The Vergecast - Goodbye to Dieter Bohn, with special guest Walt Mossberg

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

This was a tough one. The Verge co-founder and Executive Editor Dieter Bohn is leaving us. Nilay Patel, Walt Mossberg and Dieter Bohn walk down memory lane and discuss their first meeting, founding The Verge, CES memories, and what Dieter is doing once he leaves. Behringer's iNuke Boom is the essence of Vegas And now, a brief definition of the web Dieter on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast Flagship podcast Vox Media. I'm saying it this time. I only say it on special occasions. We used to say it all the time because we were the only podcast.

Now we have lots of others and we've got to be friendly. But sometimes I say it. I'm saying because it's a very special episode of the Vergecast. If you are here looking for News of the Week, Apple event, preview, all that stuff. We have another episode in the feed.

We're doing it. You can go listen to it. This one is very special because our friend Dieter Bone, co-host of the Vergecast, co-founder of the entire Verge is leaving us. Hi, Dieter. Hello. Yeah. What are we going to call this Verge cast? The bittersweet cast.

I keep saying bittersweet excitement, which I think sounds like a paint color. This garage just painted bittersweet excitement. We thought long and hard about what this episode of the show could be. who could be on it with us. There's only one person. Our friend Walt Mossberg is here. Hey, Walt. Hey, guys.

Walt, you once famously retired from The Verge. I feel like you're going to have some good advice for Dieter. I feel like, you know, I just needed to be surrounded by friends and loved ones at this time. We've got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about how we started the Verge. Deer has been in media for 20 years, which is a lot to talk about. There's a line in a rundown that says Walt has other talking points he has prepared, which I have no idea what you had in store for a small point.

Hang on, hang. Does this mean that this is the greatest validation of my career ever? I have made Walt do writing in retirement. It's true. Also, we have some clips from other people who've worked with Dieter. It's been a long career. Deeter, you've impacted a lot of people. People want to say goodbye.

Actually, let's listen to a couple of those now. Hey, Dieter. It's me, Joanna. usually you're the one asking me questions on the Vergecast, so I'm a bit at a loss of what to say here, but here goes. We haven't worked together on a daily basis since, well, I guess since Justin Bieber fell in love with me. But I'm pretty annoyed that you're leaving this job because you make me better. Yes, this is about me. There are really only a few people out there these days that really review and test things. And when I know we are both working on a review at the same time, I think,

crap. What is Deeter going to pick up on that I don't? So, yes, you will be missed deeply by me and those in the industry and those who are just trying to figure out what is a computer. But I couldn't be more excited for you and I am so proud of you in this next step. As I once boldly said, go f*** them all. Or did I say f*** them all? Anyway, do those things. Hey, Deeter, it's Phil. I wanted to say huge congrats on leaving us. I can't believe it, you, Trader.

We're going to miss you a ton. We're going to miss your videos. We're going to miss reading your great articles and reports. It's been really awesome getting to work with you. And you've been a mentor to me and so many people on the team. And I know we're all just looking forward to seeing what you do next. We'll see you on Twitter. So, Deeter, we have to address the burning question in the room.

You're leaving the verge. I am leaving the verge. Where are you going? You know, it's been 20 years of media, and I want to go try doing something different. So I'm going to go work for Google. I'm going to work on the platforms and ecosystems team, which is the group that makes Android and Chrome and Chrome OS and Google Workspace and some of their messaging apps. And I'm going to be working on long-term strategy. I'm going to be working on helping come up with clear narratives, clear stories.

and working on the product. So for me, this change is about sort of less public speaking, less identifying myself with who I am publicly online, and more about helping to build products. I still care about the way that technology creates culture, the way that technology and culture interact with each other. I just think that I'm excited to try doing that from a product perspective instead of a reporting perspective.

I think you're going to help them. I think that 20 years in media is fully paid up dues as a media guy. The thought has crossed my mind over the years that it would be fun to go somewhere and actually have an impact, direct impact on the products rather than an indirect impact. I think it's, I mean, it's obviously a loss to media, but I think Google is being very smart to bring you in inside the tent to help them because, frankly, Deeter, they need help. They need help figuring out a narrative for everything they got going. Even if we leave out the 18 messaging apps, they need a little help.

But I want to talk about something that only I can talk about, I think, which is I had 40 years in media. when I went to the verge seven years ago. You always got a one up me, don't you, Walt? I always do. This is why I brought Walt in at the end. You got to bring them out of the other. And I knew Neely. I'd known him for, you know, some years beforehand.

I even tried to hire him once. But I didn't know you. And Neely brought me and Lauren Good, who were part of the crew from Recode, which was going over to... the verge to New York and sat us down in one of those crazy no privacy offices right across from the two of you. So that was my first encounter with you. And I have to say, Neely was no surprise. It was no surprise that I liked him. It was no surprise that I already had figured out what

what his downsides were as well as its upsides. But you were a really pleasant. But you were a really It wasn't surprise, I have to say. Wow. You were kind of Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, and you did both tremendously well. Your journalism, your reporting, your videos, which actually got better and better over the years, the videos in particular, were already great. I had read them, but I had not met you. but what I didn't understand was that you were also making the trains run on time inside there with with Trello and which I'd never heard of in my life and and I was the editor or the co-edictor of

the co-executive editor whatever was called at Recode and the co-CEO but I we didn't have we didn't use Trello we didn't use any of that stuff you had all these tools and you were kind of herding cats inside while doing terrific journalism. And the other thing I have to say that both of you, I think, know I've always highly valued is speaking to the mainstream. I mean, you can nerd out with the best of them on anything. And sometimes you do, and that's fine. But you also, I think, have shown a terrific talent if you're talking about whatever

you're talking about, messaging, phones, whatever it is. You have terrific talent at talking to the mainstream consumer, which I think will, I'm betting, will be something that you bring to the table at Google and help them. Because I would have no problem having a member of my family who knows nothing about tech, watch one of your videos to understand whether they should buy whatever it is you're talking about or why they should buy it or why there's really not much difference between these two competing

things or whatever it is you're you're talking about so i am going to miss those to be really honest and i also have to say that i consider you a friend thank you i consider you a friend too and i'm very happy for you to go on to another chapter of your career but i'm a little bit sad for you to lead media and that's just the truth We spoke a little bit earlier, and you pointed out that you got into tech media when you are, or the same age that I am now, and that, you know, if you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're younger than me. And the things Walt has told me about being willing to reinvent yourself and try new things, you know, really, really helpful. And so thank you for that.

Well, you're welcome. And everybody listening to this should reinvent themselves every once in a while. I am concerned about a couple of things. Okay. I think there's going to be a crisis of puns on Twitter. Who is going to fill your shoes posting puns on Twitter? I think I can still tweet puns. I think I don't think there'll be a problem there.

Does Google have like a social media policy? One assumes, I don't know. To be clear, like, um... No, they have 16 social media policies. And Samsung has its own that comes preloaded. Yeah, right. Right. But you're pretty sure you can keep up the puns?

Because that would, there's all kinds of problems at Twitter. But the sudden loss of puns would be just another one. So I'm a little worried about that. It'd be catastrophic. I think I'll tweet puns. I'll also tweet angry videos about bike lanes. I'm anticipating that. Like lanes, yeah.

Yep, yep. Yeah. I'm kind of glad, Nilai, that Control Walt Delete, the podcast you and I did for a couple of years together, is no longer active. Because, as you know, in every single episode, we had to say, Peter Bone. It came up a lot. You know, that would be a little weird now. This guy at Google, we're talking about. I think we can still do it and we can still mention Dieter and blame him for everything.

Oh, yeah. I fully expect what I'm most excited about. We would blame him. I do want to disclose really quick that as you're listening to this, I will not be dead. I will already be dead. I will already be kicked out of the Virgin Newsroom. So at, you know, at the moment that I'm going to formally accept this job at Google, I will have already been gone from the Virgin Newsroom.

Yeah. We'll just do the. Transparencies are brand, right? Disclosures are brand. So Deeter, I can't have a Google employee in my newsroom. That's a very challenging problem. Yeah. So we asked Deeter and he agreed to not actually accept this gig until we had made this show and he'd made his goodbye video on YouTube and wrote his last post.

So we have this very, you know, in the end it's very simple. He's going to leave the verge and he's going to, but it's orchestrated. We had like stage manage this exit. So that's our disclosure. again, I believe in transparency is it's probably too much. This is like Walt, the old recode disclosures that we have modeled

everything after for years. The famous line was, it is probably more than you want to know. But here it is. And that's how I feel about this. Are you walking Dieter out of the building? Is security coming to do that? If I had the opportunity to walk Deeter out of the building

to make him put all of his like old Nokia phones in a cardboard box, and I'm like, I would have Absolutely. That's the photo I want to see. That's the Instagram I want to see. If I could pull that off. But Deeter works at home now, so he'll be walking him out of his own garage. No, he has to come to the office so he can leave the office. I'm in the San Francisco office. You have to hire two guys, big guys, in security uniforms to walk him out. Look, it's not going to take two guys to intimidate me. I'm not that powerful. I'm actually in the San Francisco office now and I opened up a drawer.

and sitting right there was like a one plus one. And I was like, oh, man, I've been doing this a while. Remember the one plus one? Like that, there was so much excitement about that phone. Anyway, why do we take a break here from some other people? Come back. Dieter, I'm dying to hear some of your kind of favorite moments for me to run at the verge. But let's hear from some folks.

Hey, Dieter. It's me, Nat Garon. Remember the person you tried to hire by telling her you were better than her at two dots and then you actually weren't? Anyway, the verge, wouldn't be what it is today if you hadn't been around to shape it. So I'm sure already know that the tech journalism industry is going to miss you so very much. And personally, I want to thank you for always being a sounding board as a boss, a mentor, a collaborator, but most importantly a friend. I'm looking forward to how you shape the next era of Android. And while you're there,

remember, I'm one with the blob. The blob is me. Bring it back. Bye. Hey, Dieter. This is your San Francisco buddy, Viren. And also for the listeners who don't know me, I'm the senior video director here at The Verge and have been working with Dieter for quite a while, five, six, probably six years. I just finished editing our last video, our last processor video,

and it was a lot of fun until I got to the end, which was a little bit sad. But I don't want to talk about that right now. What I want to do right now is thank you. Thank you for hearing me out when I needed it. Thank you for listening to my directions on how to act in front of a camera, although sometimes you would ignore that advice,

and that's okay, all's forgiven now. We made some great videos, and we made a lot of them, very proud of the work we did together. Lastly, I want to thank you for being a mentor. Thank you for all your words of wisdom, and most importantly, I want to thank you for carrying my gear whenever my back would hurt, because that shit is painful. Also, we made a fucking documentary. See you, buddy. Good luck. So, Dieter Bone, you were the first person I reached out to when we were starting the verge.

The first non-engadget person. So I don't know if people know this story, ancient history now. There is 12 of us we worked at a site called Engadget. That site was owned by AOL, which Walt, I think you famously remember, was not a great company. Products were falling apart. They're still around. I think they got bought by Verizon, sold, whatever. We were all at AOL.

We saw the writing in the wall. We wanted to leave. We're going to start the verge. And we were thinking, who should we go out and get? And the only person on my list was Dieter Bone. Dieter, do you remember that first conversation? We talked for a minute for a while. What I remember is we first met and hung out at a Microsoft conference in Las Vegas. I cannot remember what it was a build.

It was a Windows phone event, man. It was a Windows phone event, and everybody was running around. This was the same thing as the big Embark WebOS event for the Touchpad and the VIR and the Pre-3. Oh, I have a different memory of that. Well, yeah. But in both events, like, I was, like, killing myself, running around, trying to get the news, caring a lot. You were doing the same. You were at Pre-Central and Windows Central.

That was pre-Central. The Touchpad Day in particular was wild because our content management system crashed. And so we live blogged the entire day by me opening up AOL Instant Messenger and then sending updates to the owner of Marcus Adolphson, who then was just hand-coding them into a blank HTML page and hitting refresh, hitting publish on it and telling people to hit refresh. We just straight up Drudge reported it. But you're basically saying that this was the only successful thing to come out of Windows phone. Is that correct? Yeah, so I remember this event. It was in Las Vegas, and you have to put yourself back in this mode.

People believe that Microsoft was going to compete with the iPhone. Yeah. You have to, like, put yourself in that space. It is very hard to put yourself in that space now. Remember, it was called Windows Phone 7 series. It was a completely backwards name. No one could figure out why they called it this. They announced three phones.

every time we would ask them a question, they would say, we'll tell you more, I don't remember what it was called, we'll tell you more at this event that's coming up. Yeah. So all of the hype in the world is about this event. They're going to tell us about the apps, they're going to tell us about the price,

and they're going to tell us with the partners. And so I got to go. Here I am in Vegas. And it's like me and Dieter, and Deeter and I had had this interaction many, many times where it was like the two bloggers and then like the army of legacy media reporters. Yeah.

sorry Walt although Walt was much more of a blogger about this time I'm not sorry it's all right and so we're just like peppering them with questions just like arms raised talking back no decor you know everyone else is sort of like writing their thing to file for

the print paper two months from now or whatever and Dieter are like real time like blogging and I was like oh that guy he's on my wavelength and then we ended up at the bar and Dieter told me he'd broken up with his girlfriend and that was a that was the whole situation And that's it. We were off to the races.

Disclosure, this was well before disclosure, my wife who works for meta. By the way, that event, they released no information. They said nothing and Wendy's done failed. Yep. I think there was like one sliver of news and nobody else even recognizes news, but we did. And we're like, well, I guess this is the news and we're here in Las Vegas. Yeah. The Palm event, that was different.

Because we were still competitors. Yeah. We were competitors at the Windows event, too, weren't we? Yeah. I think we were the, we were like kindred spirits because we were like, is there news? Are you, can you give us news? Is there, we were like a little team. At the Palm event, I was like a keynote.

Do you remember Jimmy Irvine was on stage? Yes. And he got totally knocked off his game by the president of Qualcomm who was like, he was trying to sell beats to HP at that time. Yeah. He just went on stage and rambled. It was like one of the best rambles of all time. But that event is the day I knew I was going to quit AOL.

Oh, wow. Because they had, I will never forget this. they were running like those horrible belly fat ads on our pages. Yeah. Do you remember those like early internet like garbage remnant? Yeah. One weird trick. And I sent this like furious email.

And I was like, I'm working my ass off at this event. And like some other person was like, those ads on your page suck. And it just like sent me in this spiral. So I sent this email. We got to get these ads off. And I received an email back from, you know, one of the well-meaning dilettante AOA executives. He was like, well, we're a team here. And I literally said, no, I'm the team.

It's me. I'm doing all the work. And that was the day I knew we were leaving. And you were there. And I remember, I was like, whatever we do next, Deeter's got to be on the crew. It was great coming to start at the verge. I don't know how public this story is. But when I interviewed at the verge, I met Josh Topolski at a bar at like almost one in the morning.

It was like midnight. And we talked until they shut us down and kicked us out. And we really had similar thoughts. A book by Jordan Lanier, You're Not a Gadget. It just come out, and I had, like, angry thoughts about this book. The next morning I went and I interviewed all day, starting at, like, 8 a.m. At HP to go work for WebOS. Then I had to pick between these two jobs that day.

This is really coming full circle. Yeah, yeah. I chose The Verge, which was at the time a very, very risky bet because it was a brand new thing, no idea if it was succeed. It is not the giant that it is today. It was like, you know, a new blog. Who knows what's going to happen with something like that. But I realized that I still cared and I continue to care today about helping people do a better job of understanding how technology affects their lives and making an impact on like their like ability to think critically about technology, and I wanted to give that a shot at the verge.

Before that, I had run smartphone experts, which was later called Mobile Nations. So I founded Android Central and Imoor, and we had a Nokia Central site. Of course, we had the pre-Central site. I got my start blogging at Trio Central. My first post was about Trio Mail, the email app that the carriers refused to allow Palm to pre-install on their Trio phones because they had to have their carrier. email apps instead. Anyway, yeah, it was a wild time.

And, like, you know, I show up and I'm like, oh, man, there's all these people from Engadgett. This is going to be really intimidating. Like, you know, walk in the tiny room in a terrible New York office that was, like, tiny. I think you got internet from, like, a satellite that only worked when it was, like, a perfectly clear sky or something. I know. It was a YMAX antenna on the roof.

We couldn't, I mean, the themes here are, right? Dieter writes a post about email apps, not being allowed by carriers. He shows up at our office. We can't get fiber internet, so I have to set up a WiMAX antenna on the loop. You can see where a lot of the themes for the whole thing came from. Wymax Internet did not work. By the way, the fiber company, they finally put fiber by that office. And to this day, still email me asking me if we want fiber internet at our first office.

You should say yes. Help somebody out. Oh, okay. Let's hear from some more people. Deeder is still the only person I know who can talk about theology, WebOS, the English language, RCS, iPhones, HDMI cables, and the history of the United States all in a single sentence, and somehow it all makes sense. It's a real achievement, and I'm going to miss him very much on the Vergecast and at the verge. Deere, I miss you. I'm very proud of you. Thank you for everything.

Well, Deeter, this is a really cool situation you find yourself in. And, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had to do one last RCS reference for the road. I'm absolutely gutted by your departure, but I think you're going to have a really fun time. I think Niela and I are going to try to have a fun time. We are going to be talking about Aaron Rogers a lot more on the show. We're no longer going to be talking about phones.

It's going to be all E-Inc all the time. Please send me all your tips about how great E-Inc is. And Deeter, I'm going to miss you, man. Deeter, yeah. You've done almost every job at the verge. as Walt had pointed out, you once basically ran the entire newsroom, you have blogged your face off.

My favorite role that you ever had was what we called Reports Editor, where we would have a daily meeting at the end of the day and talk about all the news and then assign the next day's stories. And this would be at like 5 p.m. Yep. So then Deeter, in the window between 5 p.m.

and everyone else leaving would have to leave that meeting and then scramble around to every reporter to get the next day's assignments out. Yeah. We should have had the meeting earlier in the day. It's like one of those things now with, you know, like six years of hindsight. You're like, why did we do that to ourselves?

We did it almost every day. Literally everything you can think of. But tell us some of your favorite moments. Man, there are a bunch. It also is a blur. I'm going to talk about CES for a minute. Yeah. It hasn't been in person for a couple years.

It hasn't been relevant for much longer in terms of, like, major products being announced there. And maybe, like, you count the number of, like, actually genuinely impactful products that were directly announced at CES. since an independent event. It's like, you know, less than half a dozen. But we always took it seriously, not because we thought that every single random gadget was important, but because it was an important way to sort of see what the industry was doing. So we didn't want to celebrate the industry.

We wanted to like see what they were doing and be there to report on it live. So, okay, one of my favorite things that happened there is there was this Bluetooth speaker, the size of a truck. It was the most stupid thing ever. it had like an iPhone dock on the top of it. So it was a giant like literally a truck size speaker. It was so big. iPhone dock.

And they're like, we're going to sell this for real. This isn't just a little. It was called the I nuke boom. The I nuke boom. And you bought it, Nelai, right? That's in the backyard right now. It was ridiculous.

But it had like a 30 pin connector. Like it was like old school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is very old. So I go and I look at this thing and I'm like, we should write about, it here, but I didn't want to just point at it and laugh. I obviously didn't want to take it seriously as a product, because come on, you're not going to sell a truck-sized Bluetooth speaker

called the Ainuk Boom. Nobody is going to buy this thing. This is obviously a gimmick to get attention. And then I realized like, oh, wait, gimmicks to get attention is what happens here. I will write about what it's like to observe a gimmick to get attention. The Verge very kindly let me write this post that called back to a very famous essay about Las Vegas architecture and architectural theory about painted sheds and ducks, which is very, very heady. Very deeter. I called the thing a duck, which is like amazing if you are familiar with the learning from Las Vegas essay. And the verges let me do it. I just like, I wrote this thing.

And I'm like, is this any good? And they're like, yep. It's like, okay. And it was weird. And, like, I had permission to be weird. We published this thing, which, you know, was not exactly nice. And I think it was Beringer that made this thing, right? I don't even remember.

I don't remember. I have to find this post. They're like, oh, this is fun. And then they, like, they hauled their truck-sized Bluetooth speaker out to our trailer where we were blogging from. And, like, we had a little, like, nerd dance party outside our CES trailer. Actually, the most CES version of that story was. right this is like an audio company this is 2012 this is a very different time and the guy was like do you want me to bring the booth babes and i had to be like no yeah absolutely not um it was a very

c s moment for me and it was like one of those moments where i was like i'm in a position of authority and i'm making this call and like it was like one of the first times and it was about this speaker yeah and it was just i i think about this story very fondly as being like it was an experience of our values. It was the verge just like proudly being weird and literary and heady about a gadget and also

it's a truck-sized Bluetooth speaker. And I was like, oh, we got it. Like, this is where we are. Like, you've triangulated our identity as a publication inside of this experience. Well, you did a couple CES with us, right? I did. And one of them was one

of my fondest memories, and I did 25, I think, I think CES and Comdexes over the years. But one of my favorite memories was we did a video of Deeter and I walking the floor. And we spent, I think we spent more, most of our time, not the same, we went to Samsung. We went to see all the TVs and all that stuff. But my favorite thing is we went to some little company. I can't remember the name.

They were like out of Missouri or something. Yeah. that every conceivable gadget you could think of, none of which Dieter and I had ever come across or written about or whatever write about, did ever write about. But in the video, the whole, the video just shows us trying things like rocks that are Bluetooth speakers. I mean, I'm not kidding. Rocks.

Yeah. I remember us saying to Tim Cook through the video, why don't you make one of these? And I don't know if Dieter remembers any of the other crazy stuff, but it was all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was like emergency radios and, you know, knock-off Bluetooth headphones and, like, flashlights that had, like, extra random crap bolted onto them just because. Right. Just random stuff. And so, you know, it's the kind of stuff that I imagine was sold in those ads you hated, Nilai. Yeah.

Did you guys lose any belly fat along the way? Maybe, you know, behind the front counter at CVS, you know? Yeah. That was their tech section. Because these guys seemed to be doing quite well. They had a reasonable amount of floor space at CES. Yeah. And so, I mean, I love that.

The scramble at that company when they finally realized that Walt Mossberg was at their booth was remarkable. Well, that's, no, it was they realized that you were at their booth. Oh, okay. The other thing I want to say is I was at the verge maybe five days, four days, before I was in the backseat of a cab with Dieter. We were on our way to a restaurant for dinner with you, Neely and others, and I got the lecture about the open web. I got the lecture about the open web. Yeah. Because I was and still am essentially an apps guy.

And I got the lecture about the open web. And we argued about it, but I think actually on balance over the years, Deeter, I want to tell you, I think you were right. Oh, boy. Wow. Yeah, let's unpack this. Deeder, your thesis about the open web versus apps has always been in the open web. the background of the verge. We've talked about it on maybe every verge cast, whether or not we even were explicitly talking about it. But it's basically that the open web is where the innovation

comes from. It's the democratic thing and the sort of app ecosystem or the one true answer from Alexa where you ask it a question and delivers it. That's all secret deals. And the consumer can see what is happening to them on the web. And that's better. How do you think that's gone? The cliche is always the web will always win. I don't think that's necessarily true. And I definitely am not in a position to say that the web is better than apps for many, many applications. I've never thought that. I think it's worse today for lots of things than it used to be.

But I've always felt that it was important to defend and important to encourage people to use it and to try to do cool stuff with it because it is still the platform that doesn't have a giant gatekeeper telling you what to do. And sometimes that's, you know, terrible because people do terrible things on the web. But it also is a chance for innovation without a massive resources or infrastructure. You know, not to put too fine a point on it, but like the verge only exists because we could just make a website. You know, we didn't need to like back in the day. Remember with the iPad, there was like the whole idea of the iPad as they would cut deals and it was good to like a news consumption machine.

And like, Rupert, Murdoch and News Corp made an entire iPad. newspaper called the daily. 50 million bucks. He spent 50 million bucks. And they hired some of the best people. When the daily fell apart, we like went and hired some daily people. Like, oh, these people are great. Yeah. Yeah. But they were like basically publishing a single PDF to an iPad a day. Yeah. And, you know, like the fact that we

didn't need to cut a deal to do something like that, that we could just, we start, the, the verge started as a website called This Is My Next. It was a WordPress blog that you all started and then I came on, just because everyone wanted to make sure that they stayed sharp with writing, but also because we were all just, we couldn't stop ourselves from wanting to, like, comment on tech and review tech and say things about the news events that were happening. Yeah, that moment is actually really instructive. So we all left and gadget, we're recruiting Dieter, Dieter comes on, is our first way higher. We started a website just to host what became the Vergecast.

It was called, This is My Next Podcast, because we didn't have a name. And we started the WordPress site just to put the podcast somewhere. Because back in those days, you just needed to do that. And then all of us, our plan was like, well, I'll just blog on our personal blogs. This is like ancient history that people thought this was a viable strategy. And then we're like, this is stupid. We should put it all in one place. And then our poor product team, which was desperately trying to build the verge,

started getting feature requests for the WordPress site we had started in the background. because we couldn't stop ourselves from using it. I'd be like, we've got an Apple event. Like, the iPhone 4S was announced when we were still, this is my next on our WordPress blog. And I was like, here's my feature list for how we're going to do an Apple event. And I very directly remember our product manager being like, do you want to delay the verge by one month?

Because if I go and do all this garbage you want on WordPress, I will not be building your actual website. And I was like, I'm going to have to think about that. Like, very naive. But all that's just web stuff. Like, we were able to just, like, build that stuff and invent it and go to the audience with it. Mm-hmm. But there's something to, and I recognize building apps is not easier than ever, but there's something about the lack of gatekeepers.

I think it's still very important. Well, I think when I say Deeter was right, I don't mean that apps are terrible. And he didn't say that apps were terrible. But I think we need to have unopened. open web. And if, and the pandemic has kind of proved it. I mean, you can do Zoom on your phone. Uh, you can do Zoom on your iPad, but most people have done Zoom on their laptop or, or, uh, whatever. And that's just, it's just a, a link to another tab. That's the Zoom call. It's just like, just like this podcast we're doing right now is

I don't know they have an app I guess but I'm doing it on the Chrome browser which is by the way Dieter there's a little bit of gatekeeping on the web

through Chrome through Safari through I have no idea about Edge I have no idea but Microsoft wants Microsoft is desperately trying to get keep on Edge yeah

Yeah, so there's a little gatekeeping there, but anyway, I just wanted to, you know, when I was thinking about Deer Bone, I was thinking about that lecture in the cab, which took almost no time to develop. Yeah. That's very accurate. Well, okay, so let's talk about gatekeeping on browsers like Chrome, for example. Like, when a company makes a website and it only works in Chrome, I refuse to say that it is a web app, that it instead is a Chrome app, or if it only works in. Safari, that rarely happens. It's a Safari app. This is another one of my favorite things I've done at The Verge. I spent, God, Neely, when did I first pitch the definition of the web to you? It took like two years. It did take so, like, two years. I just, I kept on writing it and

erasing it and writing it and erasing it and writing it and erasing it and, like, talking to people, and talking to people on the web and whatever. This whole thing got started because John Gruber over at During Fireball had published a post, wherein he argued that it was about apps versus web, and he argued something to the effect of, like, anything that uses HTTP is on the web, and therefore apps are part of the web. And I was like, hang on. And so then I thought about it for like two years, and I landed on this post that I'm very proud of, like, and now a brief definition of the web, where I said that in order

for something to be on the web, it has to be linkable. There needs to be a link, like you mentioned, the Zoom link wall. But then the second thing is it needs to be agnostic to the client. So there needs to not be a gatekeeper for it. It needs to be able to give me what it is it's trying to do using whatever computer or whatever browser app or whatever I choose to use with it. And unless the thing you're making the app, the page, or whatever, gives you that freedom, I don't think it should count as part of the open web. That was a great piece. I'm not sure I read it contemporaneously, but I read it.

and the other thing you forgot to mention is by being agnostic, there were no green videos and blue videos. It was no green bubbles, no blue bubbles. Just we're all here. We could be using different brands of computers. I suspect we're not, but we could be. And it would matter. And we could be using different devices, you know. Yeah.

I got that lecture and I, after all these years, I just wanted to say, I take your point. I take your point. That's a big victory. It's a giant win for me. Thank you. I think that's a good, an excellent place to take another break here from some other folks. We'll be right back. Oh, hello, Dieter.

This is Elvis from your Las Vegas wedding. I just want to wish you were successful next chapter in your life and always remember to Rock on. Deeter, it's your bud Becca. Sorry if you can't hear me over the sound of the crashing waves. I'm currently celebrating on a beach because the competition on the channel just well, let's just say thank God you finally leaving. No, I'm kidding.

Deeter, you've been an incredible mentor for me and is definitely sad to see you get going. I feel like you were just getting really good at Premiere too. But anyway, Android Trump's iOS all day every day. So just happy you're going to fight the good fight. I'll see you down the trail, bud. Hey, everyone. It's Lauren Good from Wired.

And I had the absolute pleasure of working with Deeter for at least a few years at the verge, which means that there are way too many stories that I can't possibly fit into this short little speech. But I think this sums Deeter up. The other day when Deeter texted me and asked if we could talk, I ended up messaging him the next morning at about 630. So it's pretty early. And he replied, good morning, L.O.L. Glad to see we are both still. And then he put this in caps, old people who are up too early. But I guess that story doesn't really encompass what a smart and kind and caring colleague and friend Dieter is. And this is something that I think Verge, readers and Verge YouTube fans have really gotten a sense of over the years because who Dieter is really shows in his coverage. And I know he is going to be sorely missed both at the Verge and in the world of journalism. But I also know he's going to do great and just be a great person no matter where he is. So good luck, Deeter. I would say I'll miss you, but hopefully I'll see you soon.

lastly the three of us have worked together a lot it would be remiss if we had this whole conversation we shouldn't talk about the news because deeter is not technically a google executive but we have covered an awful lot of apple events together in our time there's one next week but deeter i just want to talk about that that i'm just going to take credit for it because it's the day you're leaving okay i would say that we invented the sort of modern swarm and event approach live live live live posts, immediate hands-on videos. That was something that we were doing before The Verge at our various sites, the chaos of running around with... I used to take my first event videos on like a Canon Elf camera.

It's like a real thing I used to do and we were just like throw them up on whatever garbage player we could. I had some Sony camera that would like shape like a pistol. You remember the Sony camera? Oh yeah. That thing was incredible. Yeah, yeah. I used to have one of those Elgato Turbo 264 USB cards that would speed up video. video because of computers are too slow.

So it speed up compression and encoding for you. That was all stuff we made up and now it's a system. But dude, I just want to talk about that moment. Like, I feel like I can say this to you. Like, we were nuts, right? Like, that was not the right way to burn our time or be stressed. But we did it. I'm just wondering, like, looking back on it, like, what do we get right?

What do you think we got wrong? I completely disagree. Yeah. I don't think we were nuts at all. If you go to the site, you'll see my goodbye post. There's this long-running joke that I'm always the first person to show up at these live events. I'm like first in line. I should get there at like 6 a.m.

Everyone teases me for it. And I happily take that teasing because when we do these live events and like in the virgin general, people are like, how are you so good? And it's like, well, all our people care a lot. They all work very hard. And we like, we are organized, like rigorously organized in our logistics and what the plan is going to be. And then we execute on that plan. It's very simple. but I always showed up to those events early

and I always really killed myself to do the best job I could, be as fast as I could, and just like be as on as I ever have been because it genuinely was a privilege to be there. Most people can't go to these big tech events. And whether the products end up being impactful or minor, there's a very good chance

that thousands, if not millions of people, will be using the things that are announced that day. And so I always took it very seriously to do my best, to do the best work there. Because, one, there was a massive team back in the office watching along with us, trying to get news posts up while I was live blogging or taking pictures of a phone in a giant crowd or whatever. And I wanted to make sure I didn't let them down. But importantly, I didn't want to let our audience down. Because one of the things about The Verge is, you know, we take this stuff really seriously.

We take gadgets really seriously. We think that they are important objects because, You use them thousands of times a day sometimes. And so we know our audience does too. And so for me to be jaded about my 10th Apple keynote, to me just strike, it strikes me is just fundamentally unfair because it genuinely was a privilege to be there. Not because, oh, my God, I'm at the temple of Apple or the, you know, the amazing Google I.O. keynote.

I'm lucky to, like, go be in the presence of this company. It was I had the privilege of being the representative of our audience. at that thing. So yeah, I'm going to show up a couple hours early to make sure that I don't screw it up. How do you think that's changed? I mean, that's kind of the heart of this question. And Walt, I would give that to you too, right? Like when Walt and I were talking before we got on the air here, you mentioned that there was that early run of Apple where every keynote was like a Steve Jobs new product or at least the iPod was a different color, right? There was just like a fast and furious moment. whatever it is we had you know since I've retired a few years ago I've been thinking about

kind of the run of my career and products and all that and in the early days I'm not sure you guys were old enough to be writing then but maybe you were I don't know in 1991 in the early days everything was a new thing and you know finding things to review or write about or comment about wasn't that hard. And then you go through stages. Then the computer becomes relatively common. They agree on certain, even though they don't, I assume,

formally sign a treaty, but you know, you know what a touchpad looks like or a track pad, whatever word you want to use for it. And you know that the ones on the max are better than the ones on the PCs until the PCs catch up.

a few of the PCs catch up. But you know what that is. And things like that. I mean, you know, that wasn't always clear. I think the most exciting part of that whole period after everything got settled down was about 10 years after Steve Jobs came back to Apple. And this is not a plug for Apple, but it's just what changed the world, what was fresh, what was exciting, what was different?

and what was presented to you by one of the great salesmen ever. Those were those Apple events. I mean, you know, starting with the IMac in 98, going to the iPod and the iPod Nano and the iPod mini and all those things. That famous Saturday Night Live sketch where Fred Armerson playing Steve Jobs would introduce an iPod and then cancel it five minutes later. you know, and Tina Faye would go, wait a minute, that was only on the market for a minute, you know, he goes, too long. So those, and then, and then, of course, the iPhone, which is, you know, you could write a thesis on it. And then the iPad and, oh, and the MacBook Air in there. And that was an amazing, I'm not sure there's been a run of at least hardware.

products that could compare with that run over that period of time. And the events themselves became, in a way, the place to be if you were a tech writer, whether you cared about Apple or not, whether you thought the thing was dumb or you thought it was, you know, the answer to everything. It didn't matter. Those were the places to be. And those are the places all the journalists saw each other every time it came up. So it was quite an unusual thing. And I had been going to them, I don't think I missed more than one. I think I was snowed in for one or something. But I will say that the first one I went to with you guys and watching the organization, a lot of which was Dieter, was quite astonishing to me. I mean, I mean, I mean, I,

I helped a little with the live blogging. I sat there with an iPad mini and threw in lines into the live blog. But then immediately after, we huddled outside on the sidewalk. We figured out, you know, where to go for the hands on. It was all figured out beforehand. But, I mean, we reminded ourselves of that. We tried to decide if we should do a special podcast. I think we did do at least one of those, maybe more.

who was going to write what what you know what kind of nili i think you would always write something i wrote a column typically the next day out of sequence with my regular columns so you know there was no stopping and every kind of tool we had at our disposal to talk to our audience was used so i i was just blown away deeter would often assign me the role of schmoozing to just get me up out of the way. You go schmuse. Well, I got it. I mean, it was also because I am incredibly bad at it. Like, I

have learned to do a very good job to act like I am a social person and, you know, I'm comfortable in front of people. But the truth is no, everybody is terrifying all of the time. And so I would it was important that we try and get face time

with executives. It was important that we'd like talk to other people. And so I knew that I was bad at it and I knew that Nelai is very good at it. And I knew that the tool I had in my back pocket was that I could get them an introduction to Dieter Bone. Which is very, yeah. Once you find the leverage, you got to use it is my advice. Let's hear from a couple more people. And then let's wrap this thing up.

But here's a couple more people saying about it here. Hi, it's Maria. One of my most important memories of Deeter is actually from a shoot for Handspring last year. We were on location and someone mistaked me for the production assistant. and I was the senior producer for the project. Dieter quickly turns around and is like, hey, she's actually the one who's running this whole thing. This is as much her project as it is mine. In the last eight years working for tech blogs, I have never seen anyone in real time stand up for something like that.

Usually people will message me later being like, oh, hey, that sucks. Like, sorry that happened, even if they were there in person. I think for me that story really encompasses the kind of collaborator and person Dieter is really willing to champion others and in my experience really stand up for the things that are right. So we'll miss you a lot. Hey, Dieter, Tom here. I'm recording this on some type of Android messaging app. I'm not sure which one. So hopefully you actually get to hear it through the power of RCS.

In all seriousness, though, it has been a pleasure working with you over the last 10 years. your reviews, your YouTube videos, and analysis has been nonstop 10 out of 10, and we're going to miss you dearly. I'm now looking forward to watching you keep kicking ass, using really bad puns on Twitter, and standing up for the open web. All right, dude, there's two things I want to talk about at the end here. One, we haven't really talked about your growth in video, right? You started The Verge. We all just sort of made videos. We had no ideas we were doing.

You obviously ran with it. I want to just hear about that a little bit. Yeah, because I think what you have built with your YouTube audience is incredible. And then what are you doing at Google? But let's start with this video thing. I think a lot of people look up to you. A lot of people want to be YouTubers. How did this start?

How did it grow? What does that feel like? So we've always tried to do video at the verge. And the video team has made some incredible ambitious stuff. But you know, you also got to do like hands-ons and reviews and whatnot. There was a very early hands-on with, God, I think it might have been. the Nexus 5 and it was in a weird space

and there weren't a lot of journalists there and I was nervous and I didn't want to like bother everybody else so we did a really quick hands-on and I was like really quiet and I mumbled and I was like because I didn't want to interrupt people in the room

and so the hands-on gets published and Reddit and a bunch of people just excoriate me for this like I said the camera's going to suck before I'd even try it, how dare I turned out it was right I, you know, like, it was like an unenthusiastic, like, why are you so bored by this thing? You sound bored thing. And at first I was like really like, come on, man.

Like, you know, I don't actually, like, this is unfair. I was, you don't know the situation. Like, blah, blah, blah. And then I sort of just realized like, come on, that's not fair. Like, like, they're right. I sounded unenthusiastic. And the craft of making a good video, the craft of like, like communicating to an audience on YouTube or, you know, a different platform is a mix of, like,

understanding the conventions of that platform and like, you know, knowing where you can push on them, knowing where you should stick to them. And then actually caring about the craft of, like, being clear to camera and doing good work and, you know, like the visuals, which I am terrible with the camera, but our video team has been amazing. And so a lot of the answer to like, how did I, you know, get good about, how did I get good on video, was just really thinking about the audience, caring what I think people would want to see and what they need to know, and taking the time that they are generously giving us to hit play on a video, even if you're playing it at 1.5, like, you are giving me your time.

I owe you caring about the thing I make for that time. And so it's not, it was like, maybe it's like a Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours kind of thing or whatever, but mostly it was over and over again at the verge. We really do want to make good things for our audience. And so like taking a step and not thinking about like just the product itself and what I want to say about it, but thinking about the craft that I want to say about it. And that craft is not there because I want to be a better writer, although of course it is. The craft is there because like I. I care that a person who buys a phone, like they buy the right phone and they understand how it works and they have a good experience. And so I need to tell them that. But at the same time, I care about them having a good experience with the products that we make. And so like I just, it's a very long way of saying I just started trying harder. I mean, isn't that always the answer? But I tried harder in service of like for a specific reason that like I appreciate and feel privileged for the attention that people. willing to give us and I feel like I need to give back the most that I can for that attention. You know, I said earlier that I admired you as a journalist, but that that only grew. And I think your videos were an enormous part of that. You didn't try to be flashy.

You didn't try to be, you know, kind of fake, funny. You just, you came across as a guy, and this was always my goal. I couldn't do it in video. I just said. stared at the webcam in a 1998 Mac. You know, that's what I did and looked like a deer in the headlights. But what I mean is you have to come across as somebody that they can trust, that knows more about it than they do, but that still never, ever forgets people have to be comfortable with this. People have limited budgets.

People have needs. I mean, the Samsung camera can have 150 features, but you know that most people are just going to use the default. And you know that. And you said stuff like that in your videos. And your tests took all of that into account. You might show the crazy features for a minute or two, but mostly you use the camera the way you thought your audience would use the camera.

So I can't commend you enough for your video work. Thanks. Actually, Neil, can I ask you a question? Famously with our iPhone reviews, we really dig in deep on a particular camera feature. And often our reviews, both yours and mine, there's like all the stuff, but then there's like one thing that we just like go very hard on.

And I always like that because it, you know, like the feature itself was interesting, but it was also like a demonstration of knowing that these new things that are like you're getting put out by these companies like actually could have an effect on people's lives and that the the process of us showing how we examine and think about things was like a I don't know like a example for people who end up going buying them and not being journalists to think about those things like we were demonstrating for our audience a way to think more critically about. about, you know, the latest random camera feature or whatever. Yeah. I'm not sure what the question was. Now that you're a Google executive, I think you're filibustering on my podcast, just like the rest of them. It's fine.

It's good training. What I'll add to that is, we've done that a lot. I have all these ideas about the Verger's mission statement and the tagline. And what I've settled with lately is that we are a publication about how technology makes you feel, which I think is you can get it and no one else is crazy enough to say that about a tech publication. But that's what we're about. How does this stuff make you feel? The other thing that I always think, and this is very much Neli and Dieter being esoteric about things, is it's fun to be smart. Right? If you like come into this and you're curious, like we should reward your curiosity.

And in a media environment where we don't have the production budget of Apple and we certainly don't have their timelines. the amount of information that they can put out or that Google can put out or Samsung can put out about their phone is infinite and it's beautiful and it lacks all credibility in my mind because it's not real right they're trying to sell you something we're trying to show you the experience of using it and I think a huge part of the experience of using the stuff is understanding how it works or at least knowing and this is like very much what I've taken from data over these many years at least knowing that the people who have made decisions about how it works are authors themselves. They are making choices to provide you with a tool or an instrument in the Dieter Parliance so that you yourself will then make culture. And particularly I think this is true with phones and laptops and why I spend so much time thinking about cameras. The way a smartphone camera works is the biggest unlock in human cultural production that has ever existed. Like, by far, we are, like, the amount of video that we are, are just inundated with that

everyone can create the fact that we're on a video call right now to make this podcast in three different cities in the country. And I will tell you, we use Riverside, which prioritizes audio, so you guys are a little blocky funny. It's a podcast. That stuff is incredible. It happens because of cameras. And if you don't take the cameras seriously and the decisions that people made the camera seriously, you might find yourself not really understanding the cultural object you look at.

And that's why what's a computer or what is a photo in the context of computational photography? I think have been, yep, that's me and Deter nerding out. Like, that's just who we are. But I think the reason we've built an audience around those questions is once that light goes on your brain, you understand that you're asking. very deep questions about what it means to be like a participant in our society. And yeah, and then like it's cool so I can be like the face ID works by shooting lasers on your face and like

that all comes together. But you got to start with that big idea. And then I think that if you're curious enough, you will find the things that are very cool. It's always there. It doesn't always necessarily come through. Sometimes we just got to tell you the battery life man. Instead of like the philosophical meaning of really. And I'm like, it didn't light on fire one time it did. Sorry.

These phones explode is a real important thing to get through sometimes. All right, let's talk about Google. You're going to Google. I got a Google executive on the Vodschast. It's pretty cool. Not yet. I don't start for a minute. All right.

A pre. What do you do? Are you like going to be comms? Are you going to send me emails on background that I have to tell you that I don't do that anymore? Boy, I know our background policy. so I would never dare. I'm going to be not very public for a while. I don't know how long, probably quite a while.

I'm working inside the, again, the platform and ecosystems team. So I'll be working with the people who are making the actual products, and I'll be trying to help think, you know, more narratively and more deeply about what those products are, how they can fit together, and how they themselves could be better. Wait, I thought you were going there to fix their members. messaging app. Yes.

Both of us were like, he can do it. He can fix RCS. Yeah. Do you want me to talk about RCS?

No, I mean, I just want you to fess up. Go out with the bang, man. You're going, you're going over there to be the messaging guy. Yeah.

I am not. Please. So much more than that. I've said this publicly many times. I think that RCS is not the greatest messaging platform on Earth.

I think that it has. has many faults, but so does any messaging platform, but that it's sort of, it's the direction that Google has chosen and they need to see it through. But more importantly, it's the direction that carriers have chosen and they need to see it through. So as much as I will say, you know, Apple should support RCS because fundamentally RCS can be an encrypted platform and there should be privacy between iPhone users and Android users, which I do believe at a sysm. certain point, what we're talking about here are carrier services, because that's what

RCS fundamentally is if the carriers choose to support it. And so it's on them to be like, yeah, we're setting a sunset date on SMS. And that's like, that's what needs to happen. So you're going to be just spending all your days having meetings with T-Mobile? When Dieter first told me out of this job, I was like, here are some, here are some traps I foresee for you. Yeah, yeah. I think this job sounds really interesting. I do think that... Me too.

The thing I'm looking forward to is like, yeah, one day you'll be public again, and the first Dieter-on-decoder episode is going to be hilarious. Oh, man. It's going to be real good. I'm literally terrified because, like, everybody just needs to know if this ever happens, not only will Neely not play softball, it will be incumbent upon him, and I would do the same thing in his position to play the hardest ball possible. That's right.

on that one. And I'll be on his ass if he does it. I know. I'll, Walt will produce that episode. All right. We got to wrap this up. We've gone over, actually, in classic Vergecast fashion. Walt, did you want to say one last thing to do you?

I have enjoyed working with you. I've enjoyed being a consumer of your stuff. And I hope we still are friends. I'm pretty sure we will be. And I think Google is very lucky to get you. That's what I'll say. We are absolutely going to continue to be friends. Thank you.

I will continue to be both of your rivals. I'd like everyone to realize, I've now vanquished the both of you. Really, that's what this episode's about. No, I will, Dieter, I'll miss working with you tremendously. I don't know if people know this. We have very different kinds of public personas. because Deeter is more ambitious than I am. He has higher standards than I do.

He has consistently pushed me to be the best version of the editor-in-chief that I can be and to make The Verge great. And he has just absolutely esoteric intellectual ideas that he forces me to contend with, which is a useful exercise when you are in a creative partnership with someone. So I'm going to miss working with you. I still have your phone number. One of the hardest things about this episode is like Dieter's not dying. Yeah.

So I don't want to like we're even trying to calibrate the bittersweet excitement. That's what I started with. So I'm excited for you. I'm sad to be not working with you anymore. But I just really wanted to say, thank you. And I think from our audience, I hope I'm channeling some of them. You know, the hours we have spent on this podcast together have gotten me through challenging times in our life. I think like the pandemic, part of getting through the endless slogs of pandemic was just.

complaining about how many days it had been since a website was announced with you. And, like, all that stuff is really important. And I just wanted to say, thank you for that. And also, really, can you just do something about Chrome Battery Life? Because that would be great for all of us. Try. Well, I want to thank you for all of your guidance since we started working together. And also your kindness.

The thing about both of you, actually, that I think people don't, realize is how supportive and kind you are to your fellow employees to, you know, you're supportive publicly, but even better privately when we talk. It has really meant a lot to me. And, I'm not going to try and sum up 12 years of friendship and working together in 30 seconds because good Lord. But, you know, the number of times I've, you know, the number of times I've submitted a draft to you and both been terrified and excited for you to just tell me that it was wrong or that I like missed it, I can't count because, you know, I've needed you to check me. I've, it's been incredibly, I don't know, it's deep in my humanity to have you force me to

think more clearly about things and to be more courageous in saying things directly and instead of couching it in a million, you know, little clauses and provisos and I don't know about this and how about that. And you've always pushed me just like, no, no, you know what the thing to say is you should just say it. And I think without you, I wouldn't have had that clarity. I'm still working on it today. And, yeah, man, I don't know. I'm going to miss you. But I'm not dying.

I'm still around. So please text me. Right. It's like hard to cover. at the end of this. Both of you are very dear to me. Walt, I have missed you, although I do get the occasional text or call from Walt, it's like, make the thing better, which is helpful, and I appreciate it.

Dieter, I look forward to just complaining about Google to you in back channels. We're going to have to disclose Deeter works at Google for like a few months to come. Yeah, every time there's a stock photo of me that shows up on the site. I didn't even think about that, and we're going to have to sort it out. But I think that'll all be fun. One thing I want to say to everybody, the Verge is not over. We're just saying goodbye to Deeter, who is our co-founder. We are putting on a show for it.

If you have ever co-founded anything with anybody, it's a big deal. There's a lot tied up. I've cried on Deeter's shoulder in a bar more times than I can count. Starting things is really hard. So, yeah, we're making a big deal for Deeter going. The man deserves it. He deserves every minute of it. The Verge, however, has a great team that is not closing in on 100 people.

We have a wild new website design coming this year. We have a new video strategy. All this stuff is happening. I host another podcast, which is excellent. It's a shameless plug at the end of the Dieter goodbye. So that's all still going. I just want to make sure, Dieter, you had this moment to say goodbye to this audience. Importantly, I wanted to hear people say how much we care about you and we're going to miss you.

That is our goodbye. We have a few more people who want to say goodbye to you. And then I think Dieter, Deeter wants to talk to all of you directly. So that's what we're going to do. But that's it. That's The Verge cast. Hey, it's Casey Newton contributing editor at the Verge and editor of Platformer. Dieter was my work husband for all seven and a half years that I worked at the Verge,

except for his detour in New York. We sat next to each other. And there is really no person in my professional life. I have learned more than Dieter from my first day. at the verge. He taught me to try really, really hard, to be really ambitious and to always assume that you could accomplish huge things if you simply demanded it. I don't know that Deeter will ever get the credit he deserves for helping to build the verge with his bare hands. He invented so many of our processes. He refined all those processes. He hired great people. He wrote great stuff. He made

amazing videos. So Deeter is an all-time talent and we will miss him at the verge, but I'm so, so grateful for the time that I got to spend learning by his side. Congratulations, Deeter. Hey, Deeter, I'll never forget when it was just the two of us in that shitty San Francisco office with the barbecue place next door down the street. Those were the days, weren't they? West Coast News. And now you've come so damn far. It's been a pleasure to watch. Well, if you ever need someone to narrate an impactful video, you know who to call. Well, that was great. I love talking to Walt and Nilai, obviously.

One thing I just didn't get around to is thanking everybody at the verge, both past and present. And I want to give like an Oscar-style speech where I just start saying names and telling you how amazing they are until the music plays and they kick me out. but I really shouldn't do that. And at some point, I'd forget a name, and I'd feel terrible. But there are just, there's so many. I'm going to say a few. Helen Havlack, who we promoted to be our boss, is an incredible steward for The Verge. She is one of the things that makes it great.

You might know Dan Seafurt, he runs our reviews program. Casey, Norrie runs our video team. Maria has done incredible work. She helped him make the Springboard documentary, which I hope you go watch. It is a really important thing. Viren has been making videos with me forever. I knew this was going to happen. I'm going to want to keep saying names forever,

and whoever I leave off is going to feel terrible about. But the thing I want to just emphasize here is the verge is going to continue to be amazing because the people that work there are amazing. And they're making amazing stuff, and they care every bit as much as I always have, if not more. And they are even more talented than I am. So please keep heading over there. Please keep watching the videos.

Listen to the podcast. I am so excited to see what they're going to be doing next. There's a bunch of stuff I know about that's coming that I think is going to be incredible. And there's even more stuff that I have no idea about. And I think I'm most excited about that stuff. So verge forever. Love all of you. So this is weird.

I'm saying goodbye. I'll by myself talking in your ear and you're out there. listen to me. It's called a parasycial relationship, by the way, if you haven't heard. You feel like I'm there with you, but I have no idea who you are. And that could be weird for a lot of creators. It is a little weird. But I've been incredibly lucky that I've never really felt that weird about it because I always feel like when I'm talking to the folks on the Vergecast, that I'm also like talking to you and that so many of you

have like the same sort of innate curiosity, the same obsessions, the same desire to just figure this stuff out and try and have a little fun while we do it. You know, the terms here that I've got, like you're our listeners or, you know, fans or whatever, and that's all just too passive. You're not an audience.

you're this is in the post on the site i feel like you've been a kindred spirit and so many of you have tweeted at me and emailed me and just sent me your thoughts in whatever way that you could and um it's always been wonderful it's always wonderful when people stop by and say hi in the street uh because then they get to see how awkward i truly am um so thank you for listening Thank you for letting me be in your ear all of these years. And, you know, I'm not going away. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. I am and will remain back on Twitter.

But thank you for listening. Thank you for all that you've given to me over the years. And be a kindred spirit. Don't be a stranger.