The Vergecast - Sonos' new budget soundbar / CNN Plus is shutting down / Netflix loses subscribers for the first time in over a decade

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

David Pierce rejoins The Vergecast with Nilay Patel and Alex Cranz. The crew discuss Netflix losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade, CNN Plus shutting down only a month after it launched, and a whole lot more. Verge editor Chris Welch joins the show to discuss Sonos' new budget soundbar that is set to release in June. Relevant links: gone90.biz Netflix just lost subscribers for the first time in over a decade The writing may be on the wall for sharing Netflix accounts CNN Plus is shutting down only a month after it launched The Obamas are leaving Spotify for a new multiplatform podcast deal Spotify opens up video podcasting to everyone in the US and select markets Exclusive: this is the new budget soundbar from Sonos A year after LG left the smartphone business, Samsung is the big winner The latest leak of Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch shows off a familiar design Playdate review: all it’s cranked up to be  A camera battery with a USB-C port is a gadget whose time has come Elon Musk lays out funding for ambitious Twitter takeover Delta confirms ‘exploratory’ Starlink tests Tesla earned over $3 billion in profit in the first quarter California net neutrality law to remain intact after appeals court says it won’t reconsider earlier decision Instagram is begging you to stop reposting TikToks to Reels This firm made Republicans go viral — now it’s falling apart  Booming warehouse growth clashes with rural life in California’s Inland Empire Inside the pandemic’s PPE supply chain nightmare A former Foxconn executive tries to explain what went wrong in Wisconsin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, David Pierce joins the show for the first time. It's one of its new hosts. We talk about what's going on with Netflix losing subscribers, CNN Plus shutting down. We do a little bit of a gadget scoop about Sonos. And of course, we talk about Elon and Twitter. That's coming up on the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets,

Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt 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.

Hello, and welcome to the broadcast, the flagship podcast, of the Go-90 scale of dube streaming services. A joke which I started five years ago, but is newly relevant today. That's the Vergecast. I'm your friend, Nelai. Alex Cranes is here. I am really excited about talking about Quibi today. This is all we do is we talk about Quibi.

Please rotate your phone. Rotate it so you can hear this better. We have a big announcement. Very exciting news. New host of the Vergecast, new member of the Verge staff, David Pierce is here. Hello. I'm your friend who will always share his Netflix password.

Always. No questions asked. No matter what. You can VPN. into my house. And even when we break up and you keep ruining my Netflix recommendations, I will not take away your access because I'm just that good a person. It's funny because I want to take away Max's access because she's really ruining my recommendation. Oh, it's huge problem. It's the children. Once they're in there, Netflix has no idea what you know. Is it just all

cocoa melon now? It's all cocoa melon. Liam are produced on the Verchast and Creighton the producer of Decoder both worked on a kid show called Gabby's Dollhouse, which is great. And Max likes it and I'm happy to support those two, I just don't need it in my recommendations. I've always thought Netflix needed a button that's just like a regret button where you're like, I should never have watched this. I'm so sorry, please take this out of my recommendations forever. They were supposed to give us one. We were supposed to get like a forget button. Okay. I want to talk about that in a minute. First of all, I just want to point out, David was like employee won at the verge in 2010. True. You've been on a journey through the wilderness and now you're

back. Yeah, I was just looking for you, looking for love and looking for you. for Nelai. That's all it was for years. I miss you too. No, it's, it's both very weird and very good to be back. It kind of feels like no time has passed. It also feels like it has been a literal eternity since I have done a Vergecast. Yeah, but you were on stage with us at the 10-year event with Joanna, but I think the last time was like seven years ago, formally, that you did a Verge cast with us. Yeah, still mercifully the only time anyone has made me cry on a podcast. So, which is the thing I would very much like to keep. Welcome back, David. We've got a new goal for you, buddy. If we don't get to tears, then I

90 minutes. I don't know what we're doing here. Listen, if CNN Plus can't do it to me, nothing can. So that's, so let's talk about the news. David's here. Everybody welcome him. You can tweet at him. He's at Pierce. It's great. It's great to have you here. We're very excited. We've got big plans to expand the show with David. You're going to see him on the site in a bunch of ways. It's going to be fun. All right. Let's talk about streaming. And really what I want to talk about is not CNN Plus or Netflix losing subscribers. I want to talk about this very simple idea that you just brought up, which is you should, every streaming app should have a button that's like, play, but don't count it.

Yes. I call it the I feel bad about this button. Yeah. Don't put this in your data. I want it for Spotify. I want it for everything. Like, I want to listen to this thing or watch this thing, but please don't tell anyone and don't remember that I did it.

Like, it's, I would use it all the time. That's all I want. Incognito mode, basically. Yeah. This show ain't a hit. That play, but don't pretend that this was, I did this. Right. This is how I feel about Moon Night.

I'm watching that shit. But I don't think. that this is a good show that anyone should be watching. Right. Yeah. I don't want you to hold this in your viewership metrics. I don't want you to use it to decide how much money you're going to pay Oscar Isaac. Like, this sucks and I want you to know it, but I am going to watch it.

If ever Disney Plus releases metrics on Moon Night, I'm just going to follow the around being like, but minus one. I didn't. I didn't do that willingly. It was just Wednesday and nothing else was happening. Sorry. I feel very badly about it. We're going to have Charles William Moore, our new TV critic on the show. soon to talk about all the startup shows.

And I really just want to talk to about Moonnight the whole time. So don't tell him. He thinks he's coming on to talk about super pumped and we crash and all that. It's just an hour of me being like, why did they make an ABC TV movie from the 90s on Disney Plus? Like that is the level of quality of the show. I'm sure there are Moonnight fans out there. And I encourage you to tweet David.

I have not watched Moon Night. And now it's a really, it's a hell of a sales pitch you just did. I cannot wait. I'm in. It's so bad. It has the production quality of, do you remember Sequest DSV? It's like, it's right in that pocket, man. Also, as a talking dolphin, it's wild, how similar they are.

It's like, what is going on in the show? Anyway, the actual streaming services we're here to talk about. Let's start with Netflix, because Netflix is a juggernaut. I think it's going to be fine, but they just saw subscribers for the first time in over a decade. They announced they're going to do an advertising tier. and they are going to crack down on sharing Netflix accounts the same password across households. That's a lot of change. And I would say people lost their minds.

Yes. When all this happened. So I would say my big take on this is that two of those three things you just said are super, super interesting. I think the fact that Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in a quarter is like a small thing worth noting, but not ultimately like the harbinger of anything long term. Mm-hmm. everything changes. Like, there are only so many humans in the world who will ever subscribe to Netflix. Like, those numbers are going to go up and down a little more than they have.

That does not strike me is all that interesting. I think the ad future of Netflix is fascinating. And I think the password thing is going to be super interesting. And it was really incredible to watch the response to this because everybody went from Netflix is the juggernaut. It's the future of TV to, like, in the course of one earnings release being like, well, Netflix is over. So I have to do the disclosures. Vox Media is a company. We all work at it.

NBC, which owns Peacock, which streaming service. NBC is a minority investor in Vox Media, which we all work at. That's owned by Comcast. Comcast doesn't like us. So there's a disclosure. The Verge is making a Netflix show. It's actually coming out soon. It's going to be really exciting.

I'm the EP of that show. Vox Media as a company makes shows for all these streaming services. There's a show on CNN Plus, which we're going to talk about. There's a lot of Vox as a show in Netflix, like all the things you can think of. But our show is our show and we get to say whatever we want. I just make the disclosures. That's the disclosure block. You can't tell me I didn't.

You did it. That was great. I wear it like Moon Night. Where's the suit? All throughout Moon Night, they're just like, wear the suit. And he's like, no. And it's like, that's your whole job. That's the one thing we want to see from you.

How do we seg that back to Netflix? The one thing we want to see from them is more subscribers. Yes. So Netflix loses 200,000 subscribers. There's some underlying data stuff to think about. there because they left Russia. So if they hadn't left the Russian market, maybe they would have ticked up slightly. But it doesn't matter because net, they lost 200,000 subscribers. They are focused on that subscriber loss, particularly in North America, which is a big, big deal, right? This is the market

that's saturated. And they are attributing it to, there's a lot of competition now. There is Disney Plus. There is Apple TV Plus. Apple TV Plus just won an Oscar. Their shows are really good. Everyone likes Severance. There is HBO Max, which we should talk about because now it's part of discovery and they're going undergoing changes. But HBO Max has the Batman. That's why you subscribe. But like that's HBO Max. Like they've got the big catalog of HBO stuff. They've got like the whole Turner collection.

They've got like all the old movies that nobody else has. You can watch pump up the volume on HBO Max whenever you want. And then, you know, the Batman was a sensation in theaters and it quickly hit the streaming service. And then everyone watched it again. Then it had another cycle. Like, that's real competition, regardless of the corporate chaos of AT&T and WarnerMedia and Discovery. Like, they're executing. Yeah.

One, it's an interesting thing because I was thinking about this in the course of prepping for this, that, like, I almost couldn't describe to you what Netflix is the streaming service for anymore. Because it's like HBO is starting to lock down the sort of really like blockbustery prestige stuff more and more. Disney is the place you go that has all of the stuff that, like, your kids want to watch, and it's, like, the family-friendly one that has all the Marvel and Star Wars. Like, that pitch is easy. Peacock is where you go to watch The Office. Paramount Plus exists.

No, Paramount Plus is going to have Top Gone Mavericks. Yeah. Okay, there you go. So there's a T-Tale Switch. And I'm kind of at a point where, like, Netflix's big thing is just that it's Netflix, right? Like, it is just the one everybody already has. And that's super powerful, but it does seem like we're getting to a point now where, like, if I have subscription fatigue, like, how long is the list of things that are, like,

dragging people back to Netflix every single day anymore? And it feels like that list is getting shorter. This is what Netflix has been scared of for years, though, right? Like, they started losing their catalog. They started losing friends in the office and Star Trek and everything else, and those went to smaller services. And so they've been terrified of this. That's why they've been investing. They've been trying to build this catalog. And I honestly think that this is all because they screwed up because they're like, we know we got to build a catalog. We got to to do like Apple TV. We've got to make like a reason for people to come here. But instead of everybody else who goes and like figures out what shows people want to watch and make them,

Netflix was like, we're going to use an algorithm to figure out how to like min-max this shit. And that's how we're going to make content. And now everybody's like, but it's all boring and bad and blazze. Well, because the algorithm told them the thing to do is go all in on like niche weird dating shows. Yeah. Which I've watched all of them. There's the international selection is incredible, but it's mainly through like partnerships with other other channels. And then there's like all the American stuff is like stuff that canceled after two seasons. When I say people went crazy because Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers, like literally got all the

way to this is the end of prestige TV. Yeah. Right. Like it was like, what are you talking about? Right. Like they were sort of not making it. When they were making it, it was like house of cards. And it was like one specific era.

But what is Netflix? like very famous for is like two seasons of a thing that a small very dedicated crew of fans likes and then cutting it and then moving on right and like we've heard from TV executives over the years like Netflix isn't promote our work the way the other streamers do that is in contrast to a lot of TV people saying Netflix is the best to work for it because they'll cut you a check and then get out of your way which I always think of that is like a blessing and a curse like it's a lot of smart creative people about an editor and there's an editor and as an editor I have a very specific feeling about that, which is like, everybody needs an editor.

So, like, there's a lot of just, like, bloat in the middle of Netflix shows. One, it sounds like even now Netflix is aware of that. Like, I think it was Matthew Ball was tweeting about this earlier after the news came out, that Netflix is aware of the thing that you're describing and is kind of 18 months into a plan to fix some of that where they're like, and they've been saying, we need to reinvest in in quality over quantity, which is like a very funny thing for somebody like Netflix to say. It's like, well, yeah, we all could have told you that that was going to be the case. But they just made so much stuff for so long that I think they were maybe later than they needed to be to realizing like, oh, what we actually need is a handful of really good, really sticky, really long lasting things.

And the problem is they're halfway into the process of making some of that stuff and making that stuff is really, really, really hard. Like they made squid games. Everybody's like, cool, but like there's not 80 more seasons of squid game that people are going to watch. Oh, now they're going to find a way. I want to push back on that idea that they're redoing things because they aren't. Like, they just this week got rid of their head of animation. That was one of the places where they were really standing out and they were really competing and starting to, like, take all these really cool creators from Disney and Cartoon Network and building out this thing under this guy, Phil Renda, who had started at Cartoon Network. He found, like, Adventure Time, which kicked off this huge animation renaissance.

And, like, they were building a new animation renaissance at Netflix. And then they're like, no, we're going to fire that guy and, like, cancel everything. You wanted Bone? We've been trying to make it for 25 years. Never mind. You're not getting it. And he was one of those rare people that was actually thinking about, okay, what is good content? How do we make good content?

I will not just listen to the algorithm. And they get rid of him. And, like, that seems very, very stupid. Yeah, but I don't ever really know how to evaluate those things, right? Like, how big was the audience for that? Netflix won't give us the number. Right. Maybe they're spending a lot of money in animation no one was watching it. Or they were spending a lot of money on animation and a very small number of very loyal people were watching it and tweeting a lot. And that just like skews our perception of everything. One of the core problems of all of these services is that they're utterly opaque. Yes. In a way that, I don't know, broadcast TV and cable TV all had Nielsen. So we could, we had some way of measuring something even if Nielsen wasn't perfect. But that's going to change soon, right? Because like all of these, all of these people. people are also pivoting to advertising.

Yep. And you can't do advertising without metrics. Like nobody's, I mean, I hope they do try. I hope they go the Tumblr route and like just have the worst ads on all the Netflix shows. Like that would bring me personally joy. But at some point we're going to have to get metrics because like who's going to want to, like they're going to say, oh yeah, everybody watch Squid Games. Did everybody watch Squid Games? Are you just telling us that?

Because you can do that. But you can't do that to the advertisers. Well, so Netflix has started releasing some numbers. they've got a website now. It's like total engaged minutes or something like some number that no one else uses, so you can't measure it exactly. But the thing you're saying about advertising and the password sharing thing is really interesting because it connects directly to it.

David was saying about you kind of run out of people in the United States. Yeah. You sort of have and you sort of haven't, right? They've got 200 million people around the world more or less. I think it's like 220, yeah. Yeah, 220-something accounts, 220 million-sum accounts around the world. there's more people than that in the United States. So you haven't, like, maxed it out yet.

There's, like, billions of people in the world and, like, you know, the hyperbolic headline of maybe this is as big as any streaming service can get, like, oh, you can do a lot of things. So one thing you can do is eliminate password sharing, and the way that they have hinted at doing is they won't just cut you off. They'll tell the person whose password you're sharing,

hey, you could just pay some more money to support your friends or your ex, or whoever it is. Sure, I'm going to do that. Right. So, like, I'm going to get the note about my parents. Yep. And I'm like, yeah, I just pay the money for mom and dad.

So, like, they will attract some revenue in that way. Then if you're like, I'm not going to pay for my ex. I'm going to cut them off. What they'll drop down to is a lower ad-supported tier. So then Netflix will retain you on a cheaper tier or maybe even a free ad-supported tier and say, you still have Netflix. We didn't take it away from you. Right.

We just put some ads in it. Is it going to be like punishment? Like if you don't pay, you have to move to ads? Well, no, because like maybe you're like, I just don't want Netflix. But what they're not going to do is like penalize everyone. They're going to like have these off ramps into either more money or ads. And that like increases your number of users, which is like a very clever way of doing. It is.

I am fascinated by what the like copywriting meetings are going to be like for how they tell your parents and my exes what just happened. It's like, Neelai decided he doesn't want to pay for you anymore. He doesn't love you enough to pay for your Netflix profile. So here's some ads. Thank Neelai. Yeah, I mean, and they've got to find ways to solve people who travel. Like if you're traveling out of your house, like they'll do this stuff that quite frankly, all the live TV services have done.

Like YouTube TV has figured this out. Hulu has pretended to figure out, but Hulu is just like, are you somewhere else? Go to jail. Wherever you are. If you're not in your home, this is probably jail of some kind of. that you should be in. So all these services have these like geolocation restrictions. But the idea that they will initiate new people into advertising, they've got a ramp with password sharing into, here's a soft landing on the ad supported tier that you're not paying for. And if you want to pay,

you can still pay for the new thing. They've got to execute all of that. But that's actually how you end up growing your business. You add pricing tiers. Right. You make a cheaper one and a more expensive one. Like every, you know, there's an iPhone at every $50 price point that you can think of. because it's like, do you have some money? You should spend it on this. And right now Netflix is like, to your point, David, like they've just acted like the default. Yeah.

Your first $15 in your streaming budget goes to Netflix. And I think that might be over. I kind of think so. If I had to pick one as the default right now, I think it's probably Disney Plus. Like if you're only going to get one streaming service, it feels increasingly to me like the answer is Disney Plus. Do you have small children in your home?

I don't, but I know a lot of people who do. So it's possible that I'm very biased. I also think that's what HBO Max is after. and has a real shot at pulling off with the whole discovery thing. Yeah, I was going to say, like, HBO Max would be where my, like... That's where my first money would go. Like, if it fixed its app first. Oh, God.

I refuse to have it be my only one with its terrible app. I think there was a secret update to the HBO Max app. There was. It now does a bamb like Netflix does. Yeah, it has the weird circle spinner, and I think the purple got darker. It did. And they didn't say anything about it. It just happened.

So I'm just there being like, is that purple darker? Should I read into this? and then the app is like ever so slightly slower. And I'm like, maybe it's not an update. But then it's like, ba-bum. It's like, it's different. I think they just like don't actually test things before they push them live. I think we are the test subjects.

They just push it live. And I'm like, did anybody complain? No, no, keep going, keep going. They should just let me in there. Let me design your app. But do you really think that like Netflix is actually going to add subscribers? Because they give this bonkers number of like a hundred million people or 100 million subscriptions are being lost to password sharing. Do you really think they're going to

claim all of those back? Or is the company? No, that's the same number as like the recording industry being like, we would have made 50 million more dollars last year, not for piracy. And it's like, no, I just like definitely wouldn't have listened to anything. Like I'm sorry. Like, I definitely like ripped all of my friends CDs and I wasn't like about to pay for them all instead. I think we're also reaching this point where I'm seeing more and more people say, how do you use BipTorrent? Like, I'm seeing, like, this increase in, like, interest in piracy. I'm seeing this increase in, like, interest in not paying for the shit. Spoken, like, a true invidia shield owner.

Right. I love my Plex. Very legally acquired materials on it. But, like, I just really don't think that they're, that these, all these people, these 100 million households or whatever, are going to be like, okay, well, there's a cheaper version now. I'm going to go get it. Yeah, but I think you can point to that and saying we'll get some percentage of them. Yeah.

I guess they'll get their 200,000 back. Yes. That's a very small percentage of 100 billion people. I think, I mean, to me, the ad thing is much more about, like, other countries outside the U.S. than it is the U.S. And, like, there's some, like, me, like, you're right. Not everyone in America has Netflix already. So there's some gain to be had there.

But I think, like, the thing that I've heard over and over about India, for instance, is that, like, Netflix is just too expensive in India. And people have cable subscriptions that are not very expensive, that they're not eager to cancel. And so Netflix just has not been able to make the same pitch. in countries like that that it has here, which is like we have tons of stuff to watch and we're cheaper than cable.

Like that is actually not how it works in India. But something like additive, which is like a cheaper free Netflix, or not free, but a cheaper ad-supported Netflix is going to be much more compelling to people in countries like that where $20 a month for Netflix seems ludicrous,

but half that plus ads or a quarter of that plus ads might be a lot more compelling. So that's like I think the sort of fail gracefully into ads thing is really interesting. thing, but my sense is the people who would pay for Netflix at what it costs now and the people who want it with ads are like more separate groups of people than maybe I had been thinking. Yeah, we actually have a pitch in from an Indian reporter about why Netflix failed in India that

I'm very excited to read when it comes in. That's exciting. I look forward to my theory being totally wrong when that story publishes, so that'll be great. I think that market is like particularly interesting for a wide variety of reasons. At the end of the day, though, what I think the real cause of this like, date is. long freak out about Netflix is, this market is now competitive. Yep. And everyone has forgotten what super competitive tech markets look like.

It's great. You have a lot of choices, and you can bail and spend your money somewhere else. And a lot of people looked at Netflix this past quarter and bailed. And, like, most of these companies do not have that experience. Right. Like, no one's like, you know what? I'm going to do an Android phone today. I think on this show, sometimes we pretend that happens.

Right? But, like, every, I mean, we do earnings every quarter. in every quarter. It's like Apple had another record quarter or like Amazon is like, once again, an Amazon number of Kindles were sold. And they're like, what does that mean? And they're like, the most Kindles compared to the number of Kindles previously sold compared to the number of Kindles that I imagined. It's like, that's still not a number, but it sounds great. And the other numbers going up. And like, we just haven't seen any of the big tech companies take a hit in such a long time that when they do, it feels like something is over as opposed to just how

markets work. Like, people left and came back. I think that's right. Well, and I also think it's clearly the end of one phase of this industry for companies like Netflix, too, which is basically just the throw money at the problem phase, right? And even going back, Netflix basically was able to throw money at the problem and keep growing like crazy forever. And if there's one thing we know, investors in particular, like, it's hilarious amounts of money being spent in service of hilarious amounts of growth. And now Netflix is saying we need to spend less on dumb stuff and be a little more prudent about how we spend our money. And investors are saying, well, that freaks us out because the freewheeling era of streaming growing is just is just not going to keep being this freewheeling.

Like as they got bigger, as they start to make a real dent in the cable industry, it was always going to happen like this. And I think Netflix just, unfortunately for Netflix, gets to be kind of the first through the gate of like, this is a real industry now. Yeah. I mean, the phone company is as uncompetitive as that market is, right? AT&T and Verizon and Tima will track their churn amongst each other, and then they carefully manage their prices so that they're all the same all the time. Anyway.

Now we're going to have a quadopoly? What's the streaming one? How many are there? No, streaming is just like this like super competitive market. Like, I don't think it is a four-sided race between Netflix. and HBO Max and Disney Plus and Peacock. Like, there's a lot of entrance, and there's a lot of ways to spend your money.

And, like, some of them are just going to fail, and some of them are going to succeed, and some of them are going to just trade subscribers. Like, I think it's actually relatively cool that unlike cable or your phone service, like, you can just quit these apps, like month to month. Yeah, is there anything else out there like that? Like, I subscribed to Showtime for a month

so that I could watch Super Pumped and Yellow Jackets, And I have two more episodes of Yellow Jackets. And when I'm done with them, I'm going to cancel them until another season of those shows comes out. And it's such an unusual mechanic that, like, I can, anyone who's paying attention can just do that with five different services five times a year. And you end up saving yourself a bunch of money and it's going to make their numbers chaos all the time. It's so unlike anything else I can think of. Man, if only they had some sort of like hard copy version of these things that you could just buy for a lot more money. And own.

That would be wild. It would be great, right? You actually just buy the shows. I don't even know what you're talking about. That seems crazy. And then you have them. You wouldn't be like renting them. Anyway, so that's Netflix.

I suspect Netflix will be fine. Stranger Things is coming. So Netflix is going to be fine. Yeah, Stranger Things is coming. All those people will come back. Squid Games 2's got renewed. Everybody dies again. They're just going to resurrect everybody.

Who knows? It just seems like they need hits, right? TV is a hits business. Netflix needs more hits. Apple TV, Severance is a hit, right? But we have no idea if it's actually a hit. It's a hit in the Verge newsroom. That's it. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's the best. It should be a hit everywhere. If it's not, I will go to the grave telling people to watch Severance. But it does make me think, like, I wonder if the other half of the strategy, which is basically like, you need hits,

but you also need sort of the background, like, turn off your brain television. And people have been talking about that forever as like the thing Netflix didn't have. And Netflix has invested really hard in that. They have tons of house shows. They have tons of food shows. They have is this cake. They have all these different kinds of like deliberately non-prostage TV. And I'm starting to wonder if that is actually the hook to keep people that maybe a lot of people thought it was. And if we're going to maybe get a swing away from that now. Was it Netflix that created the random button? Yes. They have the shuffle. The shuffle? Like, yeah, they just invented TV channels. The shuffle is great, but you need to,

I watch this, but don't count it button. That's actually way more important than the shuffle button. The I'm so sorry button. So we should pivot to discovery because that idea that you'll have all the background noise, big part of the discovery strategy. Yep. They make a lot of that stuff. They have it all.

It's on Discovery Plus. And they just bought Warner Media. Warner Media owns CNN. CNN Plus launched less than a month ago under AT&T. The story, so it goes, is that Discovery did not want CNN Plus to live. launch, but they were legally prohibited from telling anyone at AT&T had to manage the business before the deal closed. So instead they had to talk very publicly about their plans.

It actually makes a lot of sense in retrospect, right? Because they gave an unusual number of interviews in the run-up to all of this happening, being like, here is what we think the future should look like. Just to no one in particular, just like standing outside the office and screaming, like, here's what I think. So the deal closes. It's less than a month I'd ever seen M-plus

and they shut it down today. They said it's going to be over on April 30th. This thing lasted 29. 23 days. 23 days is today, but it's got like seven more.

It'll be like 31 by the time it dies. Yeah. So a full month, Vergecast listeners may know. I will reintroduce everyone to this concept. Verizon was the first

to doom streaming services. They launched a thing called Go-90. It was so named because when you watch a video on your phone. You're supposed to turn your phone to landscape. Verizon, the phone company, did not think about portrait video when they launched their streaming service. So they're like, everyone's going to turn their phones, Go 90. So they launched this weird mishmash of a YouTube competitor and they bought a bunch of cheap crap. They called it Go 90. They spent $80 million or $80 million

in this. They said it was a bet the company moment and it just collapsed into dust. We did an amazing story in video on it. Ben Popper when he still worked here. His headline. was Verizon is ready to show you its sexy side, which is like an all-time bird headline. It was nuts. The whole thing was nuts. Thus was born the Go-90 scale of doom streaming services, which goes from zero to 90.

90 is death when you've gone 90. So Netflix is like a two, we would say. Netflix was for a long time lived at one. Oh, okay. Every streaming service is doomed. That's like, this is the underlying conceit of the whole thing. It's just like how close to 90 are you? So Netflix for years, just like, was it one?

YouTube is at one, right? You're still doomed. Well, we're just not anywhere close to yet. Yeah. Right? Like, nothing gets a zero because everyone, you know, time is relentless. Death comes for us all, right? So Netflix and YouTube were always kind of at one.

Quibi started life at 80. Yeah, 85. And just quickly progressed itself to 90. Yeah, I think 80 was generous as it turned out. Yeah, it's very generous. You know, we had a meeting with cats. He was very convincing. So CNN Plus, fastest time to 90. Did a speed run. By a wide margin. Yeah. Launched at 85, left us 23 days later at 90. Quibi lasted like eight months. And CNN Plus couldn't last a month.

So I encourage, if you have thoughts about where other streaming services are in the Go-90 scale of Doom streaming services, you can tweet them at me. I'm at reckless. You can tweet him, but David, he's a Pierce, Alex, Alex, J. Cranz. Just let us know. Because once you start thinking of these companies in this way, you quickly realize, oh, they're all on it. We need a thing on Theverge.com where you can make your own slider. We'll, like, give you a bunch.

You can put them on there. So Paul Miller made one for us. It's still up. It's gone 90.biz. That's amazing. It's not great. It's really not great. He refused to label the chart, which is a real Verchcast crime.

It's still up. It still works. You can look at it. You can be like, oh, voodoo. That's, oh, we're at 90. It's fun to do. We're going to make another one. But right now, so I would put the things that are closest to life at one. I would put HBO Max at like a one. Like it's going to survive. Netflix is like maybe at a five now. Right. Like it had a bad quarter. They need to rejigger. It's the first time they've moved off of that spot. Disney Plus is looking like a, you know, they've got actually challenges. They've got investors worried about the rewerey. org, we just had Julia Alexander on Decoder. Like, they've got to pull off a lot of things. That's not a one. That's also looking like a five. So, like, I just think this market is so hard and so competitive. And they were all betting on endless growth and people signing up for streaming. And what they're kind of getting is, like, people have a finite amount of money for

entertainment. And they're not just going to leave these subscriptions on forever. They're just going to quit on you unless you have something great to show them. And what you have is moon night. Well, you better hope you have blueie in the background because that's, Well, and part of it is also, I think, that the last two years in retrospect kind of screwed them all because they all grew so fast and everybody's memory is so short that it was like, oh, explosive growth for two years because no one went outside. That's the future forever and ever. And then you get a little bit of retrenchment back to like where these companies would have gone if they had gone on a normal trajectory for the last couple of years and people start to panic.

So it's like the whipsawing of it. So those 200,000 people were the ones with lives. They've all returned. Right. They've all gone outside now. Or they're the people who went to HBO Max because they wanted to watch a square version of Justice League in black and white for nine hours. The greatest money AT&T has ever spent.

Straight up the fact that AT&T paid for Zach Snyder to make a 4-3 black and white version of Justice League will go down in history is the best money any phone company has ever. spent. Like, it's like unbelievable that that happened. Yep. So CNN Plus, the, uh, Discovery shuts it down. They have this meeting. The new guy who runs, uh, CNN Plus, Chris Licked, he's a discovery guy because Jeff Zooker was pushed out by Warner Media. He said they had built a beautiful house, but then, this is a quote, then the new owner came in and said, what a beautiful house, but I need an apartment. That doesn't take anything away from this beautiful house you built. I am proud of you and I am proud of this team. But I am gutted.

by what this means for you. And what he means is, I'm burning down your house. You built such a good house. I have no choice, but to torch it. And Discovery's whole strategy is like basically bundling CNN Plus

into HBO Max, bundling HBO Max with Discovery Plus and creating kind of David what you're talking about. She's like a super app of content that is always on, that has the first run movies, that has the kind of like background home shows,

that has potentially live news, that's a cable bundle. And they want to make that. And this is the thing that the discovery executives have been unusually forthcoming about over the last few months. Like typically in a case like this where you have a big merger coming and it's one of, it's two of the biggest players in streaming, everybody's kind of coy about what they're up to, right?

Like they don't usually have a lot of incentive to like roll out their grand plan. But over and over, discovery executives just kept getting up there being like, we think bundling is the answer. We are going to have one app. And, like, mincing no words about it. They were like, yeah, we think the best future for Discovery Plus and HBO Max is if they are one thing. And given the way this company works, it will be called Discovery Plus HBO Max. CNN.

That will be the name of this app. Disco Max Plus. It's interesting because for them bundling is like just a path to the merging. And, like, Disney is over there. Disney's been bundling for a while. They've got Hulu and ESPN Plus and everything together. And, like, they have zero interest in combining all of those together. Well, they do. So in markets that are not the United States, Hulu is basically integrated in Disney Plus, which leads to very weird moments inside the Disney Plus app where it's like, woo, that's a little spicy for Disney Plus.

Because they call it also like Stars Plus in a lot of markets. Right? Because they've got that they've got another whole content arm that's international. They're partially doing it in the United States at least because they want everybody to still think of Disney as like for princesses and superheroes and they want Hulu to be for adults. Yeah. But I'm saying if you leave the United States at least, because they want everybody to still think of Disney as like for princesses and superheroes. And they want Hulu to be for adults. Yeah. But I'm saying if you leave the United States and you open Disney Plus, there's a real chance. It's going to be like, Pam and Tommy is here. That's weird. She's not a Disney princess. She could be.

Maybe she is at this point. Aspirational. But, you know, Disney in the United States right now is like undergoing this massive culture war attack that might be destroying that brain. Like, they're in a tough spot with that bundle, but they also sort of acquired their way into that bundle. Like they launched, like, Hulu is like a part ownership. They can't integrate it.

Now they have more of its catalog. You can see where they're going over time. ESPN is going to be its own thing always, I think. Anyway, this is all just shaking out. I feel bad for the people at CNN, although they did cover their own streaming service launch, just like in a completely ridiculous way. Fair.

I feel bad. We should feel bad. They're laying people off. People are going to have to find new jobs inside of that company. Like 400 people got laid off, I think. Yeah, is that the number? So that's all bad, but 23 days, in just a catastrophe of corporate miscommunication. Yes. Well, and that's the thing. And I think it's like it's important to note here. And it's kind of a bummer that this is the case that this isn't actually really about the performance of CNN Plus. Like if CNN Plus had come out and gotten 50 million subscribers in the first month, like we might be having a different conversation. But we also might not be because like even even in the course of making these announcements, they've been very clear that like this was bad strategy. This goes against what this newly combined company wants to do. And it basically sounds like like you were saying, they've been very clear that like this was bad strategy. This goes against what this newly combined company wants to do. And it basically sounds like, like you were saying, they, they've

didn't want them to launch it at all. Jason Kailar and the CNN team, like two middle fingers to Discovery, decided to launch it anyway on the premise that if we've already launched it, they can't possibly shut it down. And then they said, oh, watch this and then shut it down. And so it's like, I don't know that it has anything to do with the streaming service. It's this weird like C-suite fight that just spilled out into shutting down CNN Plus, which is crazy. Yeah. And in the middle of all this, Jeff Zucker, who ran CNN was one presumes if he had launched it and was it Discovery Warner Media or whatever it's called things may have gone differently because he was just a personality but he got run out of their too like right and Discovery was also

reportedly mad that he got run out the way that he did like the whole process they seemed to do all this stuff before they had new overlords and the new overlords were not fans maybe I need to rename the chart to like the Jeff Zucker Memorial Doom Streaming Service chart I'm gonna say we go 90 a pioneer in the field of doom streaming services remember kids. When you watch a video, go 90. We should very quickly talk about like the other side of the streaming world, which is podcasts. That is undergoing change to Spotify's head of podcasts left. Courtney Holt. He was the one who brought in Joe Rogan, signed other deals, notably signed the Obama deal. Obama leaving Spotify for another as yet unannounced deal. A lot of those deals

have not borne fruit, right? They bought themselves a sort of always on Joe Rogan noise machine. And like sometimes it's like louder and sometimes it's quieter, but it's always on. There's just always a level of white noise coming out of the Joe Rogan machine that they bought. Have we gotten the Harry and Megan podcast that they bought? No, but they like assign people to it. Didn't they make like one episode and then never again? And now supposedly they're doing it for real. Yeah.

Like Archwell Media, their thing is going to do something. Sure. So the person who signed all these deals is leaving. The Obamas are leaving. And they're opening up. They bought this tool called Anchor, which is their like, like user-generated podcasting tool now. Anchors and I'll let you start uploading video podcasts

to every in the United States. It's none of the markets. I would just say that on the spectrum of companies that have figured out their approach to content moderation, there's YouTube, which is like kind of figured it out, still not great because content moderation is unsolved. And then way over there, across the ocean, in a volcano, is Spotify being like,

we don't know what we're doing. We're a tech company. Yeah, the combo platter of unmoderated open podcasting and unmoderated video is just going to open them up to a world of chaos. So we will see how this goes. Yeah, it's going to be a mess. I will say, I think there's this really interesting race happening right now where YouTube is pretty clearly investing in like the audio experience. Yep. Based on the theory that a lot of people want to watch podcasts and a lot of people want to listen to podcasts.

And I think that's pretty clearly real. And YouTube is trying to solve how to transition into like a. audio first experience while Spotify is trying to figure out how to make video work. And if I were a betting man, I would push all of my chips in the YouTube side of that fight. But I think spot, I think this is the right thing for Spotify to do. I think the moderation is going to be a mess. And Spotify's approach, it has an approach. It is chilling in a volcano, but its approach is to chill in a volcano and hope you don't notice. And to say, we think moderation is important and then like disappear into the wilderness.

Here's what I'll tell you. Again, Decoder is a podcast with org charts. It's like, it's the secret of Decoder. It's just me being like, what's your org chart? And then like asking follow-up questions. YouTube's moderation is run by the head of product. Trust and safety at YouTube reports to the head of product. It's in the product organization.

It's a unique arrangement in all of tech. It's like 50, 50, you know. But like product is like a meaningful place for that to live. That's on the roadmaps. It is literally baked into the product of YouTube. Spotify's trust and safety reports to, comms. I don't know about that, man.

Yeah. It's just like one of those things like I can just tell you, maybe all the people are great, whatever, but just that structure is like you think this is a comms, you think it's a PR problem, not a product problem. And like I can just tell you that based on where you've put it. Yeah. And they very clearly do. And that's been their response even to Joe Rogan things. Like they see it sort of as a as a hurdle to get past, not as a problem to solve. We'll see.

It's just like interesting that they're still chasing after it. And, you know, they are the. 800-pound gorilla in podcasting. They seem to be driving a lot of things, but it's true that they have not figured it out. Definitely true. But the good news for them is, I don't know that anyone has.

The podcasting infrastructure across the whole internet is still such a disaster that, like, Spotify should be better at it. But I don't know that it's behind, which is so crazy. I should take this opportunity to say that if you are interested in podcasts, we have a paid newsletter about the podcast industry

called Hot Pod Insider, which has a free edition every week called Hot Pod. You can just sign up for it. We just hired a great new reporter for it. is Ariel Shapiro. She's amazing. You'll see her on the virtual as soon. Thank you. That shameless plug for our own work is a good time to take a break. We've got to talk about some gadgets. We'll be right back.

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That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication, and when every message counts, sounding Being rushed or generic can be getting lost in the shuffle. Gramerly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and

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Old-fashioned gadget scoop. Chris, he's scooped a new soundbar from Sonas. Tell us what's going on. Yeah. So I don't know what it's called just yet. That's the one thing they can actually say for the announcement. That's ice cold, man. That's the iciest shit I ever.

Somewhere Patrick Spence is just staring at the wall in his office, very frustrated. Now, he's got a picture of you up on that wall. So it's going to be their cheapest soundbar yet. Actually, it's going to cost $249. And it's smaller than the beam, which means it's pretty tiny. Because seeing the beam in person is like you just, it's a tiny little soundbar. And this one is four inches smaller. So it's got, you know, quite a few less drivers.

There's no Atmos. You know, there's no mics built in. So it's going to be like a pretty rudimentary just TV and music soundbar. And it'll come out sometime in June, I believe. So there are photos on the site, take a look. So I think they're just going after that really cheap market of like Vizios and, you know, like Roku and TCL soundbars. And that's who they're really going for with this.

I get taking out the microphones and a lot of the other processing and stuff because it doesn't do Atmos. But why go so small? Because the whole point of speakers is the bigger, the better the sound. Couldn't they do bigger speakers without jacking up the price? I don't know. I think they just see this as like for pretty fairly small TVs, same as the beam. So if you've got like a giant 65 or like 75 inch TV, you go for the arc. Yeah. If you've got something smaller, you go for one of these two. Yeah, because these are like 20. You have here in the measurements, 550 millimeter width and then the beam two is 651. That's like 25 inches. I definitely search that, guys.

I do not just switch between millimeters and inches in my head. That was going to be very impressive. I had to let everybody know. But yeah, that's like, that's a tiny baby of a speaker. It's a tiny little thing. And one of the things is, so there's a new mount for this. So you can mount it vertically. And so they think people are going to like buy two of these to use with the arc as like rear surrounds.

And if you look closely at the image, you'll see like the tweeters are like curved. So like when you mount it vertically, it might do a better job of like just sending audio upwards toward the ceiling. something like something like a 1SL or one of those speakers. So if you want to spend $500. Oh, I see. So you can bounce off the ceiling? Yeah, on your surrounds. So you would use these instead of like, right now, if you're really into building a 5.1

Sonos system, because you have all the money in the world, you would do like two Sonos fives, right? And now you'll be able to do these much cheaper actually built for movie audio. Well, yeah, the best part of this entire Sonos thing is like anything. You can have like lamps to surrounds because they make. the speaker lamps. Picture frames. But this is like, so they're going after like the dorm room market or like the second bedroom market here.

Right. What is the state of that market right now? I feel like it's, it's been a while since I bought a sound bar. But my impression of it is like you can get a pretty good sound bar at this point for not a lot of money. Like does, does Sonos have a move here? I mean, I think they want to have a move. I think Vizu has kind of owned this whole space for years.

Yeah. And now you've got like Roku and, you know, some other companies like TCL coming in as well with like, you know, $99 or like $150 sound bars. And Sonos won't go quite that low, it seems like. They're kind of like Apple in that they will only go so low for product price. But $250 for a Sonos soundbar, you know, sounds like a pretty good gateway. Sonos definitely does have the shiny brand where like, I think if you just, if you just show people a Vizio thing and a Sonos thing, they'll mostly just assume the Sonos thing is better.

The Vizio thing is always really funny because they will like the, you know, Vizio soundbars are fine. They sound really good. Some of them are great. But like the classic one is like, you know, the long box with a big hump for the subwifor. Yep. Or like, here's like half a dozen. in weird little speakers with like the fiddly wires.

And it sort of hangs off the edge of your TV stand. Yeah. And then like people buy them. People have always bought those kits. But that's like where Vizio lives. I think Sonos wants to be that sort of like premium plug it in once. We just assume that over time you will have more money and have more rooms in your house and we'll just follow you along that journey.

I'm still going back to the fact that it doesn't have microphones because it seems like Sonos kind of finally abandoning, oh, we're going to be the voice assistant hub in your home. I don't know. I think, like, the other two do have mics built in. And also, like, they make, like, the ARC SL that you can buy at Costco that, like, doesn't have mics. There are just some people who, like, don't want. Right, right. They make a lot of those now. But this is, like, a new speaker from them. This is one speaker. I think we've seen from them without these microphones. So it's like. No, they make the 1SL. They make the ARCASL. They've been pretty clear. Like, some people do not want more microphones in their house. It's me. That's me. Yeah. And I think they've also learned, like, what do people do with microphones? They ask for music. And so, like, it's actually kind of, like, odd to have it in your sound bar. Maybe this one would have worked, but, like, that's how you get the price down. Yeah. The thing that really gets me about this whole thing is we've also seen all these rumors that they're hiring people for, like, a home theater OS. Oh, right. Right. And they've put up job listings. They've been tweeting about it. Some of their employees have been tweeting about it. That, like, this is just a regular plug-in a, sound bar to your arc port off you go. There's no operating system or anything. But that next big move from Sonos has got to be

either a streaming box, a smart sound bar, or, you know, I'm going to say now, TV. Every company should make a TV. Everyone should see the face Chris is making it right now. Like when you said the OS, Chris got like visibly excited.

Do you think it's going to be TV? I think it's going to be TV. I don't want a TV. I just want a cheaper subwoofer, man. And apparently are working on that, the sub mini. And it would make sense to have that come out with this at the same time, I think. Yeah, because right now it's like $700 for a Sonos sub. Yeah, it's absurd. It's really, really good. It sounds amazing.

Here's your $250 sound bar. Now you just have to buy a $700 sub woofer to go on with it. But there's a lot of people online that will find ways to hack other subs and they're working with a son. Like, you can, I don't know, I will just be careful, kids. Like, you're going to break out that soldering iron and you're going to disassemble one. a Sonos 1SL or like my Kia lamp to make your sub-offer work. Just be careful.

I'm just, I beg you, save yourself. But the idea that they need to expand their market, I mean, this is kind of what we're saying. This is a super competitive market. They can make cheaper products and get a new base of people. But at the end of the day, they're always plug in into somebody else's TV. They're always at somebody else's mercy. Somebody else's streaming box.

There's only one answer, man. Patrick, if you're listening, make me that OLED TV. It's going to be the box. It's going to be the box. You think it's a box? It's got to be a box. Like, A, I think Sonos has a lot to gain from a future where you have dumb screens and smart boxes and would be very interested in being those smart boxes. I also think that is the correct future.

Like, stop selling me smart TVs, sell me smart boxes and dumb screens that will last me a decade. No one's going to sell you a dumb screen. I know. And I wish they would. And maybe Sonos will. They want you to buy a new TV every time your screen. gets too dumb. Every third Roku update, I have to buy a new television. It's fantastic. But no, I also just think, like, if I'm Sonos, the TV market is a mess, especially right now, and it's not

going to get better quickly. And, like, they could build better home theater software without trying very hard because most of it is trash, and Sonos has a pretty good track record of building good software, and then put it in a box and sell it to the same kinds of people who would buy something like this. And it feels like Sona seems to just be relentlessly pushing down in the market. And that feels like where it thinks all its growth is. And I don't know that Nelai's OLED TV

solves that problem. All right, let me make the opposite problem. We'll let Chris be the judge. You ready? Okay. Yeah. There's the opposite argument. Selling a box in a market where Roku and Amazon will just give you one for free and they are already the market leaders is stupid.

Right? Like you like blink at Amazon. You're like, huh, interested in books today. Like, have you heard about Prime TV? Here's one. Yeah, one just appears at your door. It's just like happened to you, right? Roku, like, their entire business is giving way that hardware for as cheap as possible and subsizing with ads and all this other stuff they want to do. Being in that business where you're selling a box and you've got to make a new software experience and you're still just kind of at the end of the day, just like looking at your same old TV with your, that's not like Sonos. Sonos is like an experience. And like the speakers, you know,

I have a lot of sonos speakers. I think they're great. I think the company's great. I think it all works great. They're not the best sounding speakers you can get always. No, they're actually not that great. I currently have a 5.1 sono system. And almost every night, I spend way too much time trying to figure out what bookshelf speakers or giant towers I'm going to get to replace it and move from like 5.1 to 2. Because all the home theater nerds are like, you know what? Your speakers suck. And I truly believe them. I like haven't heard comparisons. But like, Every night you're on the ABS. ABS is like convinced me, man.

I'm like, no, I get it. I get it. Yeah, like a great 2.1 system is better than a Sonos iPhone. Like, I've been there. I'm like, I'm there right now. The only reason I haven't done it is because I have neighbors. And I don't think they would be as excited about my new speakers as I will be. But what I'm saying is Sonos owns the brand in the Best Buy of one of the best things you can

buy that has a complete experience. It makes you fancy. And trying to sell, like, trying to hawk some box at people. that's like, that's why you got to build the TV and be like, this is the best TV you can get because it has our brand on it and it's got our software in it. And then you sell a lot of those and then you go to the HBO Max of the world and be like, you want to be on our TV because everyone likes it. You got to pay us the money.

Nah, it's going to be a box. It's going to be a really, it's going to be what cavo. Was it Cavo? The HTMLI port. It was. It was indeed. Kavo has not pivoted to like assistive tech for older people. Oh, that's awesome.

I get an email from them every now again being like, you can't wait to show you. And I'm like, I would love to see a software update for the one I bought my mom. Look, I'm just saying, if you're going to build that thing, the way to package it isn't a new kind of, is a TV. People like things. If you send us some Android TV box with a skin on it, like, come on, man. Don't be doing that. All right, Chris, you've heard the arguments. You're the judge.

Which way do you think it's going? I don't know if it's a sound idea, but I go with the TV. It's got to be the TV. But first we'll come this in June, and then these headphones that they've been working on for years, apparently, are taking quite a long time to hit the market. So hopefully those will be alone. Yeah, I'm no longer convinced that's real. I think it's just, I've given up on Sonas ever making headphones. I think there are challenges there.

Like, how do you do handoff from, like, headphones to a speaker? Do the headphones have Wi-Fi? Like, where do you go from there? So I think there's a lot to figure out in terms of... The headphones always just seemed very stupid. Like, that always just seemed like a bad idea. From the beginning, it's like we're going to do, we're in speakers, so we're going to go for tiny speakers on your ears. That's nothing.

No, this is like the Dyson story. Dyson's like, we invented a fan. What things suck or blow? We'll just make all of those things. We'll make all of them. I'm just saying, like when Dyson was like, we're going to do a car. Like they quickly are the eyes like, oh, the fan is not the most important part of the car. We're way out of our depth, guys.

Fan-powered cars are never going to act. Just blow in a car. the highway. Oh boy, this prototype is not what we thought of. Very loud. Very loud. It's like 500 air raps, like mounted on the back of the Toyota Civic. Just going in circles.

Sounds amazing, though. All right. So that's Sonos, which I think ended in the only place it could. A bunch of other gadget stuff. David, you were really taken with a story. I'm still thinking about the Civic fans. I apologize. David, you were quite digging with this story about LG leaving and how it benefited Samsung.

I just think it was fascinating. So basically, the thrust of the story was... It's Allison Johnson's story, yeah. Yeah. She went to find out basically what happened to the smartphone market after LG left and did a bunch of really great reporting found out a bunch of really funny stuff and essentially got to the end of it and was like, well, it was already a two horse race and now it is still a two horse race.

And the thing that was so striking to me is like it just made me realize, like those of us who cover phones, we think about it as this like big teaming market full of lots of companies and you have the big guys and you have the challengers. And the actual like facts on the ground are that there are Apple and there are is Samsung and absolutely nobody else matters. And they come and they go and everybody gets really excited about One Plus and then nobody buys One Plus phones and we all move on with our lives. And it just, it's also really incredible to me how much of everything that happens in the Android market just accrues to Samsung. Like, it has just so decimated the rest of that market that anything that happens to anybody else somehow accrues to Samsung.

And it was just really eye-opening to read that story for me. Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, I like to blame carriers for this, right? Like, you know, I'd say it's like a carrier has to certify your phone. They would approve it for the network. They get in between you. But even in other countries where there's theoretically more competition, they don't know, kind of just accrues to Samsung.

And all of a sudden it made me realize, like, Samsung has made a lot of noise with its mid-range phones. over the last couple of years. And this story really sort of opened up why. And it's like because Samsung realizes it's just going to beat everyone out of the market as long as it has a phone at the same price point. And so it's just going to have phones at every $10 from a billion dollar foldable phone all the way down to $50. And that'll be that.

That will be that. Other little gadgets stuff we should talk about. And there's a leak of the pixel watch. We're thinking it'll be next month at I.O. It's a circle. It looks like the LG watch, the really bad LG watch from 2017. Yeah. I hope that's not true.

I mean, I like it. It's got a very Google, like that watch already had a very Google look to it. Yeah. This watch has a very Google look to it. I like that they've added this crown. Every time I see a crown on a smart watch, I think back to when Apple announced the Apple watch. They invented it, you know. We were told that the digital crown was the next great input method on par with the mouse and touchscreen.

You don't believe it? You can twist it and press it. It's going to change the world. Just go back and watch that sometimes. Obviously, the Apple Watch, they've rebooted it since. It's very successful. People love it. I get it.

But just go back in time and watch that and be like, oh, this is the definition of the words higher in supply. Like, you really believe that you invented the mouse again. I think we'll see this watch. You know, the big question for the Pixel Watch always. We've hearing rumors forever is like, can they? get the battery life and just general support that the Apple Watch has around it. They do have Fitbit now. We'll see, right?

Like, it's been a long time coming for Android smartwatches. They've acquired enough stuff at this point that'll be kind of sad if they can't get it, right? Or at least chase Apple's coattails better. And I think they've realized the thing that Apple took a long time to realize is like, it's tell me the time. It's due like basic dumb assistance. stuff and it's health. Like, those seem to be the things that people want from their watches. And I feel like Google is at least as well positioned as Apple to actually successfully do some of those things.

All the other crap, I don't care about. Like, every time I get an Apple Watch, I put a million apps on it, and I never use them ever. And I just wanted to do, like, four things. And I feel like, if I'm Google, and I had a long talk with a Google executive, like, years ago now about this. And they were basically, like, what, like, if you were going to make a smart watch, what would you do? and I was like less. Yeah. Like much, much less. And I have no idea how there's a land, but just from like, if they're going to do the simpler thing,

which is kind of the move with Pixel in general, I could be into it. I don't know. Chris, what do you think? You're into dumb smartwatches as much as I am, or at least once were. I once was a pebble person back in the day. But I've had the Apple Watch for a few years, obviously. I think, I mean, it sounds like a good recipe. But like you said, with phones before, the only thing that stands in their way is,

Like Samsung's watch's business does really well. And I'm not sure like how big that market is, the people who don't want a Samsung watch and want the pixel. So-called watch, we'll see. But yeah, I think if they go big on Fitbit stuff, that'll be a hit. Is the Galaxy Watch any good? I have not used it ever. Apparently it is.

People seem to like it. Yeah. No, the Galaxy Watch is like really, really good. Yeah, Victoria's Song reviews all those watches. And she's still like, this is the best Android watch you can get. It looks like a real watch for the most part. It's huge. It's enormous.

This is the bar. Like my watch looks like a watch and tells me a time. It's like, that's the bar. You don't need a lot from your watch. I mean, I was just looking at all the apps on my watch while you're, while you were talking about all the apps we never use. Like, when was the last time you used the walkie-talkie app? Oh, I use it every day.

What are you taught? You're crazy. Only like when you want to inflict violence on family members. No, no. The second you have a child and then you spend all day in your house raising said child, the walkie-talkie app starts to become like a key parenting tool. And there's literally nothing funnier than your wrist erupting with your wife going, Code Brown.

That was like a hilarious part of the first two years of Maxis life. All the time. Yeah, we use it all the time. I don't know. I feel like that's slightly less monstrous than the people who use the drop-in features on like Alexa devices, but it's still pretty monstrous. I showed my mom how to use it and I had to turn it off because like 9 o'clock in the morning, I just heard, hello from my watch.

And I was like, nope, nope, we're ending this. It's done. You got to really limit it. I'm just saying, kids are pets. It's the, and you're like, you're co-parenting after a child or a pet. Walkie to talkie comes in handy. What I was going to say is there's a new book called After Steve. It's by Tripp Mickle.

He was at the Wall Street Journal. And I think now he's at the Times. And I, it's coming out in May 3rd, but I actually have a galley. And a huge chunk of this book is Johnny Ive doing the watch. And Apple's like, journey from like fashion object to fitness object with the watch. The book is going to make everybody mad. Like everybody is going to be mad.

But it's great. And like the report, I would say there's like very few sources for like Johnny Ive stood alone in his house thinking about the watch. You know what I mean? Once you read this book, you're like, oh, they all talk to him. I don't know. That's true. I'm not going to burn trip sources.

I'm just saying there's very few sources for Johnny I've stood alone. Fair. And it is utterly fascinating the story about the inside development of the watch that is all contained in this book. I wrote a story when I first joined Wired after I left The Verge. The first big thing I wrote for Wired was like it was called The Secret History of the Apple Watch. And I wrote the beginning of one of the paragraphs was Apple decided to build a watch and only then set out to figure out what it was for. And Apple was mad at me about that line for like five years. Yeah. Because it was the opposite of what they want to tell you to do, right?

but they were just like somebody like Johnny rolled in one day and was like we're going to make a watch and they were like what's it going to do and he's like I don't know it's like a what I don't know but it's going to be 24 karat gold I don't know what it's going to do uh I again I can't I cannot stress enough if you're a virtual house listener you will you will love this it will make you mad no matter what side of this whole thing you're on if you're an apple fan if you're not an apple fan you love Johnny Ive you hate Johnny Ive it will make you mad trips a friend we're going to have to find some way to get him to talk to us about the book oh we should get him to on the show. Yeah, it'll be fun. The book is great. It is just when you read, like, I'm curious for

your take when you read it, David, like, because if you're a reporter and editor and you read a book like this, like, you cannot help but think about how it was sourced. Oh, for sure. And there's a lot of moments in this book where like, was he in the room? It's great. I cannot recommend this book enough. I read it basically in like one and a half sittings. But like, it's all about the inside of the watch. And like, the core problem is what do people want from the watch? They want fitness stuff and they want to tell the time. If you have a smart watch and you live a two-factor life, like any

corporation in America, or like you should. Yes. Morally, putting your two-factor app on your watch is great. It's a little bit like you're a secret agent, but also the most tedious corporate bullshit you've ever done in your life. Anyhow, more quick gadget stuff. Google Assistant was supposed to roll out to the Galaxy Watch 4.

That is not happening. We reviewed the playdate, which is a super cool little panic with a handle. It's so tiny. Game. That thing is, it seems awesome. It's very hard to get that Andrew Webster loved it with his review. I'm so excited that it's good. So excited. Yeah. If you didn't order it, you have to wait a year. The photos from Viren are amazing. The photos are incredible. Intense Nuprin reference in the deck of this, a little yellow different. Love that. Great story. There are now camera batteries for weird Sony cameras,

a charge of a USBC. That's a big deal. I just want to call that out. That's like Vergecast level stuff. That's a big deal for me personally, and it's really upsetting that it took this long. All right, we're cruising over. We've got to take a break. We're going to come back and finish this lighting around. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. Okay, we're back. Chris Welch is still here. This lightning around continues. This is not going to be lightning around. I don't know why I said this lightning around. Next one is Elon Musk lays out funding for Twitter takeover. David, what's going on with our boy? So, Lonnie. I don't know. So the big question about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has been what the hell is going on.

The other question is, does he actually have the money to do this? He wants to offer $43 billion in change. And as we know about Elon Musk, dude does not have a lot of cash on hand, generally speaking. He, like, lives in a weird tiny trailer and all his money is tied up in Tesla stock. And he's very excited about this fact. So the question has been, like, if, in fact, he wants to do this, how is he going to do it? And so what happened on Thursday was he, I think, amended an example. filing or did a new filing with the SEC, paperwork with the SEC, basically explaining how

he's going to come up with, I think, $46.5 billion that would let him finance his purchase of Twitter. He also said that Twitter has not responded to him and is sort of, he's kind of angsty about the whole thing. But basically, the point is that I think Morgan Stanley has agreed to loan him $25.5 billion, and Elon says he's going to spend $21 billion. of his own money. Again, we don't know exactly where that's coming from or how he's going to get it or what happens to Tesla's stock if he sells another $21 billion worth of it. But the theory now is at least he, you know, funding secured, right? He like has the money to buy Twitter. What if he secretly listened to his friend Peter, and has just like a huge Roth IRA somewhere? Just enormous Roth IRA. So what Alex is making reference to is Peter Thiel started a Roth IRA when he started PayPal and put all of his,

PayPal stock in a Roth IRA. And he's so... Which accrues tax-free. For years. He's very good. Yeah. It's well-paid. Billions.

You know, I know people are outraged about the story of billionaires to pay their taxes. If you have the foresight to be like, oh, PayPal's going to be a big deal. Let me put it in my Roth IRA. Like, I don't know, man. Like, you're betting on yourself in a fairly serious way at that point. It's incredible. It's still very funny. No, billionaires should pay their taxes.

I'm sorry. I don't mean, like, but it's still like, good on you. You know? Yeah. But you have to be like, yeah. Hate the player but also hate the game. But it's like, oh, but the player was actually quite clever here. But the game is rigged.

Yeah. Right. It would be amazing if you're like, I have a $21 billion. They're just incredible. Anyhow. Twitter has the poison pill. It is actually very funny to see all the tech people who didn't realize poison pills are a thing.

Speaking of books, everyone should read Barbarians at the gate, which is like one of the great 1980s corporate, like, novel books ever written. It's about the takeover of Arjara and Obisco. it's like nonfiction, but it's written like a novel. It's like this inspired many things about our culture that it's just like lurking in the background. This is just book talk on The Verge now. I've got a number of ideas for books for you to read. I don't know.

There was so much homework on the Verge cast. This is, I don't know how to feel about this. Signed every week. But what I can't figure out, I come to the end of this and it's like, okay, he continues to do things that make it seem like he genuinely wants to buy Twitter and is capable of buying Twitter. And this is not all like a hilarious drugs joke. But I get to the end of this and I'm like, is this? I don't know. Like with Elon Musk, as with everything, I have no idea how seriously to take anything that he does or says. Like, this seems serious, but I have no idea. I feel like he didn't actually answer the big question, which is where are the billions coming from that you're going to do this? Are you going to tank Tesla's stock and sell a bunch to do this? Because like all he's done is said, okay, instead of tanking Tesla's stock by selling off $40 something billion dollars of stock, I'm not going to just do $21 billion. Like, he has to be.

hasn't changed. Nothing's changed. Have you ever tweeted about Tesla in your life? Yes, that's the best part. They'll be fine. They'll just keep buying the stock. They'll be like, oh, the stocks for sale? We got to support Elon.

Gonna be there for our bro. He doesn't exist in like the normal market dynamics. Yeah, that's true. And I think he's counting on that. I just think the Twitter board appears to be someone at odds with itself, notably checked or see just like liking and replying to tweets that Twitter shouldn't be published. like, which is very confusing.

And like on lighting the board on fire every chance he gets. Yeah, he's like the board has always been the problem. So we'll see, like I said, or like David said, the core question here is, what's going on? What's happening? This is, so it's still happening, you say. We are going to bring back our newsletter this week in Elon written by Liz Lapato. I have a story from Liz on what is going on here waiting for me to edit when we're done verge casting here.

So by the time people hear it, Liz will have some. good thoughts on the site. Because the other thing that's going on is there are, as you guys have talked about on the show, there are in theory and increasingly in reality other people who might be interested in buying Twitter who have very different ideas about what they could do with Twitter. Like, Elon just wants to buy it because like he thinks it's hilarious and something, something free speech. But there are others who are going to make like a much more real case that there's a lot of money to be made from Twitter that is not currently making. So like it's all these different parties bidding against each other for something that they don't.

want for the same reasons. Like, this is going to get messier before it shakes out, I think, one way or another. What's fascinating about all this is that Twitter itself rarely makes a case for its own existence. And they've got a new CEO who's been tasked explicitly with it growing it by 100 million people. We just came off the whole streaming conversation. Like, that's a hard 100 million people to find. Yeah, they're not all just password chairs.

It would just be nice if Twitter started making a positive case for what it might do to grow, as opposed to what it's doing now, which is like a deer in headlights kind of situation. We'll see. Other last few things before you've got to get out of here. Delta confirmed exploratory Starlink tests, which is really fascinating because they're already getting satellite internet from Vesat, which is actually quite fast now.

And Starlink is not compared to that. You can stream movies on VASAT. But they're going to get the Elon bump. You get the Elon bump. But Starlink is like about 100 down. They have a faster tier now, which is making me 500 down, but you got to support a whole plane with that. So I'm just curious how that's going to work. Also at speed, like Starlink is like scared of trees sometimes.

Like, how is it going to handle going? Well, there's no trees in the sky, Alex. But you're going so fast. So see, they've started the test. I think it's fascinating. Of all the places Starlink could compete is like go go and Vesat. Like, yeah, go get them. Yeah.

Well, I would also think if I'm, if I'm one of the airlines, like, I'm going to be so excited to, you know, have talks, quote unquote, with anyone who could maybe drive the price down for some of these other companies. Like, they're going to be so amped about competition in this space where there has historically been like less than none. Well, so there are two companies. There's Go Go and VSA and they bought each other. What happens in America, David? When there's two companies, we'd like to get them down to one. That's really how we like to do it. Keeps things easy.

Tesla had earnings. They earned over $3 billion in profit, even with its various challenges with supply chain and China, all this stuff. So Elon's doing fine. It's only $18 billion left. Yeah, just got there. Net neutrality, actually the law in California now, went to court. The court said, nope, you can have the law. This was actually very funny, just like legal procedure stuff. The FCC, under Adjit Pai, Donald Trump, they said net neutrality is no longer the law. And also, we don't think the FCC should have any authority to pass these laws ever. So we no longer have the authority to do net neutrality or not. We solved it. And then the states said, well, we have net neutrality now. Then the carrier said, no, that's traditionally an authority left to the FCC. And all they had to say was, no, the FCC, they said they don't want it anymore. And that's how they want it. This is true.

This is the Spider-Man meme where they're like 1,000 percent too clever by half. They're like, no, if you just hadn't done this other part, you would have actually been able to preempt this. But you did the other part because you were greedy. and so now Net neutrality is the law of California. They could still appeal to the Supreme Court, who knows what they will. But the fact that it's a law in California,

it's the law in New York State. There's always that meme of like nothing bad happened when net neutrality went away, except for the two states where it still exists and all the companies have to deal with it. Yeah, that's my personal thing. All right, that's it. We have all these things about AMP,

but I don't want to talk about AMP. I just want to talk about AMP. I've done enough today. I will tell you that Instagram is begging you to stop reposting TikToks to Reels, which is a very good first David Pierce headline on our website. Thank you. I try. Adam Messeri, he just wants you to make things.

It's all he wants in the whole world. But only for him. Make them for him. Right. Send them to him directly. Some things to call out, we did the Decoder episode with Al Young from Foxconn. I will tell you this, I've never gotten so many emails from a podcast episode in my life. And same for Josh Jeza.

The number of people in Wisconsin who still want to talk about that project. And they are just emailing us being like, thank you for pointing out that this is still nuts. But go listen to that decoder. It's a good episode. The AI 8K 5G conversation truly just bonkers. Just no idea what that means. Still don't know why he reached out. He promises he's going to write another book with answers in it.

I don't know if he's going to do that. But when he does, he promised he would come back. So we will see. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a glutton for punishment. McKenna Kelly has a great story on a firm. that has like an influencer network that promised Republican candidates that could go viral. Bad company.

Same stuff as every bad company. Didn't pay people, screaming to people. Great story, though. Great reporting from McKenna. Justine Kalma has a great story about the growth of warehouses in inland California. Just one of those like, this is how the world works now. You need warehouses everywhere for all this delivery. Very cool.

And then we have a huge feature from Amanda Chicago-Lewis. It's basically just a heist story, like a caper story about people who are, hustling their way into PPE contracts during the early pandemic. Just like a great read. Like you got some time. You want a great yarn. This is a great story. Okay.

That's it. That's a verge cast. David Pierce is here, everybody. Glad to be here. We went over, as always. We got to bring this down. That's your job. I have to rein in the verge cast somehow.

Wish me luck, everything. I'm going to shave like 40 minutes off. Chris, thank you so much, buddy. Thank you. I'll have a good weekend, everybody. And sorry, Patrick. You can tweet at us. David is at Pierce.

Alex is Alex H. Cranz. Chris is at Chris Welch. I'm at Reckless. Decoder next week is the CEO of UiPath, a company that makes computers that use your computer. Oh. It's fascinating. It's like multi-billion dollar business. A virus?

No, it's robotic process automation. My personal obsession. I'm so excited about this episode. Do you talk about domes at all? There are no domes. I got to start asking all the decoder guys right on domes. and then we'll be back next week with more Vergecast. That's it.

Right and roll.