The Vergecast - A threatening Greg

Episode Date: September 18, 2015

Special guest Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times joins Dieter Bohn, Nilay Patel, and new hype-seater Kirsten Frisina to talk ad blocking and the changing state of the internet, Alexa versus Siri, the house of the future, Google beyond search, the possibility of threatening Gregs, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast Wow I did it I did the whole thing That's the whole show Wow I opened it well It was really good and uh that's it I think that's the best we ever done Hello it's September 17th This is the Vergecast

My brother's birthday, happy birthday Wow happy birthday That's important that was Dieter He was wishing his brother happy birthday So Dieter's here but then everything else is there Oh I'm Eli I'm also here Then everything else is different Get ready to come through a portal

It's kind of like a podcast mashup today based on what's going on. So joining us today is Farhad Manjou from the New York Times. Hey, hi. You may know Farhad from the New York Times. Also from Twitter, where I believe Farhad maintains one of the longest running Twitter personas in media history. People call it a persona. It's actually me. It's the real me.

It's on Twitter. All right. Well, I'm interested in diving into that. Okay. The notion of a Twitter persona is very compelling to me. And then, so this is what I mean by a mashup. Farhad has his own great podcast called Jay and Farhod Show with Jay Yarrow from Business Insider, where they come together and their media organizations do not fight, but instead collaborate

to create a content exposure. And that podcast was produced until recently because we hired her. It was produced by Kristen Frisina. Wow. No. Kirsten. Kirsten. Damn it.

I was talking too fast. I was trying to get the last name on our podcast too. I was trying to get the last name right and I blew the first name. I've been perfect on the first time this whole time and I've never had to say it. If you listen to the podcast as a watching it on YouTube or live, you are missing out on a very decked out hype desk. Yeah, there's something. It's kind of like a college football hype desk.

Is that not how it normally is? No. So I'll explain this. There's a reason she's over there. It's not. It's because I like old-timey radio. It's not a great reason, but we'll get into it. So Kirsten just joined us at the verge.

We took her away from Farhad. Yes. But now Farhad is here as well, so we brought them back together. But Kirsten's here. If you're on our Snapchat channel, you see her multiple times a day. If you are looking at any of our social media accounts, you see her many times a day. Kirsten's here to engage with you with the audience. Can I just say one more thing?

We recorded our podcast today, just the more media mashup of the Jan Farhad show. And our guest was Casey Johnson, who's from the All and Wirecutter. Yeah. And so I've experienced every media organization today in a single day. Are there ones that you are not allowed to, as a New York Times reporter? You're like not allowed to go to the journal? Yeah, probably. I bet there's a, yes, probably the journal in Bloomberg.

I don't know. No one's, I, if the journal does a podcast, I will be on their podcast. I just like the idea that you're allowed to like hang with us. But then there's definitely a level at which like there's like Times police shadowing you. And they're like, no far. No, no. Can't go on the building. Anyway, so Kirsten's out here.

So let me just explain to you the concept here. Sure. It's not, again, not a great concept, but one that we've been going with. So here on the Vurchase, we generally talk about the news. And so that's what happens here at this desk. And then that desk is the hype desk. That's the concept. She's in the hype seat.

Yes. And what we do from time to time is as we're discussing news, new products, new things, new ideas, we hype check them. to know how much hype. It's a formula in my head. It's a hype formula. Which is hype versus reality over time. Uh-huh.

Which complicated. Really, it's expressed on 110 scale. So like, for example, Kirsten, hype check the new iPhone. It's like a, it's like an eight. Yeah. See? And we just do that from time. So eight is, is what?

It's pretty high. It's pretty high. That means it's pretty hype. Yeah. It's like, there's like a high level of hype against. People are excited for us. I see. Okay.

And it's got, but over time, the hype might. it will probably dissipate you'll just be the iPhone right okay but then who's ever in that seat also is allowed to just interject it well so really just chaos

I saw I saw one of these where Casey Newton was there so oh yeah the Skype seat I was very proud of myself yeah it was good it's a good rhyme oh man you're just cold

it's a good right it's good we're moving on what else is there to say can check that rhyme wow rough all around. So there's a bunch of stuff to taco this week. I think we should start with what has sort of been blowing up today.

And then I think when we have new people on the show, I really like to just do State of the Union and talk about how tech is just doing across the board instead of like really diving and granularly. So we should do that a little bit too. But let's start with a thing that blew up our site today, which is yesterday iOS 9 came out. Have you upgraded iOS 9? I've been using the beta, so maybe I don't think I, I think I'm still on the beta. Right. Yeah, if you're on the beta and you're caught up, you should be fine. Yeah.

I don't think I actually have pulled the last lever for the public one. The public one is what I have on my phone, and it has the same bug that was in the beta, which is if you go search in settings the next time you open settings, it will freeze and you've got to quit it. I've noticed, I mean, the one really weird thing is that I just get phantom, vibrations. Really? Yeah. And it hasn't, like, not tied to a notification.

It just sort of buzzes. Huh. Well, I think it might be because the notifications are, like, more granular. Yeah, it may be that I haven't, like, I don't know what notification is triggering it. And, like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to turn off because I don't know which one. Right. I get random mail sounds. Yeah.

It's just like, all of a sudden, it's like, mail. That app is like, you know what? I did get some email. And it's like, why don't you, can you, which one is that? Give me more info. Yeah. I love to just, it's just like. happy little, do-do.

Like, yeah. Anyway, so with iOS 9, it came out. We put up a big review of it. It's great. It's iOS 9. It's like iOS, but better. It's like, it's kind of like iOS, but Android. In many ways.

Like they switch the app launcher. It looks much more like the Android app launcher. They've finally the notifications are in reverse chronological order, which is how it gets so much better. Like everything about my life is full of happiness and joy. And then of course, you know, the thing that is really happening. is that the app developers have to support it. So there's a bunch of Apple stuff that's better.

Like Spotlight is better. Yeah. Siri is marginally better. But if you have an iPhone, you should update because you have to. So it's kind of like, it got better. It's going to be fine. But the big feature of iOS sign that everyone sort of talking about today, and I published a piece about today as well,

is that it supports content blocking in Safari, which is actually expressed by people writing ad blockers. So you can add block on the web. Right. Do we know what kind of non-ad-like, what is the sort of non-adblock thing if you could do? Hate cats. Yeah, just can't stand. Cat content.

Yeah, just anything cat.gitp. Screw this. I'm out. No, content blockers are very, like, euphemistic term that they came up with. Well, the crazy thing is, you know, what are the arguments going on? It was, oh, well, there's been ad blocking on desktop for years. Why is this isn't a big change. It's just normal.

But ad blocking on desktop browsers comes through, like, extension. and they're called like add-ons or extensions or whatever, and then you get an ad blocker that way. On mobile Safari, they didn't say, oh, you can do extensions now. They've got like their other little bits for doing that that they introduce in iOS 8. No, they explicitly have a section called content blocker built into it. Right. Which is different than what we've seen before.

Well, so my theory is that Apple is like, you can now do this thing, but we're not going to do it. Like, we'll let third-party developers do it. And there's a rush of them out. Marco Arment, who was a guy who started Insta Paper and then sold it. But he started it. He just put out one called Peace. It's $3. It's one of the top grossing apps in the App Store today.

There's another one called Purify, which is also doing very well. That's the one I got. Yeah, I'm running Peace. Okay. I just figured to try it out. I've got to say, the web's really fast. Everyone's poor now. Works well.

But we're all moving much faster than each one. Apple's rich. Everyone else, very poor. So yeah, it's unclear what else you would be blocking, but they've built the system for people to be able to block ads, and then people took advantage of it. In my estimation, that is Apple kind of being like... Well, Apple couldn't release its own ad blocker. That would have been like a direct fight with Google.

Why? I mean, they could. No, they could have, I'm saying sort of politically, and there's no sort of marketing reason for them to enter that fight very explicitly. Like it's the way that they, you know, sued Samsung instead of suing Google. Like they can get ad blocking, which hurts their competitor, improves their user interface, makes their customers happy. But it's just like another app on the – they do it through third parties. They allow developers to do it.

And they leave the choice ultimately up to users who are obviously going to do it. Right. So you've written about ad blocking and then I wrote today. And so my – just to quickly do you mind, and I want to talk to you about your piece. because you have like that optimistic view. I have the much more sort of dark. I'm just a writer on the, and I work for a place that gets a lot of revenue from print.

I mean, everything about this conversation has made me nostalgic. I'm like, we should just start up print magazine, like tomorrow. Like, it'd be great. Like, no one's going to sit around with scissors at the mail depot, like cutting my ads out before we mail the stuff out. Well, the other thing we should say before we talk about this is that we are all biased in various ways. We're all compromised here. I'm biased in favor of having a salary.

Yes. And then using that salary to purchase food and eat it and remaining alive. I don't know about you. I like money and food, yeah. Yeah, that's good. Somebody told me that we're, somebody tweeted me that we're paying, that they were paying us in Mineshare. Oh, wow.

It's going to be very difficult for me to pay the right near city with Mineshire. I'm going to go to the deli after the podcast is over and see if they take Wuffy. Yeah, no, that's actually really funny. That's like the Cori Datora reference, right? Yeah. From that down at the Magic Kingdom. That's it. Anyway, we won't fall down that rabbit hole.

But so the context here, yes, we're biased. And I think this is one of those moments where the media industry and the tech industry are colliding. And things will change because of it. But in almost every one of those times, the tech industry has won, right? Like revenue has shifted from media to tech, right? So Google built YouTube. by basically stealing videos from people until Viacom gave up. And now Google controls an enormous amount of media power and money.

And other media companies are ever so smaller. And that's just one example. The music industry is the same way. Anyway, so you can run these ad blockers now in iOS 9. You could obviously have run them. It's funny, on the flip side, ad blocking on the desktop has gotten really popular because of Chrome. So literally the rates of ad rocking on desktop track along with Chrome installs. Yeah.

Obviously, Google runs Chrome. but my point is that Apple's pulling farther and farther away from Google and iOS 9 is a collection of things that are kind of direct attacks on Google so they don't call it Spotlight anymore but search in iOS 9 now lets you search it runs on Bing you can search inside of apps

Google obviously can't read inside of apps on your phone they can't they can't yeah right like everybody has to build the right hooks for the right people it's not the web we're just like crawl away And you have to use, like, Google's app to do it. And, like, Apple just has a much more streamlined way of doing it. Right. So they've got that.

They've got, obviously, the content blocker. Which, again, to me, is kind of like, well, we open this door. Yeah. Will anyone walk through it? Like, it's a very... There's candy inside. Yeah. And just sort of this collection of...

And Apple News. And Apple News, right? And so... And in general, you know, like, in Apple News, so they're pulling publishers away from the revenue platform of the web. where Google runs the dominant ad server for publishers called Double Click for Publishers, DFP. And then all the crappy ads

that follow you around the network ads, they run ad exchange, which runs those two. So you can take all the money away from Google's platforms and then say to publishers, well, but you can be here in Apple News and no one will be able to block your ads here.

So Apple News has ads in it. Apple News will track you. You can put the tracking beacons in Apple News. You absolutely can. It's funny. I was like, nobody cares about this today. Yeah. I mean, I think the reason people don't care about, I mean, first of all, very few people have used Apple News, but, you know, Facebook is sort of an analog to it. And I think the reason people don't care about it is because the UI is not bad. Like, like, you worry about things like tracking and stuff if you see the pop up and then you feel like, oh, what's happening there? But if you don't see it and it works well and it works fast, then I think you might not. I mean, I think the whole, like, they're tracking me is just kind of a proxy for like bad experience, general. Right. And that ghostry pop-up, you know, people have been screenshoting and send me a

like you look at the list and it's like Google, Google, Google, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, and then like one ad server and chart beat. Yeah. And it's like you're not, you're only mad because they're like 13 pop-ups. I'm like, it's just Google and Facebook. Like it's the buttons that are you log into our site using Google and Facebook and Twitter. Right. But I think you're right. And I think all the conversation that is about performance. We're going to make the web faster by stripping out of this crap we don't like. And that's cloaked inside of tracking. I think that's fine

I mean I honestly My big take on it Is it sites like The Verge Like big companies will be fine Because we make stuff that people want And Apple's not going to start A content company Right so like

We have media executives who work here The New York Times As media executives who work here They don't know what they do They go away to wear suits They come back They have deals Yeah they have deals with Facebook and Apple

And then your content's in there And we'll be fine Yeah we have the resources To like remake our content into all of these insane native ad or native news app platform systems i'm can't talk today um so like we can do that and then everything else will just be like i don't know you can like stick an rss feed into apple news i guess yeah it's fine and then there's facebook and star articles so that's like me right like i think the verge will be fine but i think that other companies smaller publishers that rely on

we're going to make great content with a bunch of friends and like glue in the some ad code and that'll pay for everything. They're doomed. Okay. So that's where I want to get, because you are much more optimistic. Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's a very valid argument that they will be doomed because of ad blocking. I just don't know if the alternative is that they'll survive anyway.

Like, if people don't get ad blocking today, um, yeah. Facebook instant articles is still going to come along. And the web, and so if you, if you think that the web, like, to me, the web is like a usability nightmare. Like every time I click a link, I get sort of some weird pop up. And it's slow. And it just doesn't feel like the kind of environment that is, like, going to successfully

compete against something like Facebook internet articles or Apple News if it's better. Over time, it seems like inevitable that people will either migrate to those other platforms. Or they'll stay with the web and the web will be bad. But where is the web bad for you? The web is bad on your phone. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Right. The web is not bad on desktop.

And I think this is like I wrote a piece a while ago. that was like there are no apps on the desktop like apps on desktop are not outside of like Photoshop right like yeah major professional productivity web is what you use on your desktop right right because the experience is really good right and then on the phone and this is kind of like my this is what I'm worried about I'm worried that Apple because they have dominance in the phone they're squeezing the web ever so tightly to get people onto their platform and under their control but but do you disagree that the web is bad on your phone like it it it feels like an experience that should be better.

And everything we know about how people use, you know, how people use digital things is they, they like fast, right? Like everything that's faster, even marginally faster, feels better. If it feels more responsive,

more people use it. And it just doesn't seem like clicking on a link and waiting, you know, 10 seconds for the thing to load up and then like clicking three things before it loads up is going to be like a survivable environment.

I don't know, man. I just went to that. event. You were at that Apple event. They're like, the new iPhone 6S has a desktop class processor and console class graphics and the fastest LTE that's ever been made and the Wi-Fi will definitely run you over with speed. And like,

these phones are ultra-power. They're more powerful than the PCs that ushered in the web revolution to begin with, and much faster in terms of network speed. I think you have a screen size thing though, right? Okay, that's fair. I'll take that. I mean, the pop-up covers like, you know,

but 30% of the screen and then you have to like hit a small button to close it. And it's not like, those pop-up ads on web pages are not like on terrible sites. They're on like the big reputable sites. But we're setting up a false dichotomy here, right? Either you have to go and live in Apple's proprietary garden or you have to live with, you know, the web's terrible. Do you think there's a middle ground? Fix the web.

How do you fix? Or open up the Apple's thing. So that's my, that's my argument about content blocking, like, or ad blocking. It's not calling content. Yeah, just call it ad block. We should really, I mean, like, if you're listening to this and you would like to write us a content block or that blocks some other content, if you want to block everything on a verge but the ads, like I would love to just see that product. What does that look like? I'll pay you $2.99 for that product, actually.

But so I think that if a whole lot of people, maybe not all, because it would be bad of all, if everyone adopted ad blocking. But if a whole bunch of people adopted ad blocking, I think it would force advertisers. and big, other big people who create this, like, publishing and environment on the web to do better. Like, there could be standards. The incentives aren't that clear cut. Because if more people are blocking ads, then the incentive is like, well, shit, we have fewer people.

We need to ramp up how terrible the ads are. And the second thing is, even if you're right that blocking more ads will incent advertisers to clean up their act and finally serve nice ads, once someone turns on ad blocking, it's on. and they don't go back. And so, like, that's the problem with people, you know, you all and us are like, you're part of the problem. Your ads suck.

It's like, yeah, we're working on making it better. But I kid you not, if we make our ads perfect and beautiful and fast and they will never be, they'll never annoy you on the verge, like we fixed our house, but the neighborhood's still on fire. Yeah. I mean, it's a tragedy of the commons problem, right? You suffer because there's some other site out there that has loan scruples and will run terrible ads.

Right. People turn on ad blocking because of that, and then even if you have great ads. But, okay, so there are these companies that are marketing themselves to publishers to, like, circumvent ad blocking. And the way they do it is they serve kinds of ads, you know, like serve through different protocols that aren't blocked by ad blockers. Like, you could imagine that there is some kind of kind of like tech arms race. Maybe the publishers won't win that arms race, but that kind of get around the ad blockers with better ads. Well, no, so that's what I'm most worried about. Like, again, in the darkest timeline, which is where I live, the way that you, like, ad blockers are pretty brutally simple product, right?

They block servers, right. Yeah, it's just a list of servers you don't want to load from. So, like, it doesn't matter where you load it from, right? Like, it's just there. So one way to do it is to move all the stuff onto the Virgil's core CDN and then load it from there. Yeah, then it all looks like content. It's all great content. But I think the real move is something that's already happening in the industry,

Because on desktop, ad blocking has been real, and people have been dealing with it, which is to really start blending editorial and advertising. And, like, doing it, I think, like, for example, the verge is really big, and so our sales team sits in a different part of the office, and we don't talk to them, and there's a native content group that makes that stuff, and we don't really talk to them. So that's fine. And the New York Times has the same thing.

And every big publisher has that. If you're a smaller site, and Samsung's like, hey. I mean, Samsung's new software design is, like, as crisp and refreshing as a fresca. That's going to be my review. Wait, is that an ad for Samsung or Fresca? That's what I'm saying. Which one is it?

Well, it's funny because it's like two seconds I'm going to do to Squarespace ad. Whatever, Squarespace. It's crisp and refreshing as a fresca. And it's well designed as a Samsung. Is that a burn? Like, I don't even know. What is that?

What is real? What is fake? What is reality? No, but that's it, right? the, and you see it right now, I'm like, for example, on YouTube, right? There's tons of, like, people on YouTube who have big audiences. They want to monetize it. They click the button and Google will sell them some ads. But then on the side, they'll be like, I just got this phone for free or, you know, whatever. Like, the FTC had to crack down on mommy bloggers because they were all

doing products for free. Like, you see how the money can flow into that seemingly editorial content, and you can't block that. You just absolutely can't. Right. And that is, I think that's the danger, right? The money isn't going away. So, but it's still a danger for, it's still a danger mainly for small sites, right? And maybe the future, like, as sort of terrible as it sounds to say this, like, maybe there is going to be less room for the small sites than there was in the, in the, in the, and it's not like, it's not like publishing a small, like a small publishing empire was easy in,

like, the print era, too. It's always been a difficult thing to, like, have a small publication. and it may have been that we just had like a decade and a half of like the open web and then the web turns into something like TV like I think that's a plausible end for the for digital content and you know it will be terrible in some ways but we also I mean there are sites like BuzzFeed that pale for a lot of journalists yeah and you know have native content as ads and that is a plausible model for the future and it wouldn't be like the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I mean, I think I've said this on the show a hundred times.

I think the most interesting companies in media right now are BuzzFeed, Vice, and Fox. And like, I happen to work at one of those. I think that's dope. The New York Times also great. Yeah, it looks at. Huge, huge, like, but in terms of, like, being the innovative, big digital companies, I think those are the three. But BuzzFeed's entire bet is on how do we learn how to make viral content and then sell that ability to advertisers. Right. That looks exactly like BuzzFeed content. There's rarely a difference. Casey Johnson, here we were just talking about. We're at a great piece, and it was like the ultimate expression

of this is a Friskey's ad, the BuzzFeed made, that's basically indistinguishable from something else. With like 25 million views, by the way. And so I would be okay if there, I would be okay if the future of, like, journalism on the web was part of the journalistic enterprise is like a bunch of people who are essentially running like a creative ad agency, like are creating Friskey's ads.

It's sort of like what, TV does, right? Like, like, their, you know, TV has entertainment, and then they have, and then they find a news operation. Like, it works out. Yeah, it does. It just, I don't know. It's not what we think of is, it's not the, like, utopian, like, everyone publishes stuff

and makes money vision of the web, like the Anil Dash vision of the web from, like, 15 years ago. But maybe that was a little bit optimistic. I don't know. I mean, like, here's what I worry about. And I think about it a lot. Like Matt Iglesias wrote this on Box, which was Apple got saved by the web browser. Yes. The Apple, Mac OS10 would not have been a viable product if the web didn't explode in popularity.

And Apple spent all of its time desperately trying to make the experience of the web better on a Mac than it was on the PC, which is why they did Safari. And then they did Safari for Windows, which is crazy. And then they like turn that into their other business. Right. And now Apple is in that Microsoft position. Yeah. And there's no other thing that looks like the web to help challenge that position, which I think is like, that's what scares me.

It's not, it's not about, like, I just, I'm a believer in, obviously, in, like, the open web. And the idea that there are no gatekeepers between human beings and each other because of this, this one piece of technology. And like, oh. Well, but when we say the open web, like, it's the open web that's controlled by Google. I mean. How is it controlled by Google? It's monetized by Google. It's monetized by Google.

Okay, it's monetized by Google. So we're really talking about a platform that's run by Google. Like, Google makes the browser that people use to access content that Google monetizes. Like, it is Google's playground. Yeah. And so, you know, it's open in the sense that, like, Google is not blocking any kind of content on the web. You can create a website and be completely free of Google in a way that you can't create an app and be completely free of Apple. Right.

start making money on this platform. Like, you're going to have to, at some point, go through Google or compete with them. And they're in the way because they're making the browser. Or you could, I don't know, set up a paywall and how people pay. And it's like, there are other ways to monetize the web than just Google. It's just Google is the most dominant ways to monetize the web. Whereas, I think with Apple, there are very few ways to get on the iOS platform and play there unless you directly deal with Apple as a partner.

Right. I mean, you have to go through their approval process, and you have to, if you have content they don't like, you won't be allowed in the store. And right, it's, it's a, it's a, the, the walls are higher in this garden. Um, okay. Kirsten. Yeah. I know, I have a question.

I just let you hype check this entire situation. Yeah. Yeah. You're much younger than we are. Yeah. My main question is like, I just, it seems like everyone's been talking about ad blockers today as if 100% of people are going to turn them on. And like, outside.

of this office, I don't know anyone who has an ad block. I think 100% of people are going to turn them on. I would argue. You really? Or let's say at least 40 to 60. Here's what I'll say. I'd say around 50%. I think that it's too hard of a thing for normals to set up.

And you just get an app. Yeah, but people said that about Chrome. Yeah. The rates are desktop from ad blocking and out of control. Yeah. And it's easier on mobile, I think, than Chrome. Like a lot of people don't know about add-ons for Chrome. Everyone knows about getting apps, and that's what you do.

Like, you just get, you just, it's as simple as getting an app, the app shows you like which button to press to turn it on, and then you do it. Yeah, but if you're not in tech, you don't know, like, nobody who's not in tech knows about this. If one of these ad blockers hangs out at the top of the most popular app list for a while. No, and people don't open their app store every day. That's true. The average number of apps on the phone is zero. Yeah, if we're talking about normal people, honestly, I think the setup's just going to be too.

I will say this. I think most of the ad blockers have you. used have a simpler interface than Candy Crush. Like Candy Crush is like a fucking Byzantine crazy ass. Like what is going on? Like a clown yells at you so every so like... What? Have you ever...

I just started playing it. This is like where I am in life. There's a clown who yells at you in Candy Crush. No. Well, he's like... It's a scary thing that I choose not to look at directly. I've never liked like Candy Crush. I mean, it's bejeweled but with screaming.

It's like a very confusing. No way. I think it's going to be the kind of thing where people are like a few, you know, early adopters will get it at first. But over time, you know, you'll meet someone and they'll be like, hey, why aren't you running out blocking? Like my, I, you know, you pay for data. Your phone is like significantly faster.

Like there's no downside to it to get it. Yeah, and I think a lot of people, but I will say, and this is actually the funniest stat, today of all days, and it's like, everyone's turning it on, the thing's rocketing up, our rates of ad blocking are lower than an average day today. So usually that 25% of the Virgins pages are. I blocked in today, it's 20, and I actually don't know why. I mean, it's probably, I wonder if people whitelisted you because, like, you know, on desktop, because this conversation has gone on.

That's incredible. People are like, I'm turning on my phone, but turning off my desktop. I mean, we did recently change the verge so that ads load after the rest of the page. So, like, our total page load time hasn't gone down too much, but our time to, like, you can scroll and look at the content is really fast now. Yeah, I mean, like, I, I, there's a hundred people on our product team in Vox Media, right? Like, they are reading the stuff and they care about it.

It's like they've been rapidly trying to make it better because they obviously care. But it's just fine. I think this conversation is fascinating because in many ways this is the moment when I think the web goes from this like playground of innovation where all of the money is flowing into it because building stuff on the web lets you get access to everyone to kind of a what the hell is going to happen here. Google, you better fix it. And all of the money starts really flowing. into the Apple ecosystem because that's where people are. And that to me is, and Facebook, quite on.

Like, Facebook is basically the answer for all the small publishers we're talking about. Facebook's going to show up and say, you can pay us for placement or use insin articles or buy promoted Facebook. They're going to make a product that says, we're going to save you. I'm going back to Gofer.

The web is over. And on that terrible note, let's talk about building websites together. Great transition. Squarespace. Building a website can be tough and potentially doom you to a life of pain and poverty. But even if you know your way around coding, it's going to be hard. But if you want to just make something that looks good and works well, you shoot Squarespace.

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Good job. Kind of stumbled through it a bit. All right, so this is a thing I want to do. So we talked about ad blocking. There is a world in which the world, everything gets better. And I think there's a world in which we move off platforms. Well, we remain to be seen. But I think the more interesting thing to do, because Far Haute is here,

is just sort of due, state of the union. All right. So. You don't want to talk about Amazon's brand new six pack of $50 tablets that you can buy? I'll just take a nap over here. It's fine. Hype check the Amazon tablets. One.

Like, I don't know. Actually, no. They're 50 bucks and they're not the worst things ever made. Okay, fine. I'll give them a five because they'll give you like a six pack of them, which is cool. I'm like into, I'm actually into the idea that like for schools that'll be really helpful. It's, I mean, the Amazon tablets aren't like fantastic, but it's this, they're good enough. Yeah.

For a lot of things. Like I have two kids. Like they, I don't want to. Are you to buy the kids tablet? I think I just will buy the normal one. But I mean, I won't buy any because like, we have. actually our whole house is flooded with tablets, but, you know, for people who need tablets, like, this is a good one to get. I mean, it's cheap. Why wouldn't you get a $50 tablet, I feel like.

Because the only, well, you buy a $50 dollar tablet, and the only thing it'll be capable of doing is playing Amazon video that you download. That's fine. I mean, that's worth it, right? No, I mean, it does like Netflix and stuff. Do your head fence work? Yeah. Yeah, mine. But my head fence is of stuff working. Would you like mine? Keep arguing my tablets. I'll just, I'm just gonna wing it.

Who knows what I'm listening to now. All right. Now I'm just listening to Apple Music. Can you realize if you can't hear it? I told you you were going to argue about Apple music. No, I can definitely hear you. The regret my head fence are working in.

But yeah, but of course your house is full of it. I have like Nexus 7s, like just falling out of the woodwork at my house. Yeah. But if you don't, if you have children. Yes. Like this is what you give to children to break.

Yeah, I mean, right. It's like you're not going to give them the $250. or I mean the $399 iPad. Why would you? And they're not running like sophisticated stuff, right? They're running apps that you can get on the Amazon tablet. Right. And they're running Netflix and like Amazon videos or like the tiniest stupidest games,

which are also available. Your poor kids. Yeah, I know. You're like, this game's garbage. Well, it's Android. It's full of ads and weird stuff that's tracking them. Yeah, exactly. No ad block and Android games.

So let's just start with Amazon, right? Yeah. Give me the quick what's up with Amazon in your estimation right now. I think they're doing really well. Yeah. Okay. So the device stuff, they like stumbled a little. I mean, they stumbled in a big way with the phone.

The device strategy, I'm still trying to figure out. Like their idea is to send out a bunch of cheap stuff. And then you'll get Amazon content through it. But otherwise, like, their entire e-commerce business is, like, amazing. I suspected that they would be, they would have trouble competing with, like, on-demand companies, like companies like Instacart and, like, Uber, if it ever gets into logistics and stuff. But because, you know, those companies have the advantage of they can get you stuff, and they're ratting people through smartphones and they can get you stuff faster

and, like, have perhaps wider selection from, like, your local area. Amazon seems to be competing with them okay They're building out their own on-demand infrastructure Right And they're doing drones, right? Yeah, they're doing drones That's the long-term path But also like their media stuff seems to be going fine

Like it's a smart business to spend $100 million or whatever To create some TV shows But then give those TV shows away Because you can like copy them infinitely So it's like a free gift to someone who subscribes to Prime and so it seems like a bonus for you when you get Prime and then Prime makes you buy a bunch of stuff there. It's like a very smart strategy.

I don't know anyone. I don't like if you're in a certain demographic and like can afford to shop at Amazon all the time, that's like the kind of shopper you are. Like it's become like the most attractive place to shop. Right. Didn't Amazon also just make it so that you can download their shows locally? Yeah.

That for me is like that is cool. And that's something that's, like Netflix copy that place. Well, that's something like, I mean, I wonder if Netflix, why they would do that. I guess they said they were not going to do it soon because it's like infrastructure, like it's more difficult and stuff. But Amazon doesn't care, right?

Like they just are giving away the content as like a token for, for, like, I think it's really interesting about just like what prime is for Amazon, like the whole number of services that it now encompasses. Now the Washington Post. Yeah, the Washington. Washington Coast. I think it's just really to... I think the idea is that if you're paying for Prime,

you're definitely going to buy everything from Amazon. Yeah. So if they can just keep making Prime more and more attractive to you. Yeah. But this thing you're saying about their hardware efforts failing. I mean, the phone...

Did you see this? The fire phone team went to Google to work in glass. Yeah. Yeah. Which sounds insane to me. Wait. What?

When was that? Huh? When was that? A week. Or last week, yeah. Yeah. The fire phone team... Well, a lot of 126, yeah.

That's going to go well. Yeah, it went to, um, they all just went, and who knows what they're going to do there. But it's going to go great. Glass is going to have four cameras. It's going to track you in space and give you a headache even more. So the phone was like a departure for their whole product strategy, right? Like their idea in the past was to create like strip down hardware to serve you content at a good price. Like that was the whole, the Kindle was expensive, but then it got cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to the

point that we're like you're crazy not to buy a candle because everything about it was cheaper. And that is also their tablet strategy. And arguably cheap tablets have threatened the iPad. And iPad, I mean, it's like it would have been a dominant computing platform that's something a whole bunch of people would have bought and Apple would have made a lot of profit on if it wasn't for cheap tablets. And Amazon was at the forefront of cheap tablets. Do you think it, well, one has asked me about, let me ask you a question. on those last time you bought a new TV? Oh,

a long time ago. Right. So I think iPads are just televisions. Like, they're fundamentally, they're on that cycle. You think they're like, right,

okay. You buy one, you watch a ton of video on it. You maybe, like, play some bad games. So, like, really,

there's no reason to get, like, it's a video consumption device. Yeah, so you don't need, like, the next version. You know, because you're just going to watch

Netflix on it anyway. Yeah, no one needs, like, all my friends that have, like, I have a few friends that have the original iPad,

and now is the first time that they've ever considered getting a new one. So I think... Because it's gigantic. Yeah, well, because it's the new iPad Pro, and they can do the whole kind of style of stuff. It's like a five-year replacement cycle. I mean, that makes sense. Like, it's sort of on the... I mean, it's where PCs are too, right?

Like, you don't really... Like, unless you're, like, a professional who works with a computer, like, my parents haven't bought a PC in the past five years. And, like, you get one when, like, the next thing is, like, substantially better. And your old one is, like, breaking down. Right. I mean, I think this iPad Pro thing is really interesting because it's, I think the biggest threat to Apple is that they, they didn't aggressively try to cannibalize the Mac with the iPad. So they're just rolling out multitasking.

They're just rolling out split screen. They're just rolling out a proper keyboard situation. They're starting to make it, huh? I wouldn't call that keyboard proper. Do you think? No, I think they made the weird surface-y-looking keyboard with the, I mean, I did it. They made it junky on purpose so that third-party people would make something good? Well, they just needed to make the connector.

I think everyone will end up buying the Logitech one. I'll buy anything other than one Apple Made. Yeah, Apple Made is real bad. And Tom Warren, I don't know if you've seen Tom Warren just, like, rage tweeting about how ugly it is compared to the surface one. No, but they didn't do that, right? Like, they didn't, they're only just now saying, how do we make the iPad a true laptop replacement?

I think there was a legitimate argument that multitasking on an iPad, like the, that the UI would have been bad, and they needed to figure out, they needed to get processors fast enough that they could, like, run multiple apps at the same time. Processors may be, but, like, the UI is not complicated. You swipe over. It's, like, Samsung screwed up their first stuff,

and it was overly complicated, but the UI now is, like, it's the obvious thing. You swipe it over. Like, the thing that bugs me more than, like, you know, waiting for so long is that it's still not truly multitasking to me. Like, if I'm going to make the iPad Pro my computer, like, I believe it has a power to do everything that this tiny little new MacBook is doing, right? Right. But what it can't do is let me have three apps going at the same time and, like, Windows.

Like, Windows are useful. I like Windows. Yeah, but... Okay. No, I agree. But Windows are useful, like, when you're working, right? Like, I think they fundamentally... I think they don't think of maybe the iPad Pro, but until now, I don't think they thought of the iPad as, like, a...

working machine. Yeah, they claimed that they did. They said that they did all the time. They're running around being like, this is for creativity. But the way they built it suggested they did. Right, exactly. But that was their whole strategy, right? Like, I, I, they were just like, like, this is not for just for consumption.

And like what killed them was it was just for consumption. Yeah. It seems like we should just start talking about Apple because that's, we were talking on Amazon. You're already talking about. I mean, it's, why aren't we always talking about Apple? Hype check Amazon. Everything we just talked about?

No, no, Amazon. In life. In your life. Like a... I don't know. That's a lot. Yeah. Because that's a lot.

Hype checks a big job. That's like their workplace conditions. Welcome to the desk, Kirsten. No, not their workplace conditions. I mean, you don't have to be that. That's kind of a part of the state of their company. Not what they're doing to the economy. No, I mean, okay.

Wait, are Apple's Chinese workplace conditions part of their story? Yeah, maybe. Like, who knows what it's like at the TP link factory where they're... Amazon is like... Amazon is like a 7. Amazon does some things that are... amazing Amazon does something. Wait, we can't leave, we can't leave the Amazon conversation without talking about the

Echo. Because I, that's why. Oh, yeah. You're all about the Echo, aren't you? It's the best thing ever. Yeah. It's great. I love my favorite.

I listen to my Echo all day today today. I think, I think that is the future of computers. Like talking to things in your house. Yeah. And like that machine, if it connected to like every, like, if it controlled my lights and controlled my TV, but it could also understand things like, you know, I tell it to do something and remind me tomorrow, but also add stuff to lists. If it was just like the computer in my house that I could talk to, like the Star Trek computer.

I think that would be amazing. I think the Echo is a brilliant hardware product connected to a pretty bad software service. I have to spend like all day Saturday figuring out music on my Echo because I'm like, Echo, play me some music. And they're like, okay. And then like one good song, where'd that song come from? Oh, I said something I thought was completely, well, I said one thing that worked, which was I said, play some music. and I was like, I'm playing you this play. I picked a random prime playlist, I'm playing it for you.

And I was like, three songs, I was like, this pretty good. I was like, Alexa, I like this playlist. And she was like, that's great. I marked it down. And like three days later, I was like, Alexa, play that playlist I like. And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, this is the simplest in her. There's one starred playlist in this whole system for you.

Like, that's, the hardware that's brilliant is like the directional microphone and the light that follows you. And like, the whole hardware design is brilliant. It's really fast, too. It responds. Like, it's faster than Siri. Like, you say Alexa, and it, like, instantly responds in a way that it feels, like, a little bit freaky because you're not used to computers being that quick.

And, like, and the other thing is, it, they're updating it really quickly. Like, it keeps getting better kind of silently in the background. And I, like, I use it a lot for kitchen timers. Yeah, that's almost all I use for. The other day, like, a couple weeks ago, I noticed that it could do. multiple timers at the same time. Oh, yeah. Oh, really? And it was just...

But they all have the same alarm. Yeah, yeah. So if you set them pretty close, like if you're like cooking a bunch of stuff, and like, I want one at five minutes, then two minutes, so you're like, set another one for 10 minutes. You don't know which one is ringing, right?

But I bet the next time we try it, like, they'll change that. Like, it's cool that it just updates. You know, like, have you tried like, hey Alexa, say, hey pizza to me in 10 minutes? No. No.

Maybe that could work. And then she just say, hey pizza to me. I will say that it is so sensitive that there were, when they do ads on television. Yeah, it's constantly responding. So that, I think, is one of the most interesting Amazon products that exist. Yeah. And I think they got there, in the midst of all of their hardware turmoil and leaving people, letting people go, they got to a very simple idea, but a very disruptive idea way before everybody is.

Right. I mean, it's surprising that Google didn't do that. Or Apple. I mean, it's not the kind of thing that Apple would do because it's, like, see, unusual. It's like a little bit bizarre. That's a little bit of a... little bit of a, a little bit of a burn. I mean, Apple's product, like, future seems fairly predictable, right?

Like, even the watch wasn't, like, a huge surprise. This was, like, a out-of-left-field product. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because that we were just joking with the On Hub, and everyone's like, why isn't the On Hub? I think you tweeted about this, too. You're like, why is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think it's just because they're both cylinders. And the instinct is to say, like, well, that's a cylinder. Why doesn't do the thing that... But a router, like, sits away in... That's possible. It's designed to not sit away. It's designed to sit in the center. That's why they made it.

But it doesn't, it has to sit near your cable connection. That's the problem. Yeah. Which I bought a huge giant internet cable so I can move mine to the house. Yeah, no, I just like the echo is like,

it's just sitting in my kitchen. It's like plugged in. So, I mean. I should set my echo next to my on hub and just have them be like friends. But so confusing. It seems if the, Echo idea catches on.

If, like, a home automation catches on, you would imagine that that kind of thing would be built into set-top boxes, right? Like, into the Apple TV, or I think Amazon's new fire TV thing has Alexa in it, right? Yeah. It does, yeah, it does. Right.

So. I don't want to leave my TV on. Yeah, that's true. You know, I get the weird sense that Apple with the Apple TV wants you to leave your TV on. Like, it's not like they didn't say it. Yeah, well, I mean, they built in, like, the screensavers that are, like, super gorgeous in my opinion. But, like, they do.

definitely want you to leave your settop box on. Yeah, it's just really strange. It's like, I don't, that's like a dream. Like, that's like an early 2000's dream of what houses would look like. Like, you would walk in and all the screens would be on showing you paintings. So maybe the, I don't know. And then you would, like, speak and all, they would all light up. No, but you could imagine that, like, the TV could have the screen off, but the audio on.

Like, and so it responds, like, Alexa. So you definitely don't know that it's tracking. Yeah. Wow. I don't know that that idea died in the early 2000s because, like, all of my friends, every time I go to a party with like 20 somethings, every, like, TV has some kind of video or some kind of like thing muted playing. And then there's music playing like for the party. Yeah. So like people will do like the like moving art stuff on Netflix or

they'll find like slow mo videos on YouTube. Like the idea of having a moving art or like moving TV I think is totally popular. That idea is cool. No, you're right. But I meant to like it's like a very back to the future too. Where you like you walk in. and you're like, what's going on? And your boss is like, you're fired and all your fax machines explode. Like, that idea where the screens are just on in your house all the time. You're not there and they're still on is crazy.

I mean, do you guys remember the stories about, like, Bill Gates's new house? Like, you know, like in, like, the 90s where he had all this art, but it was, like, digital art on, like, big TV screens that were around his news. And now it's, like, a normal thing. Like, like, I imagine that in the future we'll just have, like, LCDs everywhere. Right. Yeah, but. Well, they still be LCD.

Or whatever. Or whatever. Like, very, like, we should. No, that's, like a particularly Microsoft dream

that everything will be a projector and a touch surface. Yeah, we should do a super cut of like all the Microsoft home of the future keynotes from CES. Oh my gosh. Put them all together into one giant house.

Because you could do it all now. All the stuff they promised. And their vision was that you would have a Windows PC in your basement just like handling it for you. Yeah. Which seems not maybe what they're filled. Like next to my water heater? Yeah, yeah.

This is like your thing. HP actually made one of these things. There's a home server. Yeah, it was like a giant tower. Oh, you didn't know this? This is like a thing. Like the goal, Microsoft's goal was that you would have basically a mainframe in your basement in a cabinet next to your fuse box or something. And your cable would plug into it and your power would plug into it.

How long ago was this like? This is like seriously like 2006. Like the day before the iPhone came out. It's like cloud computing just like this the dumbest sounding. No, no. Seriously. Well, it's like cloud computing kind of happened because the phone was so much less powerful than these like mainframe PCs. Right.

So like literally the day before the iPhone came out, Microsoft was like, what about a mainframe for your basement with like four cable card tuners and like 50? Like it was ridiculous. And all of that like Windows Media Center, all that stuff is they're peeling it all out. They're peeling entirely out of windows because nobody wants that stuff anymore.

Because instead of cables, we have Wi-Fi connections to cloud services. I want that, I want that server in my basement. I want a basement first of all. Do you miss having a basement? No. No, it's not a California thing, yeah. Yeah. So in my in like in California you'd have like a shed with like a Microsoft right

Right we gotta get your Microsoft shed that should be your next call on for the time Yeah build it you should just build a like a future home of the 90s now Because all that stuff has got to be up lying around yeah yeah it's gotta be available You know Cina just bought a house oh did you like in Kentucky or something wow yeah they bought a They have a warehouse full of washing machines you know they just bought a house a giant what's the washing machines Because they just review everything Oh, I see. Oh, so they want like a stage.

So they literally have like a warehouse to test appliances in the middle of the country. And they just like literally put up a post. It's like, we bought a house. And it's like you're just going to change the doorlocks in this house like every week. That's going to be awful. Enjoy. Okay. I've got to read this thing.

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Connected to this cloud. Think about it. All right. That's not so great. Okay, so we vaguely talked. It's time for Microsoft. We're already like halfway there. Yeah, I feel like we're weaving Apple in and out of this.

So let's do Google, Microsoft, and then Apple. Okay, Google. Google. I don't know. Google seems everywhere and competing with everything, and their future looks a little bit. I mean, if we're talking, if, you know, our earlier conversation was about the web, right?

Like, if the web goes away, like Google is screwed, right? Like, it's hard to imagine. Like, they make all of their money from this. platform and then and then search right like if search moves to something like the the OS layer on your phone that's terrible for them uh you know iOS users are the most valuable users they're the ones that advertisers want and so if you can start searching for stuff I mean they're saving grace is that Apple doesn't seem very good at this well they offload it to Bing right yeah so they offloaded it to Bing but even like the

The, like, predictive stuff in the new iOS is not very good and sophisticated. There is one thing that's incredible. What? Which is in the recent call list, if you get a call from a phone number that's not in your contacts, it will have already searched through all your email. Yeah, that's great. And it'll make a guess at who it is. Yeah, I've noticed that.

It's crazy. That's crazy. You don't like the suggestions, like if you scroll left on your home screen and get the serious suggestions. They're the worst. Oh, really? They're awesome for me. What? I mean, do you know.

These giant round icons for, like, coffee. shops you'll never go to a gas stations. Not those. Not those. It's that they show me the last. I live in New York. I do not need gas. No, no, no. It's not about that.

You're saying the last apps. It's about, no, it's, well, it's about the last apps, but it's also about if you scroll over the, like, top section is, like, the four last people that you dealt with in any kind of, like, messaging or anything. Yeah. So for me, they had that in multitasking before. They just moved it to a different screen. Yeah, but this is faster and easier for me to get to, and it's right where I go when I go to search

for, like, I mean. But that's not at all, like, predictive or anything. It's not intelligent. It's just like the last people we talk to. Yeah, but, I mean, that is looking at data and then showing me something that I think I might want. In theory, that list will change depending on time of day. One of serious suggestions for me in that list of contacts is myself. Why do you have yourself in your phone?

I don't know. Why are you texting yourself? It used to be a thing. You'd always keep yourself in your phone so you could, like, look your contact. Has anyone ever actually done that? No, it's literally, I are going to line up your phones and then be texting. and then beam it over. Nelai.patell at SBNation.com,

which is an email address I received in 2011 from this company when it was called. I don't know why that's there. I haven't like interacted. That's weird, yeah. Email just doesn't even exist. I don't know. Siri just wants to remind me of the good old days.

Like that's what Siri's after right now. It's like, remember, you were young. That's what Facebook does. You were idealistic. I will say that like, I don't need to get gas. But there are times that you do. No, but it should know those times. It's like, are you moving in a car?

Right. I should be able to... Actually, I should be able to know if you're moving in the car. Yeah, I mean, I think phones can tell that, right. I mean, I think... But, like, you know, if... Search in the... Like, people were holding it up.

What happened? I just heard a noise. Someone's phone notifications have been on the entire time. Yeah, that's me. That's who I am. You know, search in iOS, like, a bunch... When they unveiled it at WWDC, a bunch of people were saying, like,

this is going to be a Google killer. I don't think it's going to be a Google killer. But, you know, But, you know, if they improve it to a certain extent, it could be bad for Google. Right. What do you think of the Google Alphabet situation? I don't know. I thought it was a big deal at the time, but then the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's just like a formalization of, like, a structure that had already been in place and may not change anything.

I mean, I guess since then, they've done some things like they hired a new person for the car project, and it looks like the car project will become a bigger thing. Maybe they'll allow those other projects to become, you know, to become products in a way that maybe they've been hampered at some point. But it doesn't seem like it's going to change like the fundamental, like the fundamental thing they need to do that they've been trying to do for a while is to come up with a thing to pay for stuff after search goes away. Right. Or, you know, alongside it, some new huge business. And, you know, they have time, but it's not clear if like any of these other things is going to be, you know, like the blockbuster for them right i mean i don't think search is going away and i think this is kind of what you're getting to right like the app based search or the home screen based search the os layer search it's got to get that's a to compete with google it's got to be as good as google it can't just

be slightly more convenient because everybody knows to just press that safari icon or like open a google app and get there but so a lot of the searches i do are like navigation searches right like And if I do a lot of navigation searches, that's already gone because I'm just like loading up apps. If I'm doing like research searches, like, let's say I want to like find movie times and stuff. Like those aren't hard searches to do and Apple could do them. And then you could imagine like a whole bunch of like intelligent automated stuff moving toward like things like Echo or Siri. Like searches that you used to do on your computer. Like you may have like looked up your doctor to make an appointment.

or something, and then now you can just, like, tell some smart assistant to do it or something like that. Like, I imagine that we'll get to a future where, like, AI and will be so good that we will have to search less. Yeah, but that's Google's feature. I mean, that's like, that was Google Now for a minute. Right, no, I think Google is, like, well positioned to do that, but there are all these other, like, they have to compete with Apple for this.

You think Google Now should give Google Now a name? Everybody else, like, does Siri and Portaa and whatever? Why do you think the name should be? Oh, you mean like a personality? I think it needs a personality to name because if you think about all the other ones, it's trying to simulate you dealing with like a personal assistant. Or you dealing with another person and it's going to make you more willing to like, it's weird to say empathize with like an AI,

but it's going to make you more willing to kind of accept that as a personality. If it has a name. I wish it had a name because I like Google now. It's my favorite one to use. But I wish I could just be like, hey, Greg or whatever. Greg. It should be alpha. It should be Batman's

Google Greg. Greg is like Google Greg is like really good. I just named it. You know like particularly like very Well it has to be like ungender right? Like it can't be a male or female. It should be male.

Oh no. It should totally be a good. Yeah. I have a question now. There's already two women. Has there ever been? No, that's not true. You can turn Surrey into a boy.

Yeah. You can turn it British. You can have a British boy, sirry. Here's my question. And it's just a real question. Maybe you don't have to answer it now. Just think about it. Has there ever been a threatening.

Greg. Because you need a non-threatening name. What has there ever been a threatening Greg? I'm just asking. Tweet me a threatening Greg. I'm sure there must have been a serial killer named Greg. Right. He's like, I'll show you.

Yeah. I am threatening. You're like what in the house? Greg Jennings? Who? Yeah. He's not that threatening. She's a football player.

Like, it's fine. Like, it's, I don't know. Yeah, there's no Greg the terrible. We used to have an accountant here named Craig. He was vaguely threatening because he controlled my expense reports. Like, I don't know. Okay, so we should do very quickly, you have like two minutes left with us. Apple.

Just give us... I thought we talked about Apple. We just did, we did iPad in a context of Amazon. I mean, Apple's easy. Like, Apple's future is the iPhone, and there's nothing going to... Nothing is going to... Do you think Google, here's my question, the real question. If the web starts dying, do you think Google should just make a phone?

Like, not do this Nexus garbage, but you're like, make its own phone and say, like, this is the Google phone. Buy this one instead of the Apple phone. because right now they're just dancing, right? They're waiting for Samsung to do it for them and Samsung isn't going to do it for them. Well, yeah, we're not going to do it well. And, like, Google should, like, they Chromebooks are like, hilarious joke. Like, the move, the obvious move for Google is to say, like, we're making our own operating system that runs on our phone and our PC. Do you think Google can make a hardware, software combination that can compete with the iPhone?

Like, do you think that it could be, you know, like, because I, so I think they can make something that's good enough. but at this point, there are so many people who are, like, entrenched in the iOS ecosystem, and Apple's future is to, like, make that ecosystem better and better and, like, harder to go away from, that it would take a lot to get people away from that whole ecosystem into a new thing. I mean, Google's ecosystem is the only sort of competitor

there is to Apple, but it's still, like, if you live in an iOS... A bunch of Microsoft people are tweeting you right now. Yeah. Well, like, even if you accept that you can't convert the current Apple people because they're going to... There's some future. There's still plenty of room to, like, get new customers and, like, other areas. I feel like...

They could do it. I feel like the smartphone wars are over and Apple has won. But they didn't, though. They have less market share. Yeah, they have... I understand that they make more profit. That doesn't matter. Like, they have the...

The reason that we talk... The reason we think about... It matters if you're talking about Apple's stock, but otherwise it doesn't matter. The reason we worry about, like, content blocking on iOS is because, like, all of the business of entire digital. economy occurs on this one device. Like, these are the most valuable people. And there is a future in which all those people who are running $50

Android phones, like, become the future of the tech industry and, like, become valuable and, like, you want to sell them stuff. But I don't really, I think those people are going to graduate to iPhones. Like, and that economy, like, it's really hard to pull away from iOS once you're in it. Like, that's what the whole Apple TV is for. That's what, like, perhaps what the well. watches for if it like becomes a thing that people want like it's just going to tie you further and

further into the super super profitable device for them and they don't need to get everyone i mean they just need to get like the the wealthy 30% of the i just think that there are there are plenty of people who would who it's like a it's like a new thing syndrome right like people just want new stuff yeah and i think there's plenty of people who would take a very serious look at a real, like, high-end Google phone or a really high-end, like, Google apps. It could do more than just run Chrome. But I don't even know. How do you improve upon a smartphone to this point that, like, you're willing to switch?

Like, smartphones are smartphones. Like, they do things really... People switch all the time. No, I don't think people switch. Oh, people switch all the time. I just call Dieter Google. No. And we're done.

That's it. That's our show, everybody. That has been... Nied Google. This is Google. By Hot Nacho is here. All right. Are we really done?

Google, do you think you want to say? By the way, that's what they should name Google now, Dieter. Yeah, that would be great. Deeter would be good. No, everyone would call it Dider. But there is, by the way, there have in history been threatening Deeters.

Yeah, that's true. Threatening Greggs? No one's provided me. But maybe that's the thing. No, it's a bunny. Wait, Greg the bunny? Yeah. No.

It's literally a bunny. Not threatening. No. All right. Do you want to take us? I would. I would love to take us home, but I have to find the home taking information. All right.

No. You got it? Are you doing the engagements? Did you tell me to do them? No, I'm, I'm, before I take us home. I don't know if you know this. We are terrible at starting and ending the show. We're worse at ending the show.

The middle is great. In the middle is mediocre as well. The middle is the middle. And also our podcast producer Jorge is incredibly aggressive. All right, end the show, end the show. in the show because I have one more ad to do. Okay. Well, you don't know that comes at the very end.

Okay. The very end. I think we're wrong. You need two sentences about Microsoft real quick. What are that? Oh. Dropbox just froze my computer. Microsoft could do really well if people paid attention to them.

I don't know. HoloLens looks cool. Yeah, that's true. Batman. It's that. They have like a Microsoft has a real insecurity issue right now. Yeah. All right. If you want to follow us on Twitter, there are a few places you can do it, the most obvious places at Verge. But did you know that there's an account called at Verge Cars, which is all

about Verge transportation? It's true. It's the truth. You should follow it too. We're also on Snapchat. You can see Kirsten do crazy hijinks there. That is The Real Verge. And of course, we are also on iTunes. If you go to iTunes.com slash The Verge, you will find us. You'll find a link to go give us five stars, which obviously you should do. You'll also find a couple other podcasts that we make here,

including Verge ESP, what's tech, and I don't want to give anything away, but there might be another one. Yeah. It's going to be something. It's going to be something. Yeah.

You're really, really, really, really going to want to listen to it. Like, really, really, like totally really. Like, if you're the sort of person

that routinely waste an hour listening to this show, I think you're going to be really into that show. But if you're the sort of person, I don't know, that... That's not listening to the show right now? Then they're not listening to the show. Individually, make them listen to that show.

On Twitter, I am back on Neely. It's reckless for how does F. Manjew? That's right. Sweet. And I'm at Kirsten Fricenna. Yeah. Oh, you get the ad. The rest of us don't.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Cool. Wait, wait. I got to read one more. Wait, wait. Wait, wait.

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Give us five stars. Do you ever say that part? I've ever said that part. All right, whatever. And just, BrainTree. Just get it. The end. Google.

Google. Google.