The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 97: Google Breakup: The internet is about to change

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Well folks, the Pope is dead. Anyway now that that's out of the way, we're gettin deep into the HUGE antitrust cases against Google, Meta, and to a lesser extent Amazon and Apple. These cases are mass...ive, and their rulings could change the internet as we know it. It's fascinating stuff! Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it! And please leave us a comment! It helps us! AUSTIN we added a second night! Get tix here: https://www.showclix.com/event/ben-emil-livehxfv1hb DENVER we are coming for you. Get tix here: https://comedyworks.com/comedians/ben-emil-live Talking all about Kanye, those Aussie twins, Simply Thick John, and more. Sign up and support the show at https://benandemilshow.com 🚨🚨🚨 Our Boston video is out now! https://youtu.be/emkpqsqSbF8 ***LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g ***Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa ***Trade with Ben at https://tradertreehouse.com Our episode with *Kyla Scanlon*: https://youtu.be/cIHWkY35cuc Big Tech is out of ideas (ft. ED ZITRON): https://youtu.be/zBvVGHZBpMw Arguing with a millionaire (ft. Chris Camillo): https://youtu.be/1ZUWTkWV_MM We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U __ NOTION: Get Notion Mail for free right now at https://notion.com/BAES and try the inbox that thinks like you! SHOPIFY: Turn your big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side! Sign up for your one dollar per month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/baes GOODR: If you need a new pair of sunnies, goodr is giving our listeners FREE SHIPPING! Go to https://goodr.com/baes and use code BAES for free shipping! Goodr offers a 30 day money back guarantee and 100% satisfaction. MOOMOO: Click this link https://j.moomoo.com/BAES to get up to 30 free stocks from moomoo U.S when you make a qualified deposit. Terms and Conditions Apply. Securities are offered through Moomoo Financial Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. The creator is a paid influencer and is not affiliated with MFI and their experiences may not be representative of other moomoo users. __ This episode was edited by Connor Rousseau / @ conrad_roussrad Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 We are getting all into not your uncle that I trust, but your antitrust. The government wants to break up, Google. The government has found them guilty of having a monopoly. Guilty. And now they're in this separate trial phase, which is the remedy phase, and they're trying to figure out what to do. Government's like, you're swag too hot, your search too good, your queries to fire. They are going to kill you? This is going to set a big standard here.
Starting point is 00:00:25 Are they just going to get a slap on the wrist? I kind of think so. It sucks. Or are we going to see... Or are they going to get a slap on the twish? Yeah. All these companies, they get hit with these massive lawsuits and they have the audacity to just go, can you not?
Starting point is 00:00:39 Can you just drop it? In 2020, DOJ pursued more monopolization cases than any year since the 90s. Wow. So he's saying that Trump is good now. I'm just saying it's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm, that's all I'm hearing. I also don't know what to make of any of it. It always feels like you're kind of negotiating with like a monkey with a gun.
Starting point is 00:00:55 And you're like, just like... Well, all you got to do is offered a banana. Famously monkeys like banana. I'm looking at time with Tell me what's going on Tell me what's going on So listen are not to have a new thing
Starting point is 00:01:13 Tell me what's going on Tell me what's gone on Oh man The B-Peds love that The B-Pets go crazy for that Great, now we're going to have a new thing I'm a B-Ped The B-Peds go crazy
Starting point is 00:01:29 for that kind of stuff. Oh, and hey, by the way, we worked really hard on this episode, as we do every week. So please be sure to click that thumbs up. Leave a like. If you're an audio listener, why don't you go over to YouTube? Don't you join the party? Give it a like. Leave a comment. We read them all. And we have a good time. Before we even get started, big shout out to everyone in Austin who sold out the first show. We added a second show. There will be the very next night. There will be a ticket link in the description. Yeah, you've heard of Lincoln Park? No, it's the link in description. The show will not be like that. It's going to be much better. No, it's going to be worse than that. Count on it. The show's going to be really bad. We're going to do it Joe Rogan style. Oh, because... Kill Tony's going to be there. I also, someone commented that because I think we brought it up the no phone. Maybe it was in the after hours or I mean in the bonus, but I think our Denver show, which is also going to be a on sale. That's Denver, Colorado.
Starting point is 00:02:28 As opposed to you. I don't know. I think they're going to put people's phones in little baggies that lock up. At Denver? I think so. Man, get the heck out of here. I think that'd be kind of cool. I don't. I think that that is bad if you want to be texting. Some people want to text. But actually, yeah, you're right. We'll steal your phone. I think it would be more fun for us.
Starting point is 00:02:49 So there's that. But yeah, so buy those tickets, we'll see that we're very excited. We're also selling tickets to the Pope's funeral, which is. is Saturday. Yeah, you can only get tickets on our website, Ben and Emile Show.com. So if you're looking for tickets to the Pope's funeral, make sure to head over there. Pope's dead after meeting J.D. Vance.
Starting point is 00:03:06 He lost his will to live. Yeah. I huge respect to everybody who admires and loves the Pope. I'm sure your mom, right? Well, because she's Greek. I have no. Isn't she like part of the Greek Orthodox. She's not religious at all.
Starting point is 00:03:23 Why would the Greek Orthodox Church have anything to do with the Catholic Church? Don't they heavily F with the Pope? No. That's Catholicism. Oh, well, I thought that there was... This is the Orthodox Church. Oh. We don't even do Easter on the same day.
Starting point is 00:03:35 Right. Usually, this year we did. Did you know that this last Easter, falling on April 20th, is not going to happen again until like 2080? Well, what does that mean? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:03:45 It's just a cool factoid. Don't you think that that's a cool factoid? I don't know. I was playing poker this weekend and I was just loading the table with cool facttoids and I lost a lot of money. promptly. I just kept getting back hard.
Starting point is 00:03:58 You gotta get less factoid heavy. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, big shout-outs to the Pope. Huge shout-out to the Pope. He's up there chilling or down there if you're in Australia. Who else watched Conclave after he died? I didn't see that shit. Another, another.
Starting point is 00:04:17 Oh, dear. The Pope has something urgent, an urgent message for you. The Pope's actually dead the entire time. Oh, that's what the movie's about? Oh, because a conclave is them deciding. It's when the Pope dies and they try to find a new guy. I'm sure that there's all sorts of sexy drama in the Catholic. There's a very little sexy drama.
Starting point is 00:04:36 Really? You didn't see it. You got this movie all wrong. Is it good? You see that photo of Buff, Ralph, Ray Fiends? I haven't seen that. Oh, man, he looks yoked for some inexplicable reason. Nobody knows why.
Starting point is 00:04:50 Probably getting fit. Remember when J.K. Simmons got all buff and everybody was like, Damn, this is exciting. And then it was just for like that Santa Claus movie. Yeah, look at this. Oh, hell yeah. I actually thought I got confused for a second. And when you were saying it, I thought you meant, um, wow.
Starting point is 00:05:05 J.K. Rowling got buff. And I was like, probably to beat up the beat up women in the bathroom. Yeah. No, uh, their rumor, rumor has it. Jake Ralph, Ray Feens is, um, beefing up for, uh, Schindler's list too. Hmm. Yeah. He's going to, uh, Shinler's list too, taking it to the street.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Yeah. to the street. His character comes back from the dead and it's going to be zombie style. That's cool. I hope they do that. Yeah. Speaking of... Spielberg, if you're watching, that's ours. Do not take that. Yeah, don't take that. If I see you developing Schindler's List 2 taken to the street, you'll hear from our lawyers. It reminds me in my all-time favorite radio bit who was this guy, morning show, 95-5 KLOS. He was doing a out-of-work trailer voice actor who couldn't figure out why he wasn't getting more work. And he's like, do you guys want to hear some of my, some of my stuff?
Starting point is 00:05:59 Like, maybe you can help me. And they're like, sure. And he goes, coming this fall from Steven Spileberg, Schneider's list. That's the bit. He just gets them all wrong. Yeah. Anyway, that's pretty good. We got a, we got a banger, a veritable banger of an episode. The internet. Another week where there's just too much happening. So much stuff going on once again. I almost... Too much good stuff. I almost, so much stuff going on, I almost completely missed
Starting point is 00:06:26 Kanye West talking about sucking his cousin's cock for eight years, you know? I mean, that'll be in the bonus. We're going to be talking all kinds of smack and bonus. That's the kind of weeks we're having. Kanye West will come out and say, I sucked my cousin's dick for eight years. I don't see it for two days. Oh, yeah, because you were, I didn't see it until this morning. Yeah, I saw it today.
Starting point is 00:06:47 Yeah, I saw it today too. Walking in here. I go, what? yeah this is big stuff that's not the biggest story it's one of them we're going to be talking about that in the bonus benedemielstow.com but for today's episode we're getting all into not your uncle that i trust but your antitrust because i do trust her that one's really good that's the kind of stuff that's going to be happening at the second austin show do you say antitrust or antitrust i like antitrust any trust yeah and that lends itself to uncle trust well yeah oh man so
Starting point is 00:07:17 any trust, antitrust. Holy God. It's a very funny subject. It's honestly a little bit confusing. It is. For pretty much like most of our lives, it was just,
Starting point is 00:07:31 it was just like do as you will for these large companies. And tech had a really long, really good run. They were genuinely innovative. And instead of like promoting a competitive spirit, they just started to build these huge arsenals.
Starting point is 00:07:52 And then what they'll describe is like building a moat around themselves. So they don't have to go out into a competitive market. And besides like one blip of Microsoft being maybe faced with a little bit of enforcement, which honestly they ended up settling in the Bush administration. Almost 30 years ago. Yeah. It's been good. The Bush administration and Obama administration especially, it was just, I mean,
Starting point is 00:08:17 I mean, Obama oversaw these tech giants really just gobbling up companies becoming these massive, and I think for the worst, you know, why compete? Why try to innovate when you can just buy someone and just knock them out of the market? And politically, this has been such a strange thing because there was a lot of talk in the last election about Lena Con and her and her FTC and Jonathan Cantor at the deal. E.OJ, Biden's appointees. But it's, it's been kind of this strange bipartisan push where like, unexpected, pleasantly unexpected. But it's, it's strange. I mean, because you've obviously on the left, you've got your like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren's, AOCs talking about, I collect them all. I got all the cards. Talking about, you know, the dangers of big tech, these people having so much power. And then, but you also had, you know, on the right, Josh Hawley's and Ronda Santuses and... Every time you say Ronda Santis, I think Ronda.
Starting point is 00:09:21 I hear Ronda Santis. Ronda Santis. She sounds hot. Yeah. And a lot of this stuff we're going to be talking about today started in the Trump... In Trump's first administration. That's right. Which a lot of people kind of forget.
Starting point is 00:09:36 Not only a lot of regular people, I think a lot of the tech industry forgot about... Not that... I mean... It's impossible to know what Trump is. I think a lot of people can't quite figure it out. And I think they're learning this lesson that maybe they got in bed with someone
Starting point is 00:09:54 they don't quite understand. They got in bed with someone with a stinky penis. I think they had a lot of ire for Lena Con. And they were like, you know what? Trump's our guy. Trump's our guy. And a lot of them put there, as we will discuss, put their chips, put their chips down on the place.
Starting point is 00:10:14 critical craps table, and we're blown on daddy Trump's fingers, hoping to get some of that sweet, sweet, good luck as he rolled the dice. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of embarrassing ways, as we'll get to with, like, Mark Zuckerberg, especially. Well, shall we start with, so grab your picks and shovels, folks, because we're going to dig right in. We got this new FTC chair, and it ain't a lazy boy. No, it's a human male in the form of a guy named Andrew Ferguson, who is a, he's a, he's a
Starting point is 00:10:44 lawyer who used to work for a bunch of GOP senators. And he says that he does want to, it kind of true to the Trump playbook, he does want to increase the scrutiny about the ways that social media companies handle deletion of posts, especially ones that are politically slanted. Yes, that's one thing. What I wanted to say, too, about like the right, where a lot of the attacks on big tech or, you know, antitrust on the left, it's about, you know, economic power and bringing power back to people and promoting competitive
Starting point is 00:11:22 and making it easy for more people to come in, fair markets, all that. A lot of the times when you're hearing people like Ron DeSantis or this guy talk, it's like they've been very unfair on... My vaccine post got deleted. Right. Right. And so I'm like, come on. Okay, it's hard to get behind that.
Starting point is 00:11:40 This guy, too, Andrew Ferguson, I think this is very indicative of what maybe Trump's antitrust enforcement might look like. So one of the ones we're not going to touch on as much because it's much earlier days and a lot of these other cases are a lot further along. And you're seeing like the actual results play out. But so the Trump's FTC, they are, they're also suing Uber over their practices. with this Uber-1 membership and how hard is to cancel. And he's really...
Starting point is 00:12:19 I didn't have trouble canceling mine. I'll have to say. I just got to throw that out there. Because I signed up for the free trial or whatever. And I was able to cancel. Yeah. Hey, gang, we've got to take a quick break to talk to you about your time, right?
Starting point is 00:12:37 It's your time. It's valuable. Like many of you, I spend a lot of time on email. You know, I do email. It's kind of an... I spent so much time responding to people, organizing, reading through junk, taxes, you know, it's tax season. Doing all sorts of junk, and I'm tired of it.
Starting point is 00:12:54 But the brand new Notion Mail is here, and it's been a total game changer for your old Benny Boys productivity. Notion Mail is the inbox that thinks like you, automated, personalized, and flexible to finally work the way you work. With AI that learns who matters to you, It can organize your inbox, label messages, draft replies, and even schedule meetings. No manual sorting required. That's right.
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Starting point is 00:14:12 Notion.com slash bays to get Notion mail for free right now. When you use our link, you're supporting our show. notion.com slash bays. Andrew Ferguson's pretty gung-ho about this. He's like, we're going to use all our resources.
Starting point is 00:14:25 Like, this is bullshit, blah, blah. But he voted against that rule. The cancellation rule. Yeah. The rule prohibiting, making it hard to cancel memberships, he voted against that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:39 And so that's, it's all, it's always these strange, uh, things you can't quite reconcile. You're like, okay, that are at odds with this one and other. Yeah. Inconistencies and contradictions. One of the things that I found really fascinating, uh, researching this is how we really are living in, we're, we're living through a time where this stuff is going to, I mean, hopefully dictate the playing field for, for, for big. tech for decades to come because it is so new still even though it's like decades old at this point
Starting point is 00:15:15 tech has grown so tremendously that they've got a kind of they're all kind of making it up as they go they're skirting existing laws that are woefully outdated and have nothing have no stipulations for how far technology is coming even just like shit like memberships and subscriptions they're using the sherman act which i believe is from like 1890 or something like that's ridiculous So real fast, this FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, was recently on the Odd Lots podcast. Don't listen to that show. Listen to ours only. He said that they will, quote, throw every resource the agency has at prosecuting the cases against big tech that we've got going. And the new leader of the Justice Department, antitrust division, is this woman named Gail Slater. That's a cool last name, who said, quote, it's a bipartisan issue and there's a consensus around the need for robust. antitrust enforcement. So should we start with meta? Yeah, and that's just another thing. Like, they've, they've left a lot of the Biden-era things in place so far. Like, for example, they're leaving the 2023 guidelines around mergers and acquisitions
Starting point is 00:16:20 and that kind of stuff. So, so far, I mean, this is a good thing. You know, the 2024 election, you saw all these billionaires. Who's the LinkedIn guys? That Reid Hoffman? Read Hastings. I think you're right. Reed Hoffman is LinkedIn. Read Hastings is Netflix. Oh, yeah. Read Hoffman was like going on the news time. I got to name my kid read if I had one, geez. Talking about, you know, going on MSNBC and talking about how Kamala needs to pledge to get rid of Lena Kahn, even Mark Cuban, the, you know, the lone good billionaire. Mark Kovitz.
Starting point is 00:16:52 Was also complaining about her. And that's the thing, you know, there's a, there was an FTC chairman who came out and said, it's Bill Kovitchitch. Oh, no, former FTC chairman. He said, I think that they, meaning the Silicon Valley like big tech guys, may not have fully focused on how much the first Trump presidency had to do with setting in motion this reexamination of tech. You're telling me these big tech guys had a little thing called hubris? Hubris? Is that? You're telling me that they had some other words?
Starting point is 00:17:25 No, I think they just kind of missed the... Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of people. I was watching a guy talk today about how we got this whole thing wrong. It's very frustrating to see people. talk about it now, like, while the guy's doing everything he said he would. But, but yeah, I think this is at least good. For now, it seems like they're still going to go after. So, yeah, there's some pretty high profile investigations and suits going on with the FTC and DOJ. Google has two separate suits regarding antitrust. Meta is going on currently. I think Mark Zuckerberg just took the stand, maybe yesterday.
Starting point is 00:18:08 And then Amazon and Apple are going to be much, you know, much further down the road at this point. But Google is basically at their remedy phase. They're trying to figure out what to do with Google. And I do want to point out, some of these started under Trump. And Trump, in 2020, in the last year of his term, in 2020, DOJ pursued more monopolization cases than any year since the 90s and had pretty active FTC. So, I mean... Wow. So he's saying that Trump is good now is what I'm hearing. That's what I'm... That's all I'm hearing is that
Starting point is 00:18:43 that Emil here thinks Trump is good now. I like that these are... I agree. I like that this is happening. I also don't know what to make of any of it. It always feels like you're kind of negotiating with like a monkey with a gun and you're like... Well, all you got to do is offered a banana. Famously monkeys like bananas. So Google is like you said, they're getting sued for two things. Number one, they were sued in 2020 by the DOJ for having a monopoly in online search. And the other one is the ad tech one.
Starting point is 00:19:14 The search one is much further along. It's already completed. The government has found them guilty of having a monopoly. Guilty. And now they're in this separate trial phase, which is the remedy phase and they're trying to figure out what to do. The government wants to break up Google. Yeah. The government's like, you're swag too hot.
Starting point is 00:19:32 your search too good your um your queries to fire they are going to kill you and they in this case is the government a federal judge uh just started a three week hearing on how to address the monopoly and the government is suggesting selling chrome selling google chrome and just today open a i actually as of this recording open a i has said that they'll buy it i'll buy chrome fine and other measures and it's all about how they're going to break it up. And like you said, it's the remedy phase. And the remedy phase is basically when a company says, okay, fine, you got us.
Starting point is 00:20:09 Here are some remedies. How do you want to fix it? How do you want to fix it? A big problem with this was Google was basically worming their way onto every device and paying people for the privilege of doing it. And then not only doing that, I mean, by doing that,
Starting point is 00:20:26 they would also have massive amounts of data to build an even stronger search engine and cement themselves. Yeah. Yeah. So they also want to stop that. Like, that's a big part of this deal is they're going to be like, okay,
Starting point is 00:20:39 no more paying people tens of billions of dollars. They pay Apple, folks. Google currently pays Apple $20 billion a year to be the default. 20 billion a year. Just to be the default search engine. And that just speaks. In Safari.
Starting point is 00:20:54 Yeah. And that speaks to just how important. But that's not the only list. They have deals like that around everywhere with all kinds of companies. Another suggestion, just other than selling Google Chrome, is potentially white labeling their or licensing their search data, essentially making it a white label thing so that you or I or anybody, we could start bending the meal's handy-dandy search engine. Brought to you by Google.
Starting point is 00:21:22 Yeah, Google's obviously not thrilled about that. That's their most precious. their precious data. Yeah. And Google, so Google is obviously fighting back. They're saying, hey, it's plenty competitive out there. They've even had testimony from, because AI is now really coming into the conversation. And they are saying, hey, chat GPT is majorly a competitor for us.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Right. And perplexity. Right. And perplexity. It is competitive now. And also, hey, suck my ass. We won by being the best. Are you really going to punish us for being the best? And it's like, I get that argument. They are the best at what they do.
Starting point is 00:22:02 But then, yeah, it's the paying $20 billion a year to Apple. It's the making themselves the default thing and ensuring that they stay the best. That's the crucial thing, I think. And I think it's been detrimental to a lot of people. I mean, anyone who's been using these things has known that the platform has suffered. Yeah, it sucks ass now. also like because they don't have any competitors they are allowed to offer a product that is much worse and people are just stuck with it what are you going to do you're going to go use duck duck go you're going to go do you're not going to do that
Starting point is 00:22:37 um you're going to continue you're going to keep drinking that garbage well and what's interesting to me also is two things so satia and adela the CEO of Microsoft actually testified in this case and said that google's search data makes them impossible to catch which is huge coming from the CEO of their arguably biggest competitor, Microsoft, excuse me. And it's also ironic because Microsoft's own antitrust case that was started in 1998, the decision after that is the settlement, rather, with the DOJ, is what set the stage for Google to actually emerge and become what they became. what they became. So it speaks to how, you know, even when it seems like the the walls are caving in, there's still opportunity for more things to grow, which is good
Starting point is 00:23:29 for us as the consumer. Because back then it was, I believe Microsoft had a had a monopoly with, I want to say, Internet Explorer. Yep. Yeah, the Internet Explorer browser. So pushed out Netscape and Java. Pushed them out. I mean, that's another, I mean, we didn't, there wasn't another dominant what are they called web browser for a long time and you had Netscape Navigator that was apples I do think the consumer is really suffering here
Starting point is 00:23:56 I mean they've you know Google has turned themselves into an ad company they've used all this data and all of this like SEO optimized it is so much harder to search Google than it has ever been
Starting point is 00:24:10 I mean don't even bring in the AI stuff it was difficult before they were telling you to put glue on their pizza which you should still try It's not bad Hey everybody We've got to take another quick break To thank a sponsor of our show
Starting point is 00:24:26 It's Shopify You know When we started this little thing It was intimidating We had to wear a lot of hats A lot of different hats In my head's so big I can't even wear hats
Starting point is 00:24:36 We had to keep getting bigger hats We had to keep getting bigger hats It was intimidating and lonely But then We had Shopify Shopify was there to help us in some very major ways. Honestly, this weekend, they came through for us in a huge way. Or was it this weekend or the past weekend?
Starting point is 00:24:53 The past weekend. Yeah, last weekend we did our show in Portland. And like all our shows, we use our little Shopify POS system, which makes it so easy for us. That's because Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Wow. From household names like Mattel and Jim Shark to brands like ours that are just getting in. started. So you can get started with your own design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can
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Starting point is 00:26:09 happen. They have all this data that they're very intent on not letting it get out. And the chrome thing, I don't exactly know how that's going to look. I would like to know. But it would be absolutely wild. Apparently, if the judge orders a sale of crumb, it would be the first time a government antitrust lawsuit forced a corporate breakup since a 1988 settlement with AT&T. I saw some, there's a weird sect of financial Twitter that's so anti-government like this. And they said, if the government had never stepped in and broken up AT&T, we would have flying cars and... Wow, I love that.
Starting point is 00:26:48 I mean, you've seen... There's definitely people bringing up old clips of Bill Gates. He was complaining about how, like, the things Microsoft would have accomplished if they never got... If they never had to deal with all these lawsuits and he was able to...
Starting point is 00:27:05 He said, I got really unfocused. We would have been the first to market with a smartphone and everything. We would have been the... It would have never been the iPhone. Sounds like loser crybaby shit to me. It does sound like loser crybaby shit to me. sounds like loser crybaby shit to me. Maybe you should have focused more on loving your wife and in your company instead of flying on Lolita Express to get massages or in poisoning us all with that word that I can't say without YouTube flagging this. It rhymes with Bactin. Kind of.
Starting point is 00:27:37 RFK. What are the thing that they inject you with that gives you autism? Don't say the word. They're going to. I said faxing. I said faxing. Yeah, faxing. Yeah. What's my... Fax me, these papers. What's my favorite forgotten tech? Faxing. Faxing is still around, man. It sucks. Dude, there will be... It's magic, truly, honestly. I don't know why I said it sucks. Honestly, we... We didn't give faxing its proper do. I thought it was cool as hell. That was sick. Remember those printers that go... Yeah. And it rolls on a thing and you had to rip off this... Man, that was great.
Starting point is 00:28:15 Anyway. Those truly were the days. Those were the days. So that's all going to wrap up, I believe, by August, and we should know what they're going to do. I think this is a big, this is going to set a big standard here. Like, are they just going to get a slap on the wrist? I kind of think so, which fucking sucks. Or are we going to see...
Starting point is 00:28:34 Or are they going to get a slap on the tush? Yeah. Are we going to see like a historic... Something we haven't seen in 40 years. Yeah. Over 40 years. years. The government actually, like, stepping in and being like, no, this is all anti-competitive
Starting point is 00:28:50 and it's harming us. I really do think it is harming us. Yeah, I agree. It's, you know, we need people who can enter the market and try new things. Yeah. And it'll be very funny. All these fucking goobers who jumped through all these hoops donated millions of dollars to the inauguration fund.
Starting point is 00:29:08 Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. But I, it's funny because at first blush, it seems like, like it would hurt Google, but I think it would actually help them because YouTube alone is worth tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars and breaking off Chrome and doing the, there is something to be said for all of these things as individual companies being worth more than the sum. Zuckerberg himself and some of his emails, which we'll get to in a little bit, made just that point of, which is strange. He's simultaneously fearful of this regulation.
Starting point is 00:29:45 And also like, but you know what? It could be, oftentimes these brands become more valuable. My guy, what are you worried about? You have so much damn money and power and influence. Are you really that scared of the shareholders? What are they going to string you up and cut your belly open? Spill your guts out for the elephant seals that are over there in Hawaii to nibble on and your little private property?
Starting point is 00:30:10 This sounds nice. God damn. All right, let's get to the other one. Google was also accused in Jequeuse, said the DOJ in in 2023 to Google for illegally dominating the ad tech business.
Starting point is 00:30:23 Folks, Google makes the major, I want to say 90% of their revenues come from ads. Like $600 billion. Ads. Advertisements. Yes. For your mom.
Starting point is 00:30:36 Advertisements. And Google just was found to be a monopolist in the ad tech thing. The judge ruled that its ad tech monopoly allowed it to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale again the flywheel. You can't use
Starting point is 00:30:51 one thing without the other without the other and it all keeps... Well, actually... Shut up, bitch! Stay in the ecosystem! Stay in the ecosystem! Don't make me call the CEO! They're getting more bang for their buck though because of how good we've gotten at targeting ads and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's true. They've gotten so good at it.
Starting point is 00:31:08 Everybody's walking around with the damn bullseye on their freaking forehand. head. Am I right? I mean, you can't, you cannot speak about something without it showing up in your ads. Yeah. And so the government argued that its monopoly is three parts. It is the tools used by publishers, aka any website is a publisher, news site, a blog, our website. Well, we don't host ads on there. But yeah, it's the tools used by publishers to host ads based. The tools used by advertisers to buy that ad space and the software for those transactions. And apparently I learned that you can't, so like if you are, if you are a publisher hosting the ad space, you can't use it
Starting point is 00:31:56 without also having the tools used by the ad. You need to have the entire trifecta. But a judge did dismiss, or the judge dismissed the part about tools being used by advertisers. So it's only the two things the hosting the ad space and the software for those transactions yeah and the justice department asked the court to force google to sell some of the ad tech business that it has acquired over the years that's been one of the compromises that they're talking about at least going forward in the m&A is like hey if you want to acquire hey google you want to acquire another ad tech company sell off an existing one just flip one but then there was something i i think hurts or one of the one of the car rental companies,
Starting point is 00:32:40 someone at the DOJ was like, yeah, but that's bullshit, because what they'll end up doing is just pawning off a dying brand. So, like, I think Hertz, Avis,
Starting point is 00:32:49 one of these car rental companies was about to acquire another one, and they said, oh, yeah, okay, we'll sell off dollar, dollar. Don't even get us started
Starting point is 00:32:59 on the car, the car rental monopolies. Jesus, man, those things are, but yeah, that's why you should treat them with disrespect
Starting point is 00:33:06 when you drive those cars. Google's going to fight this kicking and screen, obviously. They're already rolling out I love this. I don't know if you've seen the PR push for they're making us, they're harming ourselves in the fight against China.
Starting point is 00:33:19 They've pushed a lot of like new stories. Google says DOJ's proposal for breakup would harm US in global race with China. It's going to hurt us with China. Guys, I'm just telling you you got to. They released this long thing. Google said in a blog post Monday that such a move is not in the best
Starting point is 00:33:34 interest of the country as the global battle for supremacy and artificial intelligence rapid intensifies. So then fucking keep focusing on that. Nobody's coming after you for that. They're coming after you for the ad tech. They say the DOJ's proposal would hamstring how we develop AI. No, not hamstring. And have a
Starting point is 00:33:50 government appointed committee regulate the design and development of our products. That would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture. We're in a fiercely competitive global race with China for the next generation of technology leadership. And Google is at the forefront of American companies making scientific and technology. technological
Starting point is 00:34:08 breakthroughs. Sure, but you guys are the ones who are eating up all the competition and like just getting fat and lazy. Also, quit bitching. Your ad tech, even though it's 10% of your revenue, it's only 10% of your revenue. It's ad tech was $31 billion roughly for Google in 23 or about 10% of the revenue from a 2008 acquisition of a company called Double Click. So they acquired this thing and then turned it into what it is now. These American companies are also, I mean, depending on which stat you believe were beat by Deepseek who had just way more limited resources. But even on its highest, the highest level of resources people are saying is still just like a drop in the bucket to compare to these countries. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:53 Companies. I was astonished to learn that Google has an 87% market share in the ad tech business. Wait, say that again? They have 87% market share in ad tech. Yeah. pretty well so and the way it works is also kind of surprising when you when you load a page or refresh a page there is a split second auction that occurs behind the scenes and uh for for whose ad get shown to you and google of course says it's going to appeal they say that they face competition
Starting point is 00:35:28 from social networks and streaming platforms for their ad tech i don't know how the hell they're just such it's funny like like apple for example when you when you read these articles there's always a thing at the end that like Apple has requested a dismissal of this so it's like Apple all these companies they get hit with these massive lawsuits and they have the audacity to just go
Starting point is 00:35:51 can you not I mean it's pretty common it's pretty common practice can you just drop it actually you get sued and you go actually you don't have a case here this is a motion to dismiss we're not even go this far yeah but I it's just so it's just so funny that they're like,
Starting point is 00:36:05 can you miss this? For so long, the getting was pretty good for all these companies. They're just like, nice try. Yeah. Suck my penis. Yeah. Hey, everybody. We want to take another quick break to talk a little bit about sunglasses. That's right. Sunglasses. They'll make you look cool. They make you feel cool. But most importantly, you've got to pick the right ones.
Starting point is 00:36:27 This one's a no-brainer for me. This one's a no-brainer. Good or reached out. I mean, okay, the stylish Sunny's starting at only $25. pair. They're extremely affordable. And I was skeptical, but they rock. They got a one-year warranty. Yeah, they got a one-year warranty, 30-day free returns. And I wear them pretty much every time I play tennis. I got the mock G, rap G. Beautiful. I've never seen so much on the tennis court before. I never really understood all the benefits of wearing the larger sunglasses like that. Yeah. Beautiful. My good of glasses, I'm hitting the ball like never before. Yeah, he won't.
Starting point is 00:37:03 shut up about it. I'm seeing it. They're lightweight and comfortable. They're 100% polarized, no slip, no bounce from vibrant colors to sleek styles. There's a pair of Gooders for every personality. So yeah, folks, if you need a new pair of Sonny's, Gooder is giving Ben and Emile show listeners free shipping. You can go to gooder.com slash bays and use bays, code bays for free shipping. Gooder offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and 100% satisfaction. Again, that's That's gooder.com, G-O-O-D-R.com slash bays, and use code bays for free shipping. As we'll see with meta here, so let's, uh, do you want to shift gears? Well, we're not really quite shifting gears. We're paddle shifting here, so it's a lot easier for you. Meta got sued in 2020 for, for their purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. This one I do find the most embarrassing for Mark Zucker. He went through all this bullshit.
Starting point is 00:38:00 Yeah. They bought Instagram in 2012 for a billion. and they bought WhatsApp two years later for $19 billion. Now, the FTC... Which I didn't know until I was... I cannot believe they spent that much on WhatsApp, but... I didn't either. I remember people were freaking out friends and stuff. If you had no knowledge of this and I just said,
Starting point is 00:38:19 which one do you think Facebook paid more for? Instagram or WhatsApp? Which would you guess was more? Wow, I would immediately say Instagram. If you told me what years, if you told me what years they occurred, I would say WhatsApp. Only based on my... what I know now, but even then, I don't understand you fucking Europeans and just non-Americans
Starting point is 00:38:40 are obsessed with WhatsApp. God, what's up? Do you have WhatsApp? Yes, bro. It's basically I message for people who don't have iPhones. Exactly. You can use it everywhere and still message with Wi-Fi and everything. Yeah, Wi-Fi and everything. Yeah. But, so the FTC has a lot of evidence against Zuck. I don't know how they got these emails. Do you know how they got these emails? Discovery. Oh. Basically, I mean, There's, if you actually, well, whatever, it doesn't matter. But there's a very funny picture of them carrying out boxes of, uh, box. And one of them is falling off.
Starting point is 00:39:13 Yeah. Oh, man. There, there is a, uh, army of interns going through document after document. Oh, yeah. This is the, that does not look like an intern. That looks like it. That's not an intern. Old man.
Starting point is 00:39:27 But, oh, no. They're bringing it to a team of interns. They're going to, oh, my emails. They've home. My documents. Oh, no. Now, this is just... This is cozy to me.
Starting point is 00:39:41 I like this. Oh, no, it's hell. It's not a fun thing to do. When I hear about these lawsuits and these companies, these law firms that are going to be engaged for years on these singular cases, I'm like, man, that sounds so cozy to me. If I were just like someone in a cushy job at a big law firm making $200K a year, just like, I know what's in front of me. You're probably making more than that at a big law firm. I'd probably be making more. What am I doing here?
Starting point is 00:40:06 If you're working at a firm representing either meta or Google or whatever. Sabotaging. No, you're probably making a shit ton of money. Hell yeah, man. My friend, Kurt, actually, from colleges at a big law firm that represents Google. And I remember chatting with him about it. And he says it was a smile on his face. He's like, I fucking hate it, man.
Starting point is 00:40:27 Yeah, I don't like it. It's soul-sucking. And I question my decision every single day. Oh, yeah. it oh dude the the billable hour is like the the devil created that thing i mean it will golden handcuffs huh yeah i mean it'll fuck your life up you know who's it'll fuck your life up you know who's a saint of a lawyer friend of the show gary barossa workman's comp representing uh representing um people who are oh the guy who goes ben con yeah ben car wow let's go fishing yeah he's been doing
Starting point is 00:40:58 that for his whole life anyway yeah that's how they get everything they you know discovery So the FTC has evidence that Mark Zuckerberg saw them as a threat and had all these emails to prove it. For example, in 2012, in regards to purchasing Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg said it might help, quote, neutralize a competitor and, quote, to use M&A mergers and acquisitions to build a competitive moat around us on mobile and ads, which is so funny because you're essentially admitting in your correspondence. Hey, we got to create a monopoly here to create a competitive mode around ourselves. It's strange, though, because they're like admitting the intent, but I don't know if they necessarily succeeded, and that's what they're going to have to prove, right? They're going to have to prove that there is actually a monopoly here. And with all these companies, it's so confusing what these big, giant tech conglomerates
Starting point is 00:41:52 are even more. Is it... Are you a social media company? Yeah. Are you a messaging company? Are you a what? Right. That's what the FTC...
Starting point is 00:42:05 They're arguing, look, TikTok, Snapchat, I can't... Twitter, X, all of these things. YouTube has introduced like a vertical video. They're like, we have all this competition from all over the place. What are you talking about?
Starting point is 00:42:21 We are not dominating the market. So, you're right. The FTC... Even though we did want to. Yeah. Well, just real fast. Regarding another email regarding WhatsApp in 2013, he said,
Starting point is 00:42:31 a vector for us is for some company to build out a messaging app for communicating with small groups of people and then transform that into a broader social network. So I guess that's why they bought WhatsApp is they thought, hey, this thing could eventually, which is very, as a CEO, that's a very, very big responsible move on his part for the benefit of shareholders, is seeing that as a potential threat in acquiring them. But like you said, the FTC's job is to prove first that meta does in fact have a monopoly. Meta says, of course, TikTok. TikTok alone is proof that they don't. They even said it is every 17 year old knows it's absurd to say that they aren't a competitor. The TikTok is not a competitor of Instagrams. And it's also just a weirder thing
Starting point is 00:43:21 to prove, right? Where like it's all free to use. They're not necessarily, you know, they can't just jack up prices on people like they can show in the Google thing. It's a very, it's a strange, strange ground they're treading. Just because Instagram introduced reels, they made themselves more of a competitor with TikTok, TikTok for that one aspect. It still is its own social media thing. That's actually a great point. Stealing, because they've done this forever. Yeah, Snapchat's features, that's a great point. Stealing other companies' features does not mean that they are. like your competition you've made them your competition you used to be a photos app and you're like ah shit people like that we're doing that now yeah yeah so the fTC on the other hand the ftc has to
Starting point is 00:44:09 also prove that there is consumer harm harm being done to us as consumers which usually involves higher prices also just to be clear what these are not like bright line rules right there's not just the way you're describing it makes it like these aren't laid out in law like here's how you they're going off case law and so uh precedent yeah precedent and being like, you know, here's, here's ways we've shown it in the past. Yeah. And like we're, yeah. And so consumer harm usually involves higher prices like Google's doing where they own the market. They can charge as much as they want. But in this case, since Instagram and the like social media and whatnot are free, the FTC is going to be
Starting point is 00:44:49 arguing a degraded user experience since it's free. So, for example, bad privacy protections, the feeds being full of ads. I think that that could be. pretty but it's all subjective it's like okay what are you comparing it to how instagram was 10 years ago before they figured out uh ad revenue for for mobile is it how many ads per story that you're swiping through is considered acceptable versus uh being considered a degraded a degraded um experience yeah so it's all kind of like uh also very funny that they kind of like there's so many emails and some very strange ones to see. So perhaps the most striking evidence came in the form of a Zuckerberg email in 2018 where he considered spinning off Instagram, citing
Starting point is 00:45:36 exactly the kind of threat from antitrust enforcement he faced today. As calls to break, this is from his email, as calls to break up the big tech company grow, there's a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five to 10 years. Again. I'm not saying we should actually do this now, but as we consider it, we should keep in mind that there's a real chance that all our work to build a family of apps may be something we don't get to keep. So it's not necessarily an admission of guilt. It's just him kind of recognizing seeing the writing on the wall that, hey, we might be seen as being anti-competitive and therefore we should prepare for the contingency that we might one day
Starting point is 00:46:14 have to sell off these things. And look at them, look at them chicken. Hey, Zuckerberg manifested this, man. He's got to hire a good crystal girly or something. To avoid manifesting this stuff. We haven't really gotten to it. So the funniest part about all this is like we, we covered it pretty extensively his about face and, you know, Zuckerberg 2.0 who became cool and masculine and has like shifted. He's got Riz.
Starting point is 00:46:41 He's got Riz now. He jumped through all these hoops. He, uh, what was it? He was, he was re-masculinizing the workplace and, um, he's just, we swung too far in the other direction. we're removing all these moderation controls we're not gay anymore guys we're moving to texas and a lot of people were like you know he's got a big antitrust case here people might think this is an effort to get it dismissed all that stuff there was reports of him in the white
Starting point is 00:47:13 house talking to trump just very recently yeah um and it doesn't seem to be working out for him it's very funny uh so a lot of people were saying he's trying to force a settlement and get some kind of slap on the wrist and the FTC was saying okay $30 billion if you want to settle $30 billion bitch pay up Mark Zuckerberg goes
Starting point is 00:47:33 How about $450 million? Yeah which is insane And then they came back and they said Look we are we will not go any lower than $18 billion you can get the fuck out of here And he said they're going to They are going to go to the mat and fight
Starting point is 00:47:49 Because he's now an MMA guy I can't wait for this I can't wait for him to do another 180 all of a sudden he's like we need to feminize the workplace I put tampons I miss girls I put tampons in the men's bathroom I do love
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Starting point is 00:50:57 Yeah, also important to note, this is also confusing because of that, because of that era of just like, sure, just rubber stamp. We will approve all kinds of mergers and acquisitions. Go ahead. A lot of these things were approved by the FTC, old administrations. A lot of the stuff. They approved Zuck's own acquisitions. Exactly. This is very confusing.
Starting point is 00:51:16 And rightfully so. I think a lot of them are arguing what the hell? You told us we could do it. But that's what I'm saying about. Things have changed so much. The FTC, just as much as meta couldn't possibly have foreseen just how big these would have got. But I don't think
Starting point is 00:51:31 that's a good excuse. I think it's not an excuse. I'm just saying things change. But regardless of that, I think they did a very bad job of enforcing rules and making sure this didn't happen. You know, you saw it a lot with with Lena Conn's FTC
Starting point is 00:51:49 where what were the two airlines trying to merge? It was maybe JetBlue and Spirit, was it? And Alaska. And they axed and they were going like, what the hell? You guys were approving this kind of stuff
Starting point is 00:52:01 like just a few years ago. And it's like, yeah, that should have never happened. And like, it does create a very confusing, a confusing precedent when they were just like, yeah, I don't, I mean, there are two different industries, but sure. The ob. Yes, but it's still. just them approving things
Starting point is 00:52:19 they shouldn't have. The Obama administration was so so ingrained with all the tech stuff. Back in the day, it was like the revolving door they'd go work at politicians would go work at Wall Street and stuff. Obama's administration was always just
Starting point is 00:52:37 right out the door going to Silicon Valley, Jeff Carney going to Amazon, all these people going to Uber. They were like married to the tech industry. Yeah. Well, it is very... And we're going to deal with a lot of the effects of that. Yeah, for a long time.
Starting point is 00:52:56 It is funny that Zuck has, in fact, I mean, he donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration fund. They settled, they settled $25 million to Trump. They paid $25 million to Trump for his lawsuit against them for his account suspension that they enacted. Well, that's the thing. Zuckerberg, I mean, Trump was saying, like, I'm going to put Zuckerberg in jail and stuff. And these guys are such... And he thought that he could buy his way in. He thought, oh, I can sweet talk him.
Starting point is 00:53:24 What's great to me that I've been reading is that a lot of the MAGA... There, I said it right, right? Maga. Because I usually say MAGA. MAGA. I don't know which one is right, but...
Starting point is 00:53:36 Maga sounds funny to me. Yeah. And MAGA sounds more natural to me. MAGA. Maga makes me laugh a little bit. I don't know why. The Make America Great Again, Trump loyalists are apparently in Trump's ear saying,
Starting point is 00:53:47 don't trust this sneaky zuck man his his whole rebrand is disingenuous he's just trying to butter you up so that he can get and it is it's very funny because yeah he's been like oh i'm i'm in trump's good graces i've i've been taking meetings at his thing and i've donated to his campaign i i've they said that they're walking back these um these rules on the on the platforms about political stuff and settling his lawsuit and yeah i also like this quote from lena con It's such a fucking snipe, man. She said, Mark bought his way out of competing, so I'm not surprised that he thinks he can buy his way out of law enforcement, too.
Starting point is 00:54:30 We miss her already. We miss her already. But yeah, that's, I mean, it is at least for now. I will say these things can change so quickly, and you never have any idea what you're going to get with Trump. But it is at least nice seeing these things. go full speed ahead and people like FTC chair Andrew Ferguson saying, hey, I'm going to, even though some of his past actions, very recent past actions run very counter to what he's saying.
Starting point is 00:55:01 So what we're trying to say is folks, sometimes it's not all that bad. Sometimes even, yes, even the Trump administration can do just a little bit of good, even though it's mostly bad. It's like burying a piece of chocolate deep inside of a dog turd. You know? I find it, I don't know. I just find it very interesting, too. It's watching all these tech guys get behind the Trump administration so quickly. When things were so good for them, like, sure, you know, there might be the age of big tech. I wouldn't even say it might be ending because that's not going to happen.
Starting point is 00:55:37 They might, you might have some more. I might with these tariff with this. I mean, that's a whole other story. But just the way they fell in line behind Trump thinking they were. going to get, they were going to get a good deal is, uh, yeah, very funny. Well, so rounding out the top five here, like you said, they've also got the Justice Department sued Apple last year saying that their ecosystem makes it hard for consumers to leave, which is so effing true. If you want to try to switch, if you've been an iPhone user and you make a switch, let us know in the comments
Starting point is 00:56:10 how the hell that went for you. I mean, I think that's a perfect example where they're going to have a much easier time on, uh, you know, smartphones are very expensive. and it's not that easy to just switch. The eye message of it all and how difficult they've made it. The App Store stuff is absolutely insane. Not only that, they're really acting on that. What is it? 30% of all sales.
Starting point is 00:56:33 And that's not just like sales of apps. They're so crazy. With our very own, with our app, like we encourage people to, if you're going to sign up, do it on web, on web browser, because the rates get raised because Apple's going to take some kind of cut. Yeah. And a guy comes to my house with a gun and he says you better stop telling people to sign up outside of the App Store. I'm going to kill you with this gun.
Starting point is 00:56:57 Which is crazy of Apple to do. Yeah, I mean, that's crazy. And I show my Apple, my iPhone and I go, but I have one. I have one. Leave me alone, please. And he goes, you don't have a watch yet. Get a watch or I'll be back. So now I have to buy an Apple watch. But yeah, I'm very very curious to see. And the other one is
Starting point is 00:57:14 Amazon was accused in 2023 of squeezing small merchants on its marketplace and that's set to go to trial next year there's actually a there was a stock that I was invested in whose business model relied on that and I wrote it at the time
Starting point is 00:57:30 I bought it at like eight bucks and this sucker went all the way to 80. They were on a tear acquiring all sorts of we're talking like those air filters that the air purifiers they're the type of company that buys those. They just whenever you see those like random little
Starting point is 00:57:46 merchant shops on there like who the hell is this it was this company and they had bought so many and then all amazon did was like tweak a couple things and i think that company went out of they just went bankrupt they had bought i think they even bought squatty potty like they bought just all the and i thought this is a genius business model they're just owning all of these really popular just evergreen products on amazon but yeah and i mean if you go on amazon that that i hope would be a layup case, too, because their, their user experience has been so massively degraded. Oh, dude. You search for something on Amazon and it's like, what the fuck am I looking at? I also never know what I'm going to get when I order it. I would never, unless I, like, needed something
Starting point is 00:58:33 tomorrow or, or between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. for some fucking reason. Oh, dude, I need that shit. Get it to me. I would much rather just order direct from the site. I don't, like, I don't know what the hell is going to come to. When you see, when you see it giving you that option getting their 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. I don't know about you, but I feel like if I hit that, there's a guy out there who would otherwise be asleep and they wake him up. And they're like, you got to go deliver this toothpaste to this guy. Get out of here. Go. Or we're going to fire you. Yeah. But then I have to remind myself, number one, I'm not clicking because I don't need it that early. But I'm like, I think it always, every time I do it, it's like the first option. It's because there's a lot of nearby distribution centers. Oh, yeah. I'm sure it's not like that.
Starting point is 00:59:16 in small towns. There's one in Glendale. And sometimes when I drop Doug off at the Groomer place that I found, there's some railroad tracks and there will just be, when the light changes, it's just Amazon trucks
Starting point is 00:59:31 just pouring out of there. And I'm like, are they just going to the Walgreens for me? Dude, you never know. All right, let's wrap it up with a little bit of market stuff, shall we? But anyway, hopefully we've got, I mean, we'll check back in on this
Starting point is 00:59:46 when all the stuff wraps up and we'll see, like, what actually happens to go. I will say one, obviously, I hope something good happens. I checked in with my friend who works at Google and I said, is he crazy over there right now? Are people just like, what the hell is going to happen? And he goes, no one's even talking about it. Wow. I talked to, nothing's going to happen. Our YouTube friend, we hit balls a couple weeks ago, golf balls.
Starting point is 01:00:07 And he said that it's changed a lot since they laid off like the bottom 10, 20% of performers. So people are a lot more like dialed in and focused. That's also a totally different part of the company, but... He said he's back to in-office, like fully. Right on. Those days are over. Well, folks, let's do a little bit of a market update, shall we? This week, Trump once again threatened Jerome Powell.
Starting point is 01:00:32 He called him a major loser and said that if he doesn't lower interest rates that the economy could fall, and that caused the market to fall. Why, you ask? Because it is undermining everyone's belief. globally in the United States and the system that has been on top for so long. It's embarrassing. I mean, your president is, yeah, demeaning the abilities of our very institutions and stuff. So you've had this death combination of the dollar dropping, gold rising, bond yields rising,
Starting point is 01:01:06 which, as a reminder, when yields rise, it means, hey, if we're going to lend you money, the higher the yield means the higher the amount of distrust, essentially, in your ability to pay back those debts. I'm making that comparison a little loosely. And what's sketchy is there is zero precedent for this. You can compare it to the 70s. You can compare it to the Depression. But everything has, globalization has absolutely gone exponential bananas, Benet Cray since then. Technology, you know, all that shit, the Fed, the Dollar, everything is way, there's just no precedent for it.
Starting point is 01:01:43 So it's just one big fat question mark. And yeah, the dollar dropping, gold rising, it's, it calls into question the independence of the Fed, which is essential to its function. and, like I said, trust in the system. The trust is dwindling. And the trust, like a good relationship, like a good marriage, is all we have. I'll tell you what, you know, who's really winning? The, you know, guys like my friend who moved to the suburbs in, I don't know, 2015 or 2016 and was showing me around his house and just...
Starting point is 01:02:15 Had gold bars? Gold bars. Are you fucking kidding? And bullets. And we were all like, dude, I think you're overreacting. I mean, gold has only gone up like 300% since then. So he's doing fine. But, yeah, God bless him.
Starting point is 01:02:30 Apparently, Costco, there's a bit of a credit card arbitrage opportunity right now. Oh, yeah, because you can buy the gold right at Costco. You can buy the gold bars. They have not updated their prices to reflect the current price of gold. So you could buy them theoretically by the thousands of dollars and then sell them at a, I don't know, a gold fucking gold guy. Your local gold man. Your local Jew, excuse me. and you could go to New York to that tracks guy
Starting point is 01:03:01 and he'll be, hey, I'll buy your gold for you. You remember that guy? That fucking jewelry guy who's always on the streets going, hey, guess how much this silver cost and I'll give you the silver? Guess how much this gold is I'm going to give it to you.
Starting point is 01:03:13 I don't hang out in those sense of town. I give you this guy. I'll give him $100,000 with the gold buys. Anyway, you could do that and then just use that money. And you make a little bit of money because they're selling them for so little. They'll probably catch on and fix that. But today, Scott Besant, let's click that link on the Bacent update. Very fun today.
Starting point is 01:03:34 I had a good time today. You had a good time? He said, this fucking blows my mind. So this was straight out of Bloomberg. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bacent told a closed-door investor summit third Tuesday that the tariff standoff with China is unlawful. unsustainable, and that he expects the situation to de-escalate. Closed door.
Starting point is 01:03:58 Hmm, that's fun. So there are people, it was an event hosted by J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. in Washington, which wasn't open to the public or the media. He added that negotiations haven't started, but that a deal is possible, according to people who attended his session. Yeah. In other words, it's a big party. It's big club and you ain't in it.
Starting point is 01:04:16 The tariff standoff with China is unsustainable. Oh, wow. That's crazy. So, yeah, that headline was all over the place this morning, caused a big rally in the market. But then his further comments were basically, yeah, well, we've got an idea for a plan to get talks started. And it kind of put a damper on things and we dropped a little bit. But then we rallied again. So that's fun.
Starting point is 01:04:44 That happened. That was nice. And the Japanese this weekend, you know those Japanese, they came. they saw and they left disappointed. And rumor has it, the Japanese delegation to negotiate the tariff situation left the White House basically saying, we're trying to make a deal here and the White House doesn't even know what the hell they want. They don't even know what to ask of us. So they left without anything happening. Yeah, I mean, it was, there was like, we talked about it a little bit, a couple, or when, I can't even remember how long it's been,
Starting point is 01:05:19 But when all this was going on, of countries literally doing what they said and, like, removing all the tariffs, I think it was like Vietnam, Israel, someone else. And the Trump administration was like, no, not good enough. Yeah, we don't like that. What do you want? Yeah. Yeah, this is from Charles Gasparino. Japanese negotiators are complaining the problem with the trade negotiations with the White House. What's delaying concrete progress in a real deal is that the U.S. keeps changing its ask in terms of exactly what it wants.
Starting point is 01:05:47 Maybe it's a negotiating tactic, but the lack of publicly announced deal progress is depressing the dollar, spiking bond yields, and leading to a flight to quality to gold and now Bitcoin. Yeah, we've been seeing Bitcoin. Fartcoin, above a dollar again. Can you believe it? I actually can't believe it. I actually can't believe it, too. But yeah, it just led to a funny headline of Japan keeps asking the U.S. what it wants in trade talks and can't get an answer. Art of the deal. Art of the meal, if you ask me. Art of the deal. I'm not going to tell you. speaking of farts i think we can round up round it off with the u-s keeps changing it's a ask uh chipotle is expanding to mexico can you believe it yeah that's not gonna work taco bell apparently tried it'll be like when um when taco bell did it no didn't dominoes try
Starting point is 01:06:36 to go to italy or oh yeah i think so uh yeah it's Starbucks too or something and they were like no no thank you why would they eat shit yeah why would i eat the shit if i want to eat shit Wait, are we not going to cover the Tesla earnings? Yeah. Tesla earnings ended up being just a, I mean, they missed. I mean, it didn't move the stock at all, but no, so it's not. They missed big, I mean, people are talking about how it's just the meme stock now or a crypto coin or something because it doesn't even...
Starting point is 01:07:01 I'm pissed, so I don't want to talk about it because I'm going to lose money on their fucking... Oh, because you thought it was really going to move the stock. I thought it was going to shit the bed and I was dead wrong. People don't give a shit. It's up $8 after hours, probably because Elon Musk is up there. saying, we're going to have robots. 100%. He said, like, that's coming in June.
Starting point is 01:07:22 In Austin, we're still moving. I... He's a big crybaby, and he's apparently going to leave Doge because he's tired of getting the hate from the left. Brother, no one ever wanted you there. Yeah, nobody asked. You've grown tired of politics. I mean, what did you do?
Starting point is 01:07:36 You just fucked a bunch of shit up. You went in there and fucked a bunch of shit up for nothing. And all the things you promised, you can't do. All right, folks. Well, we certainly hope that you've enjoyed this. this episode and we hope you've learned something so keep your ear to the ground pay attention and as always
Starting point is 01:07:52 remember to have fun we love you remember to have fun we love you and we'll see you in the bonus got a lot to talk about there coming up on this week's episode of Ben and Emile Show.com We have to rebel against the empire the empire is going to do
Starting point is 01:08:07 all the we fucking know man Darth Vader and the empire are bad and you're the rebels I have to say fuck off I have to say it's crazy to be like I'm watching five different television programs about big stuff right now I haven't watched all five
Starting point is 01:08:23 I only watched two where you're just like anyone could be like wow what is it really big again it's a airplane an airplane is different than a ship is different than a train yeah there's one about an airport
Starting point is 01:08:36 during the quiet scene of the movie that everybody paid money to see did you tell them to shut up no because I didn't think that it was coming from inside the theater I thought that it was coming from just outside because when I got up to pee, three times, by the way. Three times?
Starting point is 01:08:50 I got a Diet Coke, man. How long is the movie? Two hours and 17 minutes. Dude, three times? Believe you me, I know, because I checked when I went out to pee the first time. I was like, God, am I going to be able to hold it from the remainder? Three times is like. I'm pissed.
Starting point is 01:09:03 I was pissed. Clinical. Go to the doctor. It's the Diet Coke is what it is. I assure you. Also, maybe you'd like it a little more if you didn't miss like an integral 12 minutes of the movie. I was only gone for, I wasn't. gone for four minutes per piss i've seen you piss it takes you a while starting it takes you
Starting point is 01:09:21 well to finish she's very funny funny and gets my humor too so that's nice oh you sent her like uh jokes like uh pictures of snacks and said like slurs on them no nothing like that not yet nothing like that no not yet we're not there yet um but one day but one day man hey babe i think we've You know, we've been seeing each other for a while now, and I just wanted to send you this box of Annie's snacks.

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