The Vergecast - My other car is a cargo bike

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Sure, you could drive to the grocery store and to school. But wouldn’t you rather grab a few hundred of your friends and bike-bus everywhere? The Verge’s Andy Hawkins joins the show to tell us all about his adventures with electric cargo bikes, and why he thinks they’re the ride of the future. After that, Lauren Feiner calls in from just outside a courthouse in Virginia, where she’s watching the remedies trial in Google’s adtech monopoly case. Google already lost the case; what happens next is still anyone’s guess. Finally, David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about how to feel about summarizing YouTube videos with AI. The short version: you should feel a lot of things. Further reading: Why your next car should be an electric cargo bike Electric cargo bikes are rewiring cities Can Google be trusted without a break up? US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of bike buses, which are, it turns out exactly what you think they are. I'm a friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing a thing I never thought I would be doing, which is updating and using the Rabbit R1. This is the truly terrible AI gadget that somehow is still an ongoing concern. It's been like a year and a half now, and they just put out a sort of fascinating new software update for the thing that completely changes the interface. It's all touched now. It has some new ideas about how to do like little apps that you can make with prompts. The thing is still bad

and you shouldn't buy one to be clear. I have one that is like unopened in a drawer over here because I think someday it'll be like a museum piece of weird AI. But I, we're still in this phase where I don't think anybody knows anything about how AI gadgets are supposed to work or even if they're going to be a thing. And I confess as bad as this thing is, I genuinely admire the hustle. But anyway, We are not here to talk about this delightful little orange thing. We're going to do two things on today's vergecast. First, we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins about his experience with electric cargo bikes and basically what it means to take your car drives and turn them into bike rides.

He is, you will learn very passionate about this. We're going to have some fun. After that, I'm going to talk to Lauren Finer about what's going on in the Google AdTech Remedies trial. Google was declared a monopoly in AdTech and now has to be. fight to see what's going to happen next. She's been in court all week. We're going to talk about it. I'm very excited.

We also have a fun question from the Vergecast hotline. Lots of good stuff to get to. But first, I'm going to make some apps on this thing and tell you if it's any good. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations

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Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast.

We all need to retool how we build software. What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers,

and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only a 11.

11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Andy Hawkins is here. Hi, Andy. I'm here. Hello.

Andy, I have brought you here for a selfish reason. I just feel obligated to tell you this right up front. Every once in a while, I bring a person onto the Vergecast to solve a specific problem for me specifically. Okay. This problem that I'm having is that I cannot convince my wife to allow me to buy a very expensive e-bike and use it to carry my children and my stuff everywhere all of the time. You have successfully done this in your life, and I have brought you here to teach me your ways. Well, I think maybe the first problem that I'm detecting here is that you are looking for your wife's approval. I never sought that.

I just ran rough shot over my wife's feelings and her. her aspirations. No. Forgiveness, not permission. I love this for you. Yes. No, no. This is a problem that I hear a lot from my friend group, my social circle, my neighbors. It's something that a lot of people have come to me with, which is that, like, I want to get a cargo bike, but I don't know if it will, like I can't afford it, if it's going to fit in with my lifestyle. You know, drivers are crazy in my town. You know, they're expensive. Where do I put it? There's people.

seem to have like lots of concerns about this purchase in their life, which is so fascinating to be because people will just get up and buy a car, by two cars, without any hesitation, right? They'll just be like, oh, I love Subaru. I'm just going to get another Subaru and I'll have two Subaru's because I think it's sort of a reflection of the world that we live in, right? That we live in a world that is sort of built for cars and for car drivers and for driving as sort of the primary mode of transportation, and it's not built for e-bikes, and we're looking for ways in which to kind of like shoehorn an e-bike into our lives,

and we have some concerns about that. So, yes, just to say that I hear this a lot from people. This actually makes me feel a lot better, I have to say. But so you, you just did a big story for The Verge about your adventures as a cargo bike guy. But I'm curious, sort of rewind a little bit for me. Like, you're a car guy, like, professionally. You car for a living. in some ways. How did you become a bike guy? When did this start for you?

I've always been a bike guy and I've only just recently kind of like been forced to become a car guy as the transportation editor. But the bike guy is my my default setting. That's been the way I've lived my life for a long time. I grew up in the suburbs, you know, in the Midwest, riding my bike everywhere with my friends. And it does feel like in some ways that like we did have a little bit more free range as kids growing up in the 80s and 90s to bike around that kids these days don't seem to have, which we can touch on. But yeah, I've always been a bike guy, grew up biking in my suburbs, and then I moved to New York and biked all around New York. And now I'm back in the suburbs again, and I'm like, oh, man, I have to become an SUV guy now, but I didn't want that to happen.

And fortunately, the timing was great because cargo bikes have been really sort of on this trajectory of popularity in the U.S. They've been a thing in Europe and China and elsewhere for a very long time. But I would say prior to the pandemic and then definitely over the course of the pandemic, cargo bikes became a lot more popular. And then we're selling at a lot at a higher rate than they were before. Interesting. And what makes a cargo bike a cargo bike? Just to quickly define our terms here a little bit.

You're specifically talking about the thing you got is an electric cargo bike. And I think I know what makes a bike electric. What makes a bike cargo? So it is the ability to carry cargo, whether or not that is items, grocery items, packages, whatnot, or children potentially, even multiple children. But we're not talking like little basket on the front I can put a Trader Joe's bag in. That's not a cargo bag. No, but there are cargo bikes that do feature a front bucket that extends out past the handlebars

that are called backfeats. It's a Dutch term. And that is one style, one form factor of cargo bikes. Many other ones are sort of what are called long-tail cargo bikes. It's sort of an extended rear rack on the bike that can support payload a lot of weight depending on the frame and whatnot. So, yeah, it's just any bike that has an electric battery and a motor, and that can carry a lot of cargo.

And it's been great. It's been great for my life. It's been great for a lot of people's lives. It's allowed them to replace car trips for errands, for, for, you know, taking kids to, you know, to school and to activities and friend and friend play dates and things like that. So it's really been a remarkable thing. It's honestly, it's changed my life for the better. I am the kind of guy who I'm concerned about things like climate change and traffic safety because we live at a time in which, you know, many more people are being hurt and injured in car accidents and car crashes. and I think that one of the solutions to those things is just taking more cars off the road

and replacing them with more sustainable modes of transportation. And the cargo bike is a great way to do that. So why do you think cargo bikes have had such a huge rise in the last few years? I mean, I think part of the reason I'm fascinated by this space is I've been covering various versions of these last mile vehicles for forever, right? And I think for all the reasons you just laid out, the idea of I have somewhere to go that is close by, that actually doesn't require my car, but literally the only way I have to get there is my car, is a bad situation that we have found ourselves in in a sort of unique way,

especially in the U.S. And so I'm all four ways to solve that. And, you know, I've covered the weird, like, hoverboards and the one wheels and the scooters. I got really into scooters for a really long time. And I will go to that for scooters for forever. But there's something about the cargo bike in particular that feels like an answer to the question in a different way. Like, why do you think that's the thing that really caught on for people? Yeah, I think it's a couple of sort of trend lines that are intersecting. I think one of which is, you know, sort of the technology, right, e-bike technology has improved. We've now are seeing, you know, lithium ion batteries being developed that can power vehicles for,

you know, these, these, these, these e-bikes for, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 miles of range. They're powerful. you can get up to, you know, 20, 25 miles per hour. And, you know, I think as we saw sort of an influx of imports from China mainly of e-bikes and people realizing that this is something that they could, you know, start to use as a way that, you know, it's not like a traditional bike. You don't end up sweaty and bedraggled at the end of your ride because it, you know, sort of takes a lot of that effort out of it.

And yeah, I think a lot of, you know, sort of people in the cycling community would see that is cheating. But, you know, my argument, my rebuttal to that. is that, you know, transportation doesn't need to be exercise, nor should it be exercise. You know, it's really just about getting from point A to point B in the car, in the e-bike, and especially the cargo bike is a great way to do that. It's the utility of it, right? That it's, you know, it's sort of in this form factor, but also you can take up, you can sort of throw on a lot of stuff. You know, it's more than just the passenger. When you can add passengers, you can add cargo,

you can add, you know, sort of all the things that you need to carry that you would need to as part of the errands that you're running. So the utility of it has been, I think, a real positive aspect of it. And then I think also the pandemic had a lot to do with it as well. You know, we were all cooped up in our houses. We were looking for ways to get out, socially distance ways to get out of our houses. And e-bikes were a great way to do that. So a lot of the sales were peaking during the pandemic. They flatlined a little bit, but then they've sort of since recovered and sales are back up to sort of that pandemic level. So I think it's been a bunch of different things there. that have sort of led to this growing popularity of electric cargo bikes. I so envy people who picked up, like, active outdoor activities during the pandemic. Like, I just, I really earnestly admire all of those people. I got, like, way too into one very specific version of the FIFA video game. That's what I did during the pandemic. And I learned how to juggle.

Like, those are my pandemic hobbies. Yeah, or the sourdough people, right? Like, are they, do they still have their sourdough? What's going on with that? If I had put that into biking, everything would have been. better. So I'm curious for sort of your own experience, because I think I want to touch on a lot of what you said about the kind of macro way in which these fit into the world. But you've had this thing for a while. You've been using it for a while. Like what's actually on the list of like

things that a cargo bike has solved for you day to day? It's really just been like an incredible you know, thing in my life. You know, we're a one car household, which in the suburbs is really hard to do. But having that cargo bike as a way to sort of allow us to make those trips when my wife has the car or I have the car, she's able to take the bike out or I'm able to take the bike out and go pick up the kids or go to the grocery store, what have you. And it's a way of sort of, you know, reducing our own carbon footprint to some degree, which is, you know, I think pretty great. I think it's everyone's looking for ways in which to, I think, drive less and to, you know, sort of be more climate focused, and this has been our way of doing that.

How long did it take to redo your routines? Like, I think about a while ago, I bought a scooter. And I was like, I'm going to be a person who just like takes the scooter to all of the things. Because most of the things I need are too close to drive. Like, it's going to be great. And then I would forget. I would find myself in the car halfway to the grocery store and I'd be like, oh, crap, I was supposed to take the scooter.

And I think the thing that I came away from that experience with was just realized. how car-centric everything is, like, including our lives? And, like, did you have to spend months sort of deliberately being, like, I am going to do this on the cargo bike before it felt like a natural part of your routine? Yeah, I think that's a really great question, because it did take, I think, a little bit of a psychological shift, right? That there was a lot of stuff that we would probably just naturally have taken the car out to do that I had to be like, okay, no, let's take the cargo bike, you know? Let's sort of like try to figure a way or like repack the things that we were going to take with us if we were going to the town pool

or we were going to a playground or, you know, we were going to some sort of, you know, after-school activity or whatnot. It definitely took a little bit more. You know, like, it's going to get dark soon, right? We have to make sure we have our lights and our reflector vests and all these other things to make sure that cars can see us when we're out of the road. And I do think a lot of that adjustment has to do with, you know, making sure that you feel safe while doing that, because so many people have told me, you know, since this video has come out and also just, you know, over, over the years of covering this industry, that they would love to adopt a cargo bike, but they just personally don't feel safe enough doing it because that where they live is just not, you know, not bike friendly, that the drivers are particularly crazy. There's just not enough infrastructure around to support that kind of lifestyle. And to that, I say, I totally feel that and I understand where those people are coming from. Because, yes, broadly across the United States, it's not really safe to have a cargo bike or to bike in general as part of your normal day-to-day lifestyle. And so I would say that, you know, I found like a

group of people in my town in particular that were also very interested in biking. We started a bike bus and that sort of created a community around cycling, especially with kids to school every Friday. But no, yeah, it's like you ride in a big group, right? In this sort of the idea being that there's safety in numbers, right? Because it is kind of daunting when you're, you know, we've got little kindergartners on their, on their bikes riding, you know, in the street alongside of huge trucks and SUVs and buses and all of this kind of stuff. But we're, you know, we're biking with them. You know, it's a big group. We're all biking together. The kids are laughing and talking amongst themselves. We were inspired by a man named San

Balto, who has since become a friend of mine, who is a, um, a PE teacher out in Portland, Oregon. And so he had a cargo bike. He was taking his kids to school and decided, hey, what if other people want to bike as well? And just started doing it on a weekly basis, playing lots of fun music on the ride. They'll sometimes have, you know, special guests come along. And it really grew into like this incredible thing where he was having like hundreds of kids ride with him. So we're like, oh, we could do that in our town as well. So we started with just like five parents and their kids biking to school. And now, you know, it's been three years of doing this every Friday throughout the school year. We have, you know, upwards of 400 kids that ride

to all seven schools in our town. We have multiple routes. We have an interactive map on our website and all this stuff. And it really is just sort of brought the town together in a way that has been, I think, really positive. And you can just see it under kids' faces when they get to ride to school. You know, we're blasting K-pop demon hunters and Chapel Roan and all the things that they love. And it's just like they get a little physical activity. And they also get to

experience the world outside of a car, right? Because like so much of this is about, you know, long car lines in some communities to drop off and pick up kids. It's just such a depressing thing, I think, for so many parents. What's a way that we can sort of make this a little bit more joyful and a little bit more, you know,

beneficial for, you know, community building because especially in kids feel so isolated and lonely these days. And it's a way of bringing them together. And I do think honestly and truly that the cargo bike was really an important factor in helping us sort of build this thing that we did. That's really cool. I do think that interaction with like the rest of the road is a big piece of the puzzle here. And you've touched on this a little bit. But it seems to me that like what you're describing is very familiar sounding to anyone who has, like, lived in sort of a bike-centric city in Europe where, like, everybody bikes everywhere. Or, like, I think about the countries in Asia where those, like, Vespas-style

scooters are absolutely everywhere. And it's just, this stuff is just much more sort of intermingled and interactive. And in the U.S., it is just cars. It's just cars. And so I think one of the questions, and this is a thing I spent a lot of time thinking about and talking people about with scooters in particular is like, yes, there is a technology product problem here, but there's also like a human social problem. Like, where do I write this thing? Where do I put it? What's the right if I'm, am I supposed to be in the bike lane and are the people in the bike lane not riding e-bikes allowed to be pissed at me for it? Or am I supposed to be in the road and pissing off all the people who are in cars that want to go faster? Like, I guess the problem with this is there's no way to

solve the problem without causing a problem. But I do wonder, like, do you think we're making any kind of progress figuring out how all of these different things are supposed to interact with each other? So it's been a really interesting phenomenon because I do think that one of the aspects that's been really fascinating to watch with sort of the rise in popularity of e-bikes is all of the tensions that has resulted in that, right? So for the longest time, you know, the cities that did have bike lanes, they were the exclusive realm of, you know, normal cyclists, right? Either the people who did it recreationally or the people who did it for transportation. And then you had sort of the rise of the delivery workers using e-bikes in places like New York and even in the suburbs.

Like my suburb out here in New Jersey, we have a lot of guys riding e-bikes, writing electric mopeds, delivering food. And then became, you know, sort of like the rise of the, you know, sort of the, I would call it the e-bike teen. And the e-bike teen has led to a lot of very panicked Facebook posts, I would say, across the country, as well as some, you know, some very, like, you know, desperate conversations on places like next door and other places like that, where everyone is now up in arms over these teenagers writing very high-powered electric mopeds. and sometimes even motorcycles in some cases. And I do think that it has raised a lot of people's concerns over safety,

to which I say it's good that kids are riding bikes. It's good that they're riding e-bikes. They should be safe while doing it. They should wear helmets and they should follow the rules of the road. But what are the rules of the road? I don't know that it's as simple as you just said it, right? Like I was out the other day and there were these two kids riding. I mean, they couldn't have been more than 12.

And if you had just shown me the things that they were riding, I would have been like, that's a motorcycle. Like, it just is. And so we're at this point now where like, I don't know where you're supposed to be. I don't know how fast you're supposed to. Like, I don't know whether to yell at this kid who's cutting me off on the street while I'm, you know what I mean? Like I think all of this stuff and especially once you get to these very powerful electric bikes that go, you know, in some cases like 25 plus minus. miles an hour, like, you could make a pretty compelling case that that's a car and should be

treated like one. Or a motorcycle. Right. And so I think all this, all these things are so blurry and it feels like we, until we have some kind of answers, everybody's going to hate everybody. I think it really exposes that there's this sort of this huge gap in our regulatory environment right now that if you just throw, you know, um, uh, pedals on something and you can, you can legally call it a bike. And it doesn't matter if there's a 750 watt or a thousand watt motor underneath the thing and that the person using it will actually never end up actually peddling that they can just use a throttle. I think that there's a pretty solid argument that that is not a bike that is a moped or a motorcycle and that it should be the rules that apply to mopeds and motorcycle should also apply to this

vehicle. But that's not the case, right? Because there's this giant loophole that exists and the regulators are not keeping up with it. So, and I do think that aside from sort of like the consumer safety aspect of it all, the infrastructure also is a huge piece that we're lacking. Towns today, there's, you know, it takes years and years and years to get anything protected infrastructure-wise built in any kind of town because it has to be endlessly

debated. There have to be 10,000 community meetings, you know, and everyone is so concerned about parking and the loss of, you know, space for cars. but fundamentally we've already given over all of the space that we have to cars, and we're going to have to take some of that back if we're going to have enough infrastructure to support all of these new riders and these new vehicles that are cropping up. So that's something that I talked about in the video with some of the e-bike folks that I reached out to, and they acknowledge that the little space that has been allocated to bikes is now, you know,

it's at capacity, and we need to either figure out how to get more space so that there can be both enough room for the e-bikes and also the analog bikes and for the drivers because we fundamentally just need to get everyone out of each other's way, right? The cars want their own way, the bikes want their own way, and when they all start mixing and intermingling, that's where danger comes from and people get injured and people get killed, especially children and teenagers. So I do think that we are not prepared at the moment. You're starting to see more towns that are committed to making themselves more bikeable.

That was some of the that I found in the research that more towns have become more bikeable. But there's still a long ways to go. And I do have concerns that, you know, sort of like what is safe today is only going to get worse if we just keep ignoring this problem. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons I think cargo bikes are specifically interesting on this front is that there's something about doing it in a way that is explicitly useful that I think changes the conversation in an actually really productive way.

And so, like, in the town I live in Virginia, last year, 2024, they did a big project to expand and essentially block off a bunch of bike lanes, right? They just put up those, like, little white poles to just put a little space between the bike lane and the cars. And people flipped out.

And of course they do, right? Like, everybody loses their mind about everything. But the one piece of the argument that I thought was so interesting, on the pro car lobby was essentially, I'm in my car because I need to go somewhere and you're going to make traffic worse for me so that some, you know, some loser on a bike

can have their delightful outdoor exercise. And I think to some extent that's, like, disingenuous, and I think study after study has proven that it doesn't actually increase traffic. So, like, that is what it is, but I think the idea of a bike like this that is, I'm going to the grocery store in my car and you're going to the grocery store on the bike.

And actually, you're not out for a joyride. You are out to do something. And the only difference in our goals is the mode of transportation we used to get there. I actually think, like, resets some of that debate in a way that is really productive. And so I wonder if the rise in all this is actually going to make that stuff easier to talk about. I completely agree with you. And I can tell you from personal experience that that's the case, because I feel like if I was going into my town council meetings during the public comment period and talking about, we need more public, you know, more bike lanes and more protected infrastructure.

And I was wearing spandex and like racing gear and like, get a job. Yeah. They would laugh me out of the room and they say, you know, forget this guy. But instead I go in wearing my bike bus vest and I'm dressed normally and I have my kids with me. And I'm like, hey, here's my kids. We bike to school every Friday. We think it's a great time. We wish that we could do this more often, you know, all the time.

And it would be great if you would support. lower speed limits, you know, livable streets, protected infrastructure. And that has had a serious impact. It has had an effect. We have gotten through, I think, to some of the people who are in charge through the presentation of our argument. I feel like because we're saying we want to use this for the utility aspect, for the social aspect, because we just want to get around in a way that doesn't contribute to climate

change and that's better for everybody around us. and that takes cars off the roads. I think that argument really has a lot more sway. And so I do think cargo bikes have a way to do that as well because that's not something that you're just, you're using out of a sense of recreation. You're using it out of a sense of utility, out of a sense of, you know, like how can I make my life a little bit better

while using cars less? And I do think that that's been sort of a real game changer, and I feel in sort of a lot of these local conversations that are being replicated and going on all over the country right now. I do remember one really eye-opening part of my brief schooner opening experience was suddenly you've like noticed differently how annoying it is to drive all the time in a way that I think is actually we just don't notice it because we just do it, right? It's just life. And I think when you suddenly are sort of pulled out of the amount of time you spend looking for a parking spot and then looking for

car and sitting in traffic and waiting for red lights and other cars are idiots. Like, just having your eyes open to that a little made everything else seem more appealing. That it's like, oh, sure, I'm going to have to do like a little bit more work to like find the lights so that I can get home afterwards. But I get to park my bike right out front of the damn grocery store. And that is a pretty big win. All right, I need to let you go here in a minute. But first, you've now had a lot of experience with this.

So if I'm shopping for a cargo bike, which I hopefully will be very soon, as soon as Anna hears this and agrees that this is a terrific idea and good for the world, what's the most important thing? Like, having used one of these for now, like, what matters most if you're trying to buy a cargo bike? I would say maintenance and repairability, making sure that whichever company you're buying from that has some sort of either a relationship with a local bike shop and a way that you can get your bike tuned up and repaired. Because, you know, the thing about e-bikes, especially cargo bikes, they get used a lot more than regular bikes. That's sort of like their magic power, their secret power,

is that you use them all the time. So they wear down a little bit. They're going to need to get tuned up. Make sure that your local bike shop is able to do that. And then I would also just say, if you have a little bit of money to spend and you don't mind shooting for something a little bit top-notch, anything with a Bosch motor is pretty incredible. That company has a fantastic service reputation. Their e-bikes are the motors that they build are really far and away. a lot better than the most others. So those are the things I would say to look for.

That's good to know. Do you think there's a path towards these things getting less expensive? I think I've been waiting for years as they've risen and lithium ion technology has gotten great.

And EVs are everywhere. I've been waiting for these things to sort of hit a price point that feels plausible. And like, I know you're going to say, well, it's cheaper than buying a car. And like, I'm sure that's true. These are really expensive bikes.

Like, do you, are we, Are we, is there a glimmer of hope that it might get more affordable over time? So there are definitely a range. You can get bikes that are more budget and affordable that, you know, won't break the bank. You can get a good car, a decent-sized cargo bike for, you know, I would say around $2,000. You don't have to spend $6,000, $7,000 on the premium model. But that said, you know, like I said, make sure there's an adequate customer service and maintenance and repair and repair system in place.

But yeah, I do have concerns because the vast majority of bikes come from China. I think like over 95% of bikes are built and made in China. And I think as long as we have this tariff structure and trade war situation going on, I don't see a lot of hope for the future. There have been legislatively some efforts to kind of try to bring onshore some of that bike manufacturing, offer some credits and some incentives to people to build the bikes here in the United States. but that's still a ways off, I think. Fair enough.

So I'm stuck with the, at least it's cheaper than a car argument, at least for a little while. I would say that that's a pretty persuasive argument for a lot of people, especially as cars also going up in price. So, you know, if you look at it through that lens, yes, a knee bike and especially a cargo bike,

is still a lot less expensive than, you know, a Rav4. See, Anna? Andy said it. Not me. Andy said that. I'm available for all questions. Andrew.hawkins at theverge.com. Hit me up with your e-buy questions.

I'd much rather answer e-bike questions than get yelled at about Tesla, so please. I love it. And if you want to join the bike bus, just hit up Andy. Yes. You'd love to have you. Please do.

Please do. All right, Andy, thank you, as always. We need to take a break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about ad tech trials, because that is what we do on the Vergecast as we talk about the ad tech stack. We'll be right back.

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you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Coming to you live from a Panera outside of a courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where it is time for Google

to fight for its life in the ad tech world. Lauren Feinner's here. Hi, Lauren. Thanks for having me. So you're on lunch break. Describe us the scene. Where are you? What are you doing?

You're on audio only. Just paint us a word picture of your life right this second. Yes, I am outside the beautiful Panera in Alexandria, Virginia, which has really great broccoli cheddar soup. That's true. And, you know, it's pretty nice out here. And I can use my phone. So that's something that I can't do inside the courtroom. Yeah.

So this is, I just want to say, just an incredibly rude thing that this courthouse is doing to you. You and I have both spent a lot of time in courtrooms over the last couple of years covering Google trials. You, unfortunately, much more than me. But the thing where you can, like, sit in a media room and watch a stream of it while you're on your computer, nice, lovely, delightful, totally manageable. The thing where they, like, scream at you until you turn off all of your devices and you sit and you write with a pen on paper like our ancestors did, just cruel and mean. And I did not appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty archaic, but, yeah. I'm not a fan.

But so the trial that you're in right now is the remedies trial for the Google AdTech case. And this is not the other Google antitrust case. It's the other other Google antitrust case. But just real quick, for people who have not been following the twist in terms of the ad tech thing, kind of catch us up to the beginning of this particular trial. Like how in the give us the sort of Cliff Notes versions of what this fight has been about. Yeah. So I think the Google antitrust trial that most people will remember is the one over search where recently we got the court ruling saying that Google doesn't have to spin out Chrome in order to remedy its search monopoly.

That's a separate case. This case was filed during the Biden administration and is about Google's ad tech monopoly. So basically, Google owns a series of tools that work. in different sides of the ad buying and selling market. And the judge has found that Google monopolized two markets with two of its tools and also illegally tied together those tools. And why does any of this matter? This all sounds really complicated. Basically, I think, you know, the thing I often remind myself as I'm sitting there listening to all of these really complicated terms and acronyms is really what this whole case is about is the,

revenue stream that funds a lot of journalism and a lot of websites across the internet. So the portion of advertising we're talking about is what is referred to in the trial as open web display ads, which are those ads that appear in kind of like boxes on websites you visit, like probably in the middle of a page or on the side of a page of like the New York Times, for example, or, you know, some other publisher's site. And you might be thinking those are, really annoying, but they are something that is an important revenue stream for a lot of publishers. Yeah. And I think the thing you said is important to keep remembering that Google already lost this case, right? They will inevitably appeal, and it's weird that we have to go through the

remedies before they can get to the appeal, but there's a lot of logistical nonsense in all of this stuff. But as with the search trial, Google lost. And the question now is what do we do about it? And so the trial is now a few days old, and I think you've gotten to get a real sense of what both sides want to do here. So let's start with the government. What does the government at this moment think the right answer is at the end of this trial?

Yeah, so at a high level, the government wants to impose both some behavioral changes on Google and what it's allowed to do, not allowed to do, in terms of its use of ad tech tools. And then it also wants to impose what are called structural remedies, or what colloquially we'd call a breakup.

So it wants to do a few different things. Basically, the judge found that Google illegally monopolized the markets for two basically publisher-side tools. So you have the market for publisher ad servers, which Google's double-click for publishers or DFP operates in. And that is a tool that publishers use to basically manage their inventory, manage those boxes on their website that they're selling for advertising.

And then it also monopolized the market for ad exchanges. And that's a tool that basically publishers use to get bids from advertisers that want to place ads on their website. So it's like the exchange where literally these transactions are kind of meeting in the middle. Right. And it's worth saying that that's like, that's two out of the three parts of the process. And so like the way that I think I've come to understand it is basically there's there's how the advertisers say what they want to buy. there's how the people with ad space publishers and whatnot say what they have available,

and then there's the thing in the middle that connects buyers and sellers. And the argument the government made the whole time was that Google is the most popular and important player in all three of these things, and it uses that power to make all three of those things more expensive and worse to enrich Google. And the fact that it lost on two of the three parts of the puzzle is a pretty big deal, right? Like it seems like, to me at least coming out of that trial, it was like, oh, Google, lost this in a pretty meaningful way. Right. Is that helpful to you?

Okay. Yeah, no, definitely. And we should say that, you know, Google did win on one count about its buyer side tools, the advertiser side tools, where the judge said that the DOJ didn't prove that it had a monopoly on that side of the market. But, you know, that side of the market is still obviously relevant to how these other tools work because, you know, part of the issue is that the judge. judge found that Google illegally tied together.

It's publisher ads are ritual, DFP, and AdEx. It's ad exchange. And AdEx has unique access to Google's buy side of the platform as well. Right. And the government's case is basically like, you own all three of these things. You should not be allowed to own all three of these things. And so we are going to take at least one, but maybe two of them away from you, and thus there will be more competitions.

Right. Like, is it kind of, is it kind of that straightforward? Pretty much. There's a little bit of complexity. So I think the most straightforward is that they want to have Google divest adex. It's ad exchange that sits in the middle there. And then it says after that we also want Google to have to open source what it's calling the final auction logic that sits within DFP. And so that's also a structural remedy. And basically what that means is that if DFP is where the final option,

final decision happens of who is going to get to place this ad on the publisher website. So you have bids often from other exchanges that might come through a thing called pre-bid or header bidding. And then you have AdEx gets to decide if it's going to bid. And then you also have what's called direct demand, which is, you know, deals that had already been negotiated. And the publisher has to decide, you know, when it's going to place those. And that final decision between those three things happens inside of DFP, which publishers say is basically a black box, and they don't know why anyone wins or loses besides, you know, on price. Okay. So you mentioned, obviously, this is a different trial from the other Google trial. And I think you and I have both had sort of beaten into our

heads the idea that one trial is not necessarily indicative or predictive of another, even when they're happening simultaneously. But it does feel like the bones of what the government is asking for is the same in both cases, where the one thing is like, okay, you have to, you have to, you have to divest the thing that makes you powerful, or at least one of the things that makes you powerful. And then you have to give everyone kind of the secret sauce, right? And this is a big thing in the search trial too, right? Was the idea that like actually what other search engines need is Google's ranking data and some like real transparency into how Google actually built the thing that is so successful so that they can go and do it too. And Google fought that tooth and nail.

And basically, Google's argument in the search case was like, actually there's tons of competition. Nothing's wrong. You're all idiots. Everything's fine. Is that Google's argument here, too? In a way, I'd say it's a little bit different here in the sense that I think Google has, you know, some of their behavioral remedies look somewhat similar to the governments. I'd say, you know, there's definitely significant differences. Just the fact that there are behavioral remedies in Google's mind is something. Yeah, yeah. I think like in the search case, it was more like, we'll stop doing these sorts of

contracts that were found to be illegal. They took the word exclusive out of some contracts and were like, is that enough? Yeah. Yeah. Here they would be, I'd say somewhat substantially changing the ways that its ad tools bid into different places and it would change a good amount of processes, open things up a bit more, but not as far as the government wants to go. And I should also say that a contingency that the DOJ has is that they want to reserve the right

to force Google to also divest DFP if its other remedies don't do enough. Got it, okay. But here I'd say that, you know, different from the search case, the tools that it's trying to get Google to divest have really been central to the case throughout, where during the search trial, you know, Chrome was obviously an important place where search is distributed, but it wasn't like the central tool that was like at issue in the trial. Yeah, this would be much closer to if the search app was like, or the search trial was demanding that Google sell search.

Like that way, it's much more direct in that sense. And I think that that might be why it has always felt like Google is on more aggressive defense on this one because it is like you're not just trying to kind of prop up competitors and, you know, slap us on the wrist for bad conduct. You're trying to take away the thing that makes us all of our money. Like this is, you know, you mentioned this is how a lot of the money moves around the internet. This is also how Google makes a lot of its money.

This is like it does a lot of first party ads and stuff, but this is like a true money machine for Google and has been for a really long time. And the way that this stuff works is a huge economy. And so far the biggest beneficiary of it has been Google. And so, yeah, it's just been fascinating to me to see Google seem less worried about losing Chrome than it seems about losing addicts.

But I'm actually curious on that front what it has felt like in the courtroom because you've now been in both of the remedies trials and you've gotten to sense sort of the vibes and the feelings coming from both sides. What has this one been like compared to the search trial? How does it feel just listening to the people talk in the courtroom? Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. You know, it's obviously the different attorneys have, you know,

somewhat different style. So there's a little bit of just that probably contributes to it. But, you know, I think this is a case where the divestiture of Chrome maybe felt, you know, I don't know if this was a feeling that was coming from within the courtroom or just a general sense of, you know, it's such a big ask and it's such a big part of the business and that would change so much. So I think just the scale of that felt different in a way, although I think, you know, it feels possibly like this might be a more attainable ask for the government in this case. So in a way, it feels like there's a lot of practicalities being

discussed about how this would work. And, you know, I think something that I've been thinking over the past few days is there's times where I almost have to remind myself, like, what you said earlier, David, of like, Google did lose at least most of this case. And I think the Google attorneys at times are, you know, kind of, they're doing a decent job of kind of making you forget that in a sense. Because we're talking about, you know, I think there's suggestions of what would be fair to make Google do and, you know, how much engineering work would be involved in. So, of the remedies that the DOJ proposed. But, you know, we also have to remember that Google lost this case because it was engaged in anti-competitive behavior for a decade. And Google is

also arguing things like that this whole category of advertising is declining. But, you know, some of the witnesses for the DOJ are saying, well, yeah, because it's been a market that's been dominated by one player and you have to go through this one player's tools to do these transactions. So it's less attractive to a lot of stakeholders. And it's, you know, not a place that people have been wanting to innovate or invest in because the senses that, you know, all roads lead back to Google. Yeah. Actually, I was curious about this. There was this whole sort of kerfuffle at the very beginning of this because Google said in a legal filing, essentially in as many words that the open web is dying. And part of their defense is who cares the open web is dying. And then they

went back and amended it to be like, no, no, no, no, no, just the advertising market on the open. And it's like, well, first of all, those are the same thing. And second of all, you said what you said, Frendos, has that come up? Like, has this sort of existential crisis of the internet been part of the conversation this week? That hasn't really come up directly. Yeah, I don't know, you know, it's hard to know what Google really meant in that filing in the first place. They did advise it to say, I think open web display advertising, which is like the main term that is being used in this case to describe this segment of advertising. But yeah, I think it's come up in the sense that, you know, Google wants to point out that this category of ads is on the decline.

And, you know, maybe this won't even be relevant in several years. And of course, you know, we're hearing about AI and what role does AI play. But really not, not at all to the extent that we heard about AI in the Google search remedy. trial. Right. Yeah, AI was Google's whole defense in the search remedies trial, was that none of this matters because AI is making the, even if we did do all of this for 20 years, it doesn't matter anymore because AI is so important and so powerful that it's upending the market anyway. And I think to a large extent, Judge Meta in that case was sympathetic to that. And I think one of the things I've been thinking a lot about this week is that the listening to the questions that the judge was

asking in that case actually gave a lot of information away about what was going to happen in that case. And he was asking a lot of questions about what overreach would look like and whether divesting things was actually going to accomplish the things that they claim to be accomplishing. So it makes me wonder, what is the judge saying? What kind of questions is the judge asking this week? Has anything kind of piqued your interest? Yeah, yeah. I think she's asked some really interesting questions. You know, she has made it very clear that she really wants to hear from technical experts about the feasibility of this. And I think especially the DOJ's breakup proposals and, you know, what would be involved here? And, you know, when one industry expert was on the

stand, she kind of was dismissive of it and said, you know, this is window dressing. You don't need to concern yourself with window dressing. Speaking to the attorneys, she's kind of done with the industry witnesses who are just testifying about. out the impact on them because she heard a lot of that in the liability trial. So she really wants to get down to the nitty gritty. And I think, you know, there's been questions that are probably good for Google, good for the DOJ in maybe relatively equal measure. You know, at one point, she kind of said something like, the devil is in the details and worried that the, you know, actual implementation of the technical things here would be a lot.

more complicated than what's being presented and wondering if the user experience might be different if some of these tools are migrated to another buyer, for example. But we've also heard her ask today about how exactly it would work to open source the final auction logic and where that would live and getting an understanding of like what that actually involves. And I think one thing that came up yesterday that was really interesting was there was a Google witness on the stand who helped craft Google's remedies proposals. And this executive also had been involved in a couple of projects that Google did to analyze potentially spinning out addicts and, you know, kind of doing some of the structural things that the DOJ is talking about in slightly different

ways. And Google found that they actually considered shutting down addicts altogether. And that seemed to pique the judge's interest. And she asked, well, would that be, a very simple and elegant solution here, because the Google executive was raising the concern of, you know, who's going to buy adX and doesn't just recreate the problem if another ad exchange buys it or another big tech company buys it. So, you know, that was a really interesting thing, especially because that's not even something the DOJ is asking for here.

So rather than force them to sell it, just shut it down altogether? Yeah, because, you know, there... That would be fascinating. It would because there are actually a lot of ad exchanges that are there that have testified in this trial. It's just that they don't have the same access to Google demand as AdEx does. And it's different from the publisher ad servers

where Google is pretty much the only player in that market. Right. Yeah. And I think that's again a key difference between this trial and the search trial, right? So much of the search trial hinged on why are there no other good players in this market? Like why is it impossible to build a successful search engine? And I just like, I will never be able to get Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO out of my head on the stand saying,

I would give you all of this for free just to have the query data. And like, we are all so far behind now, there's not a chance anybody can catch up. This is different in that it does seem like it would be more straightforward to just blow the market open and say, well, everybody, there are a million potential competitors out there. We're just going to give them the same access that you have and then we'll have a competitive market. Like I just, I grant that I am very unsophisticated when it comes to how the ad tech market works, but it does seem to me that it would be an easier thing to just sort of throw the doors open on this one than it would be to like gin up a way to create 10 new search engines from scratch. Yeah, I think at a high level, that's pretty much correct.

I think, you know, there are things in place here that just, you know, there need to be different pathways opened. And that's kind of what they're looking at, how exactly you do that. of the actual tools do exist. Yeah. So what do you think there is to learn from the other trial? Is there, is there obviously, again, these are different things, different judges. Every trial is different on and on and on. Do you see anything happening now that is like rhyming with some of the other trials that you've been sitting in? Is there anything that you feel like is being carried forward here? Yeah. I mean, I think in a way it's hard to make that assessment yet because we have this one data point of this.

kind of like new era of tech antitrust. And that data point is that the judge was willing to call a Google monopoly, but wasn't willing to break it up. And I think we're kind of in the midst of the second data point. And, you know, so far it definitely was notable to me that the judge seemed wary of, you know, doing something that might further harm the market, create a new problem, do something that's just technically not feasible and, you know, kind of not sensible from a technical sense. So, you know, I could see that potentially being an issue where she worries that some sort of breakup would be too complicated. But on the other hand, perhaps she does end up agreeing with the government that a breakup is really

the simplest way to go. That's long been the argument from people who favor structural remedies is, you know, rather than having behavioral changes that require a court to appoint someone to look after a lot of changes and make sure that the company's staying compliant, that, you know, structural changes, it'll take some time to get there. But once it's done, it's done. It's a separate company. It's not owned by Google anymore. So I think it'll be interesting to see which way that goes. And whether Judge Meta's ruling is instructive to that or if it is ultimately an outlier. Yeah, I think the behavioral remedies piece of it to me is really interesting because it's so much of

what has happened in this trial has been about bringing to light the shady stuff that nobody knew that Google was doing. And I think about all the first look and last look stuff that Google was giving itself, which to me is like the most sort of straightforward version of what you're able to do when you control the whole ecosystem, which is Google would run a whole fair bidding process and then give itself a last chance to win. And it was just like, what if you could see the winner of every auction and just decide whether you wanted to win it is like pretty clearly unfair?

And is not the kind of thing that Google was like, you know, advertising that it was doing. And so I think this idea that suddenly someone is going to be able to come in and like immediately suss that stuff out just seems suspicious. And so it like it seems obvious to me that that's what Google would want because like we're going to have this person who part of their job is to try and see what we're doing. And yeah, you can see why it is cleaner to just be like, no, just stop having AdEx be yours. but also why that causes a whole set of other problems. So I think, yeah, where this judge lands on sort of feasibility versus success, I think is going to be really fascinating and seems hard to know at this point. Yeah, and that's something that the DOJ brought up in their opening arguments, actually,

that, you know, this is such a complicated space. And, you know, it's not hard to imagine Google being able to bury some code or some change that's difficult to detect that kind of recreates a problem. problem all over again. All right. So you have another week of the Google trial and then some amount of time and then we'll get an answer from the judge. Is that what we're in for here? That's what we're in for. And, you know, remember, this is the rocket docket in the Eastern District of Virginia. So, you know, that is speedy in terms of legal time, not in terms of real people time. But, you know, that said, we could get a decision, you know, if you think about in the search case, which is, you know, not known as a speedy court,

We had the remedies trial, I believe, in March or April, and then we got the decision, I think, at very beginning of September. So, you know, if I would think maybe a much shorter timeframe than that to get a decision here. Yeah, so it does seem like this is one where there's just a lot hanging in the balance. And Google, I'm sure, is feeling good about itself after the search trial. But seems like it's probably pretty wary of this one, would be my guess. And it'll be fascinating to see what they come in on. like sort of how hot Google comes in making its case.

Because it came in pretty hot on the search trial, that it was basically like all of this is shenanigans. Let's just move on. But in this one, I'm just curious to hear what tone Google tries to strike as it tries to navigate its way around this. Absolutely. All right, Lauren, you have court to get back to another week of the Google trial.

Lots more to do. We're going to have to you back on to talk about how all of this shakes out whenever it does shake out. For now, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back and do a question from the Vergecast hotline. Lauren, thank you. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale,

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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. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in.

It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process, from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With hiring pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focused shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward.

Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over

against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think, that the world can be much better that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo.

And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like second. third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority.

That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, you can email Vergecast at theverge.com. You can call 866 Verge11. A thing I would like people to start doing is sending us video messages. So if you want to just, like, take a selfie video asking us questions and email it to us as like a Google Drive link or something. I don't know. Don't know. Don't break my computer with malware, but send us videos. You know what I mean? Anyway, this week's question is about AI. It's a fun one. Let's hear it.

Hey, Vergecast. This is Roy from Toronto, Canada speaking, one-time listener, first-time caller. And I have a question about YouTube and its relationship to AI, but especially Gemini. So I am what you might call a power user of YouTube as I listen to several minutes, sometimes hours a day. a lot of my podcasts, a lot of just general content on there. It's basically my main source of media consumption. And lately, I've noticed that Gemini does an incredible job of summarizing these videos. And I never realized the extent to which, especially as a busy family man who has very few minutes or hours to spare in the day. I never knew how much I watched YouTube videos

just to get information. And the reason I know this is because I started asking Gemini to summarize videos for me. And it gives me a quick, accurate, factual breakdown of the main points of the video. Is this an existential concern for YouTube creators? Am I the only weird one doing this? Could this become a trend? Would love your thought? Okay, I love this question for a bunch of reasons. Because one, Roy, you are not the only person doing this. Two, this is incredibly intended behavior. This is what Google and all of these companies want you to do is summarize things with AI.

And three, summarization is one of the things that AI is actually very good at. I think if you ask open-ended questions of an AI bot or a large language model of any kind, you run all kinds of risks, right? Things get really complicated. Things go off in weird directions. But if you just give it a body of work and say, make this shorter, it's actually very good at that. And so you see a lot of these tools out there now that are like feeding a book to an AI model in order to get a summary back. And then it's like, well, you've now read the book.

And like, you haven't. You've read a summary of the book. And that's fine. But the summaries are often very good. And I've even started doing it in my own research with a lot of like white papers and studies. It's a really great way to just like quickly digest a lot of information. And I think one of the fascinating things about YouTube is that it is both a very good and a wildly inefficient way to just consume information. Right.

Like if you want to watch a video because it's fun or it's interesting or it's visual or you like the people or whatever, that's fine. But like my favorite example of this is always when I have like some very small DIY house project to do. And I just want to know how to take the thing out and then put the other thing in without burning my house down. And what I have to watch is eight minutes of intro video before I get there. And another version of this that exists on the Internet is like the recipe websites, where it's like I go to a recipe site and I have to read 2,000 words and scroll past 12 ads just to get to the recipe. Like that exists not because that's what the creators want to do,

but because that's how they have to make a business out of it, right? Like all of the data on that recipe webpage is structured in such a way that Google will find it and rank it so that you will click on it and see it. and YouTube is very much the same way, right? Like videos are longer so that people can show more ads in the middle. The longer videos are the more watch time they get, which means they'll get surface more. And it's just this incredible flywheel of things you have to do

in order for the platform to give you the kind of audience and access that you need in order to be successful. So is a Gemini summary of a YouTube video an existential threat to the creator of that YouTube video? Absolutely unequivocally, yes. If everyone stops watching YouTube videos and starts getting summaries of those YouTube videos, it's the end of that business for people on YouTube.

You become a person who is making training data, not a person who is making content that people want to actually consume on YouTube. So, like, cast it out long enough and make that activity mainstream enough, and it absolutely all falls apart. The whole thing falls apart. And this is what nobody in this industry is reckoning with right now

is if all of this stuff works, it all collapses. But that is an existential crisis of my own that we don't have to do right now. So I think what I would say, and this is just my own way of thinking about, like, how do I support the internet in a way that works for everybody, is like, watch the videos as many as you can and as often as you can, but also understand that if what you want is a piece of information and that if the video is not giving it to you in the most efficient way, you shouldn't feel bad about not. watching the whole video. You are not obligated to watch things just because they exist. And if what you want is a piece of information on how to take something out of your wall, it's okay to find the most efficient version of that information. And frankly, I think the fact that 10-minute YouTube videos is the most efficient version of information is like insane on its own. But watch the things that you want to watch. Go actively consume the things made by the creators

that you like. That is the thing. All of the rest of the business and the system and the economy and the economy of it all works if you consume the stuff that you like as often as you can. It is not exactly that simple, but it's close enough to that simple that that's reasonable advice that I can give you. When you're looking for a piece of information, look for it in the most efficient way possible. And I think in many ways, as we've talked about on this show, AI search engines are really powerful for that.

If what you need is sort of a piece of data in the haystack of the internet, AI bots and AI search are better at that than Google. And that is a thing that is going to change a lot about how the internet works and how money flows around the internet. And we haven't fully shaken that out yet. But you as a consumer should not feel bad using the best product. But if what you care about is that the creators who make the things that you like continue to be able to make the things that you like, consume those things. Don't summarize the things and let that be enough because it's not. You should be engaging with the things that you like as often as possible. And also like tell your friends and put the video on in the background and mute your computer and just let it play on

their playlist for a long time. This is like, do it with Verge videos. If you want to watch 700 consecutive hours of the Vergecast without ever watching any of it on YouTube, I have no problem with that. I would love that. It would be very grateful. All of this is to say, yes, it's all an existential crisis. And no, it's not generally your problem to fix it by never touching AI summaries. And I think if you feel morally icky about some of these things, you're right to and you should lean into that, but you also are not required to feel bad all the time. I hope that helps. Welcome to my own existential crisis.

This is what we do here. Anyway, that's it for the Vergecast today. More existential crises to come, presumably in every episode forever. But for now, the Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. You can always email us, vergecast of theverge.com. You can always call the hotline, send me non-malware-filled Google Drive links with selfie questions your videos. We love hearing all of them. We'll be back on Friday with lots more news. We've got

a lot of smart home stuff to talk about this week, some big stuff going on. We're going to talk about all of it, all the AI stuff, all of our feelings, and all of our existential crises. Until then, we'll see you next time. Rock and roll.