The Vergecast - Google’s Pixel 6 with Sundar Pichai and Rick Osterloh

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Dieter Bohn sits down with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and SVP of Devices and Services at Google Rick Osterloh to discuss the launch of the Pixel 6 — including its tensor processing chip, the Android ecosystem, and what makes this Pixel launch different from the rest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Vergecast. I am Dieter Bone, and you are listening to our short-run series of very focused special episodes on Tuesdays,

and I'm very excited about this week's episode. It's all about the pixel. But more importantly, I got to go to Google's campus and speak to Google CEO Sundarpa Chai and Hardware Chief Rick Austerlo. I was there to talk them about this big pixel launch because it's a big moment for the pixel, maybe the biggest since the very first one.

It's important because it's the first time that Google is making its own processor. It's a system on a chip called tensor. It's also the first time Google is saying unapologetically that it's made a flagship phone. It wants this to be a real hockey stick moment for the pixel where it actually matters in the market instead of just being sort of a thing that we have existential questions about all of the time. So when I want to speak to them, what I wanted to find out and what I think you should listen for here is how they intend to make this the moment the pixel goes from a sideshow to the center stage, both within Google and for the phone itself, how are they making this phone the best possible pixel that there could be? How are they

making this a special phone? But also in the phone market itself, because just because the phone is good doesn't mean that it's successful, especially here in the U.S. You have to make deals with carriers. I also didn't want to let Sunder Pachai get away without talking about the rest of the Android ecosystem because the pixel obviously exists in the Android ecosystem and the Android ecosystem is facing some pretty big questions, especially surrounding antitrust. Google has faced some decisions in South Korea, for example, about payments in the Google Play ecosystem. They have to allow third-party payments. They've also faced some questions about whether or not they have to allow Android forks. One of the stories here is that when a manufacturer signs up to make an Android phone

with Google services, they are not allowed to make a fork of Android on the side. And South Korea just told them they're not allowed to do that. Got to ask Pichai about that. And, you know, we asked about a whole bunch of other stuff. The Fitbit acquisition came up and plenty more. So what we're going to do is we're going to roll the tape of the interview. And then after it's over, I'm going to bring Neil I Patel on. We're going to talk over some of their answers. But we're also going to talk about the pixel because we have these devices. We have able to tell you about our impressions of them from our hands-on time with them. And one last thing to mention, I may have to apologize here and there for the audio quality. I had to record this in a different place than

usual. And then we went down to Google's campus. We recorded outside. So you might hear a bird chirping and you might even in one spot here, a truck backing up. We're going to do our us to clean it up in post. All right, here's Rick and Sundar. Sunabuchai, Rick Oslo, thanks for coming on the Vergecast. I have asked both of you a version of this question at least a half a dozen times, but I feel like because the Pixel 6 is now announced and out and you've got your own chip, I'm going to ask it one more time. Let's start with you, Sondar. Why is it important that Google's in the hardware business? No, it's a good question. I've answered it before, but I think it's worth saying. You know, if you're committed to driving

computing forward. I do think you need to think at the intersection of software, services, hardware to evolve it. I think we have a unique expression of it. We have kind of always invested in deep technology to build helpful experiences with AI. We see a chance to express it in a unique way. So I think we will bring newer insights, newer experiences. Second, it helps us drive the ecosystem forward. Pretty much in my experience, every time we have done something well in a category, that category as a whole benefits in Android. It was true with our first, be the Nexus phone or Nexus 7 as a tablet and so on. And third, to do this well, you have to build a sustainable business.

So we're committed to it. We're building a business. We want to grow and do well as well. Well, okay. So I imagine the third answer is where I'm going to turn to you, Rick. How's that going? Well, we're still very early in this. I mean, I think the organization was started about five years ago.

And especially in such a mature market that matters so much. much to users, it takes a long time to build the right capabilities to be leading. And we feel like, you know, finally at this moment, we've gotten to the place where we feel really good about the innovation we've been able to build, the organization and capabilities we have in that towards building, great phones. And we think pixel six is a big step change and a nod to where we're going in the future, which is really focused around AI innovation, really focused around building a portfolio that tries to address big parts of the market. And so we want to give our users the best of Google. So that's what we're trying to do. Can you tell me why you think that Pixel 6 is

categorically different than other smartphones that are currently on the market? Or do you think that's true, I guess, is a better question? I mean, I think there's significant differences that, you know, first off, the number one thing is that it really is a clear representation of Google's brand. Like what we're trying to deliver is the very best possible Google experience. We do that by bringing, you know, all of our services that many people use, pulling them together in a cohesive user experience on the latest Android, Android 12 and beautiful new material of UUI. And then we also have been bringing a lot of our AI innovation.

We've been working in tight coupling with our AI research teams. We've been building silicon together, and we kind of put all that together in Pixel 6 so we can build the best possible experience. And you know, you see that in the work around speech. This is like really exciting new improvements in that arena. We've always been strong in computational photography, but we're taking that a lot further with Pixel 6 and TensorFlow, and we've got a big jump in our video capabilities, too. We're just really excited about this being like a moment where we pull it all together

in its best possible form. Do you think that sort of say you're intending to go toe to toe at the best that Apple or Samsung have to offer in terms of their flagships? That is our intention, yes. Are you intending to take market share from either of those companies? Certainly we want to grow. You know, first of all, we acknowledge we're a challenger. You know, the market's been pretty ossified. There's been a couple of key leaders for a long time. We think we're taking a different approach with AI-led innovation. You know, we think our time is now to be able to grow in that we've taken a big step change in so many parts of the overall experience that it's a good time for us to be investing a lot in distribution, in marketing, and of course, in the product and technology. I mean, I'm bringing up the ecosystem, Sandar, because it's Rick's job to sell a bunch of phones. It's part of your job to make sure that the Android ecosystem,

is growing and secure and that all your partners are happy with it. So when you're sitting down with Samsung to talk about Android, are you talking about the pixel line? How does, how do those conversations go? You know, they are our most important partner on Android. And, you know, first of all, I think Samsung is a big partner for, you know, our devices and services team as well. This phone, you know, is obviously, you know, they're a big partner. There are many competencies from Samsung to make all of this work as well. So they're a big partner there. Definitely, and we, you know, from an Android standpoint,

very focused, for example, the work we are doing with Samsung on foldables, working hard to make that leap and make them make it successful, the partnership more recently on the watch, which we have done together with them. And so, you know, I see this is, Android is in some ways design so that, you know, it's one of the more customizable and flexible OSS out there. You know, it gives Samsung.

Samsung and other OEMs, the chance to really innovate. And, you know, we have Google also doing that. I think some part of it will grow the pie overall. And I think it's good as a consumer. It's good. We want to put out something unique in the market and it's more choice. So, you know, I think it's healthy that way. I'm actually wondering what both do you think about the market,

specifically with Android. You called it ossified. You're coming here as a challenger. You'd say you want to grow the pie, but I can't imagine there's a lot of new smartphone customers to get. So I'm wondering, going forward, what you think you need to do to be successful. You mentioned marketing. I'm wondering what else you might need to focus on to shake up the market like you seem to want to?

Well, I think first off is innovation. I mean, our main focus as a company and especially in our phone products with Pixel is to try to offer as much help as we can to users across a lot of different arenas. And, you know, people are very familiar with what Google does and with search and Gmail and so many other categories. but we also think we can help people even further with AI as applied to photography or videos or speech or natural language processing or translation and on and on. And we can put that together in the best way on pixel. We also feel like, you know, there's an opportunity to give people great value for money with a combination of these things.

Our Pixel A series has done a really good job with that to date, I believe, and we intend to continue forward with that. So there's like both innovation and value for money opportunities in the market, and we hope to offer that for users. So there are any thoughts on what you think the Android market needs these days? Look, I may I also take a slightly longer term view. And if you look at computing as a whole, you know, there's phones. You know, you've seen hints of people doing stuff beyond their phones as well. There's watches. You know, we've done obviously Google TV with Chromecast.

And, you know, so to me, I take a long-term view, Google Home. and to me this is as much about building a deep capability to innovate in computing for the very long run. And so taking that 10-20-year view, you know, I think the day-to-day of the current position in phones, the high-end phones, you know, I think that's one snapshot in time. Yeah. But if I zoom out, you know, that's what I meant by growing the pie

and taking that long-term view. And if I could add one thing, it would be that, you know, we believe that we have a somewhat unique portfolio and then it covers a lot of the activity in the home. We recently acquired FIPIT. And so we have a nice, robust capability on wearables now that we intend to grow and knit together. And then, of course, the phone is the most important part of people's computing day-to-day usage. And so we believe this unique set of things is the right portfolio to best express where Google can go in the future.

We've been calling our computing vision for the future Ambien. computing. And that's sort of the way we think about it is we want to have people be able to use these devices wherever they are, whatever situation they're in whenever they need it, be able to naturally interface with them. Google Assistant is a common interface across all these services. And we think it's the leading assistant. And this combination is the right set of technologies for the future of where we feel computing needs to go for users. And so that is going to be our unique element in this, is the strength in the home in mobile and wearables. And we're excited to start on that.

hopefully do it in a open way. I think, you know, hopefully all this computing doesn't mean you have to be locked into one brand or one OEM. And, you know, I think some of what Android brings is the ability to have many people plug in and participate. And, you know, so, you know, I'm excited about that as well. And us doing all this also, you know, really pushes us hard to make sure different phones can work with different watches, et cetera, in a way that it doesn't add to

complexity for the user and things can be seamless. You know, and I think that's important as well. Well, we brought up AI a bunch of times. I definitely want to talk about TensorFlow. But since you mentioned Fitbit, I got to ask, how's that going? I know they're still releasing new products that are on the Fitbit platform, waiting to see if they're going to be doing hardware on your watch platform. The software story seems a little bit confusing.

There's some Fitbit stuff, but Google Health is still sitting around, sort of. So what's going on with Fitbit? Sure, yeah. Well, it's, you know, they joined our company six or seven months ago now, so it's pretty early and the integration. James and team are part of my organization, and we're working really closely together. We've consolidated a lot of our health work into the Fitbit organization so that we can really have a focused consumer health approach for wearables and mobile. We announced at Google I.O. That we'll be working on WareOS in our Fitbit team. So we're really excited about where that'll go.

You can, no doubt, you'll see them build wearables on WareOS in the future. And so we're hard at work at that. Okay. I asked too soon. We'll check in on it next year. Yes, next year. Let's talk. All right. So let's talk about TensorFlow. When did this project start? When did you decide we're making our own system on a chip? I think I started April 16th and it was around the 17th of 2016. So literally the day you started at Google, you walked into Sundar's office. When Sundar and I were talking about starting this organization five years ago, this came up. We felt like it was inevitable that we'd need to start to invest here. Exactly the form wasn't

clear. But like Moore's Law and general computing, you know, laws started to break down around that time and a little bit earlier. And so it's pretty clear. Like, if you wanted to be on the cutting edge of AI innovation, it would have to involve real complete system design. About a year in 2017, we decided we actually really needed to build an SOC because you couldn't just build a single co-processor in order to really harness the full capabilities. We needed across a diverse set of AI models and approaches. And so, you know, we discussed this a long time ago. I was, I remember talking to Sundar, letting him know this is going to be a pretty big investment, to take a long time. And we didn't have an organization at that point to build it. So it's

been a long journey. But we're really excited. We're here. I mean, this is like why I came back to Google, why we wanted to work together on this. Look, I've always felt like you have to do deeper work. You know, if you look at our services, we've built. on the consumer side, our data centers, we've never shied away from the fastest switches you needed for our networking side, subsea cables. So, you know, we've always TPUs. We obviously deeply, you know, on our data center side, we work,

you know, we buy a lot and deeply use NVDA GPUs and so on. But we've also tried to push the boundary with TPUs, custom built for our AI services. And so I think it's important, I think, recognizing that to do well here, particularly if you want to do it well from an AI standpoint, we need to kind of evolve Silicon with that focus. And I think we had good DNA and thinking on the server side too here. And so I think it's a natural part. And, you know, I appreciate the long-term focus. I clearly remember our conversation. And so it's good to see it all come together.

I mean, cast yourself back to this conversation. Was it obvious that you wanted to do what you've ended up doing, or was it a little bit fuzzier? Like, well, we're going to need to do some kind of AI chip we'll figure it out. Or, you know, were you thinking, well, Apple's got their own chips, so we got to have our own chips. Like, what was that conversation and decision process like? It wasn't 100% clear what form our system design work would take in the very early days. It was only after really thinking through what was the direction of travel in our various AI research teams that we realized that we really needed to build a whole thing, simply because of how data moves in and out of our models and how when we're doing computational photography,

we're using not just an accelerator, but like all parts of the chip to achieve what we need. And so, you know, and there were other elements too, like being able to have a very low power set of the system that could do things when the device was otherwise at sleep. So this combination made us realize like we actually really need to build a full applications processor that includes a lot of different heterogeneous subcomponents. And so that was evolutionary thinking. I mean, that took a while to fully come to that realization. And we had lots of discussions about it along the way. But it wasn't like one, one flash of one inspirational moment where that came to us. It was an evolution of thinking. Well, that's the old history.

I need to ask what more recent history. This morning, as we're talking, Qualcomm decided to say that if a company's making their own SOC, that's a red flag on Twitter. I'm wondering if you all have anything you'd like to reply to Qualcomm with? Qualcomm's always been great partners of ours, you know? We're doing this so that we can work closely with our AI team. Yeah. You know, I mean, Qualcomm plays a really important role in the Android ecosystem and will continue to play so.

And, you know, that's why I gave the server side example as well. You know, we have done tensor processing units on the server side, but, you know, we deeply use Nvidia GPUs across everything we do too, and I think the market has overall done well. I think pushing the high end of silicon across all of us is good, and so, but, you know, we are doing this for Pixel, and, you know, and so Qualcomm and others will play an important role in supplying the Android ecosystem.

Right. The other thing I'm thinking about specifically with TensorFlow, this is a problem across all of Google communicating with customers, and it's a specific problem now with TensorFlow on, the pixel, explaining the value of your AI systems, of getting people to understand what they can do, why it's helpful, and have it be more than just, well, it does this specific feature where you can raise something in the background. I feel like a lot of time when we talk about AI, it ends up just sort of ending on like jazz hands, AI, and it's supposed to be better. So I'm wondering how

you're thinking about communicating the capabilities that you've built for this phone to customers. Yeah. You know, I think it's really difficult to reduce AI to a benchmark or any sort of of simplified measure. So I think the way we intend to try to communicate the value of users is through specific experiences that they're likely to really get excited about. And, you know, it does make things possible that weren't possible before. I mean, for instance, on TensorFlow and Pixel 6, the speech recognizers out of this world. And we took a lot of engineering efforts to move our data center quality models, make them run on device, run on TensorFlow using the TPU. It wasn't possible before Tensor. And what you get out of it is something that can recognize

words at 200 words a minute. I mean, it can go faster than I can think. And I think it'll totally change how I use the phone. And I think people will see the same thing. And it works across the whole device. That's an example of how AI will affect everyone's day-to-day usage of devices. We've been doing it for years in other areas, like with screening calls that might be unwanted or in computational photography areas, and we get to apply that more and more to harder problems. So we'll show users these specific problems that we solve with it, and hopefully they'll find it helpful. Hopefully they'll see the benefits of AI overall. When you're thinking about what features to launch next, how much are you thinking about potential backlash? I think that with Duplex in particular,

there was a very strong reaction, and it took a while for the cycle for y'all to figure out how the best way to talk about it and how to get that out into the world. When you're thinking about new features for the phone or even for Google search or something, how are you thinking about, well, we can do this now, but we've got to think about how to roll it out. Well, it's a good question. I will say, you know, we now have experience of many features across our products people use and rely, and they actually vote with their feet, you know, think about smart compose in Gmail. You know, it's kind of a new thing to get used to.

You know, you have effectively AI suggesting phrases to you and stuff. You know, I think users really, it resonates with users. right? People understand it. And so people are really, I think I would give credit to people using our products a lot. They understand they are adapting. And they let us know if we get something wrong. So I've seen across search, across maps. And when we do these features well, you know, I think the bar doesn't change. If it's an AI feature or not, the bar is still the same. Are you kind of doing something which uses find it magical and useful? And if so, I think they will kind of adopt it well. And if I could add one thing, a wonderful attribute of tensor is it enables us to do a lot of these capabilities closer and closer to the user, keeps them in control. You know, like we took great pains to move our data center quality speech model to the phone. It's running locally on device. The information stays on the device. A lot of our computational capabilities are done there with our photography experience.

And this is a direction of travel for us. I mean, we want to strike a great balance between like making sure. that we've got great capability for users and also making sure they're comfortable with how data is being handled. Right. How are you balancing adding capabilities to the pixel specifically and, you know, maybe you've got it in the pixel for a year and that it goes into Android a year later or something? I could imagine a bunch of Android manufacturers would love to have your speech model on their phones. So how are you thinking about the stuff that you do? Does it get put into the rest of Android in some way? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a balance that we work on with our platforms and ecosystems team and Hiroshi's organization.

But, you know, a lot of times Pixel is basically the vanguard of our innovation across the company. And so we can get it to market through that quickly. And then a lot of it does flow into our ecosystem. Some of it is harder for that to happen in that a lot of the Pixel 6 innovation, for instance, is driven by new hardware capabilities that haven't been possible so far. And so those might take a while, if ever, to move over to the ecosystem. But in general, we want a lot of this capability available to people. Be it Google Assistant or Gboard, the Google Keyboard, et cetera. So, you know, there are many ways to do it.

Over time also, and this is not directly answering a question, but I would say we are taking our speech APIs, computer vision APIs through GCP through cloud, providing to companies as well. So, you know, both, you know, we're giving it through APIs as well. But it's a good question. I do think, I've rarely seen if OEMs are interested in accomplishing an experience, I think we work hard to make it possible. Right.

You know, and so I've never seen that be the gating factor. If people have really wanted to make camera better on their phones and they engage with us, I would say our teams work super hard to make their cameras better. Right. Well, I guess this maybe is a little bit of an aside, but since we're talking about Google services on Android, I do need to ask, South Korea recently ruled you need to allow third-party payment systems and Google Play. It seems like you're going to go along with that. You know, obviously, I think our Google Play team is assessing it and understanding it. I think

they are in dialogue with it and we'll find the right way to comply and, you know, make sure we support the ecosystem well. It's an important ecosystem for us. I do think it's important to understand Android is different from others. We, you know, invest thousands of engineers, build the operating system, which we provide for free. We don't take a share of the device sales, not a share of the carrier revenues. And so some way, we have to sustain our ecosystem. So we have a different model. And so Google Play is an important way.

In fact, it's the main source of revenue. It supports Android as a whole. So I think we'll make that viewpoint clear. But we'll engage in conversations. And I think the team will, you know, I'll leave it to the team to figure out the right next steps. I guess similarly, they're also ruling that your contracts are often not allowed manufacturers to make forks of Android if they want Google services on their Android phones. Do you know what your reaction to that ruling is going to be? You know, I mean, I literally spent my so many years in computing. I've never seen anything as open as Android, right? I buy a Peloton and I discover it's built on Android, right? And no one from Peloton, I'm sure, ever talk. I don't know whether they talk to people at Google. Amazon ships on Android. you know, so we are always in obviously one of the areas where Android gets criticized is at an end user level, the fragmentation as a cost, right?

You know, because developers complain of complexity. So we are constantly striving to create that balance, right? And as part of that, sometimes there may be feedback from regulators, and, you know, I've taken the approach. We will understand it. I haven't seen this as a major issue, but to the extent to it is, I think we will address. it too. Okay. I guess I don't know what I mean, what addressing it means. It depends on, I mean, it depends on what the specific thing is, you know, but I'm just basically pointing out many different ways people work on Android and ship Android. And in fact, there are like,

literally, I think if you tabulate all the form factors, all the versions, all the, there are folk versions of Android which ship all the time, right? And like, you know, and so I do think we are trying to make sure at the end of the day we feel responsible for delivering a user experience on top. And so there are going to be areas where we are going to have viewpoints. And I understand there's a balance and we'll have to figure that out on a case-by-case basis. Okay, let's talk about to end one more fun thing, I think, which is spending a ton of money, which y'all have been doing on pixel marketing. I have seen billboards. There are TV ads. The thing is even officially launched yet. You've got ads before we know the price. This is a blitz. Is it going to get bigger?

Have you got more planned to try and sell this phone? Yes, we're excited about the product, and we want to make sure people know about it. We started our marketing early this year, which is a bit unusual. And the reason we did that was it's a really big change. And so we started that effort a couple months ago and have been building it. You'll continue to see it build throughout the year. We're doing a terrific partnership we're going to announce with the MBA. So we're very excited about that.

That's just one of many things we're doing. But you'll see Pixel is the official phone of the NBA. And we're very excited about that because I'm a huge basketball fan. So this is a fun topic. Do you know this NBA deal happen? I saw you do a double take. I realize the real thing that drives Rick to work hard on Pixel. So that you get some courtside seats somewhere for an NBA game.

What about carrier deals? Even with the iPhone, I think that a bunch of their recent success has been coming from getting huge discounts on trade-ins and huge discounts on, you know, they're not called subsidies anymore, but they might as well be, especially here in the U.S. where I think you're really targeting. Phone sales are driven by carrier deals and subsidies. How is your thinking around that going? Well, we're going to be working very closely with carriers. You should expect to see Pixel on all major carriers going forward.

In the past, we've had, you know, distribution with them, but not always the whole portfolio and not across all of them. But that's going to change going forward. And so we've been talking to all the carriers in the U.S., and we expect to see that for Pixel 6 going forward. Do you think you're going to be able to make enough of them to meet demand? I hope so. I mean, we're making a lot more than we have in the past. We've got, you know, there is a minor supply chain issue happening in the world.

Yeah, I mean, this is a small semiconductor supply chain issue, which you may have heard about. We feel good about where we are right now for this year's supply, and hopefully that will continue throughout next year. but we'll see. I mean, we're small right now, so it's hard to know if we've gotten enough. Yeah. I mean, we are, you know, people look at Google and say sometimes

in all these kinds of, there are many areas in which we are, you know, we are a small player trying to do better. So we face the same challenges. You know, we have competing against others who have economies of scale, a better supply, you know, power and so on.

And so, you know, I think the team has to work extra hard, be it on the go-to-market side, you know, getting carrier deals and, you know, making sure people can see the product or on the other side, making sure we can get supply. And, you know, I think those are all the challenges, and, you know, which makes it even more exciting, but uncomfortably exciting. Well, this actually leads my last question.

There's a cognitive dissonance when it comes to thinking about Google as a small player, as your Google, but you're a very small player in the actual phone market. I think it was four years ago I asked you when you think the business would be big enough to start breaking it out in your financial results. and you told me five years, so you got a year left, you think you're going to get there? I mean, you know, I don't want to make any forward statements to the financial standpoint,

but broadly, you know, I want to be clear. We want to build a sustainable business. And look at other areas, we are a challenger, right? I think when we try to compete for enterprise contracts, you know, we go up against

big Microsoft bundle contracts all the time, trying to convince CIOs. And, you know, so I think there are several aspects of business, which have that characteristic. And just like we have done with cloud or YouTube,

you know, I think we are committed to, I think do well in technology. You have to build a sustainable business and they go hand in hand. Otherwise you can't. For someone like us who believes in deep R&D investment and, you know, so it is even more important to do it well. And so we are committed to, committed to,

and I take a very long-term view. And, you know, you're right. It's a year four or five, but, you know, I thought of this in a 10 to 20-year time frame. Right. Was the plan to have this be the hockey stick moment for Pixel? Because it seems like you've been building up to this. And this is the moment when you, you know, instead of sort of having a little bit of success, but you really want this phone to be the thing that, that launches it

into a real competitor with Samsung and Apple. Yeah, it's definitely a step change moment for us. We see this as truly the starting line for Pixel in that we've brought together all the elements that we think we need to be a real player in the space. But consumer electronics in general, doesn't usually see like hockey sticks like you would in a web services business. It's a steady build. And that's how we're approaching the next several years is a real steady build. And we're excited about where it's headed because, you know, what we're building with TensorFlow and with Pixel 6 is how we see the future as well.

Yeah, TensorFlow was a big part of it. So I think a common question I would ask Rick is like about TensorFlow timelines and not, you know, and, you know, where the status of the project is because. And so in some ways, I think we had a view towards, you know, part of the reason that I think the team has been more modest in their approach with Pixel over the past 18 months or so is because they've been waiting for tenser to time our investments this way. Cool. Well, Rick, Sundar, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dieter. Thanks, Deeder.

Great to be here. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, I'm going to bring on Nilai Patel, and we're going to give you our impressions of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. And we also want to dig a little bit into some of the answers we heard from Sundar and Rick. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster.

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Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. you got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible, developer first, asset compliant, enterprise ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code.

Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, my thanks to Sundar Pachai and Rick Osterlo for speaking with me. And I'm also about to thank my good friend, Nilai Patel, who is here to speak with me also. Hey, Nealai.

Hey, man, how's it good? Going good. So I want to bring you on because we both have the phones. We have the phones. Like, I'm literally holding them right now. Yeah. And so first I want to say, that was a great interview. Oh, thanks.

I learned a lot. Okay. I think your strategy of getting that. to talk to each other was a good one. I'm buttering you up because I'm going to tell you how I feel about the holding the phones. Ah, yeah, okay. Which is that I don't like holding the phones.

So I don't disagree with you. If you've seen the phones, you probably know. Well, first of all, I will say first, the way that Google's doing this is they're trying to have like a hands-on moment. And so the rules for this embargo with this moment are we can tell you about the hardware and what the screen looks like on the home screen, but we can't tell you about any software, camera quality, speed, impressions of use, any of that stuff. So we could talk about hardware and specs, and that's it. So having said all that, I don't think that, especially the

pro feels as ultra premium competes with the Samsung S-21 Ultra as they seem to want it to. I absolutely do not feel that way. And it's funny that, you know, the rules are the way they are because I can't even get myself to the software. I just can't. And I'll be honest, they sent me the white one. It has a chrome ring around the whole thing. And it's got that camera ledge. And the whole thing feels cheaper than the flagship phones from Apple and Samsung. There's just no getting around it for me. And then the way I hold a phone, and I take this with an absolute grain of salt, because once you hold a thing for a long time, you change the way you hold it. But the way I hold a phone now means that my finger hits that camera ledge constantly. Okay. Sure. Right? So it's just like an

uncomfortable thing to hold that I don't like holding. Like, I don't know what else to say about that. And then you and I have discussed this. I think you feel differently about this than I do. I do not like the display on the pro. So I'm less offended by the display than you are, but I'm not saying it's like the best display ever. A Samsung S21 display or even an iPhone 13 pro display is superior in several ways.

The thing that Neil is referring to is a display on the six pro is curved on the left and the right hand side. And the result of that curve, which is fairly aggressive, is that you can see sort of a shadow on the edges when you hold it at a certain angle because the glass and the screen are literally curved away from you. Yeah. And my thing with phones is that you are always holding them at an angle. Although, let's just say, I don't have the ledge thing under my finger. And I hold my phone straight on. So this might just be a you thing. No, it's a me. It's absolutely a me thing. It is just, and I like the non-pro a lot better because it is slightly smaller. And it doesn't have the Chrome ring. It's mine is black, so it's a matte black ring.

And it has a normal flat display. So most of my hardware concerns are solved in some way by the regular one. But the pro to me, which is supposed to be the flagship, just holding it and looking at it, I immediately perceive that shadow and a little bit of off-axis color shift and brightness shift with the display. And what I mean is you're always looking at off-axis is your hand is always moving. So if you're sensitive to it, you are always seeing some part of a giant screen off access. Right. It's cheaper than the Samsung phone and the Apple phone.

Well, it's literally cheaper. So the 6 Pro starts at 899 and the regular 6 starts at, I believe, 599. So they have spec for spec undercut not only Samsung, but also OnePlus. This is a relatively inexpensive device, especially the regular Pixel 6. But the 6 pro is also giving you all the stuff you expect on a lot. of a full premium flagship at less than that price, except that one of the things you expect is like nothing to complain about with the hardware. And there are some things that you can either nitpick or genuinely bothered by here. And I'm saying that I can just see the,

I can see the discount in the screen on the pro. I can't see it as much on the regular one, but usually when it's like we've got a two-step embargo like this, we're like, the hardware looks nice. It's great. It's like, you know, it's serviceable. And here, I think the design of this phone is going to be very polarizing for people, especially the pro. Yeah, I think that's true. I think the design of the regular one, because it is more inexpensive, because it is more straightforward, yeah, I think people will focus on the camera shelf and that'll be fine. I think the pro is going to, you have no hope but to react to the design and the size of the

pro. Now, we should speak about the camera shelf. It is the most obvious. And I think for anybody that hasn't looked at the screen a bunch, maybe the most polarizing aspect to it, I think that, first of all, all camera bumps are funny looking. This one is more funny looking than most because it's one, just bigger, but two, it's not what we're used to.

I think it is possible that over time it just becomes like a thing that is normal and fine, and I'm willing to believe that, but I'm also willing to believe that maybe it won't, but I think it probably will end up being just a different kind of camera bump.

But the thing to say about it is one of the reasons it's so big is they chose a truly massive sensor for their main camera. It's 50 megapixels and it's a 1 over 1.3 image sensor size. 1.31. So it's technically a larger sensor than is on the iPhone 13 Pro, but it's a, it's pixel width, you know, because of quad bear, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's 1.2 microns. And they're, even though it's 50

megapixels, they are at the like sensor level, at the hardware level, bitting it down to 12.5. So you can't get a 50 megapixel raw out of this thing with the way that they've got it currently set up. But if you just look at it, it is giant. Yeah. And so on the shelf, right, you on the pro, you've got three camera holes, one for the periscope telephoto lens. And then you've got the main one, which is just, it's eye-catching. You're not used to looking at a smartphone camera and being like, oh, that's huge. And this one, this one definitely has that reaction. But again, coming back to the shelf, it's neat that they've got the cameras. But I don't think this, this design is not going to last, is my, is my prediction only because we have been seeing these camera bumps eat phones.

Like every year they're getting bigger. Every year they have to support bigger and bigger. sensors. And this one, at some point, it's got to get yet bigger again and go from being like this rectangle to being a square. You can just see the direction it will have to grow. Yeah. The way that everyone else's is growing. And I'm just curious to see if the combination of how people react to it the first

time you see it and where cameras are going generally means this design is particularly long-lasting. Yeah. I mean, I think the way to take this whole conversation to this point and maybe trying to talk about some of the stuff that came up in the interview. is this is the pixel 6, and there's been a couple of A, so this is what, the eighth, ninth, maybe even 10th pixel that they've made and five years of making pixels. But in many ways, it feels like a first generation product in just terms of the fit and finish,

especially the pro one. And so we have this weird juxtaposition of Google, a massive tech giant, being, you know, around for five years making phones and making Nexus phones before that. So when Rick Osterlo says, you know, we're new at this, I'm always like, are you? because we're on the sixth one here. But it is true. It's a brand new system on a chip for them, brand new processor.

And it is like, this is the one where they are like really trying. I think Sundar even sort of intimated that they kind of had been not trying that hard on the last couple of pixels, which is, we've all seen it. So like, no,

I don't know, you listen to the interview. Like, how do you think about this being like this weird like six generation thing from a giant established company and also a very, a first gen product from like a challenger that's like, quote unquote, you know, new to the market, even though they're not. I think this is where you have to talk about the tensor chip and the fact that they made their own

SOC for this device. This runs directly into the fact that we can't talk about the software. So it's in there. I assure you it's in there. But, you know, the way they talked about it was Google thinks of itself as an AI company. They have made a phone with their own chip that is supposed to accelerate AI functions. I thought them saying there's no way to benchmark AI was really interesting. They're still learning how to talk about it.

at it, how to articulate its value to people. And that is all connected to, yep, I get why they would do it because they can't count on other companies to accelerate their specific AI functions or to ship Android without being adulterated in other ways. All the fun. But at the end of the day, when you ask them, why do you make pixel phones? The answer was, we want to show people the best of Google, which is not solve a problem for anyone but Google employees. Right. Right. That's like why they've been running at this thing for so long and ship so many phones. And they reset their hardware. This is the first flagship that is made by the HTC team that they purchased.

So that's all fair. But they still have to articulate what is this for? Why would you want this as opposed to the heavily subsidized iPhone or Samsung phone that your carrier is going to put in your face? And I think that that's the real challenge, right? Are they going to make enough of these phones? They're going to do the advertising. Are they get the carrier deals?

I heard some of those answers. I didn't hear all of them, I don't think. Yeah, I mean, I saw demos. I saw some demos when they first announced the tensor chip from before. They showed me some other demos. The dictation in real-time translation is shockingly, stunningly fast. In the interview, you heard Rick talk about bringing their full language model, you know, onto the phone locally.

Totally believe that. But when I said that often talking about the benefits of AI to consumer ends up just being jazz hands AI, you know, it's like the aristocrats joke at the end. Actually, it's not at all like that. That would be weird. If all they're doing is saying it does this feature, this feature, this feature, this feature, those could be genuinely transformative and interesting features for you as a user. But how do you do that in a way that sounds different than Samsung saying we'd have portrait mode and video?

Because on a Samsung phone, portrait mode and video is a gimmick. On a Google phone, their ability to take a picture of a kid that's moving and have that face automatically de-blurred for you may not be. but those two pitches sound very similar to, I think, the average person, especially if they're, like, standing in a Verizon store, you know? Yeah, I think when we just did our survey, people love Google, right, more than almost any other company save Amazon. There's a lot that you get by saying this is the Google phone. But I think that answer is integration with Google services,

and then Google's perception is being very helpful and good at search, right? I mean, Tundar literally says he wants Google to be thought of as a helpful company. Yeah. We haven't used the software. I can't tell you, but just from listening to the, So there you go. There's the wall. But Bisham listening to this interview, because they just put out the chip, they've built some functions, but this is the platform from which they're going to explore that aspect of what it means to make a flagship Google phone, as opposed to

every other pixel phone we've seen for years where it's been like, we want to make a really good, cheaper phone. Yeah, I mean, my hope coming into the pixel six was, all right, they're saying this is the one. They got their own ship. It's the flagship. I want no question about why the pixel exists, why Google makes it, what it's for, how it's going to compete with Samsung, how it's going to steal market share from Apple. I don't know. Naive to believe all those things would happen just from looking at a phone, but I don't think all those things are necessarily happening. Well, you asked him, are you going to do carrier co-marketing? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, unclear. They're going to have them all the carriers. I laughed when you asked Sundar if he knew

about the NBA deal. And he was like, you can't see it in the podcast, but he definitely did a double take. Look, I think that stuff is great. I wish them well with it. I just think because the design is polarizing, they're going to have to communicate a lot about the value of the phone. Right. And that, we've been saying that about pixel phones for a long time. Yeah. Especially now that the camera stuff is evened out. So let's assume, just Wonderworld assume, that they get some traction this year or next, that things are rocking.

They're stealing market share from Samsung, maybe Apple, who knows? This leads us to the stuff that I asked Sundar about, like, Android ecosystem. because if they do steal market share from Samsung, like that means something, right? I think it means something to Samsung. I think what I learned from this interview is it might not mean anything to Google. Right. It's a small business for them.

Right. I mean, the hardware is not the business. Their business in Android, and Sundar was direct about this. He was like, Google Play purchases support the business of Android. It's our main source of revenue. That's a huge thing to say, especially when, you know, Epic is suing Google over in that purchase. which is where that revenue comes from.

South Korea just told Google and Apple to cut it out within app purchase taxes. They've got to figure out what a new way is, but more importantly, we always thought that the way that Google monetized Android was search and ads across the web and, like, owning that operating. You know, it's the most popular mobile operating system

in the world. It's amazing that it has turned out that, you know, just like iOS, that purchases and mobile games turn out to be the most lucrative thing about the whole business. So it kind of doesn't matter what phone you have, if you're clicking the buttons and buying stuff, like Google's making money.

And I think that's a real, that's a real disconnect for them from the phone business versus the Android business. Yeah, well, and it's, again, it's completely different. It's different from how Android started. The reason Android exists is because Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, was terrified that Windows mobile was going to win and they would, like, lose all of their search revenue to Bing. That was a genuine fear in 2007. It was a different world. And so to learn. To learn. that, you know, they cut out getting, you know, money from carriers on, like, your bill or whatever, and they're making most of their money off of Google Play. Presumably, you know, that also includes, like, Google Mobile Services and some other stuff. But yeah, that's a wildly different way to think about Android than most of us usually do. Yeah. And I think, again, all of the controversy with various developers and governments has brought to light how all of these mobile operating systems make money and where the taxes are. But for Google in particular, when we're like, we want them to make a pixel phone. And and have it be the version of Android that we like the best. If there's not a huge financial incentive to do it,

and we can't know, they don't report those results. Another thing you ask them about, then the financial incentive is to keep making money on Android, which just kind of doesn't matter who sells the Android phone as long as they're using Google services. So that, to me, you know, over the next few years, as they build on these new flagship pixel devices, it will always be the disconnect.

But, you know, they have invested in the chip. They are trying to compete at the flagship level. They are paying the NBA a lot of money to be their official camera. Sure. They're doing a bunch of stuff to prove that they're doing it. We don't even consider that disconnect with Apple, right? To get the money from an app purchases, they have to sell iPhones. There's only one company that sells iPhones.

They have a lot of incentive to make and compete with the iPhone. Google makes all the money in Android from software buttons. The software buttons can be anywhere. You know, it's funny. We don't have these such existential conversations about, like, the Microsoft Surface. It's like a very similar idea, but everyone sort of knows that it's not core to what Microsoft is anymore, right? It's not essential to their future.

But it just feels like with the pixel, there's like that chance that Samsung could say, screw it we're going Tysen, or something could happen. So they need this thing as a hedge. And it's also, it just, it seems like it's more fundamental to what Android is that it gets developed

on a pixel than Surface exists in Windows land. And so it's this weird thing where it's like, well, we could just think of the pixel like we think of the surface as like a side hustle for a company. Google doesn't talk about it that way, and there do seem to be certain elements of its existence in the ecosystem that give it more weight and importance than the surfaces from Microsoft. And so the reason we keep coming back to like, why does a pixel exist? Let's have emotions about the pixel is it has some kind of important resonance to the entire Android ecosystem. But nailing down exactly what it is and exactly what Google thinks it is is difficult.

And you asked them, and I did, and they told us you just listen to it. Their answers make sense, but once you start really scratching at it, it's like, is that the whole story or not? It's really hard to know. Yeah. I would give the pixel overtime a lot of credit for a few things. One, the pixel team straight up revolutionized mobile photography. Yeah, no small thing. They shipped HDR first. They got it right. They were the benchmark for a long time. That is a very Google thing to have done, right? They thought about the data off the camera sensor differently than everyone else did. Maybe all the trains are pointing the same direction, but Google. got there first and for a long time best. So that is just like a unique, I think Google, because of the way Google thinks of the pixel and what it's for a unique accomplishment. Second, and I think this relates to what the surface is for Microsoft, they've set at least a benchmark for mid-range phones for a long time. And Microsoft has been very honest with us,

their executives have been very direct with us, that if they don't make the surface, the Windows OEM ecosystem is motivated to a race to the bottom. And they will just make the cheapest possible Windows laptops and seed the high ground to Apple, right, above $1,000. So Microsoft makes the surface devices. They actually license a bunch of surface hardware stuff out or they give it away. They've been honest about that, too. I don't see Google doing that with the pixel. They were really, what I asked about that, it was very unclear what exactly.

It seemed like the answer was nah. Yeah, I think the answer is no. I think they're like much more competitive, but that market is much more competitive overall. And there's not the race to the bottom. there's always Apple at the top and all the phone vendors want the expensive people who buy a lot of things on their phone. Great.

But I think at least the surface story is clarified for me in that way. I know why it's there. It's to keep Dell and HP from making ever cheaper laptops. The pixel story is like, is it a bunch of tech demos that then force everyone to compete

so they don't have to hear about the pixel and reviews? Maybe. Maybe that's all you need. But I think to their credit, to Sundar and Rick's credit, we've been asking these questions of the pixel for a long time.

You have, I have. The answers have been consistent. I think the clock might be running out. Well, the answer has been consistent, but like the proof of Microsoft being successful with the surface is we made a nice surface and some people bought it. And that's it. The proof of the pixel, given the way they talk about it is we are a competitor that matters in the smartphone market. And you have to get above two, three, four percent market share to keep making that argument. And you have to do it in a reasonable time frame.

And that, you're right. That clock is running out. Yeah. We'll see. We can't talk about the software. But look, if Google would just say, yeah, we want to make a nice phone that's a really nice Google phone. Like, if they said, if they talk about the pixel like they used to talk about the Nexus, it's a thing that exists as an example. And then our biggest fans can buy it and we're happy to sell it to them. That would be that would be the end.

But they talk about it in much grander terms. And so we think about it in grander terms just to, you know, hold them into their own claims. Well, here's a question that is a very vertrous question. Do you think that carriers in the United States want more than two smartphone vendors to exist? Yeah, man. I would assume yes, but I don't know. It may be no. It may be just simpler.

Yeah, just to constantly pit Apple and Samsung. You're like, you just need to know fewer people overall. You can just like not have to worry about it so much. Like you can spend your time buying and selling, you know, media companies and destroying them in the meanwhile. Yeah, you're like, I do want to own the NFL rates this year. No, I don't. Yeah. I just keep coming back to that.

If this was a wide open market that wasn't being funneled through the four carriers, three carriers, then maybe some of this works. And if it was easier to switch and all this stuff. But the reality is when you buy any phone, the thing you're doing is handing someone your old phone. And there are decisions about what to incentivize in exchange for your old phone are the market. Yep. And so if Google can participate in that this time, they might crack into some of that market share. but if the carriers don't want that to happen or Google doesn't pay them to make that happen,

I think we're asking them what the pixels is for again next year. Well, if they are throwing as much money at the carriers as they are at NBA deals and billboards and commercials, then they might actually be doing it this year. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's all to be told. But I like those two.

I like to hearing you talk to them. But my main question is really not for them. It's for AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile. Well, we also have other questions to answer, like, how are the cameras? How is the software? Does the AI do the stuff that it does? All that will come in the review.

So please stay tuned for that. Neli, thanks so much for coming on. That's a weird thing to say. Thanks for coming out of the Vergecast. Here I am. I live here. If you want to tweet at us, you can. I'm at Backlon.

Nelai is at Reckless. We'll be back on Friday again with the chat show. There's so much to talk about this week. There's the Apple event. There's this Google event. There's a Samsung event. We have our own event, and there will be a special episode of the Vergecast coming out from that.

So stay tuned for that. And if you happen to listen to this podcast in time and it can be in New York this Friday and Saturday, October 22nd and 23rd, we would love for you to come to our party. It's called On the Verge and you can find more information about it at Voxmediaevents.com slash on the verge.