Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Google: Breaking Laws and Killing Chromecasts

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

A lot happened this week! First, Marques, Andrew, and David talk about NVIDIA scraping YouTube videos before jumping into a new iOS feature that lets you get rid of ads on websites. Then, it's all about Google. David goes over the new Google TV and Nest thermostat before talking about the news that Google has been declared a monopoly by the DOJ. After that, Adam introduces a new segment before wrapping it up with trivia. Let us know what you think! Enjoy. Links:  404MEDIA NVIDIA Scraping Story: https://bit.ly/4dfOVV2 YouTuber suing OpenAI Story: https://tcrn.ch/3Ai6ogU Verge iOS 18 Thanos Snap: https://bit.ly/3yn5oHV Verge Google vs DOJ: https://bit.ly/4ceBXpj Ford Bronco/Mustang E-Bike: https://bit.ly/3YCLGCx Music provided by Epidemic Sound  Shop products mentioned: Google Nest Thermostat (4th Gen): https://geni.us/QsEO88a Google TV Streamer (4K): https://geni.us/cQgm2 Teenage Engineering EP1320 medieval: https://geni.us/IfcERI Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's replacing the Chromecast. The Chromecast is end of life? Yeah, end of life. And this is replacing it? Replacing it. You know what's weird? What? The Chromecast is only like a dollar and this streamer is 99 yeah yo what is up people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast

we're your hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and i'm david and this week we've got a bunch of it's almost tech timber type stuff happening i would say uh we've got some new ui features to help skip online ads possibly uh new google hardware before we actually officially see the pixels and google being declared a monopoly and some interesting learnings from that plus we're going to wrap up with a game that Adam has created called 2 Out of 3 Ain't Bad. Do you know where that's from, Marques? I don't. Okay, we'll get there.

We'll get to that later. I feel like I've heard it before, I just couldn't tell you where I heard it before. You know? I'll take that. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But I'm going to jump in, actually, because there was an early headline

that I've shared on Twitter that I found the reactions to. Again, interesting, but it was that NVIDIA this time was caught allegedly talking in Slack about scraping a whole bunch of YouTube and Netflix videos. This one's funny because NVIDIA was part of the pile that we talked about previously. But this is like that was under the guise of oh we just used an open source thing they the pile stole from you this was nvidia their slack nvidia deciding what to pull to train their own models yeah and the reactions that were interesting were kind of again along the same lines of half the people are saying wow that sucks that you've put in all of the work to make this thing and it's just being stolen to be scraped for AI to go profiteering somewhere.

And then the other half are saying, well, you did make it and put it on the internet for free. What do you expect? You kind of just – you don't own it anymore. It's kind of just out there. Google owns it. Yeah, basically. And I think that I get that perspective because that's kind of what it seems like on the surface but there is a difference between because people are saying what's the

difference between me like looking at your video and being inspired by it and nvidia scraping the video and then training a model off of it I think there's a difference between profit and just like personal use. So that exists. I think there's also like people watching it on YouTube are doing the appropriate things to pay for watching it. They're watching it either with ads or they have a premium account. It is

like going into the I think that's kind of cool that people just don't realize they are semi-paying YouTube in that way. They just feel like it's a free thing, but it's not. And also, didn't NVIDIA say they're scraping one person's lifetime worth of watching videos a day? They said 80 years of human video watching per day.

Yeah, that's just totally normal. What's the difference between that and just watching some YouTube videos and getting inspired? Yeah, i could do that yeah yeah um they also scraped netflix which seems how much of netflix uh all of it probably david i can just watch netflix on my tv what's the difference yeah it was it's funny because this so this is a 404 media article that this all came out and they've been doing some really good work recently. But they obtained some Slack messages from an ex-employee that had left NVIDIA where they were directed by their director to scrape a list of different YouTube channels

and also a lot of Netflix. They also suggested they should just scrape the entire Discovery channel. That was like a suggestion, right? It was like, we should just scrape the entire discovery channel that was like that was like a suggestion right it was like we should just do all of the discovery all of the discovery channel yeah uh so apparently they used 20 to 30 virtual machines to download 80 years of video a day uh they used these virtual machines which had rotating ip addresses so that the YouTube downloader would not ban them and block their IP. Do you think they had 30 Netflix accounts? I mean, that would be a small price to pay.

It would be a small price to pay, and I bet they're still not doing it. They're probably still not doing it, yeah. That's very efficient. Yeah. 30 computers did all that? Well, 30 virtual machines? Yeah. That's wild i know well i mean to

be fair uh 80 years of human video watching a day a day isn't time but when you're running a lot of things in parallel it's not actually that much and they were downloading that much right the speed that it takes to download a 30 minute video could be a minute depending on how fast your internet they're not actually watching any of it yeah they're just downloading it and being fed into right the training youtube does this all the time they're like people on our platform upload 3 000 years of video a day you know and it's like that's not all from one person yeah most of it is zero views yeah um and i just think that these companies they they they decide that they are not going to understand the difference between fair use or like what's public publicly available is what they like to say and actually

free to use those are very different things every time one of these companies gets asked where'd you get this data set from? They always just say publicly accessible videos. It's like, yeah, YouTube is publicly accessible. That still breaks their terms of service, dude. I don't know if Google is not going to sue them because Google is possibly,

they will not saying they're doing this also scraping YouTube. Yeah. Uh, I, I mean, Netflix is not, not Netflix is not Google and Netflix is not Netflix is not Google and Netflix is not making their own AI model

so I feel like they are much more likely there will be a Netflix AI within the next two years I imagine Netflix is just going to use open AI or something true stop me if I said this last week already stop

I would like there to be someday a checkbox in YouTube settings that says allow my videos to be scraped for AI and compensate me for it. Yeah. I think it will take a while to get to that point because the lawsuits have to happen, the terms of service have to be updated. I mean, the precedent hasn't actually been set yet. But once we get to that point, I think that that's fine.

If each individual video has a checkbox where you can actually enable or disable it, and it will actually affect whether it is scraped or not. Yeah. That would be nice. It's just interesting to me because as soon as publications and newspapers and those kind of guys started getting scraped there were lawsuits out the wazoo like new york times just added a ton more seven million seven million more alleged cases to their giant open ai lawsuit and we haven't seen youtube or netflix or anyone file any sort of lawsuit against these companies which is weird like youtubers is going to be a weird one because we have to be represented by google and

google has to be the one making that because clearly none of there's no single youtuber that could fight this even at the highest level possible and there google has to do it there is a lawsuit there is a lawsuit apparently there's a lawsuit. There's a lawsuit. Apparently there's a lawsuit of a YouTube. Let me find this. YouTube creator suing for scraping. YouTuber files class action lawsuit over OpenAI's scrape of creator transcripts. Oh, so they just like went ahead and did it for everybody. One creator has decided to jump in. I can't wait till this class action goes through and we all make $40 in seven years.

It'd be less. Millette is represented by this law firm. We can link it below. They're seeking jury trial and over $5 million in damages for all YouTube users and creators whose data might have been swept in OpenAI's training. Only $5 million. OpenAI would flip the $5 million coin over to them and be like, keep the change.

But the thing, I guess, the difference like do they settle or do they actually lose and if they lose they actually can't keep scraping it or will they just keep paying or do they have a fine i don't know yeah but it doesn't matter that they can't keep scraping it because they already can't scrape it legally yeah but there's at least a fine now or something also quick correction it wasn't seven million cases. It was 7 million new works that they added to its complaint. That's what... Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yes, that's what I meant. Just to be clear. I meant like individual instances.

That's why I meant by cases. Yeah. So, I mean at this point I'm not surprised. They ingested a data set called HDVG130M. Bless you. Yeah, thanks. 130 million YouTube they ingested a data set called HDVG130M bless you yeah thanks 130 million YouTube videos in this data set this data set explicitly

says for academic use only it's like they used it anyway for commercial use this isn't even like the Apple case where Apple can say this is like a foundation model we are just using for you know science research purposes they are actively putting this

in their Omniverse 3D world generator, their self-driving car systems, and the digital human products. And in Slack they said MKBHD. And link to the channel. At least we probably got a view out of that. Not waveform? Come on.

It says this person put like little descriptions beside each channel. They said, Blacktail Studio, woodworking channel, very professional videos. YouTube.com slash

Enos Yoel Meiser, house tours with great narration. And they said, YouTube.com slash MKBHD, tech product reviews, super high quality.

Nice. Thanks. Appreciate you. Now stop. Your mother would be disappointed. Nice. Thanks. Appreciate you. Now stop. Your mother would be disappointed. Yeah. What would waveform's description be? It would be no, don't do that.

What not to sound like. Yeah. Chaotic podcast about technology. Many overlapping voices. Anyway, many such cases, ason would say of this happening um we will pretend we will potentially be covering this more and more because i feel like every single week we cover a new scraping scandal speaking of a scandal that's not even that's not really a scandal speaking of scraping kind of kind of the animation looks like a scrape. Yeah. Well, like a snap.

Like a snap. Okay. iOS 18 has a new distraction control feature, which will let you remove an ad from a website with a tap, and it has a super cool animation when it does it. We'll link it in the show notes. We'll play it on the screen for you here if you haven't seen it. Yeah.

It's pretty sick. It's super over the top and gratuitous and unnecessary and please keep doing that. For audio listeners, it's basically like you scroll down. Every single person can imagine the webpage with 30 ads breaking up every paragraph. And when it comes over that, it just has like a little,

it highlights the box with the ad, has a little button that says hide and you click it and it literally like rainbow thanos snaps it and it like drips away you do have to like click a button first you do have to click a button yes and it works on anything i was playing with it earlier today i was like removing whole headlines and blocks of paragraph it's just pretty fun it's kind of like that um like arc added that as an option yeah where you could like modify the website. You could like basically get completely get rid of the Twitter blue prompt and all that stuff.

If you've ever like played with inspect HTML and just like got rid of H3s in your browser, that's basically what it's doing. Yeah. Here's the question I have and why I think maybe this is the better option than a lot of because we've talked a lot about how like AI summaries can screw up ad revenue for websites because that's how they need to make money this at least you see the ad so like if an ad doesn't grab you in that two seconds that you see it and you click on it normally it's already made it's already done what it needs to do and that website's made their money because most of that is just through impressions not through actual engagement so by clicking remove all that's doing is being like i saw this i'm not interested you still get my impression but now i can just read the page earlier yeah like i'm not more inclined to click an ad just because it's staying on the screen so

it seems like these websites will still make the money off of this yeah sometimes they're like videos though they're like autoplay versus not autoplay. If it plays, it's worth more. If it doesn't, it's worth less. You can get rid of autoplay videos too. You can basically get rid of any element on the screen by doing this. Can I get rid of the whole story's recipe pages have beforehand?

Yes. Just delete the first seven paragraphs and you're good. I think this is mainly to me playing around with it earlier today. I think it's for like bad actors like you know when you go to like a website and there's like 17 different ads but there's like something you really want to read underneath yeah it's not really for like the one-off ad that you're scrolling and it's like properly played yeah that's a this will be really bad for the really cheap ads that are supposed to look like other articles on the web page. Oh, yeah.

Because now, instead of that, seeing the random story that's actually an ad taking you somewhere else, a hide button will come up and you're like, oh, that's weird. Yeah. I think this just highlights how bad a lot of the web has become and how awful of an experience it's become. This reminds me of, I don't know how long ago it was. Maybe it's still there. Wasn't there a reader

feature in most mobile web browsers there still is and it still makes the experience way better so yeah you come across a web page it's got a ton of ads instead of having this Thanos snap animation or whatever you just go into reader mode and it just gives you the thing you need to read you can still do that on pretty much

every browser it's great. I'm going to keep doing that. Does that keep images, though? Or does it also do images? It keeps those inserted images, but not like ads and stuff. Yeah, it's pretty great. No, it's great.

I use it a lot. And there's like third-party services that can do it, too. If you want them to be like multi-platform, I want to read this article later. Yeah. But I'll keep it and read them on my iPad when I open it on my iPad. You can do that, too. I think ReadWiseReader does that pocket. Ra article later. Yeah. But I'll keep it and read them on my iPad when I open it on my iPad. Like you can do that too.

I think ReadWise reader does that pocket raindrop.io. But interestingly, if it's so usually how these banner ads and stuff work is you when you're a site provider, you set an interval at which you want them to refresh and like switch to a different ad. And a lot of websites just don't have them refresh but like worse actor websites if they know that you're going to be on the page for a little bit they have them the ads switch out every now and then okay and what happens with this is when you thanos snap one away when it refreshes it will show back up so it just pops up and moves everything again yes so that's almost

if it's a bad actor website like that it's almost worse because now your page is jumping all over yeah yeah so it's you know it's interesting though it reminds me a lot of when apple added the ask app not to track feature which totally boned facebook and like got rid of a lot of facebook's revenue yeah um i i think it's in it's an interesting spot to be in because apple is not really a B2B company they're kind of just a B2C company so they do all this stuff that is very sort of like unabashedly like

yeah this is probably gonna piss people off but this is good for your experience and it keeps people on the iPhone this is better than just straight up adblock for websites and it won't get the websites pissed off at them this is adblock with flair basically but the page still is gonna get paid somewhat and it won't get the websites pissed off at them this is ad block with flair basically but the page still is going to get paid

somewhat because I agree I mean it sucks that we live in this world where we have to have ads on everything that we do but it's also what makes the internet free it's just kind of gotten out of control unfortunately no one's really figured out a model that works better than that yet

so this is kind of the world we live in but having tools like this is kind of beneficial So unfortunately, no one's really figured out a model that works better than that yet. So this is kind of the world we live in. But having tools like this is kind of beneficial. It is. And Apple is great at animations. Yeah. They really are. This is true.

It's one thing. Their animation team has been doing not very Apple-y animations recently. I wouldn't have considered this an Apple-y animation until... Exactly. Exactly. Everything in iOS 18 is like this magical, intense. Rainbow-y. Give me like old school HTC vibes. Yeah, even the action button animations when you're going through the action button menu,

it doesn't look like an Apple menu at all. I can't wait till RCS messages just come in that are green with like stinky lines going above it. Wow. Like drips out of it. Slime like goofing down. Anyway. Speaking of getting rid of ads,

I wrote these together. Well played. Yeah. This is a month old, but I just recognized it the other day. And when I posted it in Slack, it seemed like a couple people didn't notice it. But there's this new skip or jump ahead button in YouTube. Have you all seen it?

It's only if you have YouTube premium. Premium, yeah. Where if there's, I don't want to say if there's an ad, but if there's a moment in a YouTube video that has like the peak, what do you call that? Like retention. Retention. Where most people skip to. Pretty much where they skip to. It gauges that part that everybody's skipping and we'll have a little button that says jump ahead and it almost always lands on an in-video

integration. Yeah, you can imagine what types of things people skip from like a 30 second basis inside of the video. Not on this video. Huge, huge retention spike. Maybe it's, yeah, maybe YouTube has some smart way of just knowing that people are going to want to skip it. Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is YouTube doesn't care because they have their before ads, their mid-rolls and their post-rolls. But in the video itself, YouTube doesn't have to care about whether or not you watch an

ad. If anything, YouTube would probably care that that is in there because the more you put a ad, the less mid-rolls you'll put or something like that. Dang, that's a great point. YouTube's incentivized to add a skip ad button because that means you are happier on YouTube, spending more time on YouTube,

and are more likely to come back and probably watch more videos if you get that button and you watch less ads and videos. And you'll get through the video faster and see another YouTube-generated ad faster. If you want to go a step further, it's YouTubers make less money on, hoping they might make less money on integrated ads because you can skip them now.

So you're more likely to throw more mid-rolls in that YouTube's controlling. Damn. Yeah. Better as a viewer, worse as a creator. Yeah. I hope that we don't get to the point where advertisers catch on

and start being like, people just skip your thing anyway. Advertisers have to catch on. Here's the other thing, though. Everyone always skipped the integration. Except our audience. Obviously. They should pay double.

I mean, no, no, the company should pay double. Oh, true, true, true. Our audience watches everything yeah every we have data on that they've watched every minute of every waveform episode it's like when every podcast player has a skip forward button yeah Spotify they have like a plus

45 second button why do you think that's there bro I'm just I would pay it's not always a 30 second ad but I have I've modified my skip forward button to be 30 seconds because it's around 30 seconds. Me too. But it's usually like 33.

Plus 33 second button. I've got it down to a science. It's three taps forward, one back, one. And then it's like. I need some podcast player to come out with some sort of like AI. This is the one thing that I want from AI. This is what AI is good for. Just recognize an advertisement

skip through it or I would literally have if there was a YouTube premium for podcasts where you just never heard ads I would literally pay like $20 a month for that

the skip forward button is a different time every time because it knows how long it is until the end of the ad that would be the best AI that would be cool

probably in any app it's like 42.7 seconds or something oh end of the ad. That would be cool. That would be the best AI. That would be cool. Probably in any app. It's like 42.7 seconds or something. Oh, wow. That would be nice. Anyway, Pocket Casts, get on it. We really need that. Get on it. I have the pro subscription.

Anyway, we should take a quick ad break. Big irony. Don't leave. Before we do that, we have some fun with trivia. So let's do trivia first. Okay. First trivia question i'm going to read you guys three hints and you need to tell me what company i'm talking about hint number one while we always hear about the cliche story of starting companies in a garage this company was actually started by three dudes in a denny's Raj, this company was actually started by three dudes in a Denny's.

Hint number two. Denny's. Before starting the company. Denny's is the company. IHOP. I was going to say, what's like Denny's? Perkins? That would be crazy. Before starting the company, the CEO actually worked at AMD.

And fun fact, this same person also used to bus tables at Denny's. What's AMD? AMD? Yeah. The company? AMD. I thought you were joking. AMD, Ryzen.

Wait, is my brain just short circuiting? I think so. Wait, is that their name? AMD. AMD, what did you think it was? Computer chips. Sorry, my brain is literally short circuiting. I'm like, that's not what they're called.

My brain is like, that's not what they're called my brain is like that's not what they're called for listeners we're recording late today because there was a lot happening not late enough for david to not know what amd is i'm a little worried it's like when you hear a word and you're like that's not that's a real word yeah i agree but he said it one time okay i don't know, man. Hint number three. The original Xbox used a graphics chip from this company which had a floating point performance of 7.3 G-flops if that helps. Giga flops.

Doesn't help at all. But it's good context clues. Started in a garage. The Denny's thing feels like a fun fact. That doesn't actually tell us the company. I thought that too, but everywhere I was Googling this, that story kept popping up. So I assume it's like an original Xbox.

If I don't know the story, it won't help me to guess by knowing that it's Denny's. No, not at all. Yeah, that's what I thought. So what GPU company is it? That's the question. Just what company. What, not at all. Yeah, that's right. So it's what GPU company is it? That's the question. Just what company. What tech company.

Yeah. But it used their GPU is what you're saying. Technically, I didn't see that. Yeah, I didn't see that. Okay. Are you okay, David? A-M-C. A-M-C.

A-M-C. We'll have the answers at the end. I need to look at this logo. That's right. Support for this podcast comes from Huntress. If you're a small business owner, then the threat of hackers isn't just a threat. It can affect your livelihood.

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of a homemade meal in no time. Visit HelloFresh.ca and use code SPOTIFY for your exclusive offer. Alright, welcome back. Obviously next week is the Made by Google event where we're going to get to see the new pixels and all that stuff.

But for some reason, one week prior, they decided to announce a bunch of other Google hardware. I think those teams didn't talk to each other and forgot that they were supposed to coordinate. No, not Google. There was some stuff, I don't know, there was some stuff that they were supposed to coordinate. Yeah. No, not Google. There was some stuff. I don't know.

There's some stuff that was integrated. Anyway, what we're seeing this week is the new Google TV streamer 4K, which is sort of like a set top box. It's sort of their reaction to the Apple TV box. We are also seeing the new Nest Learning Thermostat Gen 4. So pretty. 10 years in Gen 4. So pretty. 10 years in the making. So pretty.

Really? It's been 12 years since the original Nest Thermostat, and the Gen 3 came out 10 years ago. What? Which is crazy. That's insane. Wow. Yeah.

And then also we got a new temperature sensor for the thermostat that comes with the thermostat now. And we also got some looks into the future of Google Home. So I went to a briefing in the city about a week ago, and this is what's new. Okay, we can start with the TV streamer 4K. So I have thoughts on all these because I use a version of all these products already.

Good. You will have more thoughts than me because I only use one. I'll tell you how they make me feel. I like that. What the these products already. Good. You'll have more thoughts than me because I only use one. I'll tell you how they make me feel. I like that. What the vibes are. Emotional. The TV Streamer 4K looks like

a little set-top box. It looks nice. It's got that plush look that Google is now going for most of their hardware. It looks very similar to the Nest Wi-Fi Pro. All that kind of stuff. $99. Unfortunately, I have to say that it is

replacing the first product that Google ever sold. You talking about the Nexus Q? I'm bringing that back. No, the Chromebook CR41. It's replacing

the Chromecast. The Chromecast is end of life? Yeah, end of life. And this is replacing it? Replacing it. You know what's weird? What? The Chromecast is only like a dollar.

And this streamer is $99. Yeah. I have a hard time believing it's gonna replace the chrome so so a couple of years ago i think it was 2021 either 2020 or 21 21 they came out with the chromecast with google tv right and that was sort of like a reimagination of the chromecast because it gave you the smart tv interface of google tv which had been totally redone. It was the new Android TV but it had a remote control. This is what I have now. Yes.

It basically felt like what you would get with an Apple TV but it was still the dongle instead of being a set-top box. Yeah. So now they've got rid of, I know, I agree. They got rid of the dongle. Like one of the best products, like Chromecast was amazing and then they were like, hey, you don't have to just, you can still use your phone if you want,

but now get a remote. And also, they just have a great UI in bringing all of your different shows and stuff through all your different subscriptions together on one screen. It's generally better than most smart TV UIs. Yeah, Google TV is awesome. Google TV is awesome. But yeah, I don't know. I guess they wanted to add

more like brawn to it so as a 22 faster cpu twice the ram 32 gigs of storage this is also obviously not something you generally think about when you think about your streamer player but apparently they said in the future they want to allow for like four streams of sports at once and apparently doing that they need more bandwidth. I'll give them that. That would be cool. How would I do that? I guess the streams would have to be coming from different platforms.

No, because in YouTube, you can technically do multi-view. You can watch multiple videos at the same time. YouTube TV, regular YouTube, that kind of stuff. They also might let you, I'm not sure about this, they might let you watch different platforms view oh so you can watch multiple videos at the same time youtube tv youtube tv regular youtube that kind of stuff they also might let you i'm not sure about this they might let you watch different platforms at the same time which would be part of my brain i'm not incredible internet

to do that i would like to know from the audience how many people actually watch multiple things at the same time well i'm immediately thinking like when lane's old enough to watch tv can i put on like bluey and an f1 race in the bottom corner? Well, that's just picture in picture. Does it have that already with two totally separate services? That's a good question. I bet they have that. I'm just saying.

Why would you want to watch anything other than Bluey though? I've also, true. I focus on Bluey. I put hockey and F1 on at the same time. And I would do two streams. That's fair. I'm sure people. Olympics right now? Yeah, that's true.

Multiple sports. Yeah. So it has Ethernet. It has HDMI 2.1. Also, it now has a button on the back that you can press and it will ring the remote, which is cool. That's nice. So the remote has a little mic.

The remote is also redesigned. It is now longer. They have gotten rid of the volume buttons on the side and added them to the top. And they also has like a ribbed bottom so that it's like easier to hold and also stays stable more easily.

There's also a remappable button on it that you can use to basically bring up whatever you want on Google TV. An action button? It's sort of an action button nice I also noticed that I was comparing the Chromecast with Google TV to the new TV streamer remote they replaced the button the assistant button because there was a Google assistant button yeah on the assistant logo they replaced it with just a microphone and my conspiracy theory just a microphone button right button okay yeah and my like you know we've talked about this a lot like what are they going to do

with assistant because they brought up they brought up the google assistant multiple times during this briefing yeah they said they were making updates to the assistant uh and i asked them about this and they basically said we made it a microphone because in the context of your TV, people don't think about the mic being the Google assistant. They think I just need to talk to my TV. Apparently, people are just normalized now to talking to their technology with a microphone. It's fair. Most TV remotes now have a microphone logo. You kind of have to because like in in youtube if you want to search with voice

you have to click the mic button and then hold the mic button on their remote so i could see where the confusion between mic button and youtube or disney plus or whatever then doesn't correlate to google assistant button you need to see the like exact same icon right you can still do all the google assistant stuff that you could do before, but now it's just a mic button. The remappable button, they now have a new section in Google TV that can show all of your Google Home stuff. So you can see your Nest cams. You can see views from your Nest cams.

You can see all the lights and you can turn on and off your lights and your Nest thermostat stuff. So it's all basically integrated into one application, which is pretty nice. I like that. It was already a really nice interface. I think one of the best ones.

I really dislike the Apple TV interface. I think the Google one is way better. And yeah, they made it better. What's also nice about it is it has Matter over Thread. So it can be a Thread border router, which we did a whole episode on Matter, which you can go watch if you want to learn more about that. But effectively, if you want to use Matter,

you need to have a thread border router somewhere in your house, which generally only more expensive products have. So having one in the living room is really nice because it's like kind of a central space to the rest of your house. Nice. So that's convenient. They also said that they updated Google TV with Gemini, which I had, you know, I felt confused about.

And also, I feel like they're just trying to stick Gemini in anything that they can. They say that it uses Gemini to make AI powered recommendations for suggestions, which is just suggestions that they already made you, but I guess better, apparently. they already made you but i guess better apparently uh overviews about shows and movies now that are generated by ai which to me just says we fired all the people that did that um which is that overview is just like it's not gonna literally tell me what happens it's a no it's just a description of the movie uh which people used to make but if ai is doing that how do people how can they prove there's no spoilers that's true it's like

Harry Potter 6 Dumbledore yeah you won't believe okay and the other thing that they were really excited about that I just wanted to cry is ambient mode

can still show your photos that are important to you. It can also now show generative AI screensavers. Yeah. So that's basically that. A lot of people are very excited about it because they wanted to make it look nice because they didn't want the radio signals to get interfered with. Like at the house I lived at with Michael Fisher a few years ago, we had one of the Chromecast, but it was plugged into like a set top box thing under our console.

And it would sometimes have networking problems because we had a lot of metal in there. So their whole thing was like, we want to get it onto the top of your console so that it is not obstructed by anything. And so that's why they made it look nicer. Yeah. That was my question. They did a bad job at, the like quick little announcement of it was like,

no more hanging dongles. Now you have this nice, and I was like, the hanging dongle was behind my TV. I didn't see it. I don't care that it was hanging back there. Yeah, same. Yeah, that's kind of it for that. What's your take, Marques, since you said you have all your thoughts?

My take is I probably won't be getting one. I'm happy with the Google TV thing I have now. It's high res. It's pretty quick. I'm sure being faster and maybe being able to do multiple streams will be fun and nice, but I don't really think I'm going to need to do that. So I guess I'm good. Yeah.

I think it's for people that want to buy some sort of smart TV player because honestly, when you buy a TV from Samsung or TCL or whatever, they have a bunch of different apps and the UI sucks and the controller sucks and I would prefer to just use the Google thing. This is like a spec bump of the old one, basically. Basically, yeah. And honestly, they said that most of the spec upgrades were not for anything that they need right now, but for things that they potentially want to do in the future.

We were talking about this the other day because it basically just means that we have two remotes now. Yeah. With your phone and it, you mean? Well, because you still have to have the remote for the TV, but you would program that to now control your tv right oh but that would have to be the power button can control your tv over hdmi 2.1 but that's that's arc or e-arc or whatever c-e-arc something like that the only problem is is my soundbar goes through that so now

now do i run into that problem of either needing two remotes or going through that HDMI? And I guess I could plug in through like optical. That's always my problem. Like I can't figure it out. And I need to get a splitter. I also have an eARC soundbar and I think it just talks directly to this.

Well, what I'm saying, but then I would need to still have a remote that's turning my tv on because it can't get control through hdmi yeah yeah so you saw two remotes yeah bring back harmony honestly we're getting back to the point where like you go to your friend's house and their coffee table had seven remotes on it for like the tv remote and this room i just housed that for my parents this past weekend and I sit down in the living room and I go to just like turn

on the TV to watch YouTube and there's like four different remotes and I'm trying all of them trying to figure out which one it is. Dang. I think this is the world we live in. Three remotes. I have the Apple TV remote, the Chromecast remote and a TV remote. And they're different enough. That doesn't bother you?

No. I like the Chromecast UI better than my Samsung UI. 100%. But I don't want to use two remotes, so I'd rather just suffer through the Samsung UI. Yeah, I think the Chromecast remote turns the TV on enough. And you have your soundbar through? And it controls the soundbar. Is it called eARC?

Yeah, I think eARC. And it talks through the TV to the soundbar. Is it called eARC? Yeah, I think eARC. And it talks through the TV to the soundbar. So I think if I sit down knowing I'm going to do a Chromecast thing, I can just pick up the Chromecast remote and do everything on that remote. I'm 99% sure. Because there's a power button on the remote, there's volume buttons on the remote, they all work, and then obviously the UI and the Chromecast thing.

And the volume buttons on that remote controls the soundbar? Yeah. Yeah, you got Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Yeah. You got it figured out. This all confuses me a lot. I don't have a TV, so I don't know.

You might have sold me on this. The funny thing is, is they want this to not be hidden. And if I ever get this, it will be hidden in the console. You can still hide it. Yeah. 100%. But there's the cool button to find the remote. But you can also say hey g into your phone

find my remote and it'll ring it nice which is cool so yeah that's nice um i think the thing that most people are going to be excited about though is the new nest learning thermostat because and i just fact checked myself it has indeed been nine years not ten how dare you i'm sorry canceled uh nine years since the last generation, the Gen 3, now we have the Gen 4. This is the first major design change in the Nest Learning thermostat, basically since its inception. Even the Gen 1, for the time, looked really nice. If you compare this to a lot of Honeywell or standard thermostats, even the Gen 1 looks

advanced. But the Gen 3 3 they basically said they wanted to make it look like a giant pixel watch i was just gonna say it just looks like a pixel watch yeah they said that and it kind of does and it sort of like bevels off the cool thing about it is it does have bezels but you can't really notice because they said they used multiple layers of glass and film to sort of like kind of diffuse the bezel so you can't see it really at all yeah which is nice. I have a question.

Just like the pixel glass. How far off of the wall does this go? Not like a ton. It's probably. Is that as far? Like an inch off the wall? No, no, no. That was just a stand to be able to see it. This looks like significant shadow casting behind it. Maybe.

It uses the same mount as the last one. That's really good to know because I have Nest mounts and Nest thermostats already and like a ton of places already do. And I don't know that there's any real reason. Is there a reason to upgrade if you already have a Nest thermostat or is this again just kind of like a spec upgrade?

In my opinion there are many reasons to upgrade. Like what? Okay so it has a 60% bigger screen. To you, you probably don't care about that. But it does look nice. It can... Okay. God, there's so many features of this. I wrote down so many things.

Mark has not caring about a bigger screen. Needs to go down in the history books. Well, okay, I guess in the home, I'm fairly... I don't like the tech to be built into the home because the tech inside the home gets upgraded all the time like my computer my ipad my phone they get changed out all the time the tech that people build into their houses i always find like you ever seen those like a

million dollar mansion things where they're like oh there's an ipad on the wall and it controls the shades and in three years you're like this is an years, you're like, this is an old iPad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, this is a $10 million house and now it's bolted into the wall. I don't want the tech in the home to be a focus. So the smaller and more like

out of the way the tech is, the better. Bigger screen, sure, but like, I wouldn't buy it just for that. Well,

it does a lot of different things that will actually save you a lot of energy costs. For you, it doesn't matter because you use solar, I guess. I'm still down to save energy.

Yeah, okay. So it actually uses Soli, which for those that don't remember, Soli was something in the Pixel 4 that they actually had first shown off in 2012, which is super fine radar that in all their showing off of it, it could detect how many cards were

in a deck when you like just put a deck of cards on the table it was that precise then they put it in the pixel 4 and it was really bad it was awful really awful literally the worst part of literal doo-doo water yeah doo-doo water they had already reduced the battery size in the pixel 4 from the pixel 3 and then like the physical battery size and then Sully just drained it so bad. The only things you could do with it because the US government was like, oh, well, you can't really use all the capabilities of radar.

You can only use like certain parts of it where you would wave your hand over it to change songs on Spotify or whatever. And it never even worked. There's a video of Adam and I in Central Park trying to film a Pixel 4 review for Android Authority. And for 15 minutes, I was just doing this on a I in Central Park trying to film a Pixel 4 review for Android Authority and for 15 minutes I was just doing this on a rock in Central Park and it

wasn't working. Core memory. It was bad. Soli did two things for me. It would be like on a wireless charger next to my keyboard at work and I'd type and I'd hit escape and it would think I was reaching for it and then it would light the screen up and I'd be like why is that lighting up and then it would face scan me and unlock my phone

and then I would just be like, now my phone's unlocked. Or when I'm reaching for the Taco Bell on my driver's seat while I'm driving, it would just skip songs as I'm reaching over. Every time you reach for a fry, it skips a song. Okay, but it uses,

so the previous Nest Thermostat had a motion sensor, but this actually has the radar so it has this feature called dynamic farsight and because the display is a lot bigger it shows you different ambient information depending on how close you are to it when you're looking at it yeah okay all right yeah interesting because right now i have to walk up to the thermostat and like look at it and like really make it obvious and then it's like okay here's the temperature yeah you can be like across the room and it'll know that you're looking at it but it will just show you just the temperature in big bold numbers but if you're

closer to it the numbers will be smaller and it'll show extra information around it because it knows you're close enough to see the detail that's nice which is very cool that is nice um it also knows what the weather is like outside because it's connected to Wi-Fi. It'll show animations that it's going to rain, whatever. But it has all of these different energy-saving features. If you want your house to always be a certain temperature, it'll account for how hot the weather outside is going to make your house naturally passively

or how cool the weather outside is going to make your house passively right so it like won't use the amount of energy over the course of the day because it knows oh at this time of the day it's going to get this much hotter so i only have to put this much energy into heating damn that's smart fascinating very smart that is really interesting also things like if you like your house to be a certain temperature when you come home, when you leave the house, it was already your ideal temperature. And instead of just completely turning off your cooling system and then it gets really cold while you're gone. And then when you're on your way home, it has to heat it all the way back up.

It'll lower the temperature a little bit, but because it uses more energy to heat all the way back up from being completely off than it is to just like leave it on a little bit it'll leave it on a little bit uh it has dynamic um what is it called when you basically vent a ventilation so when you ventilate your house uh generally you have air coming in from the outside and it sort of like passes through but if it knows that the aqi is high it won't ventilate at certain times if you're in certain locations i can see marquez being sold on this in real time these are all like nice things it's all nice nice to have yeah i don't know if it's like upgradable yeah things i mean i think it'll save you energy which i think is kind of

worth it over time i feel like judging on how my nest thermostat right now saves me energy is it not good? no I've really dialed my nest stuff to the point where I basically manually built all my schedules for every day where like

when I leave it goes up to 78 when I come home at roughly the same time, it's going back to 73 and like it's kind of set already. I don't want to derail this that far, but is changing temperatures in the Nest thermostat the most confusing thing possible? Not just like one thing,

but like changing schedules and stuff like that. Oh, I do it in the app, but yes, on the thermostat itself, it's a nightmare. No, no, on the app. The app's not good either. I just want to show David, I do it in the app, but yes, on the thermostat itself, it's a nightmare. No, no, on the app, I think it is. The app's not good either. I just want to show David, if David hasn't done this, I just really quickly want you to try and change. Can you screen record? Because I've never seen this either. I need to make sure.

Yeah, making a schedule, it's like a multi-axis thing where you have to like pick the dot for when it will change temperatures, drag it to the day, then drag it to the time, then drag it to the temperature. It's like... I don't even know what you're talking about. No? The Nest app. I'm talking about the Nest app, not the Google Home app.

No, that's the Google Home app. That's the Google Home app. The Nest app is where this all started. Welcome to Google. It's not better. This was going to be a question, so while we're figuring this out, maybe we can discuss it. How long until Google ditches the Nest name?

Gosh. Probably soon. I don't know. I mean, they ditched the... I feel like that has really good branding. They changed Google Wi-Fi to Nest Wi-Fi. They changed Google Home to Google Nest. I want you to try and change the schedule of what my...

House is scheduling? The schedule will be like tomorrow. Wait. I don't even know if you're doing it right. This is great radio, guys. What is that? That data point that I can change temperature or time. This looks like one of your scheduling apps.

Kind of, yeah. It's crazy to talk to people who live in houses. Because I haven't lived in a house in like 15 years and i haven't been able to use any of this stuff literally my temperature is whatever my landlord decides it's probably easier to change than this is this is really bad it's so confusing and like half the time claire and i just like we go out grocery shopping and the whole house is like well they're never coming back let's just turn everything off and then you get home and it's sweltering and i did turn off the the like smartphone tracking feature because i think we had to turn that was i thought that that would be such a good idea and

it just never worked well no it's just like never worked smartphone tracking it's just like smartphone tracking. Basically, it knows where your phone is. So if your phone is home, it knows your home. And so if you leave, it goes, ah, you're away. Time to turn things into energy saver mode. And when you come home, it goes, oh, you're back, and let me warm it up for you. I thought intuitively that would make a lot of sense and it would work well.

It doesn't. No, it's like, oh, you're back? Don't worry, your house only takes two hours to cool down now. So just sweat it out for a little while wait can we talk about the one the one little feature that i think was maybe gonna hook me is there's a new temperature sensor yeah okay i have the temperature sensors because one of my thermostats is on a wall next to a window so the sun is always

shining on it so it always thinks it's 80 degrees when it's not. Why do you have it there? Well, that's just where the thermostat is. So I got a temperature sensor to put in the middle of the room, which is where it should think to adjust the temperature. And they're the most finicky gadgets I've ever owned. Are they just like little plastic things with a soft touch top? Yep, you can unscrew it. You get a rechargeable battery inside. I've gone through like seven or eight of them.

Half of them have broken. Half of them I couldn't get to connect. They would work for like a couple months and then disconnect and never reconnect. They're some of the finickiest gadgets in my life. So if they fix that, that's enough for me to give that a shot. But it would still be on the wall near the window. No, I just mean make the temperature. The thermometer was on the wall near the window.

Make the separate temperature sensor. There's a temperature sensor puck that you can have. Got it. Yeah. Kind of like, you know how the- I thought it was built into the thermostat. There is one built into the thermostat. Yeah.

But there's another one that you can- But if your thermostat is in a place where it's not really ideal, then you can buy a separate temperature sensor and pair it to the thermostat. From Google? Yeah. It's just a little puck.

And put it wherever you want. And I, you know, in the basement, like it's in the back corner and I want the middle of the basement to be where it has the temperature sensor. So I put it on the table in the middle of the basement and that seems to work okay until it disconnects every six months and then explodes.

Yeah. Yeah. So they made a new one and it comes with, it comes with one of them. Now it comes with one and you can buy them separately and also in a three pack. Is it backwards compatible? I don't know about that.

I'm a chick. I'm a chick. Yeah. Okay. Something else that's quite interesting is there's a special wire and all the electricians out there are going to murder me over this and i'm sorry because i don't know anything about wiring but they said google's words there is a special c wire that basically is needed for most smart home, like smart thermostats.

And a lot of homes, especially older homes, don't have this wire. But apparently Google did some sort of magic with the voltages and the electricity running through the other wires that they're able to do everything without the C wire. God, I wish Ellis was here. So I can't explain exactly what's happening but i can explain

that i'm one of the people with the problem that that would be solving so for me and i believe the reason this is is because my ac unit and my thermostat can't control my heat because my ac unit is a condenser with air and my heat is oil through baseboards so they're two totally separate systems that just happen to not be connected yeah um so i think because of that the one singular ac because i have no zones i just have a single zone one huge zone it was just super basic wires in it and because of that it can't if you want to do the like motion tracking and stuff like that it takes more energy for the actual unit itself and since i don't want to charge it all the time i have to turn all of those things off and barely just get enough energy through the wires that actually are connected because those wires are pretty much just there to control that condenser and the air controller

okay so i'm assuming what that is is it would let me use the super basic wires because like when you set it all up, it's like connect this here, connect this here and this optional wire for like energy. That's the C wire. Yeah. And like, I don't care about motion tracking enough to have an electrician come in and

run a new wire for that. Um, so that would let me actually being able to use solely and stuff like that. They said most people do not have to use this wire. If you do have to use it for some reason, they have an adapter that'll make it work that they will send you, apparently. So, yeah, it comes in three colors,

polished silver, polished obsidian, and polished gold. They all look very nice. There's no black? Obsidian. Oh, okay. It's black. Also, by just the looks of it, it looks like the color almost doesn't even matter.

Yeah, it's on the side. Yeah, true. So it doesn't matter as much. But the bezel comes over. Yeah. It's flowing over the side, so you can barely even see anything. Yeah.

It also has these cool weather animations that play. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know if I want it to rain inside and outside at the same time. Yeah. Now, the cobalt in the battery is 100% recycled is good shout out to dualipa yep thanks dualipa for pressuring google through tim cook um and also zero plastic in the packaging which is also good google's kind of

doing that a lot now so yeah that's the new nest learning thermostat. Gen four, it is $279 in the United States and $379 in Canada, which seems awful because I'm pretty sure the U S exchange rate in Canada is also really bad right

now. Wait, is that, that's not 379 Canadian, Canadian, which I think is even worse,

but I'm not sure. Uh, yeah, so it is. And then if you want the temperature sensor, it's $39.99 for one, but it comes with it. Or $99.99 for three. Wait, okay.

$40 for one. You buy a thermostat, you get one temperature sensor for free. Yes. If you want one more temperature sensor, that's $39.99. Yeah. And if you want a three-pack, it's $100. $100, okay. okay Canadian exchange rate almost exactly the same. Oh okay never mind

yeah so that was that and then they also talked to me a bit about the future of Google Home which apparently people that subscribe to Nest Aware are going to have early access to mostly Gemini stuff Google says they know that you get way too many notifications from your nest cameras which you guys probably do i do never that's why they're all turned off

yeah uh now gemini will identify what's actually important they say and surface the ones that they say are actually important if this works this would be the greatest achievement of all time. I agree. Because none of them work right now. They're all just like, here's a leaf blowing, notification. Here's a car driving by, notification. Squirrel shadow, notification. It's just, oh, it's constant.

Yeah. Do you ever go in and it's just like, motion, motion, motion, motion, motion. I know the tree is blowing in the wind. You don't need to tell me every five seconds. It's still there. Yeah. Yeah. you can also ask gemini questions like did the kids leave the bikes in the driveway and it will pull the appropriate footage because it's a multimodal model narc oh snap so it's looking so it can tell by looking at the footage what's happening and if you ask a question about the footage, whoa. That, if, okay.

I'm going to be like, Lane, did you leave your bike in the driveway? No. Ask Google if you did. Lane, ask my phone. Are people going to be creeped out by that? It's their home security footage and you're asking the Google Assistant about the things that happen in your home security footage. But it's your

home. It is your home, but it's Google looking at the footage in people's brains. In people's brains. That's what's happening. But it's your home. It is your home, but it's Google looking at the footage. In people's brains. Well, it's in people's brains. Yeah, yeah. That's what's happening. Fair. That's fair. I just want to point out again

that if approached, Google will just hand over the footage to the police. So it doesn't need to be an AI looking at your footage. I mean, this is all happening already, isn't it? Yep.

Interesting. Yeah. Now with AI. Well, I already have the cameras, so might as well just sign me up. What I don't understand is what if the kids did put the bikes in the driveway, but then they later moved it? Is it just going to pull the bikes being in the driveway, and then you'll be wrong?

It would go by real time, no? Well, it goes through the footage you have, so I don't know. Oh. It might track like latest to earliest. Did they or everyone's yes on saturday the 12th what yeah yeah i don't know and then uh you can also now ask gemini to create automations for you in google home so that do you guys know about the automations features in google home they added like a editor for, like for advanced users to like really go hardcore on the automation.

I just have a morning one. Yeah. So now apparently you can ask Gemini to create certain automations based on fairly complex scenarios, which sounds nice. I think that sounds cool. Yeah.

Wait, but how? Would it be like watch me over the last week and suggest automations? Hey, make an automation for when i leave the home because of my motion sensor turn on all the lights in the kitchen and turn off the nest thermostat we're like when i wake up in the morning i want to hear the news and the living room lights to be turned on yeah yeah so just being conversational with your technology if that that works, we'll see. They also have new Google Assistant updates, which again, I'm like, I'm confused.

You're asking Gemini, but also you have new Assistant updates. I don't know. It says, using Gemini models to make Google Assistant experience feel more natural. There will be an updated voice model being pushed out for Google Assistant later this year. All right.

Can you, can you guys just figure this out, please? Like just, I don't, I don't understand why they had to rename Google assistant to Gemini when the model is named Gemini. It just confuses people because you don't know if they're talking about the

Gemini, the model or Gemini, the new assistant. I don't even know what you're talking about right now. The assistant powered by Gemini. So Google assistant, it's still called the assistant assistant. I don't even know what you're talking about right now. The assistant powered by Gemini. So Google Assistant. It's still called Assistant though. Google Assistant on Google Home stuff

is still Google Assistant but then you also have Gemini on your phone. They're using Gemini models to power the updated Google Assistant. Oh okay so you're saying because Gemini models are the models and then there's also Gemini the assistant which is like competing

with the actual Google assistant one update I would love to have is to permanently shut off the hey next time try asking yeah this blah blah blah thing it's like I've been using you for 10 years yeah stop like what's the weather and it's like it's 72 degrees also

if you want a morning report I can talk about the news to you every single day just ask me hey it's like oh my god 72 degrees. Also, if you want a morning report, I can talk about the news to you every single day. Just ask me, hey. It's like, oh my God, why? Why? It's like a needy friend. Why? Okay, and then also speaking of Google,

this is pretty big news this week. A judge ruled in the Google antitrust trial that Google is officially exercising monopoly powers in search. Whoops. is officially exercising monopoly powers in search. Whoops. Undersized response to that. I've been waiting an hour to do that. Our bad.

Big whoops. Bigger than that soundbite, which is a pretty big deal. They were found to have violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which is a monopoly act from a very long time ago which makes it unlawful for any person to monopolize or attempt to monopolize or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among

the several states or with foreign nations that's the uh the sherman act can you read it again i know um yeah so basically they're saying there is no other option in the search market and that search has gotten a lot worse, which is very true. Yeah. And I think one of the things they referenced was, which we also found out some more information, we already knew that in 2022, Google paid Apple around $20 billion to be the default search engine for Safari. paid apple around 20 billion dollars to be the default search engine for safari and that came up in the case as being like how is any other competitors supposed to have money like that on

hands to compete um but apparently somebody accidentally slipped and said um gave out the percentage of what google is paying apple no apple yeah google is paying apple yeah so apple is getting 36 of ad revenue through google search on safari yes to be the default to be the default yes okay that's wild that's a lot that has a lot of and apple said that was a low number i saw somewhere that it was like roughly 20 percent of apple's services business yeah no it is that's crazy which means yeah it's like a huge number it's 30 30 percent of apple's operating profit so google and apple are like best bros yeah yeah sounds about right yeah it's the duopoly hanging out with each other. What's really weird about this and doesn't really add up, you know, is that Eddie Q, who works for Apple, you may know, he testified.

Wait, let me just double check. It was Eddie Q. It was somebody. Yes. Okay. weird and doesn't really add up is that eddie q from apple testified and said there is no price that microsoft could ever pay that would make apple make bing the default search engine whoops that's the sickest burn which is both the sickest burn ever but also if that is the case and google is the only one they would use, then why is Google paying them $20 billion?

They do it for free is what they're basically saying. They stopped paying, and there's no world where they use Microsoft. I have a conspiracy theory. Go ahead. My conspiracy theory is that Apple's search engine is ready. And that's the only reason. And Apple has decided that it would cost them, because apparently they did an analysis of reason that it would cost them because apparently they did an analysis

of how much it would cost Apple to spin up their own competitive search engine and it was about $20 billion what a coincidence what a coincidence to be competitive with Google and I think that Apple just thinks like oh being a search engine comes with a lot of complexity you're turning into

a B2C company instead of just strictly being a B2 sorry B2B company instead of turning into a b2c company instead of just strictly being a b2 uh sorry b2b company instead of strictly being a b2c company uh and so let's just let google pay us 20 billion dollars you know it's easier that way so my theory is that apple's like ready and google is paying them in order to stay a monopoly because literally overnight if google pressed if apple pressed the button and was like we now have a search engine and the default search on every Apple product through Safari is Apple search engine, there would be an insane traffic dump for Google. Yeah. Apple search.

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Another interesting tidbit. I buy it. Yeah. I buy it. lot of the time is just automatically give you the answer or like search it for you and when they rolled that out google saw a 10 to 15 percent query loss through google on iphones and which was up to 10 of the safari revenue profit at the time and so as part of their 2016 deal that they made with apple apple had to promise to never make that product better, which is like the most antitrust thing you could possibly think of, right?

Yeah. They're like, oh, our competitor made this too good. We'll just pay you off to not make it better so that we're still the only game in town. Damn. Yeah. I wish people would pay us off. I was going to say,

well, they still scrape our YouTube videos for nothing. Pay me to make sure that I never get better at my job. Yeah. So, yeah. Very fun. The judge said, maybe AI searches the future, but the future is not here yet,

at least not in a way that's relevant to antitrust law. AI may someday fundamentally alter search, but not anytime soon. And for me,'s like so much for welcome to the Gemini era this whole statement that judge had so many zingers dude I know it was great and it makes it seem like the judge was pretty privy to like all the stuff

that was going on as well I would hope so I can't get over the line of there's no amount of money you can pay me for paying you ain't no way mom there's nothing you could money you could pay me for paying you no way same mom there's nothing you could do to let me hang out with nick this weekend or like there's no amount of money no amount of candy to make me want to do that okay one last thing that i think was a major thing in this trial google did a survey in 2020 this like study that they paid a lot of money for that about what would happen

and how much money they would lose if they made google search significantly worse if they just like made the product a lot worse over time how much traffic they would lose and the result of the study was that they would basically not lose any money or any revenue or any traffic that tracks because since 2020 it's become terrible yeah and so that basically says like oh hmm we can just like like make the experience way worse for our users while making ourselves way more money i feel like the only reason that they feel confident enough to roll out ai overviews and just not care that it's terrible is that they know that 95 of people are still going to use Google every single day. Where are they going to go?

Duck, duck, go. Where are they going to do? Bing. Who's going to go? Not Bing. You can pay me enough to use Bing. Search GPT. Yeah. So pretty insane. There's a really good Verge article that actually points out a lot of the most insane things that happened in discovery during this trial so i recommend going and reading that uh very useful we'll we will link that in the show notes but yeah it's a pretty big deal they are officially a monopoly in search and there is

no there's nothing that's happening yet because they discovered that but they said within three to four months they will come to some decision and it could go as far as Google being forced to sell off parts of its search business which is crazy like sell off Adsense as a separate thing or something like that there are laws there are good to know good to know all right well we should take a quick break before we do that though Adam hit us with the trivia hit us with the trivia question number two so after 11 years the chromecast is dead the chromecast as it turns out was not the first product that google ever made google negative one it was however it launched alongside a very popular tablet. What OS version was that tablet running at launch? It's 2012.

Questions are fun when there's multiple levels. I don't know. There's really only one question. I just wanted to layer it in a bunch of things that would confuse you. Can I just give you the number? Yeah, I will accept the number. I'm going to try to give you the dessert as well, but I know the number. Yeah.

Okay. How do you know there's a dessert? Well, we're... I know the number. Yeah. Okay. How do you know there's a dessert? Well, we're... I know there's a dessert. Okay. Anyway, we'll think about that. Answers at the end. We'll be right back.

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Yes. Oh, no, I've never heard. The singer. The singer. Meatloaf the singer? Yeah. The singer. No.

Have you ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show? No. Have you ever heard I Would Do Anything for Love But I Won't Do That? No. We're off to a great start. What's a more popular song? This next segment is really going to confuse you. Cool.

Perfect. There's got to be a meatloaf song you know. Bad Out of Hell? No. Fair enough by the Dashboard Light? No. Yeah, I doubt. I probably haven't heard it.

Have you seen Fight Club? No. No Fight Club. Cool. You don't really need to know any of this but the next segment Adam created is based off of the lyrics of a Meatloaf song inspired by Meatloaf yeah the person not the food

do you like Meatloaf the food yeah sure I love Meatloaf I feel like it's super underrated it's really good but it's really easy to mess up you can make it really dry really easy I haven't had it since I was like underrated it's really good but it's really easy to mess up you can make it really dry really easy I haven't had it since I was like 4 but it is really good you remember it?

you haven't had it since you were 4 but you remember it because I hated all the other foods my parents made oh wow that's vivid this band my dad used to say would tour at some local places by him and people would go thinking meatloaf was the special at the bar that night and then it was just some guy singing like rock music and yeah

they were kind of sad yeah huh they were sad to see meatloaf meatloaf i think if he's touring at a place that might get confused with the food meatloaf he wasn't that big yet that's fair my dad was a big meatloaf anyways so anyway this segment is called two out of three ain't bad okay based on the song so every week when we pick things to talk about there are always a few new stories and fun things that kind of slip through the cracks just because we're trying to hit the big topics uh but i came up with this little segment to give us a chance to cover some of them i I'm going to explain a few quick stories to you and I need you guys

to decide if it's a good idea or a bad idea. Okay. The theory behind the name is that because there are three of you, there should never be a tie. There will always be something

that's either a good idea or a bad idea. Okay. All right. Number one, the Teenage Engineering EP 1320 Medieval. There's a link there

for you guys to click. Good idea. Okay. This is a new sampler based on the EP 133, the one that I have and can't shut up about. But it is a medieval version. For some reason. What's different about it? It has a new look with old English font, new graphics, a new colorway that's brown or beige and best of all it's filled with pre-loaded samples of instruments like the hurdy-gurdy harps trumpets

gregorian chants torture chamber reverb and even sound effects like swords animals and a dragon i think we should let the swedish do anything they want can i. Can I ask a sound question? Sure. Why is it not called the medieval? The medieval. Why is it not M-I-D-I-E-V-A-L? Do you guys want to hear some of the sounds that it has? Teenage engineering.

I will take the partnership on that. Wait, it has special sounds? Yeah. It's got sword fighting. Really? This is a beat made with this device. That's one. This is another one.

All right. Honestly, I feel like this is like half of indie game music. That was just old school RuneScape yeah good idea alright that's one for good idea Andrew Marquez just cause I love it doesn't mean it's a good idea

I think it does no I think it does cause I think it's gonna sell a bunch this is basically a special edition thing and everyone always buys the special edition things I am more compelled to buy this than I was to buy the original This is basically a special edition thing and everyone always buys the special edition things. I am more compelled to buy this than I was to buy the original version. I can't deny this.

I have to say good idea. Yeah. Because it's so out of left field that it's like gonna generate buzz, you know? Bad idea. I love when tech companies take their products and take photos of them like in the grass or on a rock. There's something hilarious.

Well, this makes sense to be on a rock. What's funny is that during the interview with David Erickson, the co-founder that we had on a special Wayform episode, go back and listen to it. I asked him because this is going to be an EP series. And I asked him, are there going to be more of these? And he said yes with like a smirk. This is not what I was expecting. I love that the font is like old English. Old English.

And they renamed some of the things on it. But even the digital font inside that changes is like alarm clock-esque, but old English. They're also selling a vinyl for $22.99 that i'm definitely going to buy because that's not even that expensive for a vinyl all right so marquez why is this a bad idea uh too niche fair enough too niche honestly you're not into renaissance fairs i'm not particularly yeah i'm sure there's look with every product it's a good idea

for someone I just think there's not enough of those people for this one alright it has a hundred dollar medieval quilt bag

carrier if you want to buy it the shipping is sixteen dollars on a twenty two dollar product it comes by carrier pigeon

alright alright well the consensus good idea yeah I would love to put this on my desk and not know how to use it. How does it? Yeah, that's what I do.

$300. It's the same price as the original EP133. I just want to reiterate that we should let the Swedish do anything they want. Anything they want. All right. The second thing is Amazon's AI podcast picker. Bad idea. So we always talk about...

Let me explain. We always talk about how podcast discoverability is bad. And that's one of the reasons we throw it on YouTube because it's a discovery engine. That's true. Amazon Music launched an AI feature that will help you find new episodes based on topics mentioned in the episode.

So, quote, to suggest relevant topic tags, podcast transcripts and descriptions are analyzed by AI alongside human review to identify key topics that are discussed in a particular episode. So using AI for podcast discovery, good idea or bad idea? I can go first.

It is a good idea. Specifically. It's a good idea specifically it's a good idea I have a question I have an answer does it only serve you different episodes of that same podcast or does it give you different podcasts different podcasts

and different episodes so we got one good idea so what I'm assuming you're getting at is the idea is great, but the person doing it maybe isn't going to do the best job. Yeah, may or may not be good, may or may not work well,

may or may not actually follow through, but that's a good idea. This is just for the idea. Yeah. I like the idea. Yeah, it's true. I like any idea that helps podcast discoverability. David?

My question is, how is this different from just Googling the word? What? Like in the sample that it shows, it's the Stuff You Should Know podcast subjects, the duality of caffeine. It's the Stuff You Should Know podcast subjects, the duality of caffeine, and then the topics that it shows that you can then search for more podcasts about is caffeine, which is obvious. Coffee, dopamine.

What if I just searched those terms? Wouldn't it show me podcasts anyway? No, you might find a list that someone wrote on a website. Yeah, or if it specifically has that name in the title. But a podcast search just sucks so bad. I feel like you would have a hard time finding this. Where if this is actually pulling from the content,

and also not just that, but knowing the content of what it is. So if you search coffee, it doesn't just mean they said coffee in the transcript once, but the topic is actually. This is an assumption, by the way. Considering I don't think it diminishes the experience,

I think it's a good idea. Oh, so all good ideas. I never thought that I would think Amazon and AI in the same sentence would be a good idea. Amazon, AI, idea. Idea. We need to try it. Alright, so good idea. Next is the Ford, Bronco and mustang e-bike

thingy nice yeah ford is collabing with n plus an e-bike company to release a bronco and mustang e-bike they have rear hub motors that put out max 750 watts of power and 885 nanometers of torque i don't even know what that is newton meters newton meters thank you the bronco will be rugged for all terrain use and has a dual suspension system that they're calling goat which stands for goes over any type of terrain so it just goes over any terrain yeah i think that should be all that's just what all terrain means it? Yeah. But then how will they get the goat acronym? Yeah, they need it to be called goat somehow. Yeah, it's got to be called goat. This thing costs $4,500.

And the Mustang e-bike will cost $4,000. And there will also be a 60th anniversary edition that will be sold exclusively at Ford dealers. But my question, e-bike versions of popular cars, good idea or bad idea? for 4500 dollars e-bike versions of popular cars i'm definitely leaning towards bad idea here or just not a good idea you know like there's a difference yeah no, no, I hear what you mean. It's not a bad idea.

There's nothing wrong with it. Right. There's no danger here. It's just that's not a good idea. That's a great point. It's like something that's not a good idea is not necessarily a bad idea. Yeah.

Yeah. I did not see this coming. It looks cool. I guess. The picture looks nice. It looks fine. I'm just, here's my biggest question about this. If they're basing it off of old cars,

I would assume the majority of people who are very nostalgic about those old cars might not want to be traveling at 30 miles an hour on a bike anymore because they're a bit older and it doesn't feel the safest. I'm not saying old people can't ride bikes. I see. What are you saying?

I feel like spending $4,500 on a bike feels more dangerous. An e-bike. Here's a counterpoint. Porsche's e-bike is ten thousand seven hundred dollars damn this is a good deal then my take is that there are a bunch of white label e-bike brands that go to car manufacturers and say want to make a ton of money and then they just put the name on it and then they don't make a ton of and then they don't because nobody buys it i've literally never seen anyone with one of these yeah i doubt you ever will i mean apparently there's the there's the uh gosh polestar bikes too right there's a bugatti scooter out there somewhere in the world

the bugatti scooter is chef's kiss oh so that's a good idea no it is terrible and i love it so much i'm going to say bad idea because i don't think they're going to sell any okay yeah i'm also going to say bad idea even though the color matching paint is kind of cool what they did with the red bike and the red old ford that's my favorite part of that's pretty cool but yeah that's about it i'll go good idea because it it looks nice it was well designed and if you're okay with paying a bunch of extra money for nostalgia and looks on an e-bike, I don't see any reason not to get this.

Except that I think the company is going to spend more money on making these than they're going to actually sell. I ain't losing any money on it. Good idea. Two out of three ain't bad. Two out of three ain't bad, but it's still a bad idea. If they did like a Pikachu e-bike, I think it would sell way more than this.

Don't give them that idea. Wait, does it say how fast this thing goes? It did. I don't know if I wrote it down. The speed of an original Mustang. I want to say 28 miles per hour. Yeah, I was going to say 30. But lacks a throttle.

Oh, so it's only pedal assisted. Pedal assisted. Interesting. I feel bad that I said old people can't ride bikes you can you can do anything I probably shouldn't ride a bike do it Robert Downey Jr.

was on kids you can do anything I don't even know when that's from Robert Downey Jr. was spotted on a Harley Davidson e-bike see it's cool he's like 40 is that Porsche e-bike. See, it's cool. He's like 40. Is that Porsche?

Oh no, it's a Porsche one. He was on a Porsche e-bike. Porsche bikes now? Porsche bike. $10,700 for a Porsche e-bike. All right. Well, look, as you said, two out of three ain't bad.

Two out of three ain't bad. We have some good products there. Are you going to listen to the song when you get home? No, no, I'm not. It's fine. I'll play it as soon as we leave. out of three ain't bad. Two out of three ain't bad. We have some good are you going to go listen to the song when you get home? No. No I'm not. It's fine I'll play it as soon as we leave. We eventually got you

to watch Her. It only took two years. I don't feel as Paradise by the Dashboard might be longer than Her. That's true. That's true. Her had a shocking

amount of relevance. Yeah. I'm not as incentivized to get you to listen to me love. Totally fine. Totally fine. Well we should let's hit trivia one last time yeah it's a good way to end i gotta cover my second answer because i remember trivia but not the first thing sure about dude all right quick update on the score

david 15 andrew 16 what I thought we were all tied. No. You said the same thing last week when I read the score. And Marquez with 15. Really? I'm winning? Yeah, by one point. He's carrying the one.

I thought we were tied. That's what I said. You know what, Andrew? I'm taking your point away. You're all tied. I honestly thought I was losing. We were, but then you got ahead question one okay i'm gonna read you three hints you tell me what company i'm talking about

so this company was started by three men in a denny's number two before starting the company the ceo actually worked at amd and fun fact the same person actually used to bus tables at denny's worked at AMD. And fun fact, this same person actually used to bus tables at Denny's. Really likes Denny's. Number three, the original Xbox used a graphics chip from this company, which had a floating point performance of 7.3 GFops. Original Xbox. What's a company that's older than the original Xbox? I feel like I might be right i'll give you guys another hint it is worth over a trillion dollars right now this company oh that really knows wait what really wait a trillion significantly narrows it down wait he previously worked at amd

oh shoot this is so i'm so between two and if it's the other one, I'm going to be so mad. I just hope someone else guesses what I wrote. All right, flip it and read. What do you guys got? I hope it's not Intel. All together now. NVIDIA. Okay, we got it.

I wrote, yeah, okay. I changed it after you said the trillion dollar thing. Yeah, I know. I figured it. I thought it was going to be Texas Instruments. I almost said Intel. I almost said Intel. Then I said trillion dollar company, and you i was like oh well intel yeah okay anyway

robert moore question two after 11 years the chromecast is dead but it was launched alongside a popular tablet what os version was that tablet running do we get an extra point if we need a tablet? No. No. You'll get my love and respect. But not an extra point. Andrew with a thousand yards there. I'm going for the love and respect right now. Did I review this product? You did.

Hell yeah, I did. Hell yeah, brother. Oh, wait. Did we have to write the number or we could write the letter? The number. Well, I did. I mean, I'll take both. Whatever.

All right, David, what do you got? Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich. No? Nope. I just wrote N. Android N? Android N. NuGet was recent. I also wrote Android 4.0 Ice Cream Android N. NuGet was recent.

I also wrote Android 4.0 ice cream sandwich, Motorola Zoom, Holo. No, no. It was a Nexus 7, bro. It was a Nexus 7 2013, which was running. Was it Android 5? No. Nexus 7 what year? 2013. It was a honeycomb, was it?

No. Oh. 4.3. 4.3. Oh, 4.3. That's specific, bro. Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean was 4.3? 4.3. Oh, 4.3. That's specific, bro. Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean.

Jelly Bean was 4.3? 4.3. Why did they do that? Oh, I remember the Jelly Bean animation on my Nexus 7. Dang. Wait, what was the question again? Is this wrong? It was, what OS version was the Nexus 2013 tablet running, basically, when it launched?

Is that how you phrased it, though? No, no. So the way I phrased it was, the Chromecast was launched alongside a popular tablet. What OS version was that tablet running? So it was like a two-parter kind of. Okay. Yeah. Should have remembered it was Jelly Bean.

I remember the Jelly Bean animation on my Nexus 7. Same. We have a couple of Jelly Beans here in our top-down set. Do you know what the Jelly Bean's? The little colorful? Oh, yeah. It's like a little red. I thought a couple jelly beans here in our top-down set. Do you know what the jelly beans are? The little colorful... I thought we had jelly beans in the kitchen for a second. I got really excited. I do like jelly beans. It's a little red jelly bean with a smiley face

and android ears. Do you know what we pulled out for a video the other day? That's going to be on Studio Channel soon. The Peppermint Android. Remember? We painted? We painted it because you were trying to troll everyone to thinking that we knew that we thought it was gonna be well because the year before was oreo and it was like so much oreo that people started believing it wasn't oreo and then they trolled

it at io so then we built a peppermint one to try and make people think we knew ahead of them and i think hiroshi retweeted it to really troll everyone. Isn't that the first year that they stopped using desserts? No, it was pie, wasn't it? Yeah, pie and then what was Q? I think that's when they stopped. That's when they stopped using desserts. If only Google had Gemini back then to decide.

Cool, yeah, but that's not a dessert though. I could talk, you know, I mean, you know me. I could talk about quiche for a while. So we have to end the podcast there before I go down that rabbit hole. But yeah, that's been it. Thanks for watching and listening to this episode of Waveform. And we'll catch you guys very soon in the next one. Peace.

Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with the Vox Media Podcast Network. And our intro after music was created by vane so bingo let's go