. Sorry, let me use AI, not AGI. So, and Google's business model will have to change to accommodate that, again, because they're not, and this is going to be the challenge, is figuring out the advertising, but as far as user behavior goes, if you have a fundamental shift in the economics of a market,

the market structure does not stay the same. The market structure will change. Now, it might take a while for it to change for all the reasons we've talked about why the status quo can linger. But if we have this world, my assumption is that the current structure we have will look very different. And so that's answer number one. Number two, I'm not worried about being replaced by AGI. If I am, well, you know, it happens. You know, this is, I get to some of the philosophical questions of what is or isn't sort of AGI, what is creative. I was thinking about this before.

Obviously, we've been talking about it. But like, Open AI has a very loose definition, which is AI can do like most productive work or in an economically beneficial way or something along those lines. The interesting thing about that question is it runs in both directions, which is, is it that AGI gets really smart or is it that a lot of work doesn't take much smarts to complete, right? That is sort of the question. I do think that one of the great ironies is everybody criticizing or whatever, like the YouTube influencer or the blog, which is the, which is the, old making fun of the podcaster, which was the old making fun of the blogger. And, you know, there's a long running sort of theme. Yeah.

Is that now podcasters are cool just for the record. We are on YouTube and stuff. No, no. I think we're already not, we were wrong past the days of being cool. We've embraced that, Andrew, remember? That's true. Penelope has words for you. That's right.

So again, I am heavily biased in this regard. So take my words to the grain of salt. I do think there is an aspect of humanity. that we bring to the table that will be significantly much more difficult for AI to replace. And the folks that succeed in all those industries, influencer or YouTuber or whatever might be, are bringing something more than just knowledge to the table. And I would argue, I think there is a level of insight that is wholly original, that is not just sort of like figuring out new things from old content that I think will preserve.

Now, how many jobs are actually about producing wholly original content, you know, like to take today, for example, I think an AI could have probably produced an accurate understanding of the Google Epic case because it just involves knowing the facts, right? Right. And sort of like drawing the connections there. Now, there's other areas of coining or understanding tying together lots of disparate areas that are not obvious and producing something new. that I don't think we've seen yet and I'm waiting for evidence that AI can do that. But again, maybe I'll be wrong. We'll see. I'm wholly biased on this point.

I think my job is going to preserve. I want my job to preserve. So again, take what I say. I do too. Don't come for the podcast. No, so I think what interests me is that obviously you can look at how far along AI content is now and AI generated writing is now and think, oh my God. God, where is it going to be in five or ten years?

And the smart money is to bet on that side of the spectrum. But I also come back to what you mentioned about a month ago. We were talking about the difficulty with AI is the final 2%. You can get to 95, 96, 97%. But the final two or three percent has always been the challenge. And I think that could also prove true in writing where, like, I've read enough stilted chat GPT stuff the past year or so, that I now sort of want to adopt a wait and see approach before I assume that just all of journalism is going to be replaced by AI writing.

Or also realizing that 98% of journalism is stilted in like sort of well, that's true, but I don't know. Right now it's exceptionally bad. I'm not going to name any names. There are a couple newsbreakers that the AI writing reminds me of. But it just beyond that, I do sort of, I feel like we've all sort of taken it as a foregone conclusion that AI will make that leap and then suddenly it's going to be indistinguishable from the human writing we read every day. And I'm not sure that's definitely true.

There's this longstanding mistake made by technologists in general, which is to discount in part because they completely fail to understand the human component of everything. Yeah, what makes a human writing unique? This is a standard Silicon Valley failure case. I mean, this is like you go back to Apple, right? Steve Jobs, we're at the intersection of technology liberal arts. What does that mean? What that means is we actually attempt to understand normal people and what matters to them instead of being hung up on specs. And actually do.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. Everybody's attempting. But I think Steve Jobs actually did. No, a lot of people are not attempting. Right? Like you like remember the classic iPod comes out.

It's on slash dot oh, less space than a nano, blah, blah, blah, blah, lame. Right? Why? Because you just looked at the numbers. You said that sucks. There was no actual understanding of what is the user experience? What does it feel like to actually carry it around? Like all these sorts of pieces.

And this isn't just a tech thing. Like what am I, you know, seminal first articles was taking on Clay Christensen, like godfather of like the sort of innovation sort of bit, who I, to be clear, admire greatly. I've read all, read all his books. I'm sad. I never got a chance to meet him before he passed away. I did get a chance to do a podcast for years with one of his protégé, James Allworth,

which started because he was so mad that I wrote this piece. which is saying these business folks are completely dismissing and failing to understand the value of a user experience and why that matters in consumer markets. When people are that when the buyer is the same as the user, the things they value will differ. All these examples in your books and your articles and why you are saying that Apple is going to, he was so sure Apple would lose in smartphones to Nokia because it's just going to be sustaining innovation. What all the examples were situations where the buyer and the user were different. The buyers would buy based on specs. They would buy based on an articulation of things. And you see this in so many areas.

You have a basketball podcast, right? What's the core criticism? I won't speak for you. I won't put a mouse in my pocket. I'll speak for me. The core criticism I have of the whole analytics sort of movement is what happens is you end up only caring about and focusing about what can get onto a spreadsheet. And you will talk about, yes, we know there's other things that matter. But what happens is when stuff can actually be articulated and quantified, that overwhelms you forget about that other part because you can't measure it.

And there is a, it's not a purposeful dismissal. It's an inevitable dismissal that comes from wholly quantitative analysis that forgets about the qualitative aspects. And voice service is given to the qualitative aspects, but no real credence is, because, Because, you know, God gets an opinion. Everyone else has data or whatever sort of the phrase is sort of thrown at. And I think you see this all over the place where stuff that can be measured becomes overly valued because there is stuff that matters that can't be measured. When the reality is the stuff that can't be measured is in almost all cases vastly more

important than the stuff that can be measured is. Yeah. Well, and just to extend the basketball metaphor there, one of the things that's interesting is that measuring across an entire season is different than measuring across a couple crucial possessions at the end of a playoff game. And so across an example. Everyone always, this is the other huge,

as long as we're on the analytics rant, drastically overvaluing the regular season because sample size matters. Well, yes, sample size does matter. But it doesn't change the fact that if the fundamental underlying sample is different, it's immaterial, right? I mean, like, and so you have these situations where, where, you know, people are dismissing playoff performance because it's a small sample size.

And so, oh, look at it. He's played a thousand games in the regular season. Yeah, they were regular season games. Well, Ed, so three is more than two across a regular season. And if you could shoot 35% from three for 82 games, then, yeah, you should take more threes than you're taking twos. But if you need to get a basket at the end of the game and you're a 40% two-point shooter, then take the 40% shot. And unfortunately, it was just sort of hardwired into basketball as a culture.

Well, it is, but you have a better chance. If you need to get one bucket, 40% is more than 35%. And so there's a math case too. But it all sort of gets obscured because for a long time, anybody who is making that argument is seen as over-indexing on the human element and not trusting what are pretty compelling numbers drawn from the regular season. Right. But you just said the exact words about about, the AI question, the human element.

I am on the side, and again, maybe I'm wrong in that AI is different. But in case after case, argument after argument, in my experience, the technology is seriously underestimate and completely fail to understand the human element. I think there is some aspect of the human element that AI is nowhere close to replicating. And if I'm wrong, then, you know, we'll be. We're screwed. That's our. Let's figure something out.

Yeah, it's fine. We'll still be podcasting. Nobody has to listen. Jonathan says if AI brings the cost of video content production down to essentially zero, we're ending with some weird ones here. Would we see more breakout movie hits where China is the enemy? My very limited and understanding is that there's no chance of movies like that currently being produced because, A, it's so expensive to produce a movie, and therefore B, studios want the biggest audience possible.

and C, want to make movies that will be allowed into the Chinese market. If anyone who has an awesome script can create a feature-length movie at a fraction of the current cost, that it's just a question of distribution. YouTube to start, then movie theaters once they see how popular the movies are, and awareness. Right. So what do you think, Ben? Do you endorse that vision for the future of the movie market? Well, just to reestablish my pro-antitrust bonifides, this is one of the issues of massive.

of consolidation. It's not just that they won't make movies because they want to sell them in the Chinese market. They won't make movies because they don't want other movies they make to sell the Chinese market to be punished because like the one entity is being punished. That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. You don't want the superhero movie excluded from the Beijing market. Because of another sort of like indie movie that someone made or something other, right? And that's the issue is there's a very limited number of throats. China's vigilance on this issue. Right. Some shitty indie movie can. screw an entire studio. But yes, okay. Continue. So number one. Number two, yes, sure we will see movies like this, but the difference is, is again, I talked about it before. If the economic aspects of a market change,

the structure of the market changes. And that is like we've seen this in other places. We talked a few episodes ago in an episode I think really resonated sort of your point about the monoculture, right, and how you miss the monoculture. The monoculture is downstream. from the economic structure of movie making and TV making. In a world where anyone can make a movie, you don't have a monoculture, you don't have a big breakout movie to use his sort of terminology

because there are no big breakout movies. There's nothing to do with content. You have a world like writing today. There's no big breakout writers like there were sort of back in the day. There's a huge number of niches. You can find whatever written content you want that's anti-China or talks about things along those lines.

But there's nothing that rises to the level of a national conversation around a singular piece because that world doesn't exist anymore. So, yes, more new movies, band movies or whatever might be can be made in our, are we already being made right now? But they're not going to ever have the cultural resonance like a movie might have what have had, not because of the content, but because of the structure. Good takes. I just think that we're also far away from a situation where you're able to make like a Hollywood quality movie because AI has brought the cost so far down that you can just sort of make it in your basement.

Right. But in defense of the technologists, because I've been hard of them today, two years ago, if we were sitting here, the idea of trivial generating images, like Dolly existed, but it was still pretty. crappy. And that was, you know, Dolly 2, I think is when it really broke into broader awareness. That's when I first wrote about it explicitly on trajectory. Within that time period, we have video, AI produced video. And again, it's nowhere to your point. It's nowhere near that. But there is a trajectory here that is pretty astonishing. So it may happen sooner than you expect. Okay. Well, look out PRC sensors. Who knows what you'll be tracking as the years unfold here. All right, we've got baseball, Christmas, and then farts to close it out here. Jonathan says,

why would Shohay defer 600? Why would Shohay Atani defer $680 million for 10 years? Assuming a conservative discount rate of 5%, the current price of a treasury bill, $680 million, 10 years from now, would be worth about $417 million in today's dollars. Assuming a more aggressive rate of 12%, the average annual return on the S&P 500 and a reasonable proxy for the opportunity cost he's incurring, $680 million, 10 years from now, would be worth about $219 million in today's dollars.

I know baseball isn't your primary sport, Ben, but this decision strikes me as madness. Is there some larger business reason to do this baseball has a similar problem as basketball too much inventory not enough events reliant on rsn revenue is this something you think we'll see more of in other sports so what do you think do you have a 90 second explanation for what the hell is happened with i have a 90 minute explanation 90 seconds is the challenge here all right so number one all the reporting about this is insane this is uh so one of the bits is like oh the dodgers have a loophole it's only being like

Baseball is like a competitive balance cap, some sort of thing, which you can exceed, but there's big penalties if you do. And it's only being coward against the cap as $46 million. That is correct. That's because it's only worth $46 million.

So I think they are using the, they're using some discount rate that is broadly based on treasuries. I think the, the tenure treasury is actually closer to like 4.1 or 4.2% which is correct. That would,

like anyone who studied finance understands this. You have to discount the money. In this case, they're using the risk-free rate, which is U.S. Treasuries, it's assumed that, you know, this is the whole thing about, like, when the U.S., like, when they have these financial crises, people miss the potential chaos that could theoretically result because all financial calculations assume that U.S. Treasuries will always be good is a whole other sort of wild thing. I don't want to think about it. That's 900 minutes in a very serious podcast. So based on that, it counts against this cap as 46 million.

And that's not a loophole. That is what it is actually worth. So number one, $46 million, which is a totally reasonable contract. The highest contract before now was Max Scherzer for $43 million. Three million more for Shoah Otani, who is a very good pitcher and a phenomenal hitter, feels like a deal, to be honest. You know, if they announce a deal for $10, $460 million, no one would bat an eye. So that's the way you should think about this deal.

in that context, what Otani is doing seems insane to me. Yeah, like I did he take it is the question. Right. So, yes, Jonathan is exactly right. Using the risk-free rate is nuts, right? Because any sort of reasonable financial advisor that, you know, could properly sort of hedge your risk and stuff could certainly generate a better return than that, particularly over 10 years, which you have time to recover from any downturn or sort of whatever it might be.

So yes, I think Otani is giving up a ton of money. I don't understand why he's doing it. Some of the arguments are, oh, he wants to get a tax break because California has 13% and he won't be taxed until he actually gets paid. That's possible, but where's he going to go? If he goes to Japan, Japan has a marginal tax rate of 45%, which is, so 45% relative to like whatever the U.S. rate, 35, 38% plus 13%. It's not that much different. And so that doesn't seem to make sense.

So you heard it here first on Sharp Tech. Shohei Otani is going to be relocating to Monaco. Monaco is the place to go. The reason why athletes all go to Monaco is you are only taxed on income you make in Monaco. And so that's why every professional athlete lives in Monaco because when they play a golf tournament or a Wimbledon in London, they don't pay any income taxes. They only pay it sort of like. And so, yes, Monaco is the place to go. It takes five years residency to acquire citizenship.

I've looked into it. I'm not going to Monaco. You're not quite on Otani level yet. No, no. These are all very significant questions. So if you asked to retire a Monaco, then you can see the payoff here. But I feel like he could get that 30% back and more if he would just invest the money and sort of start sort of accruing the return. So I don't understand. I think this is an unbelievable deal for the Dodgers.

I think Otani is kind of nuts. There's been, you know, I mean, so he's also, he's making a big interest rate bet or I'm sorry, inflation bet that you're not going to get sort of huge amounts of inflation over the next 10 years. he's making a bet on that the Dodgers aren't going to go bankrupt or sort of whatever sort of might happen with the RSN stuff. He does make a ton of endorsement money. And, you know, I'm sure he's genuine that he wants the Dodgers to have financial freedom to get other players. But, you know, if I were his advisor, I would have argued strenuously against this. It's not worth the $700 million headline to be putting this much at risk with no upside. You're like you are taking on risk and for going upside.

It's nuts. Right. Well, that's a good comprehensive answer. I got to be honest with you, I haven't spent 15 seconds thinking about Shohei Otani this week. What's the Chimoth quote? The below my line, Shohay, and all of baseball is below my line. I apologize, but congrats to Dodgers fans out there in the audience. The funniest thing is people getting so upset about this quote unquote loophole.

And it's like, no, you have it all backwards. The loophole is a player with a terrible agent, maybe. The loophole is that the Dodgers are only being charged $46 million against this sort of cap for this fee. And it's like that's not a loophole. That is, that's the actual fact. The $700 million, that's the fiction. Yes.

Well, I appreciate the explanation there. Jeremy says in the spirit of extremely strong, in the spirit of having extremely strong opinions about minor details, I have to register my disbelief at the. the glaring omission from your list of best Christmas carols. Oh, holy night, probably the platonic ideal of a Christmas carol, not least because it requires a 10-year-old to properly hit the high notes. I can only imagine this missed your shortlist because you've heard it butchered by the likes of

Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, et cetera, et cetera. But listen to this, and he links to the King's College Choir, and he says, tell me it isn't carol perfection. Oh, and one more thing. The other true beauty of this song is its ability when sung with sufficient gusto, pulling out all the stops, kneeling for the high notes to utterly terrorize your children.

A great note from Jeremy. The song he said. It's a great song, but also I actually came across it this week. So one of my terrible, you know, of course I was, you know, procrastinating from writing a piece. So I'm like going through some Instagram reels or something.

And I come up or no, it's just a Twitter in general. You're deep in the reels game. You consistently send me reels on Instagram. So I know that's how you procrastinate. Well, but I think it was a Twitter, which was the Brit got talent or whatever, like the Simon Cowell, like one of his shows of Malachi bio. I think it is. He's this kid from Great Britain that he's saying some opera piece. It was unbelievable.

It's one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen. Then I found another song. Of course, I know YouTube, I have to search him up. He sang, Oh, Holy Night.

And made all, like, you will understand exactly what Jeremy says. When you watch him sing, Oh, Holy Night, it's, it's,

it's emotional, right? Like, but, and so, yes, I will give CREAT's, O'Holy Night is a great song, great structure,

great words, and it provides the platform to pull out unbelievable performances and also shame everyone that can't match. That can't match up. So yes, I endorse it.

Good addition to the list. Yes, Jeremy, you're a man after my mother-in-law's heart. Jeannie, my mother-in-law, is a King's College fanatic. And watching his video today sent me down a rabbit hole where somehow I landed on like a three-hour Christmas carol mix on YouTube. But it was like King's College, like church music, like choir music, not annoying Christmas music. And it was delightful. as I was prepping for sure. I'm a big fan.

I'm a big fan of the choirs, to be clear. I mentioned Mormon tabernacle choir before. Like, they have several Christmas albums, all of which just are fantastic. But yes, we would, all good. But, you know, I'm already sort of hoeing a tough row with the kids. I'm not sure I can quite bring in choirs. That might be a bit too far.

Yeah. Well, it's an important distinction, though, because I said on Sharp China that I was listening to three hours of Christmas music, but I didn't clarify that it was tasteful choir Christmas music. Like department store Christmas music will drive people insane for a couple hours. I also don't like it to be honest. Yeah, I don't think I can handle it for more than like 10 minutes at a time. But in any of that.

My main problem is I don't mind it, but I start feeling so ashamed of everyone else having to put up with it as I'm listening to it. It's like second order cringe. Look at you, selfless as the people around you lose their grip on San. Morgan says Ben and Andrew, this is a petition to make believing your own farts a regular phrase on Sharp Tech. That is all. We'll see where the road takes us, Morgan. I'm glad that you emailed in and reminded me that Ben said that on the previous episode. I don't know where that came from.

I just suddenly said, I don't think I've ever uttered that phrase in my life. It was like, see, this is why AI will not win. Like, it is completely spurred. moment the human spark. That's what that was. I have a nomination for the biggest fart believers of the year as we close out here. Do you want to guess? Me?

I don't know. No, not you. Of course not. The effective altruists, I feel like, are the biggest fart believers, hands down. Fart believers of the year. Yeah, we include. prestigious award. Both Sam's, the Open AI board, who could say?

If you have other fart believers. Here's our call for our mailbag. The Frileaders of the year. And also suggestions for other awards that we ought to give out. But they need to be award nominations that no AI would ever come up with. That's the case. Exactly. A very sharp tech year in review coming next week.

All right. Until then, Ben, go enjoy your weekend. I look forward to next week's episodes and we'll keep it rolling. and keep the Festivist energy rolling for the next couple of days. No, no, I'm good. This episode got much more cheery towards the end. I got it all off my chest. I've been irked and rankled by this for years.

I've taken out on you on this podcast on several occasions. I think this is going to be a fresh new chapter for Sharp Tech in general. Now that I've aired by grievances. And you know what? Festivist, great holiday. One that needs to exist. I see the value now. Tis the season. Here we go.

All right. We'll be back next week. Ben, I'll talk to you soon. Talk to you later. And thank you, Frank Costanza.