The Vergecast - Your robot is about to get its own robot

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

It's a big week for the smart home. Jake, Vee, and Jen sit down to chat about all the new tech out of IFA, from robots that carry robot vacuums up stairs to upgrades that turn 10-year-old Hue bulbs into motion sensors. Then, Lauren joins the show to talk about the Google antitrust remedies ruling and what Google is going to have to do to allow more competition in the search market. Finally, the Thunder Round is back and better than ever. We're talking $2,000 smart watches, Amazon yanking a major Prime perk, the Pixel 10 Pro's 100x AI zoom, Instagram for iPad, and drama at the FTC. Further reading: Eufy built a stairlift for its robovacs Inside Philips Hue’s plans to make all your lights motion sensors Philips Hue responds to cheaper competitors with major product overhaul SwitchBot has ambitions to be the AI that powers your smart home Samsung’s Galaxy S25 FE and Tab S11 are thinner, lighter, and otherwise about the same Google gets to keep Chrome, judge rules in search antitrust case Google critics think the search remedies ruling is a total whiff Here’s what Google and the DOJ had to say about the search remedies ruling The tech antitrust renaissance may already be over Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro series finally lets you leave your phone at home — sort of Instagram is coming to iPad, 15 years later Amazon ends shared Prime free shipping outside your home Ousted Democratic FTC commissioner can return (again) for now Here’s how the Pixel’s AI zoom compares to a real 100x lens 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

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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 Skylar 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.

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of robots carrying other robots. I'm Jake Castranakis, executive editor of The Verge, David Neely, those guys not here today, but got some big news here. David Pierce will be back starting next week. He'll be on the podcast, so tune in, look forward to that. Today, we've got a great crew, though. With me for the whole show is going to be Vee Song, Senior Reviewer at the Verge. Hello.

And, V, you just had a big announcement. Yes, I did. I launched Optimizer, which is our latest newsletter. All right. It's going to be a fun time. I will be having several existential crises as I test out text claims to make your life better with whatever app, AI Gizmo, SmartWatch, you know, the whole spiel. you know, we're going to dive into whether these things actually make your life better.

I'm so excited for this. Via's already been writing basically a bunch of these on the site. And so if you've been reading her stuff lately being like these are wild, these are ridiculous, like that's what optimizers are going to be. It's going to be really fun. So check it out at theverge.com. We've got a lot to talk about today. There is a huge ruling in the Google antitrust case. Lauren Feiner, the Verge's senior policy reporter, is going to join. join us later to talk about that. But first, we've got Jen Toey here. She is in Berlin at the EFA trade show. Jen, how's it going? Good, thanks. Yeah. Hot and sweaty. It's like 900 degrees in

Berlin. But having a blast checking out all the fun gadgets and the robots carrying robots. So it's always a good time here. Okay. I have an important question. How is your hotel room? Is there any smart tech? That's... No. It's not... I've never been in a smart tech hotel. I think they only exist in California, honestly.

Okay, well, that's that... We need to make your next trip over to California. I thought, I was hoping that because of If, you'd have a slightly smarter, swankier, AI-infused hotel, but no, nothing yet. No. Okay, we'll get there. This one can't even do the air conditioning.

It's definitely not smart. Ooh, it's not good. What floor is? you on? I can open my window. That's the nice thing about Europe. Okay, okay. It's Europeans that you open windows. That's, you know what? That's technology. Yes, that is a different kind. That is very true. So, Jen is in Germany for Ifa. Ifa is this big European tech show. There's been a lot of stuff going on. Samsung announced a new F.E. phone and a tablet. Anchor has a cool new party speaker slash party projector. But Smart Home is the start of the show. It has been for the last few years.

There are a bunch of robot vacuums, a lot of smart lights. A big announcement from Phillips Hugh that turns its smart bulbs into motion detectors. We're going to get into all of that. I guess, Jen, you've been walking around the show all day. How is it? And what are people buzzing about? So today was the media day. And unlike, so IFA is kind of like CES for Europe.

But unlike CES for America, and here in EFA, you don't have to go to a little boring. press rooms, they have their press conferences for all the media on the show floor, but they haven't finished putting their booths together. So we're basically dodging, literally dodging forklick trucks and ladders and like buckets of paint as we try and go and check out these press conferences. So I haven't got to really get hands on in too many booths yet because they're still building them. But we got a lot of announcements. So, but it was fun to sort of get a few sneak peeks, you know, around the back of the, curtain for some of the booths. So Dreamy had a big press conference in their booth today. And that was

one of the more sort of, huh, this is kind of cool, but do we really need it moments? Which was a stair climbing robot. And this is something that has been sort of dear to my heart in the robot vacuum worlds, you know, robots with various limbs and things like they can do. like proper stairs. I feel like it's been announced before. And they're like, it can, it's actually just like a bump. I know. You're right.

You're right. We've had these levels. Now we're at the, but they're so. What are we talking about here? Legs, treads. Treads. So it's actually, they call them arms or, well, there's two companies that have actually released the same robot concept.

Ufi has one, which you can actually are going to be able to buy relatively soon. I think next year. And then Dreamy has announced it's. concept and it's tracks and they basically fold their sort of arms out from the body and turn into tracks and then track track track track track track up the stairs so it went up like nine stairs and then stopped turned around and came down that's almost a whole flight of stairs is there a limit to the number of stairs they can do because you know I live in a four floor townhouse it would be nice to have one stair climbing robot instead of four robo vacuons

limited to each floor. So they didn't really specs on the dreamy one, but the Ufi one, they did say it can go up to, I think it was up to five flights, and they can turn corners and do different shapes of stairs. But the way it works is instead of it actually being a robot vacuum, it's just a robot, and the robot vacuum gets into it and gets carried up. So it's like a stair lift for your robot vacuum.

My God. That is so cool and so frightening at the same time. I'm just waiting for my cat to like the side. Okay, I'm going to hop on and get a ride up. So it's a robot for your robot. It's a myth that your robot gets into. And that's, I feel like we've gone too far. I think we've over-engineered cleaning our floors.

I really do. It's so impressive. The other thing that gets me is it doesn't clean the stairs. I want something. It cleans the stairs. Oh, come on. It's right there. That's next year's robot.

It will also carry the separate, buy it separately, stair cleaning bot as it brings it up. So, yeah, it's a little crazy. Robobaks are always good for, like, truly ridiculous robot technology. It does feel like they really turned a corner this year and have been adding all these limbs and appendages. It's wild. It's not clear that any of them work, like, amazingly. You tested the one with the robot arm, right? And it was like, eh.

It was fine at a vacuum, but the arm was very limited. Well, you know, it's Gen 1. It's a Gen 1 arm. Yes. I do have one question about Eiffin. Is it still at Mess Berlin? Yeah. Which is a fascinating building. I mean, if you're into brutalist German architecture, then you will love this place.

But it's also a maze, which is actually, you know, there are stairs everywhere. So honestly, I could have used one of these for me, like a genie. then transporter to take me around the conference center. That's how they'll really impress us. Yes. So what has been your number one thing so far of the show? Well, I was very into all the Hugh lighting announcements yesterday. They did a big event out not actually in the MESA, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it.

And they did a big event where they announced a ton of new lights. The sort of headline feature for most people is that their products are getting cheaper. So they've released a new line of essentials light bulbs that starts at around $15 a bulb, which is still not the least expensive smart bulb you can buy. I mean, that's like a quarter of the price, right? Like a huge bulb is $60. 60 bucks. So it's 2499 for a single essentials bulb, but if you buy a four pack, it's down to $15 a bulb.

So it's, yeah, it's, that's great. That's wild pricing for, for hue. Big change. Can you change the colors? Yes, so they're all white and color ambiance bulbs. They just have, so they don't dim quite as deep. They have slightly less temperature range. And they say that while the color accuracy is very good, it's not, they don't, it's not

as guaranteed to be match perfectly with all your other hue bulbs in the way that their premium bulbs are. So that, that was kind of nice. think for the market to see that because Hugh has always been a very popular products, but the number one complaint I hear from people is just so expensive. And now there are all these other products on the market. And with Matter, you know, it's much easier. It used to be for Hugh, they worked with everyone. So that was a great selling point and maybe one of the reasons you might think to spend more. But with Matter now, most smart lighting bulbs work with most platforms. So that they were kind of

losing that differentiating factor. I think that probably played into needing to move, you know, have more choice for people. But the really exciting thing, for me anyway, I'm not sure if this is as exciting for most people as the pricing, but is that they have released a new feature, which is a software upgrade that will go on every hub bulb made after 2014. So basically second gen on. That turns your light bulbs into motion sensors. This is wild. This is what I've wanted this whole year of building my first smart home in this very vertical townhouse. Like the Cold War, my spouse and I have, is over the smart lights because I like to use voice. And they're like Google Assistant kind of discriminates against their voice and never works, even though we've trained it.

So they're just like, I got to pull out an app. What's wrong with a light switch? But, you know, if it was a motion sensor, and I'm guessing it turns on when you walk into a room or turns off when you leave it, then we don't have to have any fights anymore about turning on the lights. That could be their tagline. Yeah. Phillips Hughes, saving people's marriages. Yeah. Well, you could get a motion sensor, V.

I mean, to be fair, you can buy motion sensors. We could. We could. But, you know, it's kind of cool if you don't have to buy multiple devices. And motion sensors can be fiddly. It's kind of one of the advantages of this text. is it covers a larger area than, say, a traditional PIR sensor. But there are a few caveats here.

You have to have three bulbs in the area. You want the motion sensing because it kind of triangulates. And what it's using is RF sensing. So that's something that we've seen with Wi-Fi, Wireless Wi-Fi sensing, Zigby, Bluetooth. There's some of this. A couple products that use Bluetooth mesh sensing. But this is the first product to launch that uses. Zygby RF sensing.

And it's a technology developed by a company called Ivani called Sensify, which I wrote about a year or so ago. And we kind of speculated at the time that this might be what Hugh was going to be using for its bulbs because they're obviously one of the most well-known Zigby-based smart lighting lines. And so it's basically just detects disturbances in the radio frequency signals between the bulbs. So that's why you need at least, I think they recommend, three to four, which could be a bit tricky depending on what kind of a room you have. And you don't, I asked, and they said, no, you don't do like three in a row. Like if you had track lighting,

that's probably not going to work that well because it's not creating a zone. So there's going to be a bit of setting up to do. I did test a Wi-Fi version of this that Wiz, which is Hughes' sister company had for their bulbs. And it wasn't super reliable. It would turn on okay, but it was the turning off part that was less reliable. So, but Hugh says that they've worked, been working on this for a long time, like multiple years, and specifically sort of fine-tuning the reliability aspect. So I'm, I'm going to be really interested to try it out because it is, the idea that you can take a product you already own and upgrade it to get this kind of function is a great thing for the smart home. Also, not having little white boxes and sensors around the

house. I mean, I have a hue motion sensor. They're great. But like my kid will move it or my husband will get annoyed by the light. You know, it's occasionally it will blink a little LED light and he'll like put it flat on its face. So it's no longer sensing motion. But there is, is one caveat, you do have to have the new Hugh Bridge Pro for this to work. Sorry, just got that one in there. No, no, no, no. So it really is remarkable, though. Like, I truly cannot think of another instance where a company went and retroactively added a major feature to 10 years' worth of products. Yeah. And especially something as substantially different as this. Like, this is a very clever implementation and a very clever new feature. And, you know, you're right, like, there is this

important caveat. So you do have to have this new hub to enable it. And it sounds like there's a legitimate reason for that, right? They're not just like paygating it. Right. So it is a heavy technical load to process. So what happens is that the bulbs can be firmware updated to support this sort of tech stack of the sensified technology with the hue technology sort of mixed in. But they then, all they do is detect motion. They don't know what that motion. is. And so they send their signals back to the bridge, which processes, uses algorithms that have been kind of fine-tuned to detect specific types of motion. So there are two use cases for this that Hugh's touting. And there's motion sensing for turning your lights on. And that's free

if you buy the bridge. But it's also been used for security because Hugh has a security suite of cameras and now a new siren. So you could actually use it like a security system. And the security algorithm is different from the motion sensing algorithm. The motion sensing algorithm actually needs to be more precise, but the security, I mean, more, needs to be quicker, needs to be super fast, whereas the security algorithm doesn't need to be as fast, but it needs to be very accurate because you don't want to trigger an alarm for a false alarm. So yeah, and that they're charging for. That's a dollar a month, or it's part of their Hugh Secure system. But yeah, so the bridge is doing all that processing of the data that the radio waves,

disturbances are sending to the bridge and then it decides what's going to happen. What's being triggered? Were they able to demo any of this for you yet? Okay, so you actually did, you walked in and saw the lights come on. Yes. And so, okay, this is my big question. Like, how obviously you have to do a lot more testing to see how reliable it is, but like was it fast?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was very fast. But I didn't get to see how long it. So for me, as I mentioned, is it turning off. Because that's the tricky one. Like, I get this with my spouse all the time. Like, the lights turned off on me.

And I, you know, I didn't want them to turn off. And I was like, well, you weren't moving enough. Oh, right. Well, this is important because you know, you say this in your piece. It's motion sensing. It's not presence sensing. Correct. And so if you are just sitting there, the lights will still turn off on you.

Yes. What about pets? Right. Like, what if I have a naughty little kitty who is zooming around at 2 a.m. And I'm trying to. I mean, I want my kitty to see. You're doomed. They can see in the dark.

No, it is just like having a PIR sensor in that if you have a large animal, it will probably trigger it. Like my dog constantly triggers my motion sensors. But there is a sensitivity slider like there is with PIR motion sensors in the app. so you can adjust, sort of fine-tune it for your household. So, I mean, I think, and the turning off part is, to me, is quite important, because I often have my lights turn off on me while I'm still in a room, while I'm still doing something, and that's very frustrating. So that's the part.

I mean, they didn't really demo that because they're not going to be like, let's sit here for 10 minutes and wait for the lights to turn off. So I'm looking forward to trying that out. So do stretch breaks every once in a while. and make arm motions. And, you know, the next time your smartwatch is like, hey, you've been sitting too long and go like, oh, yeah, my life also needs me to move around.

So maybe this is holistic health and lighting. I don't know. Or maybe you could have, we could somehow tie in your smartwatch to your motion sensing technology to tell you that you are still moving a little. moving a little bit because this is something else I saw a lot of on the show floor today is a is sort of holistic home uh the holistic smart home everything feeding data into a central

AI powered system they don't want to say AI agent yet because it's not really agentic but we can see that we could be moving to the point where data that your home takes in can then be processed and some sort of intelligent decision could be made to predict perhaps what you might want to do next or what you might want your home to do next. Like you're getting a bit warm. Maybe your smartwatch can send that data and your home could decide to turn your AC on for you. I don't know. There was a lot of that. LG had a whole sort of AI home booth. They actually had an entire orchestra of appliances.

Oh, my gosh. This sounds so much like, what was it? It's just fresh on my mind because we just had the pixel event, but this sounds so much like that whole ambient computing thing that Google is always on about and just how everything will be invisible and you'll have, this is the conspiracy theory, you'll have all these devices just feeding data to each other

and talking to each other. the AI in your home will be the thread. Another smart home pun to tie it all together. And so, you know, it really, you know, I think back in the day we're like ambient computing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it's just like all starting to fall together into the same piece and hearing this. I'm just like, yeah, I want motion sensors in my lights. Would be really cool if it talks to my smartwatch for those reasons.

I mean, I'm sure we could think of a really dystopian use case for it, like that, I don't know if you saw the Disney Channel movie, like, about the smart home that goes really rogue on the family at one point. But, you know, I think it sounds great. It would be super convenient for me, like me personally. This AI stuff does seem to be like, this is the next frontier for them, right? Switchbot also had this announcement that they're going to do an AI hub. And it seems like all these companies are going, okay, we put enough stuff in your home. It's kind of complicated, but maybe if we all mix it around with AI, yeah, like it turns into something more coherent. Like, that's the next move, but we're not sure if it works yet.

Yeah, that's, I think you're right. It's very much about like there is so much capability in the smart home tech world today, but getting people to actually use those capabilities is hard because it's a, deep learning curve for a lot of things. Even just a motion sensor, just if you went and bought a motion sensor and tried to set it up and get it to work with your home and your routines, it can be frustrating, turning the lights on when you don't want it to. Whereas if the home system can manage all of that stuff for you and ideally be able to

kind of pull in data from all parts of your home, not just necessarily for your comfort, but also for convenience, for saving energy, for safety, for safety. like one of the things this new tech, the sensing tech can do, could eventually be good enough to sense if you fell over. So in theory, you know, your home could basically be watching you. And I know everyone's going, no, your lights are watching you. It's not creepy. It's just merely a totally different appliance that shouldn't be able to see you. Right. So that's that is the benefit of this sort of ambient sensing. But I do see with the AI home bent that.

cameras are going to be a huge part of using this ambient home being proactive because the data, the richness of the data they get from cameras versus the data you get from sensors is just a step above. And so in terms of, like, so Switchbot's example, they released their AI, AI hub and they have a couple cameras that you can use inside or inside the home. They have one pan and tilt camera and they have a video doorbell. And they are, they were sort of pitching it like we can we can see when you, you know, where you've left your phone because we're watching you in the home. Okay, that's a good feature.

And then when you can't find your phone, you say, hey, switchbot, where's my phone? And they'll be like, you left it in the bathroom. And then your three robot vacuums go and crawl up to the bathroom and grab it with their arm and bring it back to you. Yes, there you go. You've solved it. It's all coming together. That sounds so cool and so scary at the same time.

Like just like equal parts, like the idea of having cameras in every part of my home watching me. Like when you say like, oh, it'll tell you where your phone is. I'm like, I need that because I'm constantly dinging the thing at all points in time. And you know you're finding the sound, but your cat's sitting on it. So the sound isn't accurate, that sort of thing. Air tags don't work well through floors and all of that stuff. So that personally, this is all just personally in my life. I would love that, but at the same time, I don't know if we want a camera in my bathroom.

Yeah. I mean, the cameras, you know, ideally though, you wouldn't do it. But if you have a camera at the front door, maybe you have a camera at the back door, maybe you have one in the hallway. And then the other sensors could help for, you know, the bathroom stuff. But yeah, there's got to be a way to kind of pull all of this together where it feels private and secure. And this was something that Switchbot was focusing on too, because their hub was entirely. local, but they were also using vision learning, so machine vision learning, which is, has to use the cloud because it's such a high processing, you know, it requires a lot of processing power,

which the hub can't do, and you would have to pay a monthly fee for those types of things. I can see more and more companies doing that. So using the AI for what the home sees in strategic areas so that it can then, you know, so say I've lost my cat, it will know that it saw the cat leave through the front door because someone left the door open or, but then the personal data can be more like wearables or sensors in the bedroom or the bathroom, but the key is tying it all together. And right now, everything is so disparate. Each company is like, you can use all of our appliances. Like, that's LG with its appliance orchestra. It's like, look, we can make all of these works.

together, but that means I have to have everything from LG, or I have to have everything from Samsung or everything from Switchbot. So that next level is how do we bring all of this together? And how much is Matter and Thread helping with stuff? Like, it's a promise. It could. Nothing at the moment. Yes, could. Could is an important word. Yes. I mean, it's, that's one of the reasons for matter is so that we could have this more, it's an open standard. It provides the platform and for the technology to talk to each other. So you could then bring in a Samsung AI home or LG's Furon agent as they call it and or Switchbot hub or something else to connect into the data that matter provides. So you wouldn't necessarily, so matter being any device

can work with any platform no matter who made it. So you're not locked into proprietary ecosystems. And that's really the foundation of, that was the point of creating matter. So, yes, you can see that this could help create that foundation. And then the fight now, the arms race, is who becomes the brain of your home? Because that is going to be someone you have to pick. Is it Google? Is it Apple?

Is it Alexa? Is it LG? Is it Samsung? Is it Switchbot? It's just like, I put up a story over the weekend about how when I talk to Google, they were basically selling the same idea about how the ambient computing world is going to happen and AI is just going to be the glue

that keeps all of these devices talking to each other and together. So if you win the AI battle and in Google's case, Gemini is the bot that everybody chooses, then in some ways, AI is strengthening the product ecosystem. It's like putting putty, and strengthening the walled gardens as opposed to tearing it down in some way? I think for the flagship products, definitely.

Yeah. The phone, the speaker, the watch. But where it's democratized, you know, so it makes buying a light bulb, a $15 hue light bulb now much more approachable or a motion sensor or a present sensor. You know, we saw some cool new present sensors out on the show floor today. Or a door lock, you know, all of that. now doesn't have to be from one company. That's where you get much more of the democracy and being able to choose what you want to make your home work. But yes, I think the flagship

products, you're going to feel locked in. So 20 minutes of Samsung's keynote today was all about AI home. So at CES, they called it Home AI, but now they've rebranded and it's now AI Home. It's like, oh, thinking of it. outside the box there. And it was all about the Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Phone, Samsung Food, which is their meal planning, healthy eating system app, and then smart things. So bringing all of their pieces together to sort of lock you into that ecosystem.

They don't really care which smart bulbs you buy. So, Jen, I know the show hasn't even technically started yet, but is there anything else we should... Or today. Today's Friday, right? Gosh. As this is airing, the show has started. Just started. For you personally, well, it's really a start.

No, but is there anything else we should be looking forward to throughout EFA, or is it just going to be AI, AI. A.I. What's next? Yeah. I think more robots. Robots. We always get excited about robots.

There's some interesting, I did get to play with a robot pet today, which was quite cute. I love those. The weird pets. The weird pets. Pets are so good. Yeah, LG has its weird little baby in a bowl pet that it had at CES here. Do you remember that thing? No, that's okay.

Was it the Marumi? No, it was in Marumi. It was like a Japanese one. But yeah, so that's here. And there's also SwitchBot has its AI pet. And I saw like anime holograms in like a, in a, like a canister. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lots of companionship type things. It's time to shut down Ifa. We have gone too far. It was like an anime character and they were like, yes, it's your companion. It's like, oh, my daughter loves anime. And I got a bit closer. I'm like, I don't think this is for her. No.

Was it like anime like Pikachu anime? No, no, no. Or was it like Elon Musk any anime? Oh, no. Oh, no. So, yeah. And then there's a nice. another robot with an arm that can throw tennis balls for the dog.

That's better. Yeah. Yeah. I love that robot. So there's lots of fun robots, lots of appliances. I always get excited about appliances. I know that's. And I think there's laptops too in case people are interested in those.

Awesome. Well, I'm very excited. Everyone should stay tuned to Theverge.com. We're going to have a lot more. Jen, thank you so much for hopping on to tell us all about EFA. I'll let you get back to the wild show in Berlin. Thank you. All right, we've got to take a break.

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whatnot.com slash sell. And we're back and we've got the Virgins senior policy reporter Lauren Finer here with us. Hi. Lauren, you spent a bunch of time this spring in a courthouse watching the remedies trial of the Google antitrust decision. This started, I guess, a year ago. A year ago, a judge decided that Google had maintained a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. then this spring, there was a whole big to do over what they should do about it. And that ruling finally came down.

And people were expecting something pretty big, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, this even goes back, you know, another like five years back to 2020 when this case was first filed under the first Trump administration. And then, you know, in last August, the judge finally said that Google is a monopoly in online search. And that was a huge landmark ruling, the first of these big tech cases by the government. And then there was all this anticipation of like, okay, what is he going to do to make sure that Google can no longer have this, you know, power grip over this industry? And that leads us up to this past week when the judge finally issued his ruling and said,

basically, Google can't do some contracts, some certain things. terms in their contracts and they have to share some data to help search competitors get up to speed with them, but basically rejected the largest of the DOJ's proposals of how to restore competition to this market. Right. The DOJ like swung for the fences and they had these these pretty big asks that I think the most famous of them was trying to get forced Google to sell Chrome and then like everyone was coming out of the woodwork, trying to. trying to buy Chrome, even though it wasn't for sale yet. And the judge is just like, no, that's absolutely not happening.

He said the government really overreach to by trying to get them to, as a backup, maybe have to sell Android. Most of the big asks just didn't happen here. And I think most of the big ass just didn't happen here, right? Like, the DOJ didn't get most of what they were asking for. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think you could definitely look at this and say, hey, the DOJ swan. for the fences, you know, put out all of these really big ideas of how to fix this market,

and it probably wasn't going to get all of them. But I think it was surprising the extent to which they didn't get so much of what they wanted. You know, the judge really didn't go all that much further beyond what Google had conceded to. And in some ways, having watched Judge Mata throughout both the liability phase and the remedies phase trials, you know, you could see that he was really grappling with what to do here. He's the first out of the gate with one of these rulings in this kind of new era of tech antitrust reform. And he really was, seemed very cautious about, you know, not wanting to create a new problem and disrupt something that's, you know, already set in motion. Well, it's really interesting.

In his opinion this week, he goes into the fact that AI changed how he ended up making this decision. The fact that AI is now seen as a competitor search made him, I think, a little more cautious in what he did here. He has this one quote, he says, quote, much has changed since the end of the liability trial. artificial intelligence technologies, particularly generative AI, may yet prove to be game changers. And then he just says, like, flat out, the emergence of gen AI changed the course of this case. And so there is this real thing here where I think possibly we could have gotten a much stronger version of these remedies against Google. But for the first time in decades, the first time maybe ever, Google actually is seeing some material competition. And I think, you know, V, you just did a whole Vodcast episode on this about people's use for AI.

And Search is one of the big ones now. I mean, like you and I talk pretty heavily about using AI for search because, sorry, Google, your search kind of sucks now. Like, it's so weird because on the one hand, we use Google the way that we use the word Kleenex to mean tissues, right? Google just means go search something on the internet that's in our vernacular. That pretty much would make you think that, hey, this is a monopoly because we don't say, oh, go Yahoo that thing, right? We say go Google that thing. But to our vergecast discussion, it's not good enough anymore because all of the SEO slop has

just changed that game. So it's sort of like, oh, once again, because I've been watching Law and Order and I had to have perplexity tell me what season it was that Finn Tutuola cuts off his ponytail. Like AI was actually able to tell me, like it told me a wrong answer and someone called me out online and then I looked it up again and then it told me the right answer. So you do have to kind of handhold it a little bit. But it's still telling you what's more likely to be an answer when your traditional Google search isn't going to help you anymore. I had a situation this morning where my fridge was the ice maker was spitting out clay balls. And I was like, what,

what is happening here? I'm very concerned. Why is my ice maker spitting out clay balls? And then I asked, and Google was not giving me any answers. And so I asked AI, and they're like, well, this is either a sediment issue and you're just going to have to do a lot of work or something's wrong with your, with your thing. And why don't you just empty out the ice bucket? And I was like, oh, I can empty out the ice bucket. New homeowner. I've never had to do appliance maintenance before. And I found out that my spouse had put an eye mask with clay balls in them in the ice maker. Oh my God.

It had opened up a hole. And that's why clay balls were coming out of my ice maker. So I was like, I didn't give me the right answer in this situation. But it did kind of put me on a path that got me to the right answer for a search and a question that I had, whereas just typing it into Google did nothing for me. So it's like a really, I get where it. the judge is coming from, but also I'm like, come on, man. It is one of those ultra-specific things. I, again, I did the exact same thing.

I was trying to look up, do you remember the chat app Trillion? I just like, I was like, how do I search for a chat app that was popular in 2006 with a weird like infinity logo? And it was just, right? Like, I can't Google that. But you're right. Like, it is, it is pretty remarkable that if this remedies trial had been held. probably a year earlier, certainly two years earlier, we may have ended up in a very different

outcome because Google, it seemed kind of borderline impossible that Google would see material challenge to its dominance in the search industry. So I'm just going to read out, I think, a quick TLDR of how I'm seeing the things that they actually have to do. And, Lauren, you can tell me that this is about correct. But here's what the judge is going to require. of Google, assuming that this sticks. The judge says that Google has to stop making exclusivity contracts for products like search, Chrome, and Gemini. So they can still make default contracts, but they can't say it's the exclusive provider

of those things. Google has to stop tying some of their apps to the placement or use of other apps on their devices. So they can't be like, if you want Gmail, you have to use Chrome. If you want Gmail, you have to use Gemini. can't do that anymore. They're going to have to syndicate some of their search results, and that's like with an asterisk, there's like a big subset there, and they have to share some of their search index. Is that about right? Like it's a lot of like half measures here.

That's right. And he leaves open some possibility that he could expand some of this in the future. For example, you know, he finds that, you know, these remedies aren't actually enough to restore competition. Maybe he'll look back. on the payments part of this or something like that. So there's some options here, but that's basically the extent of what Google has to do if these remedies hold up. Well, and actually, we should touch on the payments part because that was a big thing at issue here. And he thinks, they're fine, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if he necessarily would say, oh, this is totally fine. I think throughout the trial, even the liability phase and the remedies phase, we saw, you know, he really felt like

the fact that Google was paying Apple, you know, $20 billion to be the default search provider on Safari was pretty indicative that, you know, they felt like they needed to hold on to this position, even though they keep saying that they're the best. And so he really seemed to kind of hang on to that fact throughout the trial. But at the same time, I think he heard from both Eddie Q from Apple and an executive from Mozilla who said, you know, we would basically be pure losers here if you decide that we can't get these payments from Google because Google is still dominant. Our customers are still going to want to go to Google and we have to provide that option and yet we'll no longer be able to be paid for it. So I think that was something

that he really wanted to consider here and probably drove some of his things. thinking around whether Google could be able to make these payments. It's really fascinating. You know, I think the critics of Google are pretty upset about this ruling. They think that it's not going to go far enough, at least from what I've seen. But as I was reading the opinion, you know, you do sort of like see how the judge landed here, and you start to feel for him in terms of the challenge of threading this needle. Because you look at the payments, which were one of the big things at issue here.

And it's like, okay, so maybe you say, you know what, it is bad for Google to be able to pay to be the default and therefore crowded everybody else. And then you think from the judge's point of view, okay, does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Apple $20 billion a year, but Apple sets Google as a default search anyway because Google is the best product? Does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Mozilla a bunch of money and then Firefox dies and even more people have to use Chrome? And you just keep going through these things and it's like, oh, like, this is kind of tough. Like, how do you make space for competitors without actually hurting the rest of the industry at the same time? Because all of these companies are just hooked on Google's money. And Google, you know, saving them a bunch of cash would actually be a perk for them in some ways. Yeah, definitely.

I think, you know, Judge Major talks a lot of. about, you know, judicial humility and, you know, not wanting to kind of take proactive action that will cause more harm or disruption or, you know, pretend that he can know the future. But at the same time, I think critics of this decision are saying, you know, he really didn't go far enough. And we already, he already found that there's this issue in this market that revolves around how Google has conducted itself. And, you know, a lot of these critics feel like he hasn't gone far enough and instead did a sort of half measure that says they can't have these exclusivity in their contracts, but they can keep paying heaps of money to be the defaults, which, you know,

already he's kind of found that the defaults act as a way that Google has been able to maintain its monopoly power. So a question I have is, like, a lot of times with law and one thing that I've learned just serving in unions is that you can want all of these ambitious things, but you really have to think about enforceability, right? Like when you decide you're going to do things a new way and you're like, hey, what if we do it this way? I think one of the challenges that I learned about was how implementable is it actually? So are the things that he's, you know, asking Google to do? Are these things that materially make a difference?

Are these things that the government can enforce, or is it just sort of like we said that they're doing this here? But actually, it's a status quo. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the reason why the Justice Department was pushing for a breakup or what they'd call structural remedies in the first place is that, you know, a lot of people who advocate for those kinds of remedies say they're the easiest to enforce because you don't have to monitor it. You don't have to babysit a company. you just break them up. You just say Chrome can no longer be owned by Google and they have to sell it and they have to break it apart. And obviously that's easier set than done, but once it's done, it's done. These behavioral remedies like having to not put certain provisions in their contracts or share certain search data,

that's something that kind of does have to be monitored for compliance. a little bit more. But, you know, I think in this case, it doesn't seem like so hard to do that. But I guess the devil will be in the details of how they're, you know, they have to do that if, you know, they actually get to that point. So the thing that I think is a little tricky here is I sort of see how he lands at we can't ban these payments. As far as we lands at the rest of the remedies and what is required of Google to create, competition, it gets a little more complicated, I think, because he actually carves this pretty narrow path. And I don't know that this path is necessarily tied to the ways that Google created its monopoly and enforced its monopoly. And I think that's what a lot of the remedies were about,

right? The remedies were Chrome enables Google's monopoly, so we will remove Chrome. Android enables Google's monopoly and so we'll threaten to remove Android and kind of as I see it what he's doing instead is saying I'm going to create a little narrow path that will allow more competition to bubble up you're saying that the problem

is that Google has such a lead in search that no one else can catch up and compete with them so I'm going to give you some basic tools so that these other companies can bubble up and start to create competition And from my read of the opinion, he's basically saying, listen, all you other companies, you can have basically a map of what Google is doing. And that's kind of it, right?

We'll give you some supporting stuff. So you'll have a map. Like the search index is essentially a map of the internet to let them understand what Google is indexing. They're going to get some basic search syndication, but they can only syndicate up to like 40% of their search. from Google. And that's supposed to sort of help bootstrap them. But the judge is pretty blunt about from there, you got to do it yourself. You can't keep going back to Google and getting more information about how they build their search engine. You need to invest and you need to build a good product. You need to compete with them, which is still a pretty big ask of the industry.

Yeah, I think it's important to know that, you know, in antitrust law, when it comes to remedy is, the goal here is not, you know, let's undo every anti-competitive thing that Google did up until this point, because some of them maybe are irrelevant to the market at this point. The goal is to restore competition to the market that Google has monopolized. So, you know, I think the goal with these remedies is basically to make it so that, you know, rivals really can compete in this market in a way they haven't been able to in, you know, decades. based on Judge Mata's ruling. So basically they, he's implementing all of this to say, okay, let's give some of these

rivals kind of a jumpstart in the way that they haven't been able to do that in years. Because basically delivering valuable search results requires a lot of data, collecting a lot of data, requires a lot of users coming to your service and putting in a lot of queries. And if Google is gobbling all those up, then no other company is really getting that. So the goal is to kind of give these other companies a jumpstart in that way. And so that's kind of what he's trying to do here. But at the same time, he's kind of limiting that a lot more than what the Justice Department said would be necessary to really get them there by saying, you know, we're not going to let you have access to this on a periodic basis. You'll just get like one snapshot in time.

and that should give you a sense of what Google knows or, you know, saying you can only have some access to some of these features for six years rather than 10. So I think that's kind of how he's tried to like walk this line. And he's really wary of making these rivals dependent on Google. He doesn't want them to feel like, okay, we have like a long runway to figure this out. and we could just like coast on Google's data in the meantime he wants them to build up to be their own services. Have you heard from the Mozilla's The Duck Duck Go's, like how they feel about this? Like is this going to be helpful to them? I mean, I think Mozilla is relieved that they will not be losing a huge chunk of their revenue that comes from Google for default payments for Firefox.

I think Duck Duck Go was really not happy with this ruling. And, you know, they ultimately said their CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, said in a statement, quote, Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors, including an AI search. As a result, consumers will continue to suffer. We believe Congress should now step in. And, you know, if you're calling on Congress to step in at this point, point after we've seen these bills shot down before, you know, that really feels like a last

resort. So there's this take out there. And I'm curious your thought, like, it seemed people, Google clearly lost the lawsuit, right? They were ruled to have a monopoly. That is the last thing they wanted. But when it comes to the remedies, it kind of seems like they won. Do you agree with that? I do largely agree with that. I mean, basically what the judge granted was pretty much most of what, pretty much all of what Google had proposed that they said, we'd be fine with this, which was basically the exclusivity contracts aspect. And then he imposed somewhat more of what the Justice Department asked for in terms of some of the search data and other syndication that he ordered. But really, the DOJ lost out on, all of its other big ass. So, you know, it's not a total loss for the Justice Department, but it's far short of what they asked for and seems to be far short of what many critics here think would be necessary to restore competition. I want to ask me a bigger picture question. You had this story that ran on Thursday. You said the tech antitrust renaissance may already be

over. Can you dive into that more? Because there was, I think, this big burst of momentum sentiment energy toward, you know, tearing apart big tech. And it seemed like this was going to be the moment. And I think you're saying maybe it fizzled out before it, before it even started. Yeah. I mean, I started on this beat about six years ago when a lot of this was starting to bubble up. And at the time, you know, there was this kind of feeling around antitrust for a long time that, you know, we should kind of just look at like prices and do. prices go up or down and what does that mean for consumers and we should really be restrained

and how we think about antitrust. And that was just beginning to change with things like Lena Kahn coming on the scene with a proposal about how we should look differently at markets that aren't necessarily, don't necessarily have a price tag for consumers, like is the case in digital markets a lot of the time, but still have, you know, a lot of power. And, you know, she kind of came onto the scene making a argument about how to go after Amazon's alleged monopoly. And then we saw this explosion of interest from lawmakers, from outside groups, and, you know, eventually from the enforcers themselves to actually kind of take this new approach to antitrust. And, you know, in 2019, we saw the House Judiciary Committee start to investigate all of these companies. We saw the DOJ and the FTC begin to look into all of these companies.

And all of that has resulted in lawsuits at this point against Google, meta, Apple, Amazon. I mean, that's just unheard of for at one point in time to have huge monopoly cases against all of these companies. So it was really a milestone. And then, you know, in the last couple years we've seen these cases begin to go to trial and having the initial last last liability finding from Judge Mata saying that Google is a monopoly in online search. I mean, that was just huge. That was such a watershed moment for this movement and seemed to really solidify like, okay, really we can get the courts on board here if we put in the work, if we bring these

cases. And I think getting to this point and seeing, okay, yes, we got a court, the Justice Department got a court to find. tech company to be a monopoly, but then he does kind of the bare minimum to remedy it. That is, that's a real setback. And I think it's, it just casts some doubt on how far our courts will really be willing to go to address this problem. And, you know, it could be that in a few years, it turns out that this was the outlier.

You know, there's, Google is going to face the DOJ later this month in its other case that it lost to the Justice Department over its ad tech monopoly. And it's very possible that the judge in that case could say, I'm going to break up part of Google's ad tech business. And we could see some more, you know, aggressive rulings in some of these other cases. So it is too soon to know what the arc of history on this will look like. But I think it is just a kind of a warning to the optimist. that's existed in this space that, you know, there's still such a long road ahead and the hardest part may be yet to come. I'm just curious because, like, you're kind of mentioning that this is a

marathon, not like a 5K, just these runner analogies. But, you know, I'm just curious how much of the environmental vibe shift plays into this, because if this started six years ago, then, well, a lot of this momentum and energy started under the initial Trump regime and then gain someone I guess during the Biden years. And, you know, I think everyone would agree that there's been a little bit of an energy change since, you know, the start of 2025. So I'm just curious, like, does that also play into this, like, fear that the Renaissance might be over before it began? Because, you know, ostensibly there's a long time before there's another vibe shift maybe, or maybe they'll never be another vibe shift again. So just curious how much that plays into, like, thoughts regarding, like,

how this is going to go with all of these big antitrust cases. Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, I think it's impossible to ignore the, you know, political influence here and just the way, you know, the political moment has shifted. At the same time, it's really interesting, and I've written about this a good amount, it's been such a bipartisan movement here. And it's not that it's like all sides of both parties really care about this, but it's, you know, a certain subset of each party. is really invested and you'll see like, you know, I think at one hearing there was like Matt Gates and, you know, we'll be saying something that sounds a lot like Elizabeth Warren.

And so it's just like really perplexing sometimes. But then I think you end up seeing like in this moment, especially amid like all the upheaval we saw earlier this year with Doge, with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg coming to the White House right before. his antitrust case went to trial, you know, all of this kind of fear about outside influence, corporate influence, and just how the Trump administration would conduct itself, his dismantling of different agencies and kind of taking Democrats off the Federal Trade Commission, I think all of that just kind of created this questioning and distrust among, between the parties around all of this. So I don't know that it necessarily,

undermines the like policy goals that I think are kind of deeply held beliefs, at least within a lot of members of this movement on both sides. But I think it's impossible to ignore the possible influence of that and just kind of the different moment that we're in right now. I think you're right that at a bare minimum, this is a coming back down to earth moment. This is even if we get there, judges are typically very very very very. very cautious in how they approach these remedies. And, you know, I think it says a lot that Google, at least as of the time we're recording

this on Thursday afternoon, Google has not appealed, right? They still could. But I tend to find that most companies, about 30 minutes after an opinion comes down, put out a statement saying, this is terrible, this is the worst thing that's ever happened, and we're going to appeal. And Google put out a statement that was actually like, you know, the judge, he was very thoughtful in this case. We're just like, not what you expect to happen.

They didn't have that one drafted. They had to write that one on the fly. So, Lauren, what happens next here, right? This still could get appealed. It could eventually be put into place. What are we waiting on? Yeah, I think it still is pretty likely that Google appeals. They said before this came out that they would appeal because basically they had to wait for the remedies

willing to come out to even appeal the underlying liability finding. And Google doesn't like being called a monopolist. It probably is going to appeal that part of the ruling. But, you know, we'll see what happens there. The other thing that could happen is that the DOJ or the states that also brought this case against Google could appeal to get more of the remedies that they were asking for. So we could see appeals from one or both sides here. and then that would go up to the appeals court and that could eventually go up to the Supreme Court. So even though a lot of these remedies could go in place soon, they could all be kind of paused while all of this goes on.

And it really could be a long time before any of this really comes to fruition. RIP, Lauren. Yes. You know where to find me. Stay tuned. Maybe we'll have AGI by the time. the actual remedies come down. All right, we've got to take a break. When we get back, the thunder round is back and better than ever.

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That means it's time to move on. All right, V, you're up first. What have we got? Okay. So my question is, would you pay two? thousand dollars for a smartwatch because that's what Garmin is asking from some people. They came out with an announcement this week about the their flagship Garmin Phoenix 8 pro series. So it's like an S year for Garmin. The Phoenix is their flagship line and just like how

the iPhone used to have an iPhone 4, then iPhone 4 S the S year is just like that money updates. So they just came out with the S year pro Garmin Phoenix 8 and uh you know there's some really cool. things. They finally added LTE and satellite SOS. Kind of. Kind of. You have to use the Garmin Messenger app, so it's not like you can have an actual phone number on your Garmin or a fully, like, how you would think of a data connection on that. Doesn't the Apple Watch Ultra have that for half the price? It's for $10 and it's $800. You know, the LTE connection is generally $10 depending on your carrier and the Apple Watch Ultra is $800. But they're saying, hold on now. The starting price for an OLED display will be $1,200. If you go a slight size up, it'll be $1,300. But if you want the micro LED display, which has a maximum brightness of 4,500 nits,

which I don't think I've ever heard of any device with a maximum brightness of 4,500 nits, you have the privilege and the distinct honor of paying $2,000. And I was just like, you can't convince people to spend $2,000 for a foldable phone that does a lot of stuff. $2,000, $2,000. Like, people will lose in their minds over the garments because Phoenix 8 being $1,000. $2,000. For $2,000, this thing better, like, be 4K.

I better be able to watch, like, Dolby Vision movies on my wrist, like, with this thing. So, I don't, what is the outdoorsy use case where you, absolutely need 40,500 and it's like, it's like you exclusively hike in the desert with the midday sun directly overhead and you just like can't possibly rotate your wrist enough to like see it. Yeah. Yeah, it's mostly so you can see things in bright direct sunlight, but it's really funny because I was reading the comments and everyone was just like, what, no memory in pixel trans-reflective display, which, you know, would let the battery be 4,000 years long. Not with the display that bright, not happening. No, no, so the micro lead will be, I think, about a 10-day battery life. And for gar- That's pretty good. If you're talking about for an Apple Watch or a Pixel Watch or a Samsung watch, 10 days battery life, hoie, sign me up, Bob.

But for a garment where they measure the battery life in weeks and months, 10 days, they're like, 10 days! Is this supposed to be like a part of the ultralight hiking movement so that, like, you don't have to bring your phone or your satellite phone. But I don't get how you would be able to rely on this to send all your messages if you are an emergency. Yeah, kind of like basically what they're doing, because it's really hard to negotiate these carrier deals for the smaller. I say smaller brands, like Garmin's a publicly traded company, but it's just, it's not on the scale of like Apple or Google, right? So it's harder for them to negotiate the carrier deals.

So what they're doing is they're relying on the Garmin in-reach satellite communications to bring LTEEM to these watches and satellite connectivity. So depending where you are, if you make an SOS call, which is the big appeal of these things, it'll reroute you to the Garmin response center. So Garmin is going to be like a middleman in every step of the thing. Your watch won't have its own cell phone number. You can only call other Garmin Phoenix. say so your friend who is also spent over $1,000 for Garmin Phoenix 8 and or the family members that you've badgered into downloading the Garmin Messenger app, which is their proprietary app to enable text messaging more thoroughly on their on their device. And, you know, they introduced that last year. I tested it for the Garmin Phoenix 8 review. I had a friend download it. And as soon as I was done with the review, she was like, so the reviews up? And I was like, yeah. She's like, can I delete this app now? So it's great

Helps them compete more with Apple and all those stuff But I can't help but feel like they've lost the plot a little bit For what their users actually want So $2,000 that's my They have taken the best and worst parts of microlady Which is really bright and insanely expensive Yeah All right Lauren what have you got

Okay so I'm here to deliver some devastating news that Amazon is cracking down on how you share your prime shipping benefits with your friends and family. Yeah, this was huge news in my family because on the day that the Google search remedies ruling came out, my dad said, okay, yeah, but have you seen that you have to stop mooching off of our Amazon benefits? So, yeah, basically they're making it so, you know, they're kind of changing this invitee program that they had. to Amazon family, and under that program, you kind of, everyone who's part of that has to be part of the same primary household. So if you don't live with the other person in your family or your friend group that you share a prime account with, you can't kind of share those prime

benefits. It seems like from how I'm reading it, that you could still just have, you know, your friend or family membership you stuff from their account, just to like a different ad or you could log in there, but you can't have, like, your own account and use their shipping benefits. I'm not letting somebody else see my Amazon purchase history. Like, I just cannot explain, like, why I bought, like, a tarp and, like, a tomato plant stick and also, like, 15 USBC cables in the same order. Like, it just doesn't add up. I had no idea that this was even a benefit that was allowed. Like, Netflix password sharing, like, okay, that makes sense. Like, these are just computers.

Netflix isn't tied to my house. Amazon is like very singular to me. So I was like honestly, maybe I'm just out of the loop. Maybe I'm just left behind. I didn't realize, I barely even realize you could share it within your household. So I was like, oh. I thought I was getting an upgrade. Jake.

It's not true. Jake, you got to get on the password sharing at least within your house because, oh, you're not. You know, for a while before like tied the knot, said holy matrimony. we were paying for our individual prime stuff. And then when we found out that we were basically paying twice while living under the same household, we were like, why are we doing this? Why should we have to be doing this?

But I hate that Amazon is basically taking a page out of the streamers. But I mean, come on, man. We all got subscription fatigue. Let us have this. Let us have our shipping. Come on. Like the narrative, though, for subscriptions over the past, what, like two years at this point and it was started by Netflix

and they were like we're going to crack down passwords and like they expanded it globally and now it's kind of everyone like if they haven't done it already they've announced that they're going to do it I'm pretty sure it came to HBO I'm pretty sure it came or it's coming to Disney Plus and Amazon Prime

I'm going to say this one actually makes the most sense to me as a thing that feels very focused on a single location but nonetheless like these things are expensive. And every time another company does a crackdown, it adds another subscription to everybody else. And so it's like each crackdown is hurting the next company that does a crackdown because they're just going to have fewer people who are willing to add a subscription.

Like I am tapped out. I have too many things. I like when it comes to streaming services, I just like save it up until there's like enough like movies and shows that I want to watch and then like try to knock it out in like a month or two because I'm like, I can't keep all these going at the same time. This is outrageous. I think it's kind of surprising that they let us, like, have all these passports sharing for as long as they did. And I think once, like, Netflix decided we're going to crack down on this and, you know,

people didn't just leave in droves. I think everyone else was like, all right, I guess we could do it too finally. No, that's so true. Like, Netflix was willing to take the reputational hit. And I guess people actually just like Netflix enough that they're like, well, what are you going to do? I'll pay for some more Netflix. I mean, it helps that there's like bundles now,

where if you go to a carrier, they'll be like, we'll give you a free year of this and a free year of that. And you can now, within a one bundle, get five different subscription services, and you'll save money than if you were subscribing to them all independently.

And here's a credit card thing, but I was like, why do we have to do this? Why do we have to jump through all of these hoops? I had a racket going with a bunch of six friends where one person would pay for one service and then put us all as famous. family and everyone was responsible for paying one subscription and we were all just on a big

old racket and this is like falling apart but and so now I'm just like do I need this service? I don't I miss my my subscription racket. I will say some of the companies that have done these crackdowns they're not as good as cracking down as they say they are. There's a you know listen I'm not breaking any rules but there might be some people on my accounts who are and they Nobody's caught on yet. All right. Next story. Okay, so I have been talking about this, I think, the past three weeks.

I am obsessed with the Pixel 10 Pro's 100X zoom feature. So it has this feature called ProRes Zoom, where when you zoom into 100X, it will use AI to enhance the image. And I think when we first saw this, I was like, these demo images that I'm seeing seem like incredible. They're remarkable. I can't believe they look this good. And then last week I was like, well, I'm maybe seeing a few flaws here. This week, I think I'm ready to say, I might hate it. I might hate it.

So Allison Johnson went out with the Pixel 10 Pro and a cool Picks camera that actually has a 100x lens. And number one, you have to see what this camera looks like. It is this enormous black thing. it is like the size of a limb. It's huge because it turns out you need a huge lens to actually get 100x. But she did a bunch of side-by-side photos with the Pixel 10 Pro and this actual 100X zoom. Okay, so I want to show you two of the photos that Allison took. And I want to hear which one you think is better.

And this is, I'm going to give you the one that I think is maybe the best presentation from the AI. So here are two photos of the tails of some planes. So here's photo one, and it is kind of like blurry and ripply, and it almost feels like you can feel the like fumes or something coming out of the back of the jet engines. And here's another one, and I think this one is like crisp and clear, maybe a little smooth, the colors are vibrant. I'm curious, do you two have thoughts on which of these two is a better photo?

The one that doesn't look like amateur impressionist art. So you're saying to this one that's currently up between the smooth one with the bold colors. Lauren, do you feel the same? Do you prefer this one? I think the crisper one is better, but it's a little bit like too perfect. So this is the AI one. And this is, I think, the best case for it. Right.

It is these sort of big simple objects, big, bold colors, and it's able to clean them up really neatly, and there aren't too many weird artifacts or messy imperfections or fake things. But I went through all of Allison's episodes, and this is like the single one that I think actually shows off this feature being good. But the one that really broke it for me, there's this photo of the moon that Allison took with the pixel. And I looked at it and I thought, you know, that's a pretty darn good picture of the moon. And like it looks sharp. It has this incredible texture on it. And I'm like, it has moon texture. It looks like the moon.

This is so cool. And the moment that I turned against this feature was when I looked at the actual photo of the moon. And it is completely different. All the texture is made up. It got, it's not there at all. It was just like, yeah, some texture here. So I don't know. Oh, man, I was in pretty messy feelings about this.

It's a little different color. Yeah, it's certainly a different color. I don't know. I feel very, very torn because, again, I do think like this one photo of the plane's like, yeah, that's pretty good for 100X. Like, that cleans it up nicely. But this moon photo, I'm like, it just made up a bunch of stuff about the moon. Like, that's not what I want from a camera. and Allison just talked to Mark LaVoy

who used to work on the pixel cameras and now works on cameras at Adobe and talked to him about putting generative AI in camera apps and I don't know the impression I got was that he was kind of uncertain if it was a good idea and I yeah this is this is how I feel I'm curious you guys I think

look through some of the other photos like do you have thoughts here like is Is this good? Is this evil? It's just why? I feel like I have mixed feelings. Yeah, I think it kind of just depends what you're going for with a photo. Like, if you're trying to, like, capture the moment that you're in or, like, or get, like, real information from a photo that you're going to remember, like, I don't know

that I'd want to rely on AI for that because it's like you could just, like, download a photo of a really good photo of the moon if you want to know what the moon really looks like. or, you know, I feel like some of just, like, taking photos with your phone is just, like, capturing the moment. But, yeah, this feels like something else. Why are you zooming in a hundred times just because you can? Like, for what reason are we going a hundred times zoom sometimes? It is because I can, to be clear. Like, I'm excited by that.

It just doesn't make any sense. Okay, we could do another, like, 20 hours on 100X Zoom, but we might be. move on. The, what have you got? In the year of our Lord 2025, you can finally have Instagram on the iPad. I saw this headline. They did it. They did it. They did it. This is the most impressive piece of, oh my gosh, incredible. This is the single most impressive piece of engineering that we've seen out of meta in years. Can you believe they managed to do this?

It's groundbreaking. We've only been asking for this since the inception of Instagram over 10 years ago. And it's just like, oh, cool. Instagram and the iPad are the same age. They're the same age. They could have done it at any point. At any point. We could have had a native iPad app that just, you know, instead of an iPhone app that just blows up.

But then at the same time, so I was reading me a story. story on it and it's like it'll prominently feature reels. I was like, that's not what I want. That's not what I want from the iPad Instagram app. This is mind-blowing. You open it up and it defaults to reels. And if you want to find photos on Instagram, you have to go to a new tab that like it looks like you're going to find your friends or something.

Like it's not a clear photo. You need to find, it's buried in a new tab, the photos. The Instagram part of Instagram is now hidden within Instagram. This just screams to me that they just wanted to find another way to distribute reels and they didn't really have interest in an actual Instagram app for iPad. That's exactly it. And it's just like, listen, I'm pitching a new segment called give the people what they fricking want and don't edit.

Like, you know, there's just so many things where it's just give the people what they want. We are asking nicely. Please don't put your nefarious agenda into the thing that we're asking for. Give us our chronological freaking feeds back. I was just like, yeah. Listen, I will use the Chinese state-sponsored, you know, NSA deeply concerned app TikTok for my short form video. And Instagram, I would like to stick to photos. that's how I feel

I'm not messing with reels I'm messing with reels until the day that TikTok gets banned and then I'll open up my iPad photos and stories that's all you know honestly just give me the stories I want to snoop on what my friends are doing and go like oh good for her

or like oh that's shady you know that's what Instagram on the iPad should be for just as it is on the phone I don't want reels there leave me alone so yeah I It was just so wonderful and then so cruel. And I say this as someone who hasn't had a fully charged iPad in months.

So I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It is. Meta's approach to the iPad has been bewildering. And I realize, like, I don't know. I realize it takes some engineering resources. I realize like maybe it's probably never going to be the most popular platform for them. but it is so embarrassing and weird and ridiculous

that today, or at least as of yesterday, you opened up Instagram, and it was still that tiny little square that you, just like a version of what you'd see on the phone. And the same is true for threads, right? I believe it was true for WhatsApp until pretty recently as well, too. So hopefully this means threads is next. What do they have against the iPad?

Like, I'm not a big iPad girly, but like all of our grandparents and all of the children. on our iPads. Those are great segments to target. I don't get it. I do think they have beef with Apple. Meta and Apple definitely have beef. But like, taking it out on the iPad is like Apple does not notice that. They're like, they're not like, oh no, but WhatsApp for iPad doesn't go full screen. Like, that's not your leverage to getting a better deal in the app store. You're just hurting all the old people with bad eyes, which will be me in a few, like not even a few years. It's me now. An old person with bad eyes.

I saw your glasses earlier. They are there. You're already there. I'm already there. My eyes are garbage eyeballs. And I was, you know, I was like, oh, I don't have to do the thingy. And maybe I'll use my iPad more because I don't have to have all these iPhone apps that just blow up. No.

I'm very upset by this. I know. It's finally here. And I'm still upset. about it because they're using it to push reels. RIP to her Instagram, it was already not Instagram anymore, but now it's clear where their interest lies. All right, Lauren, last one.

Take us home. Last one. So, yeah, this is just basically shout out to Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who pretty much every day for the past several months has said to check a court docket to figure out if she's going back to work. You might recall that Trump tried to fire her and her colleague at the time, Alvaro Badoia, from the Federal Trade Commission, which he technically isn't allowed to do based on Supreme Court precedent, that basically they're trying to challenge. This whole case had to play out. And, you know, the district court judge said, you can go back.

So she went back. And then the appeals court said, wait a minute, we're going to pause all. this while we figure it out, then she went home. And just this week, the circuit court said, okay, you know what, she can go back to work. We're still figuring out the case, but, you know, for now, like, she's allowed to go back. So, yeah, I just can't imagine your life being run by a court docket in this way. But that's been the situation. She's like finding out in the New York Times if she goes to work in the morning. It's like the weirdest. It's like the weirdest. snowday imaginable.

Yeah. That's hell. That's real hell. I don't think I could do it. She's a strong woman. So has, obviously, it is, I'm going to say, bad for the FTC not to have a full set of commissioners and very problematic for Trump to fire the Democrats. These are intentionally designed to be a bipartisan commission. Has it allowed them to, you know, go running now that there hasn't been two Democrats

in there? Or is the FTC commissioners who are left, like, not even care? Well, I think the thing it changes is not so much, like, what the commission is actually doing, but just, like, what sort of insight the public could possibly get into what they're doing. So, you know, there's three Republicans on the commission now. So they were always going to have the majority. It's a five-person panel when it's full. So, and the chair gets to set the agenda. So it's not that the Democrats would be able to kind of change the outcomes of any votes or anything, but they'd have access to the same documents that the rest of the commissioners do.

They'd be able to say in their dissenting statements like, hey, you know, this is why I think this was really wrong. And without that, you know, we'll never really know. This also just like stymies the commission. I think one thing that's overlooked, and this is true at the FCC as well, like a lot of what the commission does is. boring bipartisan stuff. And that day-to-day work now just grinds to a halt in some respects when you're down to major leaders. And so it's like the commission is just going to do a worst job of being the Federal Trade Commission. They're going to do a worse job of enforcing the rules that universally they agree they want to enforce. And, you know, it would be nice if this person

was allowed to have her job back as she is legally allowed to be there. Yeah, I mean, I think it also just arguably makes it so any company that's trying to sue because they didn't like what the FTC told them they have to do, gives them another thing to say in court, like, hey, look at it, this is not like the normal course of things. That's fascinating. I'm sure that like any court case, we've got like 900 appeals to go. For sure. RIP, Lauren.

I'm excited to see how all plays out All right That's it for the Thunder Round Again If you love the Thunderround Send an email Vergecast at theVirtg.com Hashtag save the thunder round

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