The Vergecast - In the Tweet Mix

Episode Date: February 6, 2015

This week's show includes a very special attempt at an actual introduction. That's right, we're rolling out the red carpet for Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider's chief correspondent. The professionalism doesn't last for long, though, as we quickly devolve into the mathematical definition of a hypecheck, the FCC's role in the future of the internet, and Apple's new take on photo management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the professionally introduced Vergecast. This is a show about the Verge and things relating to the Verge's interests. It's like the director's track. Yeah, and you're listening to it now, which is great. Just staring right at me this whole time. I was hoping that you would like tell me how to start the show. And the answer is that no one knows. But hello, I'm Neil A Patel.

This is Dieter Bone. and actually today, the reason we tried and stumbled through a real intro for the show, which our listeners, I know. I'm extremely flattered. Is because Nicholas Carlson is joining us as a guest for the opening of the show. Nick Carlson, Senior. Nope, a chief correspondent. Chief correspondent.

That's like a TV network title, man. It's totally made up. Chief correspondent of Business Insider. A couple summers ago, a friend and I, well, I was talking to Henry about a new job, and then a friend and I sat and said, What would be really awesome. You're talking Henry Blodgett. Henry's the boss.

Yeah. And I had a new job. This job. Didn't have a title. And he and I, and a friend of mine were talking, well, it would sound awesome. Yeah. Chief correspondent sounds dope. Yeah.

Like, but that's like you have to go to a war zone now. Right? Like, you can't be, you can't. I covered Yahoo. Come back. All right. So, so with that, with that mouth percussion, we will now explain why Nick is here. Nick just wrote a book, published a book.

First real. First book. First book. Marissa Meyer. And the fight to save Yahoo. Which I have read. Wow. Cover to cover.

No, really? And not because you gave it to me for free. Wow. But because I have a deep and inviting interest in failed organizations. And disaster stories. Yeah. And you is a disaster story. Yeah.

I mean, you know, Yahoo, people don't think about this. But it was like the Google, you know, today's Google, today's. Apple back in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was the internet company, $128 billion, and it crashed to, within a year, $8 billion. That was its market cap. And it's, what's it doing now? Now it's around $50 billion, but that's because they made this great investment in 2005 in a Chinese internet company called Alibaba.

And Alibaba, as we all know, is exploded in value. It's now like, you know, one of the big giants of the internet. So that stake in Alibaba is the reason. reason that Yahoo's worth so much. Didn't something just happen with that stake recently? Yeah, absolutely. So the last third of my book is about Marissa. So, you know, this awful company that's just going downhill for all these years.

And then like this superstar Wonder Woman CEO, Marissa Meyer. You know, first I'd chronicle her rise at Google. And it's quite her eyes. She's like in the garage. Yeah. In the early days of Google. Employee number like 20 to 25 somewhere in there. And there's actually a little bit of dispute over which number.

But anyway, so she goes to Google and she has this amazing career. And can she save Yahoo? And the thing is, is she gets this, this has to do with Alibaba. She gets this amazing opportunity that most turnaround CEOs never get, which is that she was going to be able to turn around the company for two years, work on it without shareholders really paying attention to how Yahoo's core business was doing. That's because everybody who's investing in Yahoo was actually paying attention to Alibaba.

Because this is the only way to really, for public investors to invest in Alibaba at that point, was to invest in Yahoo. And so she had this two-year period and could she do it or not? Could she really get the company healthy by the time this IPO came around? Right. And the answer is...

And this is a thing that comes up several, several times in your book, which I think is kind of like the way the verge in our audience, I think we think about tech companies is that they're like fully formed actors and they're top down. Yeah.

Right? And they like, they make decisions in like a cohesive way. And the story of Yahoo, which is crazy, is that there's all these people outside of the company. Yeah. And evaluating what it is, what it should do, doing math, like, crazy-ass math about, like, what all the pieces are worth? And then being like, well, what if we just change CEOs to do something I want? So then I'll make more money. And, like, that is like a recurring theme, particularly with Yahoo. Yeah. And so Yahoo right now, some of the parts valuation, the business of Yahoo is worth negative money compared to AliBub.

Yeah, like super quick math. It's so, so Yahoo has a big stake in Alibaba, 15% stake in that. It's going to spin it out in a tax-free fashion. That's just important. That stake is worth about $40 billion, judging by the public markets. These figures are actually according to Yahoo. And then it owns, you know, a good half of Yahoo Japan with, it's a co-venture with soft bank, and that's worth about $7 billion.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has about $5 billion in cash. So that's, we're up to $53 billion. is what you'd think it would be worth on the markets, right? It's actually the market cap is at $43 billion. So people are saying, okay, so there's the Alibaba steak, and there's the Yahoo Japan stake, Yahoo core business, the one that we all think of when we think of Yahoo.com is worth, you know, theoretically less than $0. Yeah.

And literally the only thing I think about when I think of Yahoo, I think of Yahoo, I think of Yahoo fantasy football. Yeah. It is the only, the one and only valuable part of Yahoo. Yeah. As far as I can tell. Well, no, so my dad only uses Yahoo! And he reads Yahoo News.

And I think there's that kind of demographic that... How old your dad and where does he live? He is a... Next to and research for his next book. The people of Minnesota. Minnesota. Middle of America, very popular. You want to know the crazy thing?

He only reads Yahoo! Deutschland because he assumes that in America it's more biased. Whoa. Well, so Yahoo... So tell us... Okay. So you spent months and months and months and months. Yes.

Interviewing hundreds of people. Yes. Learning about Mercer's Maris. So I want to talk about the character of Marisnaz. Because in your book, she is very much a character. Yeah. Right? And there's all these scenes and all these moments.

Yeah. But I want to talk about the Google. Because I think she, as every kind of ex-Google person does, she rolled in being like, I got it. Yeah. I'm from Google. Yeah. Oh, so you want to talk about her rolling into Yahoo or her like what she did at Google? Let's start with what she did at Google.

because I think she was for a minute, like one of the most important people who could be. Totally. So, I mean, so there's some lessons people can draw from, like, the career of Marissa Meyer. She, by the way, made like $700 million. So at Google, she shows up. She could have gone anywhere after Stanford. I mean, she could have gone to be a consultant at like McKinsey or gone off and been a professor, or Kearney-E-Mell and, like, pretty impressive jobs.

Instead, she goes and works for this funny-sounding company, you know, Google, which at the time was what? She was, like, worried how her parents would think of it because of the name, which was just weird. So she goes in there at 22. She was hired as a coder. And to her credit, she kind of quickly realized that that was not going to be her specialty long term. She went in there and she was supposed to build Google's first ad delivery system. And it was taking her months and months and months.

And then Google went out and hired a guy named Jeff Dean, who's a superstar coder. There's actually like, you know how like there's Chuck Norris fax on the internet? At Google, there's Jeff Dean facts. Wow. And we actually did a slideshow at BI about it. They're funny. I mean, there's the funny like nerd jokes that I don't really get. I actually had someone explain it to me one of the engineers of BI.

Anyway, he's great. And he did what she was working on in about three weeks. And she realized, okay, this isn't my specialty. So instead, she sort of stepped back and she loved working at Google. She's like, what can I do here to really make a difference? And she just threw herself at any problem. She got involved in PR. And then she got involved in, like, really kind of just being the CEO's, like, lieutenant.

Like, you know, and she kind of ran Larry Page's meetings. And then she ran the UI reviews. And she gained a lot of power. by sort of being the person who determined finally whether or not a product lived up to Google's standards in terms of user interface. And then the other big thing she did is she set up a program called the APM program, the Associate Product Manager's program. She taught Google how to hire. Google had been going out and hiring MBAs. And well, there's this guy there who was trying to hire MBAs.

And Larry Page kept being like, I hate MBAs. Why are you bringing these people to me? They're like a bunch of douchebags. So, Meyer said to this person who was trying to hire all. these people like, you're doing it wrong. What you need to do is you need to hire, like, technically savvy people who are interested in business. And he said, okay, you think you're so smart.

Go start up the program. And so she did. And it was called the APM program. And it's sort of renowned in Silicon Valley as this like CEO school. And so the clever thing that she did was these APMs would come, they would come from Stanford or MIT or whatever. And they would come into Google and they would go off and they would like have their actual bosses.

Like they would be working on Gmail and they would have them. their boss in Gmail or something like that. But Marissa Meyer was the person who hired them and was running their APM program, which is like, and so they would all... So she was their finisher. Exactly. They would all come back to her, report to her, say what was going on. And she had a lot of influence with him, even as they went up in the org.

And so, you know, by 2008, 2007, she was extremely powerful at Google. And then, then came like a, you know, a derailment of her career. But still. Right. Yeah. But so the one story that I love, which is in your book and then it's been, everywhere in the world. It's the 40-some shades of blue.

Yeah. Right? She's famous like data-driven design. Yes. Right. And so tell that story. So, I mean,

Meyer is the person who, so, you know, she was in human computer interaction at Stanford, which is also the, the degree that Scott Forstall got out of Stanford. Same program and everything.

So, you know, so she was very good at, like, sort of creating ways of understanding what users wanted. This is how she got, she like sort of progressed in understanding.

So she would, she would, um, she would, um, measure data sort of see how people did. But she would also do things like before broadband was, uh,

over 50% penetration. She had dial up in her home because she said, you know, like that's how most people are using Google products. I want to use it how most people are using it. So she sort of created these systems. And then she created like tests. Yeah.

Where she would, um, she would say like, you know, she just had like interesting ideas about what design meant. So she had this, rule of like, you know, if there's a certain amount of colors on the page and a certain amount of font changes, you give a point for every font change and a point for every color

and different change. And like, nothing should go over five points. Yeah. So, I mean, she just had like all these, like, very particular rules. Right. And then one designer, he's like, I can't work with these rules. I can't work with these tests. Like, totally. I picked one shade of blue in Google, like, A, B. Test, 40. So, I mean, one thing I think Meyer deserves credit for. And also one reason why she has a lot of enemies is like, she threw herself at all these problems at Google, and she didn't care who else was already trying to solve them. Right. She's like, I'll do it.

Someone else is like, but I am. And then by the time they say that it's done, and she's moved on to bigger things. Right. So you said there's a derailment of the crew. There's a lot of, there's a lot to unpack there, but that's actually not, that's like, it's interesting for itself. But what's in the bigger context, Google, like, flattens out for her. And then she's recruited into Yahoo.

Yes. To, from what I can tell, turn Yahoo into a Google again. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, so there were two directors who hired her really led the charge. One was Dan Loeb. And, like, just real quick, there's a section of my book where Dan Loeb looks at Yahoo. He's the investor you were talking about before.

He, like, looks at Yahoo and he says, okay, this can be fixed. I just need to fire the entire board of directors. Right. And so he buys 5% of the company, and he basically leads a campaign to get all of the directors fired, including the CEO that they hired. And he does that by discovering that the CEO lied on his resume. And there's this great scene in the book where all the executives at Yahoo, discover this story about him lying on the resume in a meeting with the CEO and then he rushes

out of the room and it was just chaos. And there's Scott Thompson. Scott Thompson is who I'm talking about. Yeah. So Loeb and another director named Michael Wolf, they were, they actually talked to a lot of people in the Valley, including Mark and Dresen said, what kind of CEO does Yahoo need to turn around? And Andreessen kind of gave him this idea that what a tech company like Yahoo is, what its products are is innovation, not specific products. You need like Mark's like, Mark, You need a Larry Page, Jr., you know, and they're like, who's like that? Who's like that? Oh, Marissa Meyer.

And so they were just sort of like stunned that she was interested because she's a big name, early Googler. And they hired her with hopes of turning Yahoo into high-flying company like Google or Facebook or, you know, one of those. Right. So I will say that you work for a new media company that owns a proprietary technology stack. We work for a new media company that is a proprietary media stack. There's a hand, the BuzzFeed is one of these things. Yeah. And that tension between the media company and the tech company is real.

Yeah. It's defining in this moment for us in our careers. But what's funny to me is that for a company like Yahoo, that tension is the whole game. Yeah. Right. It's like, reading these stories in your book, it was, the choice was between Marissa Meyer, the product person and Ross Levinson and the media person. Yep. And it's like, it's, I don't know, it's like if your football team needs a new coach, are you going to pick an offense guy or a

defense. It's a lot like that, yeah. But it's also like you also need a good head coach. Yeah. Right. There's a reason that like you also need that, right? Like no one thinks Bill Belichick is like bad at offense. Right. I mean, exactly. It kind of to like go with a metaphor further like Belichick is very adaptable. Right. You know, and what where Meyer is right now is where she needs to adapt. She needs to say like, okay, I was hired to do this. And by the way, neither of those directors are still on her board. So she's not responsible to them in why they hired her. They're just like agents of chaos. Like that's the thing. The way we talk about companies and even the way B.I reports about it, you guys obviously have a much more business focus.

It's when we report on Microsoft, it's like Microsoft made this decision. Yeah. And somewhere in the back end, it's just like, or these like this dude's name's Michael Wolf. Like, or this dude. Like Wolf showed up. Yeah. And like bought a big chunk of your company.

Yeah. Fired a bunch of people. Yeah. Helicopter than new people. And then left and was like, thanks for the millions. Yeah, I mean, this is like why I wrote this book, just because like these are humans at the other end of this who are like just doing crazy things and living through crazy times and making whoppers of decisions. Like, I mean, just to me, like the story that I love talking about is Terry Semmel thinking that he can outsmart Mark Zuckerberg by like forcing him to take a deal for $150 million less than the deal he agreed to. And Mark Zuckerberg, so they had a deal, done deal to buy Facebook for a billion dollars.

and Mark Zuckerberg did not want to sell his company. But he promised his board that if he ever got an offer for a billion dollars, he'd sell the company. So the deal's done. It's a billion dollars. He walks into Yahoo and Terry Semmel, who's like a famous, famous for being a tough negotiator in Hollywood in his career prior to Yahoo. He's all like, oh, I'm going to get him to take a smaller deal. Comes in, says, you know, Mark, I'm sorry, it's going to be $850 million. It's the best we can do.

Semmel's like thinking, like, oh, he's going to take that. That's $850 million. He's like 22 years old. He's going to take it. Zuckerberg just goes, ha. He's like, gotcha. He's out of there. He left.

He goes back to Facebook's headquarters, and he high fives Duscan Moskowitz, and he's like, we don't have to sell. We did it. We're out of way. And now, now, what is Facebook? Like 200 billion plus? Right, yeah.

Who's struggling along? I mean, not to say that necessarily would have been great, but I just love, like, getting down into, like, the moments where these, like, human people make mistakes that, that, that massive ripple.

Yeah. So let's talk about Marissa at Yahoo now. Yeah. Because that's really, your book is third. It's like the rise of Marissa, the transition into power. Yeah. And like what I would call the current period, which is what, what are you doing, Marissa? Yeah.

What's up, Marissa? How are you going to do it? Yeah. You know, she's, I mean, she's an incredible person. I would say no one in the world prepares better than her. Yeah. You know, like if she needs to be prepared for something, she will know it inside and out. But I mean, it's just like mind boggling.

She works extremely hard. She's pretty creative. And she did some amazing things at Yahoo. She went in and got, like, I imagine none of us used Yahoo apps. But just think about this. When she got there, there were no native apps for iOS. I mean, like, they had, like, garbage, like, they had those terrible hybrid apps that were, like, reliant on web pages, HTML5 and what have you.

It was just garbage. And so she went in and said, this is garbage. And now they have all pretty nice, nice, working, fluent apps. I mean, like, they're not extremely popular, but they're all. better than they were. I mean, she bought, do you know this story? We had our old office,

which was near the business inside our office, there was a company next to us. Stamped. Yeah, yeah, yeah, first aquaire. So stamped was literally,

they were the office next door. We could hear their weird-ass piano music in our office. You remember that? It was great. It was weird. It was strange. And one day,

we just like, we look on Instagram and there's a picture of Versa of Myr with the stamp team. We were like, oh, she was on our floor. We like, Maritza?

What are you doing? So she bought all this talent. It kind of an incredible premium. Yeah, she did. She paid about a million dollars per engineer for every one of these aquiliter. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

And then she made like 40 of them. So it starts to add up. Right. And then she obviously bought Tumblr. Right. Which as far as I can tell is ridiculously independent of Yahoo. It is. Yeah.

They're stridently independent. Like there was, I was around at an executive during a conference recently and like someone said, you're at Yahoo and the person said no tumbler you know uh well you know even during this net neutrality thing there was a great story in the washington post just now about how uh uh tumbler CEO was sitting next to Obama who's like arguing for net neutrality to dinner wow and i you know i've been plugged in that story a long time and what i've heard over and over again is basically people around tumbler and in tumbler saying yeah we're doing this and like maybe we're all going to be fired because this is not necessarily yahoo's position yeah but for us like to make

Tumblr's strong. Like, this is where we came from. This is what we believe. Yeah. And we're running with it. And David Carp is like, Yo, Barry. Title II, right?

Yes. And that, it's just funny because they're just like, we're doing it like this. This is important to us and like we're not telling Yahoo. I think that's the way they're running it. Totally. And so that's,

as far as I can tell the most successful. The fact that Yahoo is a business. Yeah. Is negative value and Tumblr sitting within it. That's a good point. It tells you like a ton about. Yeah. That's right.

That's another asset you could put on some of the parts. Like Tumblr's surely worth something. thing. Yeah. Like, you could just buy Yahoo. Be like, okay,

everything's shut down. Yeah. This is like when I used to work at it. I told you I was on a transition this day. That's a good point. You should put that in your book. Too late. Too bad you printed it on dread T's.

I know. Like, I know. No, it's weird. I can do a whole other podcast about the weirdness of books. Oh, we should do that one too.

Yeah. So we should wrap this up a little bit. We promise you we don't take a little bit of your time. Oh, I can hang out. It's a fun podcast. Yeah. So what? we we there's a common report pitch at the verge

which is just basically like WTF blank like WTF phones like that that comes up a lot WTF 4K TVs yeah that's another one so WTF Yahoo so just I mean what am I saying like what what's what is this company going to survive like here's so I used for AOL you used to report on AOL by calling me

fishing for quotes this is true don't tell I never gave you anything. No, never. Until I quit, then I gave you everything. So AOL's like AOL's going through whatever Rocky Tom is going through.

But it still has, grandmothers who don't know better, paying for dial-off. Yes, it does. Amazing. Billions of dollars there. Tim Armstrong, another ex-Gougler, powerful X-Goolewer running immediate.

A-WL and Yahoo are like mirrored twins. They're pretty similar, yeah. They're, you know, both El-Tool Media Company. Webmail providers, portals. Webmail providers. That's what they are. I mean, that's what Yahoo is. That's what it is.

It's a webmail provider. That's the saddest thing. It's a webmail provider that runs Tumblr. It's a declining, it's a declining product in category, and that's why Yahoo! Yeah. Man. No, so Tim Armstrong goes to AOL. Yeah.

He makes his disastrously failed media play in the O.A. Yeah. Which is literally the reason I quit my job at AOL. And Patch. And Patch. Yeah. God bless Patch. Hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain.

Right. So he makes his whatever. his two big failed media plays. Yeah. I would say directly leads to the creation of The Verge, which is delightful. Thanks, Tim. It was nice to do. This place is nice.

It's good. I would say, again, I said this year earlier, snack game, not as strong as business insider. We're going to have to use some of our dirty new media money to get better with that. I just raise the pile, I think. But anyway, but then he, none of that worked. They're actually shutting down blogs at ale now, but he invested heavily into pretty boring ad tech services.

Yeah. And it's paid off as far as I can tell. Yeah. I mean, he had to come to Jesus moment, which is like we were talking about this Dan Loeb guy, went and just started stuff up at at Yahoo. Same thing happened at AOL. I mean, this Starboard, which is actually, interestingly, now turns its sights on Yahoo. Starboard went into AOL and said,

you got to shut this patch thing down. You've got to rationalize HuffPost. You got to like do something about these patents you have. And then AOL sold its patents, which were for like a billion dollars. And then it sort of just got rid of patch. And actually just got rid of it because of these investors. And then Tim, yeah, he got into like real boring behind the scenes, but actually profitable

businesses in ad tech. Right. And realize that it's pretty good to be number two or three to Google and Facebook and ad tech and like, just do that. You know what I mean? Right. And now actually sort of Marissa Meyer and Yahoo are sort of pivoting into the same space. I mean, they just bought this company called Bright Roll before that.

They bought Flurry. These are ad tech plays. They're trying to take this massive audience they have and use technology to make it so they can charge slightly higher ad prices. Right. You know, like I saw something crazy, which is that per every mobile user, Facebook gets $2 in ads. And per every mobile user, Yahoo gets $0.44. You know, so that's, I mean, that's both a terrible state of affairs and also an opportunity. So here's the last question.

And I think this is, in terms of this, like, I'm going to call them the wolf pack. Yeah. That's, like, this wolf pack of activist investors. Yeah. It feels like the next thing you're going to want is for Yonahil to just finally just become one. Yeah. They just mash up these companies that have looked the same forever. They've demanded it actually in public letters to Meyer.

And there's a big, I mean, there's big. So what you don't, you see these, like, activist ones who are big in public, but there are, like, very big ones behind the scenes who own huge shares of Yahoo. and they're pushing Meyer to take this deal. They want her. They're talking to the board. Like, you really should do this. You should sell to AOL. You should, you know, even if it means Tim Armstrong should be the CEO.

Now, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen because Meyer has a board that trusts her and they like her. And she may tell these investors go suck an egg and say, like, you know, this is what you're getting. If you don't like this, sell the stock. Wow. I mean, if only I had that ability. I know. I want her. I really, I really want her.

do that. I want her to come out and be like, listen, our plan is to be, try to be a high flyer again. We have billions of dollars we're going to invest. We're going to do it. If you don't want to buy this stock, don't buy this stock. And if you want to try to fire me, try to fire me. See who else is going to run this thing. And so, I mean, that's like a dare at this point. Yeah. But also, she's got $700 million and she would be a hero. And also, you know, maybe she could do it. And if she can't, you know, it's like, yeah, Yahoo is pretty messy in the first place. and someone goes someone going and buy it well that's actually that's the sort of the last piece of your book is look at all these smart people who try to fix yahoo yeah i mean that was like real quick the one of the big lessons i learned is like people looked at terry simmel we just talked about him before um Hollywood executive came and tried to run yahoo people people people looked at carol barts and they said what a bunch of idiots like old doddering fools you know what i mean but i researched this book i found out that those were actually really excellent bright people who just um got put in charge of a company that has from the beginning not had like a coherent purpose

You know, and that's made it very difficult to run. It's also called Yahoo. Yeah. Come on, man. Google's called Google. Yeah. I mean, well, it's... Google used to have an exclamation point because Yahoo had one.

Yeah. That's delightful. All right. You should buy the book if you're listening to podcasts. Thank you. You should. Marissa Meyer in the fight to save Yahoo. Yeah.

Find an affiliate link on our website so we get a cut of this dirty money. We don't have any of those, but maybe next time we will. But Nick, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, guys. Sam, you've got to read some copy about Snapchat. All right. See you guys. John, let me know when to do. Oh, oh, great.

Come on. Okay. We're so bad at transitions. We're doing a thing. All right. So, as you guys know, the Verges on Snapchat, we are the real verge there. And we've had our account for five months now. And I want to know what you guys think of the account.

We are doing a bunch of new things recently. We did, like, food with Phil yesterday. We did this new music thing with Lizzie. But I want to know what you. you want to see what's worked, what you hated, what stuck with you, what was funny, what do you want to see more of? Who do you want to see more of? And let me know, email me.

I'm Sam at Theverge.com, or you can just tweet at me. I'm at Sam Shephyr on Twitter and add us on Snapchat, The Real Verge. And we're going to have fun. Did you just self-promo? Yeah. You just, just, hey guys. Machiavellian, man. I mean, how are they going to get in touch with me?

Sam published a Snapchat news story on TheVurge.com today. he put the big giant follow the real verge. And as I was scrolling down, I was 50% sure that it was going to be Sam's on Snapchat. I was like, oh, here we go. Okay, it's fine. Hey, guess he's back. Hello. I realized it's an audio podcast.

The full pantomime I was going to do for the episode, really isn't display. Hey, Chris Plant. How you doing? He's doing great because we won the internet back. We did. So we got to do some news. Okay. Great.

Talking Yahoo's talking Yahoo. Not news. We didn't. We didn't hype check Yahoo. Oh yeah. Hype check Yahoo, dude. Tumblr was a good purchase for them. Wait, because it's Tumblr.

Not for any other reason. Nice. Today we're getting business, Sam. Oh, yeah. Corporate, Sam. It's corporate. Corp. Sam.

Sam Corp. I just feel like Sam Corp. Do the hype check. By the way, I came up and just everybody else before the show because we have

what I would call an inherent conflict at the verge. Mm-hmm. A fight for the attention that defines our brand, which is what is the difference between beef or bust and hype check?

Yeah. Like beef or bust is a thing and then like hype check is like also a thing. Right. Oh, by the way, and this Snapchat, Synergy, Synergy Snapchat.

Beef or bust is a show that Sam Sam is the host of with Chris. With Chris Sigler on our Snapchats. Right, right. Co-host. Yes.

So you can watch Beef or Bust, I would say, up to 35 times a day on our Snapchat. And it gets better every time you watch it. It continues every time I watch it. But then on this show, on the Vergecast, we have hype check. And from what I can tell, correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. The difference is beef or bust is a binary.

Yes. So like, is this good or bad? Correct. And you can only answer with the beef or the bust. beef being a positive, bust being a thumbs down. Hype check started out pretty similar because it was like hype or not hype. But what is, it's evolved into bizarre. You don't know what you're going to get.

It's more like opening of fortune. Right. I figured it out. I think it's a hype check is you want to look at the, you know, the asset plan for the company. No, no, it's teenage. I need to look at the portfolio. I'd like to see the revenues. What would they do last quarter?

No, here's, here's, I think, what it is. I've thought about it. I've thought about it. A hype check. Here's what he knows about hype check. Here's what I know. A hype check is a mathematical kind of equation. Sure.

Where it's hype divided by reality equals a check. Right? So, like, the iPhone 6 has a lot of hype, but there's a lot of good reality there. Sure. So it has a hype check index of 0.9. I don't know. Oh, no, it's hype minus reality. So, like, you want...

A reality divided by hype. And it's golf. So you want the lowest score. So if you have a, if you have a hype of 100 and you have a reality of 99, then you get a 1. No, I think it should be division. And I also think the scale needs to be... The scale needs to be, like, Richard scale, exponential, right? So a hype of 10 has to be 10 times more hype than 9.

So Sam... Okay. Sam, here's what I want. Can I check my definition of hype? Hype check? Here's what I want. For the rest of this show, when we say hype check, I want you to do some math in your head. Oh, my God.

Wait. For people who can't see this, he literally turned to his computer as if he was going to do math. What is the formula for hype check? Neil, I define the formula. I think it is hype over reality equals check. Hype divided by reality. And that gives you your hype percentage. metric percentage high percentage no but shouldn't the result be the hype check okay here i i'm gonna stop

this i'm gonna say that if anyone is you is aware of our program and how we ended shouldn't it be swagger divided by sweat equals height we're done we're done with this i want to talk about telecom policy okay killed sam so oh my god peter that was probably the funniest thing you've ever said oh my god all right let's talk let's let's let's let's talk some some FCC By the way, give us five stars in iTunes and tell us what the stupid formula should be. What does I check? We need a mathematical formula. I gave a great one.

You gave a formula. Form the hype on a hundred point scale. A hundred being the best high. But it needs to be more complicated. No, it doesn't. It works great. We're going to give it to the people. Anyway, we won the internet this week.

There we go. We did win the internet. And the reason we're giving it to the people. It's because we won. The people are the internet. Transitions. Yeah. The reason that we're giving it to the people is the people's voice was heard by our government.

And that voice said, choose one law and not another law. Choose this part of a piece of paper, not another part of a piece of paper. So that's what happened this week. So finally after, and this is, I think, for me, this is crazy. Like, there's like, my personal history is wrapped up in this. Like, I published. Almost a year ago, exactly. Almost in February 20th or something of 2014, I published the internet as fucked because I was basically like, because that's how I felt.

Yep. Also, it was true. At that moment, it was true. So the FCC had lost in court over the first set of net neutrality rules because the legal standing was too weak. Immediately after that, every ISP in the country started like doing bad, weird stuff. Comcast started, Comcast keeps always. promising that it will obey neutrality rules

so that's when they started throttling Netflix and then Netflix played and Netflix speeds went back up. AT&T started doing sponsored data. Just silly stuff. Like do you remember, what was it?

Hangouts was going to be preloaded on Android phones but it couldn't be. And T-Mobile's music thing too? That came later. That was a little bit later. There was like some ridiculous thing where

Hangouts. Video chat. Hangouts video wasn't going to be pre- loaded on Android phones on AT&T, but you could install it from the app store. And it was AT&T was like, we don't allow preloaded apps until we approve them. And it was like, what's the difference between a preloaded app and one that comes on the app store?

And AT&T was like, we control our network. And it was just like all this crazy stuff. Like, why wouldn't you let Google just build an app on its phone on its platform, right? Like, and it was just this moment, I think, in early 2014, where it felt like all was lost in these carriers to be able to completely control what devices we used, what apps we used, what services we wanted to use, how we were, like, there's no competition, how we're going to pay for them. And there was just a massive outcry.

Like, we want these rules. And a year later, after basically thinking it was not going to happen for the longest time, the president said we're going to do the rules. And finally, FCC announced yesterday, Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the C said, we're going to use Title II of the telecommunity. Act, which is what people have wanted for a decade to regulate the internet, like the utility that you know it is. Yep.

And that actually doesn't even do anything yet. That's the funniest part about it. It doesn't create net neutrality rules yet. It's just, it's the piece of paper that says you have permission to make the rules. Yeah, it's a piece of paper that says the FCC is going to do its job. Basically. Although, you know, like, when was the Janet Jackson Super Bowl? The FCC's job at that time was to like regulate nudity on TV.

So, like, it has been a long road, right? Like, when people wouldn't, like, I don't know, like, daughtering old ladies, like, see a swear word on TV or hear a swear word on TV, they, like, write a letter to someone, it's the FCC. Yeah. That used to be their job. Can I do that for the internet now? Yes.

So that's like, so that's... Admittedly, that's the worry, right? Like, the previous, the reason I brought up Chan Jackson is, like, the previous thing that the FCC got the most letters about ever was, like, a boob on television. And so this whole agency... Good job, America. And now they're getting letters about whether or not Comcast should be regulated. And the fear in Comcast is able to do this is...

And it is an argument that can be made that the FCC will start to regulate the content of the internet. They'll start to regulate Facebook and this and that. And I think that I personally think that's ridiculous. I think the FCC thinks that's ridiculous. The goal is to protect the marketplace from the monopoly. of the providers not to regulate the marketplace. But you can definitely make that argument. I think that is going to be where the sort of Republicans who are reflexively anti-abama.

Can we talk about that ad that came out today? No, I didn't see it. The Republican ad? You haven't seen this? No. So I believe it was the GOP released a YouTube video that is this scene, but also implies that if net neutrality is approved in any capacity, that your wife won't be able to have sex with the guy who installs your internet?

Yeah, it is literally... The video, if you didn't know what the video was and you played the first 40 seconds, it is a porn video. Yeah, it's the beginning of like... I'm so confused. It's like, it's like a mother is home or a wife is home. It's like this looks like just this big generic suburban home. And then the guy shows up who I guess is like a repairman, but he's here to install the

internet. And they like, they emphasize that. And then a nerd, because of course, yeah. A nerd comes up and he's like, um, actually, I'll have to document this entire process. And he's like, I'm here for the government. And then like eight more nerds show up. And then they're like, oh, you have a smart refrigerator. We'll have to write that down.

And the whole like arc of the video is because they can't actually say what is going to happen is like, we'll write that down. Like this weird implication that things are going to happen because they write it down. They're like, oh, you have a webcam. You're going to have to use this webcam. And it's like, wait, what? Like, these are all the fears that I had if Comcast had utter right. You literally, you could replace the video and just like put Comcast and after effects onto all these people shouldn't. It's like, yes, that was the fear.

Right. What is this? That's like that's real for mobile carriers, right? Like you go to AT&T and they're like, you want that phone? What about this mildly rebranded phone with worst software? Right? Like, that's already happening. Yeah.

Comic Cats is like, you want to watch TV? Here's a box from 1975. You are stuck with it. It's real. What's funny is all the, so this is, I think I've told the story like four times now, right? I don't know if I remember. I don't remember if I told them on the show last week. But we, I went to a conference last week about a telecom policy conference.

And there was a Republican congresswoman speaking. And she was saying literally all of the right things in a really significant way. And after she spoke, the conversation at the conference was you can't fight the people anymore. Right. Like regardless of political affiliation, everybody hates their internet provider. That's true. And they're saying we want the government to protect us. from the market monopoly is the internet provider.

Because what is real, I mean, it's a monopoly. There's no getting around it. If you are Comcast and you put wires in the ground in a city of 100,000 people, you have 100,000 potential customers. If you are Verizon and you want to come in that market, you're not going to capture the entire market. So everybody's customer base gets smaller in an area.

And eventually you're just not, like, it won't ever be economic for a fourth or fifth or, right? Like, you won't get a big market of choices because no one's going to chase a market of 20,000, right, or a potential market of 20,000. So everybody is, naturally, consumers know that this is a monopoly, and they want protection from it, and they've demanded it so loudly that both sides of the political spectrum, no, they can't say it's a bad idea anymore.

So now they're just arguing about how to do it, which is great, except the way that we should do it is not to, like, do what their Republicans are doing now, quite honestly. and like, we wrote a slap dash law, let's pass this, and that'll shut you up. And the fact that it's become politicized like that, I think, is really short-sighted. And politicizing it like, literally the thing Title II says you can't do is block, or, you know, the net neutrality rules that will go under a fact on our Title II is no blocking of lawful devices and applications. It is the number one thing it says. Yeah.

And everybody, there is not a single person on either side of the spectrum. Michael Powell, who is the Republican commissioner of the FCC, was the first. was the first person that passed no blocking rules, right? And he was also the Janet Jatson commissioner. He's the one who started moving the agency because he thought that was wonderful. It's a really great time for politicizing random things, though, in America. We're coming off of, like, off of a good six years of, like, everything being divided,

but now some issues are popping up where they don't naturally divide. Like this is a great one. Vaccines is a great one where it's like a thing that I associate with liberals, but now it's become a conservative thing. It's a really fun. Dieter is about to Live in the Vergecast I'm getting in a fight with Mark Cuban

about net neutrality Just Wait wait Eli have you seen the tweet No I haven't seen the tweet The RFCC you just set back Online implementations of virtual reality 10 years

That's crazy Is he listening to us No he just replied I retweeted him and said no That's not true Great this is a great time to do that Well you know At least I'm not shopping

I will say that we have gotten into many many fights on this show on Twitter. Like we should ban Twitter on the show. But it's like, we should just not use computers. You can also maybe to stop fighting with Mark Cuban. What is it with you guys? Like, you guys like...

No, it's like this. Like, you know who I really want to fight with all day? I want to fight with Gawker. Like a Trump show. I want to fight with like Gawker writers, right? But that's like punching down. Mark Cuban is at least punching up. Right?

Like, whatever. Like, cool. Cool, dumb idea, guys. Like, great. I'm not paying attention to you or twice your size. Mark Cuban's like a billionaire. He owns a basketball team. He has a jet.

He has a standing order for the biggest TV anyone can make. Like, that's punching up. Okay. You fight that guy. That's awesome. What? Just, Yeah,

no, I'm saying. Like, that's, all that's cool. The last part is super awesome. No, it's true. He does.

He has standing order for, like, if any company makes a bigger TV than the one he has. It shows up. It shows up. It just appears. They all know it. There was like a really great run,

uh, sort of in the, like, 2005, 2008, when the HD transition was like really kicking off. When every, like,

literally we'd go to CES and like Panasonic would be like, we made a bigger TV. Mark Cuban's getting it. And he'd be like, cool. That's awesome for me. All right. Do we continue talking about neutrality? Yes. So there's a few things left to say about it.

One, the rules are not yet out, right? There's a, he announced he was going to do it. And that was a big deal when everyone, we wrote a lot of stuff yesterday. I would say our audience is appetite for telecom policy stories a bit surprising. But you guys love it, so we're going to keep doing it. But then there's going to be the actual order,

the proposed order, which we are expecting basically to leak any day. The reason it's going to leak and not just be published is because, so there's five commissioners at FCC, three of them are Democrats, two of them are Republicans. He's going to, Tom Wheeler is going to distribute this order and they're going to negotiate. Right.

And because he desperately needs the two votes from the other two Democrats to pass this, because the Republicans definitely aren't, there's going to be a little back and forth, right? They're going to pass some leverage. Then there'll be a real order, then that will pass, and then Verizon will immediately sue the FCC. Like, oh, that's the path. Yep. And they'll sue the FCC for two reasons. One, they'll say reclassification is illegal. You don't have the power to do it.

So it's probably going to be a loser because the court just said they do. Yeah. And then I'm going to say all these Title II. this is nerdy. So Title II is a long law. It literally regulates rates for like long distance service and all this stuff. Right. The FCC is going to selectively,

they have the authority to selectively cross out parts of it and only enforce parts of it. Yeah. And so this is why Comcast and Time Warner's stock jumped when the news came out. And it was like, what? Why would your stock jump? I thought you were against this. But the FCC said we're not going to apply the like rate regulation that's entitled

to to, cable companies, you guys can charge whatever the hell you want. And there was like, oh, we're cool. So that's why those cable company stocks that just spiked as soon as the news came out. Right. And so, well, which is crazy, right? It's crazy because to me, then maybe, tell me if I'm wrong here, because I'm going to speak for a normal, all right? A norm?

If I saw that, I'm going to, I'm going to go for Norm McDonald. I invest in a company like Google, which is spreading. If you're going to norm McDonald, you got to get way more nasal. I can't even do it. I was going to do a Dennis Miller instead. But I invest in a company like Google, which I see going into cities with faster internet, cheaper internet, and better services that's reliable. I don't go like, great, these, sorry, evil essentially companies that are using awful rates

and exploiting people again and again and again, and they're not going to be controlled regarding that. I don't see, like, it just boggles my mind investing in them because, like, like, I'm, like, like great, they can still be evil. Because as we're seeing with Google, is it spreading like wildfire? Yeah. Well, it's not quite wildfire. People are jumping to it fast and hard when it comes to their towns.

It's a smoldering. Even AT&T is getting better. No, it's amazing with a little competition. Actually, the municipal stuff is the thing that I'm, the municipal broadband is what I'm actually really excited about. Anyway, but we're getting a little bit off track. Title II, it's got a whole list of rules that were designed to regulate phone companies. And they're going to selectively cross some of them out and they're going to

selectively enforce them in every decision, I'm sure. Like, Verizon is, Verizon, it's funny. We pick on Comcast the most because Comcast is most easily picked on. Like, they're the biggest, they're the big gorilla. Verizon is the most litigious in its way. And they're the evilest. Like, I'm just going to say it. They're the evilest.

And they're the evilest for this reason. Although they don't rename their customers. That's true. Comcast has, like, massive customer service problems. But the reason that I would pick. on Verizon the most is the old net neutrality rules were in effect and the only company that like just wouldn't have it that like went to court and just beat them down was Verizon. Verizon operates its proprietary wireless networks, right? So even Google, if you remember this, there was a big

wireless spectrum auction. Google bid a bunch of money to trigger a clause in the auction rules that said 700 megahertz LTE had to be open access so you could use any device you want. Verizon has never, ever, ever let that happen. Like, you know, Verizon is just, they're very proprietary about their network. Now you get what you pay for. I think Verizon has the best wireless network. They have the most expensive one.

But in a world of choice, like once you are on Verizon's platforms and networks, you're not going to any. Verizon's the one that blocked Google Wallet. Remember the Nexus? Oh, yeah. The Nexus 1. Was that going to have Google Wallet? No.

The S? Nexus. I think it was the Galaxy Nexus. Galaxy Nexus. That's what it was. Man, we should just do a timeline of those. Those were great phones. We can go way back with Verizon.

I was getting a fight with them in 2008 about GPS on Windows mobile devices. They were blocking the GPS chip, the hardware chip on phones that you bought wouldn't work. We used to, there was an entire series. I remember the series of Post and Gadget where Verizon was fighting against having Wi-Fi enabled on their phones. Because they wanted you to definitely use a Verizon network. And their argument was insane. It was, we guarantee you that no matter where you are, the Verizon network is better than your Wi-Fi. And it's like, dude, you are running like a 3G network.

Like, what are you talking about? Like, no, you're wrong. And they lost that battle, right? Well, they lost the battle because their customers are like, this is stupid. Yeah. Because their customers like, yeah, I'm going to go to AT&T where there's an iPhone. Yeah. Right?

Like Verizon, like, literally was not doing, opening up the devices to Wi-Fi until, like, the iPhone pressured them basically to doing it. I mean, like, these are companies that are built around, like, command and control what is happening. There's a big-ass Verizon ad on our website right now. That's great. I'm going to shut up about Verizon now. Verizon's the best, you guys. There was a phone where they blocked. There was a phone where they blocked Bluetooth because they were afraid.

They knew that people were using it to tether their PDAs to the phones and so they wouldn't let their phones have Bluetooth. I mean, all I'm saying is the, in the reason that this is, I'm bringing up Verizon Wireless in particular, is these rules for the first time will regulate mobile networks, the same way to regulate wired networks. And the argument over and over again, and if you ever want to get Chris Sigler, like, you like, you like, pump him full of booze and you say Spectrum crunch. And then you like start to get more mad at you. Because their argument is always, like, Spectrum is a finite resource. It's so valuable. We pay so much money for it. We've got.

It's so different. It's magic what we do To put data in the air That's how it's like they're wizards and they only have so many spell charges And they're one And so they're like So their whole thing is we need to be able to zero rate the music service Like all this crap they do

And basically we're at the point where Mobile networks are so much more important than wired networks And there's you know It's some crazy number It's like 70% of like accesses through mobile now That the FCC is like look we're going to do it, we're doing it to everything. Yeah, they have to.

And so then you're going to see a lot of lawsuits there. But I mean, the assuming, like, the best case scenario, as near as I can tell is all these lawsuits happen, Verizon fights, and the FCC, like, wins everything. Hooray, we're still in a place where the FC is going to be making lots of weird little judgment calls that, like, we have to keep an eye on. Like, they said that they were going to pay attention to zero rating of data. So this is like the thing where Team Mobile will let you listen to music for free. They're going to look at that stuff on a case-by-case basis.

They're not going to allow space. sponsored data, I think? I think sponsored data is out the window. Right. But like there's like, it's a whole lot of like, well, we have the authority and now we're going to draw some bright lines, but then I know, we know you want to do this terrible stuff. And so we're just going to like see how it goes. Which is, I mean, fine. Which is fine. Like, that's a way better situation than where we were headed before, I guess, Barack Obama pressured Tom Wheeler into changing his mind.

Like, I like that, that process of what, did Wheeler? really want to do this in the first place? Did he put out that original terrible proposal because he knew? I have to assume that he genuinely had to change positions here. Right. I think there's a good story in the Washington Post. Yeah, yeah. Where basically the president had two aides

who secretly developed a net neutrality plan. And like the real push in everyone right now is taking credit for this. So it kind of depends on who your sources are. But according to this post story and according to people that I've talked to,

Um, the real push came from basically like New York startup tech companies, right? Because your apples and your Googles and what have you. They're big enough to pay. So they're not like like Google spends a lot of money on lobbying, but they were not like at the forefront of the net neutrality fight because they'll just pay. You run YouTube. Like you're going to pay. You're going to be fine.

But if you are, uh, Tumblr. So David Carp, we were talking about this with Nick. Like David Carp like personally petition the president. He's like tumbler is built on this. Etsy is like a big. company that's like fighting for net neutrality because they're like, look, we can't increase cost to our sellers who are just people in their garages, like making stuff. If our costs to distribute content go up because Comcast and Verizon want to charge us to get faster,

we're just going to pass that cost down to our sellers who are trying to like build small businesses. And Etsy's who they have to drag out if this does get politicized because if there's one thing that wins, it's jobs. Right. And like down home jobs. Yeah. And that's That's exactly who. I mean, I'm happy to hear that because Silicon Allie, I think, is the right phrase. But they've been, I wish I could remember the name of the people who worked under Bloomberg. But the work that has been coming out of that team is nuts. And doesn't get nearly enough attention. The maid in New York people? Yeah. Just because they do so much work and it's such a different, I would say, not repugnant culture compared to what we've seen out of San Francisco. And it's totally unsurprising to hear that they would be involved. Because that seems like way at the front of it. And I don't. I know people who are cadetsi and they're like wonderful and they're just, they're, they're, they're the ones who like really, really pushed and said, we are building market. You know, there's a thing about, we've talked about this on the show before. Like the difference between New York companies and San Francisco companies is you have to actually make it in New York.

Right. It's real. Like, there's a lot of people here. So if you're building a company that depends on a lot of people using your thing, like either it's going to happen right away for you in New York or it's not. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Eli, can we circle back for one second?

I just had a question about this. So if net neutrality and that whole bill passes and the internet is a utility and all that stuff, Netflix pays Comcast, right? There's like money exchange there for giving them faster speeds. Will that continue to happen if this bill is passed? Yeah, I mean, so there's Ben Popper is like deep in this game.

So there's the last mile question of net neutrality of like, can your retail ISP provide you stuff? And then there's like the backbone interconnect peering question. So this proposal, as far as we can tell, regulates the whole chain. Yep. But even at those interconnects, like, there's just a lot to unpack there, right? Those are big, complicated, hairy business deals that have traditionally, like, either not involved money or involved a lot of, there's. So we don't know.

Ben's going to do a big series, I think, of reporting against that. Because that, right, you can, there's a lot of people who will make a very persuasive argument that the Netflix problem with Comcast. was not about Comcast. It was about Netflix choosing crappy providers on their end and underpaying a company called Cogent, which was not able to do Netflix. And then finally, quitting and paying Comcast. Right.

And we've reported on this. Yeah, yeah. We have tons of this stuff. And actually, Ben and I don't like 100% disagree. So I'm on this show like stridently arguing for net neutrality. And Ben has done an amazing job of reporting on the site, kind of peeling apart all the layers of this onion. So this is like something that's going to like unfold as this.

this crazy thing continues. Yeah. It's going to be a long way. It'll be a story of the year. I mean, this feels like the type of thing that's going to be. You know,

it's funny. I think it is for us. When I talked to, when Obama, you know, issued a statement and did it on YouTube. And I was like, I saw Ezra Klein,

who runs Vox. And obviously, Ezra is like deep in the politics game. I was like, this is it. Like, Obama's making his mark on the way out. And he's like,

no. And it's like, way bigger stuff coming to. And it's like, oh yeah. Like, that dude can also just, like bomb a country on his way at the door.

Like, you know, it's like, so. Yeah. So, I mean, for the very, I can assure you things have happened this week that are probably in the real world. But for us, I mean, if you think about like what the verge is and what, why the verge exists, like all of the things we want to cover and all the things we want to talk about and all the change and all the future and all that, you can't have it without an internet that allows it all to happen, right?

And the last thing you want is Comcast software. The last thing you want is AT&T software. Like, if you are a listener of the Vergecast and you use AT&T's address book, I want you to send us an email. Right? Like, just send us to know. And we mean like genuinely use it and, and don't just have it forced upon you as a, like, thing sucking a life out of your actual address book. Yeah, right. If you are like, yep, that's the software I'm choosing.

It's like the alien. It's the face crawler. No, if you are. And its eggs are sitting inside. If you are a listener of the Vergecast, like a legitimate. you're not just like riding along in a car. You're not, you haven't been kidnapped

and forced to listen to this as a form of torture. If you are a legitimate listener of the show, yeah, it's real bad for a lot of people. And I apologize. Also, those people should send me a note and we will rescue you. Just tell me where you are.

No, if you're a legitimate listener of the show and you choose VZ Navigator over Google Maps, which, let me know. Or ways, just let me know. Like, I want to know why you made that choice. Like, what is wrong with your brain and then we will help you.

Because those are garbage products. And like, you know, you have to pay for VZ Navigator on Android. Oh, my God. Why would you do that? Just get ways, dude. Like, just do it. You got Google Maps. Just right.

So that's what I'm saying. Like, you don't want to live in a world where these companies are making those sorts of decisions for you. Right. And if we could, if you, I don't know, it's like, I keep him back to TV because that's the last network that we all are confronted with where it is. closed control where I would love nothing more than to buy an Apple TV box or Google TV box and plug it into my Comcast TV service and just be able to watch some TV with better

interface ideas in the front of it. And they can't do it. They've never been able to do it. Because Comcast and the cable companies completely control that chain. And you just don't want the internet to turn into television that way. Yeah. I think that's incredibly dangerous. So that's And if you want to hear more about the internet changing into television, there's a great piece on the all today that you should read that will break your heart. I think John Herman is one of the best writers on media, but I completely, I don't know if I agree with that piece. You should read it in the conversation.

I will say this. I saw, I got to go find this thing. You should read it. Go to the all.com. It's called The Future of the Internet's Television. It's a really good piece. John is a great writer. On the nose is a headline, don't you think?

You read the thing, piece. Read the take. Take it out. That's my new command for making people read blog posts. Take it out. Please never say that ever again. What else do we have? We're coming up on the show.

Apple photos. Dieter, you want to take us through? Stop reading, think pieces. I'm putting it in my pocket. That was nerdy. This show's going to go long. John, I apologize. We got to talk Apple photos.

So Apple Photos, there's a developer seed, which means if you're a developer, you can look at it now. If you're not, there's a beta coming, and then after that, it's getting released in the spring. This is Apple's replacement for iFoto and for aperture, and it basically makes the app on your Mac look and feel and sort of generally operate the same way the photos app on iOS 8 does.

So all the zooming out to the giant year view. There's a cool thing where you can hold the mouse button down and drag around to see pop-ups of all your pictures so you can find them really quickly. And then it has pretty good editing tools. They've got this cool thing. The intelligent slider. An intelligent slider. So it shows your picture, and then there's a slider that has, like, what will happen to your picture?

Like, the, if you do, like, the light slider, it's, like, dark on this side and light on the other side. And then you slide it around, and it just, it does a really good job of brightening the photo. But when you look at it, you can expand it and see that it's doing all the crap that, like, you always do manually when you're trying to make a photo brighter. You're bumping up the exposure, but you're bringing down the highlights, but you're popping up the shadows a little bit, and you're, like, screwing around the luminance and all that other stuff. They just figured out a way to do most of that algorithmically. They've got a crop tool that will automatically find the horizon line, rotate it, and... Like, unsue it. Un-sue it.

And then they also will adjust it slightly to fit the rule of thirds to make it look better. Yeah. Just magically. So if you're an I photo user, it's a huge improvement. It's a massive huge improvement. It seems to be way faster. It's got a much nicer interface. The editing tools are much better.

And the best part about it is it has a It's got this weird like I don't know how to put it The learning curve is not very steep Like using the new photos app to edit photos Will make you better at editing photos Because you can you can screw around at the slider And then you can watch how it does the thing that it does And you can actually learn to understand

You know the concepts of what these things are And like the histogram will actually Become a meaningful thing to you Instead of a random ass graph that's attached to every photo Yeah I just move this slide lighter to the pointy part. Yeah, right.

That's where the blacks go. Right. So it's great. If you are hoping that it is like an aperture replacement, that it's like a pro tool, you're kind of out of luck. Yeah, but I think even Apple's like just used light rim. Yeah, exactly. I think that's, I think they've come to that conclusion.

Right. I think the last piece of it is like they're going to kill final thought. Right. Just used for me. So the other half of the story is ICloud photo, which basically, basically it's a magic sync between the stuff on your phone and the stuff on your computer. And it's all finally, properly, where it should have been the whole freaking time in the cloud. But you need to pay for it.

Which makes no sense to me. Which is pretty annoying because you don't have to pay for Amazon or Google service. Right. Well, Google, the highest tiers of Google, don't you have to pay? If you, above a certain image size, I guess you do. Right. No, I think Google Plus. Google Plus has.

Yeah, I think you have unlimited storage. Yeah. It's always complicated. And the other thing is if you don't opt into iCloud photos, you can still use my photo stream, which still has the insane arbitrary 30-day limit on how long your stuff stays in the cloud. So this is why I don't understand.

You should switch to it if you use an iPhone and you want to use the thing, but you're going to end up having to pay Apple for storage. If you have an Apple's ecosystem, you should use it and pay for storage. Yeah, that's the thing. Because Casey, it's funny because Casey wrote the initial piece on photos,

and his earlier piece this week. Was no photo storage thing, can survive, yeah. Which is, you know, RIP picture life, I think was really the impetus behind that story. But what's crazy to me is Apple is the richest company in the world. They're the biggest. They have the most money. They have like basically a small country's GDP in the bank just sitting there.

And it's like storage for you is free. Yeah. It's storage is free. And it's also this thing lives inside Apple's app ecosystem. Yes, you can like upload photos in ICloud, but this is not a like participate in the rest the internet tool. You can't like squirt your Instagram photos and do it automatically, right? You need to like do the work to like import your crap and put it in there.

Wow. If you live in Apple's world, it's great. But if you don't, you need to like, you're going to need to like do the same old thing that you did before where you figure out a way to get your photos off of Facebook and Instagram and whatnot. Well, that's only if you use it, right? Photos just stress me out, man. Yeah, it's really stressful.

I lost, I lost 10 gigs of photos this year or last year because I backed up my eye photo libraries to Dropbox and Google Drive without doing the research to discover that both of those storage solutions don't support complex databases the way that I photo does and so the photos are just gone. Yep. I didn't back up the raw files. I backed up the library and it got all got corrupted. Yeah.

That's awful. It's terrifying. So yeah, the idea. I'm just going to start printing them all that. Photos are terrifying. They're terrifying to regular people. and you need to do you need to make your photo backup into the cloud solution make people believe that they're not going to get leaked right this is the thing that

nobody that we need to talk about that with Apple and you need to make sure that it is so simple and obvious of where they are where they're going and how you can get them that you just you know that they're there and you're not going to lose them right those solve those two problems and I will give you lots of money for your service I mean Like, it's funny because Google, Google doesn't have the native component of this that I think is required, right? Like, I would love to give all my photos to Google because Google Plus stuff is really good. It's probably the best part of Google Plus.

It's the only, yeah. But then I feel like it's not anywhere near me. Like, I'm taking all these photos and they go to the cloud and I'm just like, I want, I don't. I love Google Photos. It's my preferred thing. It's what I'm using too. It's so easy. And it does everything for you. It's easier to navigate.

I just wish that they would decouple it from Google Plus. Because every time I want to grab a photo out of there, it's like, I just don't know. I'm uploading it on the phone. The app is. On the iPhone, it's garbage. No,

but on Android, it's just... If I have a real camera and I, like... Yeah, On Android, it's just native. It just happens. It's great. No,

Android is great. But then I have like a real camera and like, am I just going to upload this in like this web client? Like, that's weird. Yeah, that's what I do, man. It's great. I do it like whenever I have like a large batch of photos, turn my computer on right before bed,

drop it all in there. I can literally drop thousands of photos all at once. It uploads them all. I wake up in the morning. It's like, oh, I hope you slept well. Here are gifts of some of the things that we're in there. We thought that would be fun. Oh, in all your photos, we touched them all up for you.

Oh, and it's snowing in some of these. So you probably don't want it. So we left the other ones normal. But we add snowing to them just in case if you want alternates. And it's like, yeah, Google, I do want those things. I won't share them with anybody because I hate Google Plus. But thank you for keeping these. It's such weird, man.

The Autololome thing is really cool. I just like... I just want them all close to me. It can be close to you. I keep buying big-ass hard drives and back in my photo library. Guys, we're all switching to Android. This is the time. Ready?

Here we? Guys. I just switched to iOS like a month ago. Yeah, I'm switching. I'm done. You should. Which one? What are you going to get?

The good one? Which one is? Oh, God. Which one? And this Vergecast took another hour to complete. Everybody... What's important to you? The best Android.

Is it camera important to you? No, I have my on camera now. The best, the best answer your phone, I would say right now. Well, then here's what you should do. You should get a Nexus 6 and glue your camera to the back of it. That sounds fine. Do you do, if you want to, is you want a big ass phone? That would be an awesome.

That would be an awesome. How's they get a MotoX? 2014. Mottox 2014. That's what you want. It's 2015. Thanks, teen. Just saying.

Teen facts. I would wait. I would wait. I would wait. Hype check Apple photos for OSX. That was 10. God. man there's no difference.

There's no difference. Sam, you're supposed to say, you're supposed to do math. Oh my God. Yes, there's an absolute difference. One is a letter, one is a number, and a thing is a number. And when you're supposed to hype check something, you're supposed to do math and say a number. So twice in one thing, you failed to say numbers. Wow, you are being really hard on a swagmaster.

Photos for, I haven't used it yet. I can't. Sorry, that was. That was supposed to sound like fake angry. I'm not out. I didn't think you're angry either. I don't know. No, but for real plan, I would.

I could have fewer emotions about that. It would be really hard. But, like, regarding your Android phone, there's a Samsung event soon. Oh, yeah. The new,

that's curvy S6. Yeah. Oh, we haven't talked about that. I'll get that. I have a Mojovax in my drawer. I will say, went back on it.

You should just glue your camera to that and it's a great phone. Eli, we should talk about Bill Gates. Because it's the feature went on Wednesday. We should wrap this up. So it's Bill Gates month on the verge. We'll just do this quickly because I don't know. Well, and there's also other beautiful videos you should be watching and articles you should be reading.

Yes, but this is the month during which Bill Gates guests edit the verge. That means every Wednesday we're going to have an episode of the big future and a feature about one of Gates's predictions for the next 15 years. And all of his predictions are specifically related to how life for the world's poorest will radically improve because of technology. So this week, the feature was about mobile banking. So this is a crazy thing that I actually didn't know. In many of the poorest places in the world, if you ask people what they would rather have a mobile phone or plumbing, they will pick mobile phones. They will continue to use outhouses as long as they have phones, which I think for most of us in the developed world, it's like kind of like a crazy choice. But then I would make the same choice.

Like if you're like, I'm going to take away your phone, but give you this. toilet. I don't know. I don't know what to do with that without a phone. Yeah. Well, I mean, there are also things... I think the point that they make is there are things that we take for granted that... Right. Like, we can go to a bank here. You can't always go to a bank in a third country. It provides you a lot of benefits. But one of the things is, as particularly phones, because the desire for them, the demand for phones is so high. Sure.

That they will spread through the population in these poor countries. I want to read this tweet that Bill Gates tweeted, and he linked to our article, he says, today, 2 billion people don't have a bank account. In 15 years, they'll be making payments with their phones. Right. So those 2 billion people that don't have a bank account now will have phones and be making payments with those phones. The crazy thing is Bill actually tweeted that. Yeah.

Yeah. He does. So we know more about Bill Gates and, like, his Twitter strategy now. It's very interesting. Yeah. There's like a lot of, like, Bill Gates, like, tweet. I don't know. He tweets by committee.

But he is involved. But he's definitely like in the tweet mix. By the way, in the tweet mix, my new album. It's actually a remix album. It's just Twitter. It's just Twitter. It's just Twitter wraps. Oh, boy, getting to the end of the episode.

You just got it. Anyway, it's Bill Gates month. The Moe Viking thing is fascinating. The episode of The Big Future is fascinating. I believe next week is about education. So look for that on Wednesday. And then we'll have this sort of exact weird summary at the end of the podcast. Yeah, it'll be great.

Actually, I won't be on the podcast next week Because I will be on vacation Then Dieter will be doing this awkward thing On the podcast next week Just me and Dieter Tune in And the boss chair All right

To tune to the Vergecast next week When everything falls apart Unlike every other It's gonna be great Anyway that's our show A bunch of stuff Is it gonna be I've got a whole list here

I'm gonna do it Sam I did an opening I'm doing closing Wow Taking Sam's role Go for it on a roll. I just want to see if I can do it. And the last line here is just makes me

cry. You're worried about the sign-off? He's ready for it. Way more worried about the sign-off. Yeah, let's do. I really do not enjoy it. Guys, we're done because I'm going to go upstairs and study some more telecom policy. Yes. Great. Stay tuned to the Verge for more Bill Gates throughout February. That's the best. Follow at Verge on Twitter. Do something hashtag Vergecast.

Go on iTunes, leave us a five-star rating. And what's the assignment? What is the assignment? What's the hype check? The specific hype check formula. The iTunes URL, we have a new iTunes URL, iTunes. That's dope. SlashVirgecast, which is awesome.

Wow. Stay tuned next week. What? Oh, maybe instead of that, oh, oh. Stay tuned next week for the debut, the star-studded debut, by which I mean, Chris Plant and somebody else of What's Tech with Chris Plant. An audio podcast. An audio-only podcast, which involves, I will say, sitting in a tiny uncomfortable room with Chris Plant with audio padding on the walls that makes you want to fucking die.

He gets so hot and stinky. And then like the, there's like, like, magic eyes at you. Oh, yeah. The good thing, can I tell people about it? Yeah, go ahead. So the good thing about it is the room is, it should, you should not put more than one person. It's room. You just shouldn't. It's so small, but it's surrounded in that audio foam. Yeah. That's what they call it. Audio film.

The triangles sticking out of you. We should just Snapchat this afterwards. We'll Snapchat it. You sit across from each other in the corners. So when you look, it's like a folding in of that audio foam. And when you stay there for more than two minutes, your eyes, they don't know what to do with the mirror image. It's kind of like looking at a TV when it has a 3D effect on, but you're not wearing the 3D glasses. And you just, you just. start to faint. And like, I literally was like, talking to you. I'm like, uh-huh. And then he like went, he like went down a little bit.

And he told me this is going to happen. I was like, I'll be fine. And then like, that happened. And I was like, huh. And then I started,

and it's over. Yeah. Yeah. By the time you know it's too late. So what the podcast is in fact coming. The podcast is coming. What's Tech with Chris Plant featuring many passed out guests.

Yeah. Next week, debuting. That'll be really exciting. Sam is on Snapchat at the real verge. It's like a 50th time. we've plugged Snapchat. Hell yeah.

Our unmonetized distribution channel. It's cool. Go look at us where we make no money. I am reckless. Dieter is back lawn. Chris Plant. Plant. It's Plant.

Sam Chef. Sam Sheffer. Sam Chef. That's it. That's the end of our show. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.

Hi. I'm Chris Plant and I believe technology can be, well, a little impenetrable. So I've invited my friends into a tiny, padded a room to tell me how it all works. You can hear it all on my new podcast. What's Tech from the Verge.