YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan on new features for creators in 2022

Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and streaming reporter Catie Keck talk with YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan about new features coming to YouTube: more tools for Shorts, interactive live streaming, a new YouTube TV interface, and more. Further reading: YouTube is adding new ways for creators to make money with Shorts and shopping YouTube TV to finally add picture-in-picture on iOS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Special episode of the Vergecast today. YouTube Head of Product Neil Moen joins me and Verge streaming reporter Katie Keck to talk about a bunch of new features coming to YouTube and YouTube TV that's coming up on the Vergecast now.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of YouTube Shorts monetization. I'm your friend, Neil. Katie Keck is here. Katie's our streaming reporter. Hey, Katie.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Hello. Thank you for having me.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  It's great to have you on the show for the first time. And we have a very special guest, Neil Moan, the Chief Product Officer of YouTube is here. Hey, Neil.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Hey, Neil. It's great to be with you again.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  It's great to talk to you. So the last time I talked to you, it was on Decoder. We had like a business strategy leadership conversation, but you've got some YouTube product news to talk about today. Features, new buttons. I've got a laundry list of feature requests. We got to get into it. Just today, you put out a blog post talking about sort of new features for YouTube. Give us the top line.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, happy to do that. And of course, I'm mainly here for your feature requests. So we should, we should definitely get into that. But just starting off, as you and I have talked about before, everything that we do at YouTube is really to just make sure that our, our platform remains the best place for creators and viewers. As you know, everything at YouTube starts with our creators. That's why we all as viewers come to the platform every single day. And so we want to make sure that, you know, we can fulfill the most ambitious creative goals that our creators have, be able to build a business on YouTube. That's what I'm going to talk about, as well as everything that we're doing for viewers. And our viewer mission is that as long as our viewers are on a device with an internet connection, regardless of where they are in the world, they should get the best possible

• 3:08Speaker 03

  experience and seamlessly be able to connect with the creators that they're there for in the first place. So that's, that's our mission statement of our, of our product team. And along those lines, we have a number of things in store for 2022 that I'm extremely excited about that I'm, that I'm happy to jump into.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. One thing I just want from the start, YouTube is not just one product anymore. There's the YouTube app that we know and love. Inside of that, there are multiple kinds of products for creators to make. There's shorts, obviously. There's live. Then there's YouTube Music. Then there's YouTube TV. A lot of the news here is kind of about all of them at once. Just really quickly, how should People think about all those products interconnecting. How do you think about it?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I really think about it back to the way that I just described the mission. From a viewer's standpoint, you know, the 2 billion plus viewers that come to the platform on a regular basis, they're looking to connect with their favorite creators, their favorite content, and everything that we talk about from a product and technology standpoint, in some sense, should almost sort of just almost fade away and really just be in support of that goal. And so whether that's on the mobile apps, whether it's on Android or iOS, whether it's on a television screen, as you know, our fastest growing screen is actually a television screen, whether that's through new applications like YouTube TV or the music app, that's sort of a means to an end from my standpoint. And the ultimate goal of everything

• 4:34Speaker 03

  that we build is about that connectivity between viewers and creators. So that's how I think about it. That's how I set the goals and the mission of our product team here at YouTube. And I think it allows us to really focus on that mission and sort of let all of the product innovation sort of be the means by which we accomplish that mission.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  All right. So just keeping that mission in mind, Katie and I were reading the blog post, and both of us lasered in on this line about the metaverse. And it just says, we're thinking about how the metaverse can make gaming even more interactive and immersive. And I think a couple of months ago, Susan said you were gonna do NFTs and some blockchain stuff for creators. That's all pretty hazy. When you say we're gonna use the metaverse to make gaming more interactive and immersive, in the context of those YouTube products, what do you mean?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, so as you know, Neal, that term is, you know, obviously used all over the place. It's a loaded term. And so in the context of YouTube, again, it really just means how we can just strengthen that connection within with between our viewers and our creators. And so gaming is an area that I that I point out in the post in terms of our vision for 2022, because I think it's a place where a lot of that interactivity already sort of blatantly exists on our platform. Obviously, YouTube is a, you know, we pride ourselves on being home for gamers. There's lots of live streams. happening on a regular basis. There's lots of VOD content that's consumed in that gaming

• 6:03Speaker 03

  vertical on a regular basis. And a lot of what happens there is really kind of manifested through kind of the strength of that gamer community, whether you're a consumer of that content, whether you're a creator yourself, that's already happening latently on our platform, whether it's through comments, whether it's through YouTube posts, stories, shorts, etc. All of that sort of community aspect is happening. And so when you think about something like the term metaverse, the way that I'm thinking about it is along those lines of interactivity. So let me give you a couple of concrete examples of where this could go on a platform like YouTube that would feel sort of very native to YouTube and is something that I think our users and creators

• 6:46Speaker 03

  would really enjoy. So you know, you're watching a stream, a live stream of your favorite creator, you're interacting with that creator either through the live chat or through one of our, you know, even our monetization products, whether it's Super Chat or what have you, and you're part of that community as the stream is going on. Well, you know, you're there because you love that creator, you also love that game. Are there interesting ways that you could collaborate more closely with that creator? What if there was a way that you could actually move from consuming to gameplay mode in a more sort of seamless fashion? So that's sort of one conceptual idea, and I don't have any more specifics to get into in terms of the mechanics of how that would work in our player or anything like that today. But I wanted to give you sort of a concrete picture of how something like that could work.

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on, that idea has been around for a minute, though. I very distinctly recall watching like the Stadia introduction, and that was part of Stadia, right? You're watching YouTube and you'll push it and you'll switch to streaming that game right away. Are you thinking about it in those terms? Because it obviously didn't work quite it out for Stadia.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  I'm thinking about it in those terms as it relates to YouTube. So YouTube is a place where you're already, I mean, you're engaging with that creator. You're, you happen to be doing it through a lot of these existing YouTube products. Like I said, Super Chat or Live Stream or Live Chat or what have you. But the urge is there, both as you as a gamer, as a viewer, but also from the creator's standpoint, to actually get into the gameplay. So yes, it's something that we've talked about in the past. But I do think that, at least from our product team's perspective, we're very serious about finding ways to make that a concrete use case within YouTube. So I'm talking about in the context of the YouTube app, whether you're watching it on a living room screen or whether you're watching it on your, on your mobile. That's one example.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Another example, which also I think has existed conceptually, but this is about taking conceptual ideas and turning them into reality for our, for our creators and our viewers, is co-watch experiences in the quote unquote sort of metaverse type environment. That, you know, that's been an idea that's been talked about. It's something that you can imagine lends itself incredibly well to the type of content that is streamed on YouTube, particularly in the gaming vertical, but you could see it outside of the gaming vertical as well. You could see it obviously in music. That's an obvious sort of use case. Co-watching of concert experiences within a metaverse type environment. And that's an area that we want to partner with all the game developers

• 9:15Speaker 03

  that we partner with already, creators, et cetera, to create those types of experiences. And so those are two concrete examples of use cases that, as you point out, have been talked about for a while. But I do think that we can make a reality on our platform.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  Do you think you're gonna have to build out YouTube avatars? Like, will they have legs? Because Metas doesn't have legs. Like, that's a big win for you if you could just do legs. Or are you thinking about using other?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Avatars from other game engines. I haven't gotten to the leg part of the PRD yet, but, but conceptually, that is, you could see those types of manifestations in the metaverse. You could see those types of controls being given to viewers. You could see, you know, those types of controls certainly being given to creators. Our creators are already doing versions of that themselves. I mean, you can see lots of streams and VODs on our platform where that concept has existed for a long time. You know, we, we have a term, we actually call them VTubers. And so you could certainly see that as being part of what I just talked about.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  So Neil, if I may, what I'm understanding is that the way that you understand YouTube's relationship to the metaverse at present is less about gaming and more about gamification with feature interactivity. Is that correct?

• 10:32Speaker 03

  So yes, I think what you said is, is correct in terms of how the use cases would show up for, for our, for our users and viewers on the platform. But the reason why I focused on gaming in my letter and why I'm using that as an example here is, first of all, I think that type of content lends itself to these types of more immersive type experiences because by definition, when you're playing that game, you are immersed in that environment. And so that's one piece that I think is important. But I think the other piece that's really important as it relates to the gaming vertical is something that I set up top, which is that sort of connection between creators and viewers and the community itself. And one

• 11:13Speaker 03

  of the things that I have learned, you know, during my time at YouTube is that the community, I think, is strong across all of YouTube, but it's particularly strong and interactive in the gaming route. A lot of the products that we've developed, especially as it relates to kind of community features and building on sort of that connectivity have started in the gaming vertical. So Super Chat, for example, has been a product that's been around for some time. It's a way for live, live creators on YouTube to generate revenue by their fans basically kind of paying for placement, prominent placement as in the live chat and also supporting their favorite creators at the same time. That started in gaming because that, that tradition. Of supporting your creators, supporting the community already existed in gaming.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  We have another one, which I talked about in the letter, which is the ability to gift channel memberships. That is a feature that has been driven by gaming. And the reason it's been driven by gaming is because it, that sort of extremely strong sort of community aspect really is kind of a part of the gaming tradition. So that's why I like that gaming examples in the context of something like the metaverse as well.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  So there's the metaverse, which I would say is like lightly controversial in the sense of, is it going to happen is like a good question, right? There's a lot, it's a long way to go before we spend our days in headsets in the full metaverse. And next to that, and I think intertwined with it, maybe unfairly is blockchain, NFT, crypto stuff. There has been some small announcements again from Susan, hey, we're going to think about doing this for creators. When you think about NFTs and creators, there's a lot of activity there. That's way more loaded. That's way more controversial. It is, I would say, an ideological war in the tech community, whether NFTs and the blockchain and crypto are going to pan out or whether they're good. You're very focused on creators. Is that something you're going to head into?

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the, the first thing that I'll say up top is that, you know, I'm by no means an expert on that technology. I don't think, I mean, there's obviously lots of people who've spent a lot of time thinking about it. As you described, there's an active conversation in our industry around all of these things.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Active conversation's good.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  But, I mean, you kind of hit on the point, the first point I was going to make, which is for us, it all starts, and Susan pointed this out, you know, in her letter as well. It all starts with, with our creators, just like I said, again, at the beginning, as it relates to our mission. And so there is a connection between the evolution of that technology, particularly in the manifestation like NFTs and creators. You've seen that already happen outside of YouTube, whether it's musicians looking for ways to crowdsource their next piece of creative content, whether it's a song or what have you, and allow fans to be able to partake in there, be able to bundle in things like, you know, things in the real physical world around. Meet and greets and things like that. And so that's already happening.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  And just like we've built other products, like, you know, we built our merchandising shelf on YouTube because creators were selling lots of merch on YouTube and we wanted to make it easier for them. So we are very attuned to what our creators are thinking about and doing. And so that is sort of one lens at which we come at this. The second is, are there capabilities that, you know, this new technology, kind of the, some of these new paradigms might afford that we couldn't do otherwise? So is there something, for example, to this notion of, to this idea of potentially crowdsourcing the development of content? I mean, that is what happens, that's what happens on YouTube. Today, the model on YouTube is you build a video, you build an audience, and then you monetize it.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Are there ways that we could continue to foster that creative process by having some of that risk taken away upfront? But as a result of that risk being taken away upfront, your fans and viewers can partake in the upside of it, as an example. Or you could potentially continue to participate in the upside of it as a creator, even if that piece of content continues to kind of get sold repeatedly in the future. And so those are concepts that don't exist today, that I think could be enabled by some of this new technology. And that, that's sort of what I was referring to in my letter. I think that's sort of what Susan was referring to. I don't have a concrete feature or a product proposal to talk about today, but that is the lens through which we're thinking about how something like,

• 15:32Speaker 03

  you know, blockchains and particularly NFT manifestations of it could show up on YouTube.

• 15:38Nilay Patel?

  Is that something you're working on or is it something you're thinking about?

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Uh, it's going to be something that we work on this year.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  So if I understand that correctly, I just want to make sure that I have this straight. So you're talking about owning specific videos. This wouldn't just be like a still of one of my favorite creators doing something.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I think that it could be any number of things. So you could imagine it being, as you know, as you described the canonical use case, right? The pre-funding or crowdfunding of a video like that is, you know, kind of like a very clear case. But you could see a lot of other cases. I mean, you could see derivatives of that video. You know, today, what's happening on the platform is people create, you know, clips of videos. They create even shorts of video-related content. You could boil that down to thumbnails, iconic thumbnails, et cetera. And so there's lots of permutations and combinations. And I think, you know, one of the ways that, you know, at least my team is thinking about it is, what are the ways that creators want to participate

• 16:38Speaker 03

  in that? But just as importantly, what are the ways that really add value from a viewer standpoint? You know, if you partake in that, you've acquired an NFT, you know, in your example of an image or of a clip of a video or a full video, you know, how do you display that? Where could that go? Like, what are, what are the ways that users could actually continue to sort of not just derive satisfaction for it personally, but also display it and things like that? And so those are, those are the active conversations that we have right now in terms of how we're thinking about this working, both for our creators and our, and our viewers.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  All right. You mentioned shorts. That's a great segue to go out of future stuff to stuff that is happening right now. You've got some new features you're rolling out for shorts. That's the vertical scrolling short form video product. How are shorts going? What are you adding to it?

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I'd say a couple of things. So shorts, I think, is going really well. As since the last time we talked, it's, you know, rolled out all over the world. It's gotten on the order of five trillion views, about 15 billion views on a daily basis. So it is being consumed by our viewers at a growing pace. Creators are using it of all stripes. So, you know, again, back to this creator viewer connectivity, it's happening all over the world. So from an overall standpoint, in terms of user growth, creator growth, we're really pleased with it. Having said that, I would still say it's really, really early days. I mean, it is a product that, you know, I'm certainly pleased with in terms of the reception it's received,

• 18:12Speaker 03

  but it is still a product that, you know, we're going to continue to innovate on as one of our top priorities in 2022. That's why, you know, I started my letter really talking about that. And so, you know, we have a list of things that we want to do for creators, for viewers. We want to continue to make this product a unique product to YouTube that feels YouTube-y in terms of how you experience it. So all of that is in store. And then, you know, one of the big questions, you know, which we started on last year, but that we will continue to sort of build on this year is allowing creators to be able to build a business on the Shorts product. So, you know, we pride ourselves in being, you know, kind of, you know, one of the original and largest creator economies out there.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  We've paid out over $30 billion to creators over, you know, kind of the life of YouTube, and we want that to continue to grow, and Shorts should be a means to do that, too. So we had the Shorts Fund. One of the things I can share about that is we wanted that to be something that we were doing sort of in addition to our existing, you know, YouTube Partner Program, which is our main monetization program on YouTube. And, you know, you need to hit a certain threshold in order to qualify for that program. But we wanted Shorts to be a place where new creators could actually start out and start generating revenue. So one of the cool things is 40% of the creators that were able to monetize through the Shorts Fund were not part of YPP. And that was obviously kind of a, the fund was a stake in the ground,

• 19:38Speaker 03

  but we want to turn that into a robust, permanent monetization program. So that's something that's on our radar screen. But then we want to also build on top of that other ways for creators to monetize by bringing some of our existing monetization products like Brand Connect, which is a way for brands and creators to connect Super Chat, those types of products to Shorts as well. So that's an area of innovation. We want to, as I said, I can go on and on, I'll pause there, but I'm happy to, happy to talk more about some of the features that we're building out as well.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Did you see the, um, there's a really great Hank Green video that just recently hit about why YouTube has a great moat for creators and TikTok is bad for monetization. Do you see that video?

• 20:20Speaker 03

  I did. And Hank is, you know, he's always, you know, a thought leader, as you know, in our, in our community. I know. I don't know if you chatted with him after that or not, but he's always got, um, you know, great insights and perspective on all of this.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  So one of the things that he pointed out, the simplest piece of this puzzle is that right now, let's call them a standard YouTuber. You make a YouTube video, you put it up on YouTube, everyone knows what I'm talking about. That is monetized through pre and mid-roll advertising. And so you can assign the revenue to that creator. You got this many views, this many ads ran, it was at this rate, here's your cut of it. Great. You have a, you have a business. And that business makes sense. When I talk to other YouTubers, they understand how that part of that business works. With shorts, with TikToks, with Instagram reels, there's not that connection between the advertising and the content, right? You're just scrolling through and you see an ad in the middle. And so that unbundling of the monetization from the content creates all kinds of problems. And so you end up with things like creator

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  funds that just sort of like pay you out on views without this ability to control the revenue. Is that a problem you can solve? Like you obviously have YouTube Partner Program and AdSense and all these programs that work for what we think of as normal YouTube, but you can't really apply them to a product like Shorts.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, you're describing, you know, and, and I, and I think Hank was insightful in this regard, a core, you know, kind of like the core use case of, of a Shorts type experience. It's, it's a, it's, it's almost like a feed type of experience as opposed to, you know, you're streaming this video and you're consuming this video and then you'll decide to move on to the next. So like that core sort of critical user journey, if you will, is, is different. It's fundamentally different. And, and so that's the reason why we actually rolled out the Shorts Fund last year, which is basically a nod to the fact that we believe just like has been kind of part of the existing YouTube heritage, that creators being able to generate income and make money has got to be a core part of a

• 22:17Speaker 03

  product like Shorts that we're rolling out that is so, going to be so central. To the YouTube experience, but we have to work out the details. And so a fund was basically kind of a placeholder, if you will, before we work out, as I mentioned, a more permanent monetization program. And I think that, you know, the monetization program that we develop has to take into account that sort of user modality that you described. Like, how are you going to be? I think it has to have two core components. One is, how are you going to be transparent about how that is calculated? So creators can understand it, as Hank alluded to, right? With our existing model, you can understand it pretty clearly. But secondly, it also obviously has to be fair.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  It has to be equivalent to the value that's being sort of contributed to that user session, if you will, whether it's on a session basis or what have you. And so those are the pieces that we're working out. As with everything that we do in this realm, like, we're going to actually get feedback from our creators as we go through this. You know, kind of, you know, creators that have been on the platform for a while, new creators, et cetera. And the Shorts Fund and kind of the life of the Shorts Fund, I believe, actually gives us the space to be sort of pretty thoughtful about how we roll something out here.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  Do you have a sense of, at the end of the day, right? The real competition is for minutes people spend paying attention to things. So do you have a sense that you're taking market share from TikTok or Instagram reels? How are you measuring that?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I gave you some just high level metrics in terms of kind of how that product is doing overall, right? Like, you know, the five trillion views or what have you. But I would say that it is really early in the evolution of this format. And again, the way that I think about it is, yes, we should make sure that this product is successful. More critically from like, is it actually something that fosters, you know, new creativity for creators on mobile devices, viewers love it, et cetera. But I view this sort of holistically across all of YouTube. You know, I think that for lots of viewers on the platform, it's going to be about consuming Shorts content, but it's also going to be about consuming content that you've been coming to YouTube for for years. And I think that

• 24:30Speaker 03

  That the same thing might apply for lots of creators as well. There will of course be creators that are exclusively doing shorts or you know what you referred to as sort of more traditional YouTube videos. But I also see lots of videos, lots of creators moving from one to the other, experimenting. And so a lot of my focus and my team's focus, and you saw some of this in the letter, are about sort of almost sort of blurring those boundaries. So you know, one of the features that I'm really excited about, just to give you a very concrete example, was the ability for people to remix audio that exists, obviously music, but other type of audio from traditional YouTube videos into shorts. So that is a feature that you could imagine us continuing to build on with new, you know, video effects, editing tools, things like that.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Another example of that that I'm pretty excited about is for creators to be able to have the capability to respond to comments with a short. And that comment could be on a VOD video, it could be on a shorts video, it could be anywhere on the platform. But that would be, that would be sort of a very kind of creative and interactive way for creators to engage with comments. And so we're thinking about those types of, we obviously, you've seen, you know, have the ability for you to be able to create shorts from a video as well. Or if you're listening to music in a short, being able to tap on a link and be able to link to the full music video, the original video, be able to find out more about the artist. So I think one thing that you can expect in 2022 from YouTube around shorts

• 25:58Speaker 03

  is really much more of sort of that blended holistic experience, both from a viewer standpoint as well as from a creator standpoint. And that's, that's sort of how I think about that product.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna ask one more question about monetization. I told you it was a flagship podcast of shorts monetization. And then I'm gonna let Katie ask some creator questions. The Shorts Creator Fund, it was announced as a hundred million dollars we paid out over 2021 and 2022. We're obviously into 2022. How much have you paid out so far?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  I don't have the, that exact number, but you know, we, we announced that as sort of our intention through the course of this year. And then we'll obviously, you know, kind of judge how that's going, figure out sort of if we, we need to make any sort of adjustments to it. But I don't have a concrete number in terms of what percentage has been, has been paid out.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about some creator tools. Katie, I know you've got some questions here.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So all of these kind of are intertwined in some way or another.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  It's holistic.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  You've got to view YouTube holistically.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yes, but I wanted to start with YouTube Studio and some insights that you're introducing that you say are going to help creators generate content ideas. I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, I think about what we're doing in Studio and actually in some of the other product areas too. I'll touch on kind of live there as well is creators, obviously our products and our tools have to work in a seamless way. Again, so that the technology is not getting in the way of, you know, the creativity of our creators. That is sort of where the magic of YouTube happens. And a lot of what we're doing in Studio is along those lines, right? You know, making it even more effective and efficient on desktop, building out those capabilities in the mobile studio app. That's work that we're going to continue to do. But another thing that's really started to come up, I would say, you know, over the last few years is what are the things that my audience is interested in?

• 27:49Speaker 03

  What are ways for me to think about my content, not just in terms of delivering for my existing audience, but to grow my audience? And so that is an area where I believe we can provide lots of insights to creators around the type of content that they might want to think about that is potentially adjacent to content that they are already producing. So, you know, viewers that consume this type of video also were interested in this type of content as an example. Or when you produce videos along these lines, it benchmarks to the rest of your video content in this particular way. So I think these are really interesting insights. It's something that when I talk to creators, they ask for in various ways all the time.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  And I think that that is going to give them the insights to kind of spur new types of content creation, which, you know, producing content, producing these videos is hard to make it so that it's interesting and engaging on a regular basis. You all know that. And so whatever we can do to make that easier for our creators is how we're, how we're thinking about it. That's in terms of your specific question, Katie, around like, what are we doing in Studio? But there's other products that we're also working on for creators to make it so that sort of that creative idea generation part becomes easier as well.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so on that note, let's talk about live streaming and co-streams for creators. That's interesting.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that that actually is a perfect example of of what we were talking about. So this, again, this is another feature, another product that's been requested by a lot of our live streamers and and actually creators in general. But it gets at sort of what I was touching on, which is when you go live, what are you going to talk about? What are the ideas? And obviously, you you might have a blueprint, you might have some thoughts, but being able to do that in a collaborative way with another creator or somebody else that you want to pull in as a guest into your live stream, I really think gets those creative juices flowing. So not only is it a new type of live stream, but it's actually something that helps sort of bootstrap that creativity process. At least that's what I hear from creators on a regular basis.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  So that's one of the products that I'm really excited about that I touch on in in our letter, which is, you know, collaborative live streaming. And I think our, I think the fans of all those creators are going to love that as well. And it, what I think remains to be seen is the very, like, what I always love about building these products for our creators is that we have some idea based on conversations with them and how we design the product in terms of how it's going to be used. And then six months down the road, it's used in sort of incredible, unexpected ways that I think sort of just kind of continue to grow our ecosystem. And I expect the same thing with something like collaborative live streaming.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  Can I follow up on that a little bit? Because one of the things that I think YouTube gets criticized for a lot, fairly or unfairly, is, yeah, a lot of these features kind of look like other platforms, right? It's hard to talk about shorts without talking about TikTok. It's hard to talk about going live with another person without knowing that, like, hip hop artists can't stop doing that on Instagram. It's hard to talk about gifting memberships without knowing that that already happens on Twitch. Is your expectation that you're going to bring over these core kind of features that other platforms have, and they're going to evolve into something else that's YouTube? Or are you just trying to bring? Those features over because they are becoming table stakes across platforms.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  So first of all, as you know, this entire space is incredibly vibrant. There's competitors, there's platforms out there, there's new features, products coming from all of them on a regular basis. And I think that sort of keeps all of us frankly, on our toes and, and you know, focused on, on doing what's right for our viewers and our creators. Having said that, the way, everything that I've talked about so far today and that that's in the letter that we're going through is really about how do we build a feature that is about something that our creators are looking for, that their behavior is either showing us or that they're telling me directly and that our viewers are showing or asking for.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  And so, you know, do collaboration products exist across the industry? Yeah, they do. They exist in various forms, but the way that we're building it is a YouTube collaboration product for live streaming. And so, you know, is that like a product that existed that we're moving over? The way I think about it, it's a capability to expand live streaming on YouTube. I think it's a very natural ask for our creators to say, I live stream on the platform. Live streaming is fun, but it has these challenges. What are ways that I could make it A, more fun, but also address some of these challenges, including the fundamental one of like, what do I talk about? And so that's the way that we design it. And so the conversation is always about how do we take the existing YouTube product and enhance it with these capabilities?

• 32:34Speaker 03

  And that's, that's where this idea of the collaboration product came from. And it's obviously something that we've been thinking about for a while. It takes a while to sort of get it right and build it and launch it. It's not something that, you know, sort of that we just sort of reacted to in terms of kind of what was happening in the, in the industry.

• 32:50Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever take a step back when you're building a live stream product, let's see people talk to each other and be like, shit, we made Zoom? Right, that's, it's a video, you made a video conference, like, is there a kind of a recognition that these are just tools that are being kind of like remixed into different purposes?

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and so that's why I think it's important to always fall back to the core use cases. What are, what are the, when you go to the YouTube app and you're watching a live stream, what are you doing as a viewer? Like, that's the principles through which we build the product. Similarly, if you're a creator. And so, yeah, obviously, you know, as you described in your insightful comment, there's lots of overlaps in terms of like, some of the user journeys, etc. But from my perspective, in order to make it feel like a core seamless part of YouTube, it sort of has to fit that journey. And so, you could imagine with the product that I'm describing, you know, you go to your, you know, let's use the gaming example again, you go and watch, you know, a gaming livestream with

• 33:46Speaker 03

  your favorite creator. Well, now that can be a collaborative livestream. And so, to me, it just looks like an even better, more interesting way to augment what, you know, your favorite gamer was doing in that livestream in the first place. And oh, by the way, it might be that, it might be your channel, it might be you as a creator that actually gets pulled into that collaborative livestream. And so, you know, for me, it's sort of building on a lot of what already exists on YouTube. In this example, it's like, live, but it's also the community aspects. And that's how we think about our features and products.

• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  Would that question have gone better if I said Google Meet? Are you allowed to acknowledge that Zoom exists?

• 34:22Speaker 03

  I mean, we, I, I, I mean, I'm using a new technology here to talk to you. So I use all kinds of technologies.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  We're using Riverside, I'll give them the plug. I mean, that's like a part of the puzzle here, right? Especially with lots of people remote and still remote, is you're trying to get people to collaborate. Yep, you can just talk to each other is one way to do it. There's other ways to do it, and they may, maybe the metaverse is one way that's coming in the future. But have you thought about, like, I'll just go back to TikTok. TikTok has duet and Stitch for their videos. I don't think Shorts has products like that yet. Are you going to build those out?

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so as I said, I think Shorts is really early in its journey in terms of all the things that we could build. You know, I gave you an example of that remix product. Well, there's other ways that that remix product could work with existing content on the corpus. So that'll be one dimension that we expand in. Effects and the ability to actually create different types of content, whether it's collaborative, as you're describing, sort of multiple Shorts creators being able to participate and produce a short. That's certainly something that we're looking at, being able to pull. I mean, in some sense, the remix concept that I'm describing could apply to something like Stitch that you're describing, right? So those are going to be new products and features that you should look for in the Shorts product this year.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Growing teams need a corporate card built for more, something that doesn't sacrifice speed for control. Introducing the American Express Corporate Cash Back Card. Get 1.5% cash back on eligible business purchases, advanced spending controls, and real-time visibility, plus intelligent expense management. Get started at go.amex slash amexcorporate. Terms and cap apply.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month-end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/af.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  So we've talked a lot about creators. I would say, in fact, most of this conversation about new features on YouTube have been really creator focused, like new ways to make content, new ways to get recommendations on what content to make, which is fascinating, new monetization. There's a line here, it's like buried in your letter, soon, and this is about consuming YouTube, "Soon you'll be able to use your phone to engage with the content that you watch on TV." So this sounds like a full-on YouTube second screen experience. You're watching your favorite YouTubers on your smart TV and you've got your phone open, and then what is happening on your phone?

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, and as a, you know, daily consumer of YouTube content on my television screen, it's something that I'm looking forward to a lot. And so, the first thing I'll say, just by way of context, is TV continues to be our fastest-growing screen, really globally. That's certainly, I'm sure, not a surprise to you, to, you know, all the listeners in terms of their own experience, but the growth of it has been, has been pretty remarkable. You know, it's at the order now of around 700 million hours of YouTube content consumed on those types of devices every single day. And again, continues to grow. That number's

• 38:04Speaker 03

  as of last month, as of January. And so, one of the, one of the things that we all, I think, would wish to have when we're consuming YouTube on those large devices, are a lot of, is a lot of the functionality that we take for granted, that we use with video watching on your mobile devices. And so, the idea is to have, as you describe, kind of a, to build out a full-fledged second-screen-type experience powered by your mobile phone as you watch YouTube on a television screen. So, to make that concrete, what could that mean? It could mean that you can use your mobile phone to comment on that video that you're watching. You could add that video, for example, to a playlist. You could read

• 38:48Speaker 03

  comments. You could share that video with a friend. And, and so, everything that you enjoy about the YouTube experience on your mobile phone, we want to be able to seamlessly provide that when you're consuming it on a living room device. So that's something that I'm, I'm very excited about.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Was this boom that you saw in usage on TVs directly tied to the pandemic and people spending more time in their homes? Or was this sort of a natural evolution that happened separate from the pandemic?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say that this growth in consumption on living room screens was something that we were seeing well before the pandemic. So we were seeing this certainly in some of our more mature markets, but you know, really kind of around the world. And as with everything, the pandemic has accelerated lots of trends that were already underway. So you know, I gave you some, some kind of hot off the press numbers as it relates to living room consumption of YouTube content. We saw the same thing in live, for example. Live content consumption through the pandemic tripled over the course of, you know, the two years that we've been living through, through the pandemic. And so, you know, shopping is another thing I touch on in my letter that I think accelerated,

• 40:01Speaker 03

  obviously, online commerce through the pandemic. So, but in the living room case, it was something that was happening before, but I'm sure just like a lot of these trends, it got accelerated as a result of the pandemic.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Do you think this sort of smartphone app, you're kind of describing all the stuff on the sides and the bottom of a YouTube page, right? There's a chat, there's comments, maybe you're going to chop. Is that how to think about it? Right? Like you've got the video on your smart TV, you don't want to do laptop stuff on your smart TV, so we're going to move all that stuff from the webpage onto a phone and let you interact in that way?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  I mean, it's basically, yeah, it's sort of dealing with the limitations that you have in terms of interacting with, with YouTube on that TV and just eliminating them. And the most seamless way to do that is by making sure that there's kind of this mirrored experience between what you're consuming on the living room TV and your mobile phone, because that's, you know, predominantly where, that's the device that you have in your hand when you're watching TV anyways. And it's the place where all of this functionality and interactivity that you sort of take for granted on that watch page on the mobile phone exists. And so that's, that's the experience that we want to bring to the living room, living room device as well.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  A lot of times with YouTube features like this, there's varying compatibility requirements, but I'm guessing this one, you just have to be signed into your YouTube account, right?

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, that would be the way that it would work seamlessly for you. And by the, and you know, for example, You know, lots of what happens is people add those videos to a playlist so that they can consume them on a different device later. And so for all of those types of use cases, you know, comments, you know, sharing, sharing videos, but also leaving comments, et cetera, requires you to be in a signed in experience for all that to work the way that you're used to having it work on your mobile device.

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  All right. The timeline here is soon. Can you give us a better timeline?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  I don't have a specific date to give you. I wanted to make sure that I highlighted all the things that I'm excited about in 2022. But, you know, the other thing I'll say is that we will roll out capabilities here incrementally too. It's not going to be a one and done thing, but I don't have a specific date I can share on that one today.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  Another little note, just on watching YouTube. It seems like you're going to do a watch party feature with Google Duo where you can watch YouTube videos together with somebody else.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  You know, so I gave you that sort of conceptual example when we were talking about the metaverse question earlier. I don't have any specific feature to talk about there today, but just like we talked about collaborative live streaming, you can imagine sort of like a collaborative consumption type experience in the future as well, whether that's something that we build out as part of what we're thinking about with the metaverse or through some other means. I don't have anything specific there to share, but yes, that's something that we're also thinking about and working on.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  This is a very good question. I have to ask, is the first problem just like identifying which Google messaging product to use here? Because there's a lot of that.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  I mean, I think from my perspective, we're going to work with whatever products, you know, our users are that make it seamless for our users. And so, you know, there's obviously lots of collaborative consumption, collaborative interactivity products out there at Google elsewhere. And we want YouTube to kind of work seamlessly from a user standpoint, but I should leave it at that.

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. We got to talk about YouTube TV. You know, Katie and I are both like obsessed with YouTube TV. And then we do have a lightning round of feature requests, so. We'll get to that, but let's talk about YouTube TV. There's a line here, this is another line. It's like all the way at the bottom of this letter. YouTube TV is about to get even better with the new interface. That sounds like a total redesign of YouTube TV. What's going on there?

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I mean, so even in your own experience, I hope you've noticed that the way the UX and the interface continues to improve on a regular basis as opposed to kind of like a big bang. And so what we have store in 2022 are some of those sort of critical, you know, again, sort of those critical user journeys. So there's obviously kind of, you know, kind of two of the places are the library and live, where, you know, we all as consumers of the product spend a lot of time. And we, over the course of the last few years, there's been lots of sort of behavior that we've seen from our viewers, but also, you know, feature requests that we've gotten in terms of how we can improve those. So when I, when I, in that line, that's, that's basically what I'm referring to.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  So in the library, you know, there's lots of content that people have in the library. It's great to see people are taking advantage of one of our original sort of core concepts of sort of this, you know, DVR in the cloud type concept. And that's where the library has grown. But as it's grown, one of the, one of the feature requests often that I hear is about more controls over how you organize that. So how does that, um, how does that play out for, you know, users? So organization is one big theme. Another one which can apply to the library, but also, you know, I'll give you an example in the context of live is, you know, there's the live guide that you see, which obviously has to have a time dimension to it. It's obviously got to have, you know, where do you actually find that content, you know, a channel dimension to it.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  But there are things that we can layer on, because this is YouTube TV, that you don't get in, you know, those sort of traditional sort of guide type experiences, which is being better around recommendations. We have a sense, obviously, through, um, you know, your use of the platform, how to personalize that live experience in a way that it's a lot more useful to you. And I think that that's one of the things that we see in terms of user behavior, and you may experience this on your own, is, you know, that, that guide is a pretty long guide. So how do we make it so that, you know, the type of content that you're really excited about stands out prominently is more personalized, et cetera? So when when we're thinking about a redesign, it's it's giving users more control over organization,

• 45:49Speaker 03

  but also doing more with what was one of our fundamental theses of YouTube TV in the first place, which is just smart personalization.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  One of the things in covering this space that I hear so often is people are so frustrated with the constant carriage disputes for RSNs, right? Like, people people subscribe to a live TV service to be able, presumably, to be able to watch the TV they want to watch. And it's really, really frustrating for users when they lose, you know, regional sports networks. So I was wondering if you could kind of just explain to me why we see these come up so frequently on YouTube TV alone. It's, you know, we've seen it with Fox, we've seen it with NBCU. Can you speak to that?

• 46:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, and I'd be the first to say that, you know, we we went through our share of renegotiations with, you know, our content partners last year. You you mentioned a couple of them, you know, Disney towards the end of the year, et cetera. And I'd say a couple of things. One is that when we built YouTube TV, and, you know, this is certainly my experience as a consumer of the product regularly, we really did want to redesign that consumption experience for our viewers from a product perspective. That's why, you know, we that's why I focused on some of the features and capabilities that we're building, you know, the introduction of things like 4K plus, et cetera.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  But we are, in that product, as you know, subject to kind of the the way that that that industry generally works and how content rights are negotiated. And as we weathered through that, whether it's, you know, in the Disney example or the RSNs example or NBC example, we've had sort of two core principles that we've tried to stick to. The first is, and this is obviously not going to be a shock, but we want to be treated the same way that other platforms of similar size are in terms of, you know, the business negotiations and how that part of, you know, kind of The industry actually works and we've been very clear about that publicly. And then the second is, I understand that frustration from a user standpoint.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  I'm, you know, one of those users myself and I happen to be a sports junkie. And so for me, you know, that's really, really important. And so what we always wanted to do is make sure that we really are doing right by the user. And so, you know, in the Disney example, you may recall that we offered a, you know, $15 discount to every user when that, you know, if that content was removed. And, and it was, it was removed for two days. But despite the fact that it was removed for two days, we honored that $15 discount. And so we really do want to, and, and, and as you've seen in some of our announcements, we've also made it very crystal clear to our users where if that content is removed

• 48:36Speaker 03

  from YouTube, literally what other platform, including competitive platforms, you can go to, to go get that content. And so that has been our north star around YouTube TV. Doesn't mean that it was a seamless or smooth experience for our users when that happened, but we really do try to endeavor to the best of our ability to do right by our users. And so that's really what I can say about these negotiations, other than the fact that, you know, they're a fact of life in that part of the, part of the industry. But we really do try our best to protect our users from, from kind of downstream effects. And if they happen, how do we make sure that we ultimately make it up to them?

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Do you think the storm has passed, right? You mentioned that the three big ones, presumably those deals are longer than six months, right? Like, do you think you're through, I mean, the cable industry is convulsing. It's going through an enormous amount of change. Do you think you're through this patch of, of renegotiations?

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, there's always conversations happening around, you know, as you know, there's lots of content on the platform. We've added content since, you know, you, you all probably signed up for the product. And so all of those come in, you know, our conversations with our partners don't all happen at once. They happen, you know, kind of in a staggered fashion. So I can't speak to all of them, but hopefully, you know, we can try to maintain as smooth of an experience for our users as possible as it relates to the content.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  All right, one, one more on YouTube TV and then we'll do the sliding around. Can you tell I'm just like, I've been waiting patiently to do my feature request sliding around. Yeah. All right. It's the Olympics again. Obviously, the Olympics in 4K is a thing. You launched 4K with the Summer Olympics. I would say that there was just like not a lot of content for the extra money. That's just the state of television is there's not a lot of 4K content. Has it improved since the Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics? And I'm asking that, it's a loaded question because for me it has not improved. Because my local NBC affiliate does not broadcast in 4K, which means I can't get YouTube in 4K. Which maybe Vergecast listeners understand the dynamics of that. I promise you, no normal person

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  understands that NBC on YouTube TV isn't in 4K unless your local broadcast affiliate is in 4K. So are you kind of pushing that forward?

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, you, you, you hit on one of the specific points I, I would have made in, in response to, to your desire. As I said, I'm a, I'm a huge sports fan myself. I love to watch it in 4K. So I understand what you're, what you're describing. We do have, so I do think it has improved. Uh, and it's not improved in terms of, you know, YouTube TV capabilities. It's improved for, you know, the reason that you're describing to. We have the, we have the broadest 4K coverage for the Winter Olympics of any US provider on YouTube TV. And so, uh, we do have broad coverage. I think we have coverage in the Summer Olympics. We had it in more than 50 markets. The number only continues to go up. I think what the last time I calculated as it relates to the Winter Olympics,

• 51:31Speaker 03

  the markets where we do have 4K coverage represent something on the order of 70% of US TV households. Uh, so it's certainly not 100%, although check this with your own experience. You can watch it in 4K on the next day air.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Uh, and so that, that does exist. I know it doesn't exist during the live, live broadcasts in every market. And the final point I'll say is that you hit, you hit on the limitation, which is we are limited by whether that NBC affiliate is carrying the, the 4K stream or not.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  Google is a, I'm told a wealthy company, which seems to be the case. Have you thought about spending the money to help NBC or Fox or CBS or whatever? Do better 4K broadcasts and then make that exclusive because they don't want to invest, right? I mean, the Super Bowl will not be in 4K, which seems absurd to me. And part of it is just cost. Have you thought about saying, hey, we'll, we'll make the forward investment for you in cameras and broadcast stuff if you give us the exclusive on the 4K distribution?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  I mean, we do, we do talk with our partners, not just the broadcasters, but actually in many cases, the sports leagues about how to bring innovation to the actual production of sports related content. I mean, to the, to leagues credit, they're, they are forward looking about these types of things. I haven't talked about this specific application you're describing, which is, you know, penetration of 4K.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  I get a, I get a point off that deal if you do it, if you take that idea.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  I'll run with it. So, I mean, we're, we're always talking about ways that we can make it better, but on that specific one, I'll, I will certainly take that idea back to the team. But as I said, a lot of this is going to be limitations of what, you know, the, the broadcasters are looking to do. But we did expand. We know it's something that our sports fans in particular want. And there's been a change even from, you know, the, the Summer Olympics a few months ago.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You know, what's fascinating is the biggest advance in football broadcasting, at least, is mirrorless cameras on the sideline, which they pulled from YouTubers, right? They're like, major sports broadcasts have a YouTuber look to them now because they're using the same cameras as YouTubers. I think that there's a PhD thesis in there for someone if you want to go after it. All right. It's time for the lightning round. I'm going to start with YouTube TV questions. You ready?

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:50Nilay Patel?

  August of last year, you announced surround sound for YouTube TV. It's on like three smart TVs and maybe one specific model of Amazon Fire to stick. What is going on there?

• 54:01Speaker 03

  How did I know that you were gonna, you were gonna ask me about that? Well, the, what I will say is that there's, as you know very well, there's three things that go into support for that type of functionality for surround sound in particular. One is, obviously, can we as at YouTube technically support that? That's work that we had to do and is frankly, the work that we have the most control over. The second is getting that feed from, you know, our partners, obviously. And then the third, which is what you're alluding to, is Software support, software upgrades to the devices that are out there vis a vis the device manufacturers. And you're pointing out something where the rollout of that feature has certainly been a lot slower than I would have liked. And it's primarily for that, it's

• 54:46Speaker 03

  basically for that third reason. And my hope, though, is hopefully over the next six months, you start to see that in a lot more devices out there as they go through their kind of various stages of software upgrade cycles. So, you know, I think that if we're chatting in six months, that situation should be dramatically better.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  But like, it's not on the Chromecast with Google TV. You can't just like Google Meet Rishi and be like, yo, update your product.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  We're, we're working through all of our device partners on that. So the goal is to get as much coverage, as much coverage as we can.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  It's a lightning round. I asked you about this on Decoder, but I'm gonna ask you about it again. Background playback for YouTube TV on iOS, so you can put it picture in picture.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  So I do have good news on that. And so as you rightly pointed out, we've supported that feature on Android for, for, for some time. And we're hopefully in the next, I can't again, give you an exact date, but hopefully in the next few months, we'll be able to support picture in picture on, on iOS devices as well.

• 55:45Nilay Patel?

  Very cool. Did YouTube Music get a bump with all the Spotify pain with Joe Rogan?

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I don't have any concrete, concrete data on that. No, I don't, I haven't seen. I mean, YouTube, YouTube Music continues to grow. I mean, as you know, music is one of our largest, you know, kind of verticals, use cases, whatever you want to call on YouTube, both on the main app, but also as part of our YouTube Music subscription service. We have over 50 million subscribers now, but I don't have anything specific on that.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, that was just a wild card. It wasn't a feature request. I was just saying if you answer. This one, basically, our entire staff said this one. I'm not eligible for YouTube Premium free trial anymore. Give me the option to disable the pop up.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  You're talking, you're talking about our, the promo interstitially.

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  People have used their trials, or they still see the pop up for the free trial.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that actually sounds like, that might sound like a bug. I don't think that should be happening. So I will lodge that with the team and figure out a way to resolve that. We should be able to discern whether you're eligible for that, for that offer or not.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  All right. This one is, I will say, unhinged. They came from a member of our team. I won't call him out because it is unhinged. Playback speed beyond 2X.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  That, that is pretty intense.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  I mean, I think you know that most viewers pick 1.5. That's sort of the, that is where users go. I think 2 is, is, is pretty intense. The reason, and I, you know, I can obviously follow up with more specifics on this, but the reason is, is actually frankly, technical limitations in terms of all that needs to go into that playback beyond just literally egress of the video, uh, which is, you know, all of our, all of the, all the capabilities that we layer on top of it in terms of, you know, you know, kind of syncing, uh, rights management, all of that sort of stuff. So it's, it's related to kind of technical limitations of being able to do that at sort of very high speed. Plus also the fact that, you know, most viewers pick something less than, less than two.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  Unhinged. All right. Uh, last one. This is actually a good one. A fully landscape interface on iPhone, or I guess Android smartphone, a fully landscape smartphone interface. So I don't have to pick it up while I'm using my elliptical.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And when you say full, a full experience, you mean all the stuff that you enjoy below the video when you're in landscape mode. Cause obviously the video is rendered in landscape.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think right now when you go to landscape mode, it's, it's just the video, but you don't get any of the Chrome or the navigation.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, I fully agree. So we are bringing those controls. Um, first that sort of tray of controls that you see below the video, you know, share likes, dislikes, those types of controls as an overlay on top of, uh, the video when you're in landscape mode. The ability to sort of navigate more seamlessly while you're in landscape mode without having to either turn the phone or pick it up or what have you. So stay tuned for that. That is definitely something that we, we want to do. A lot of our consumption on, on mobile devices, as you can imagine, happens in landscape.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  All right. And I think we asked about this one already, but it's on our lightning round, duet in Stitch and Shorts.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't have a specific feature to to describe today, but I did allude to the fact that we want to bring, you know, those types of collaborative capabilities, both in terms of bringing pieces or clips of content into Shorts, but also multiple creators being able to do them simultaneously. So stay tuned for more on that this year. But that is that is an area that we're working on.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. I think we got three out of six. If I'm counting this right, six months for wider surround sound. That's what you said.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, gradually, not not not six months for anything to happen. I think it'll happen as these various devices roll out.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  You just go call the Google TV team. They're right over there.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  I will. It's a good idea. I will.

• 59:37Nilay Patel?

  Also tell them to support 24 frame auto content match because that's what are you doing? That's not your problem. I'm just sending the message through.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  I will deliver it.

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  But it sounds like six months for surround sound, hopefully growing background on YouTube TV is coming.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  And then landscape interface. Those are the those are the ones.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  And then I don't know what kind of drugs someone's gonna have to do to support 3X playback speed, but put it in the mix.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  I will. I'll throw that in there.

• 1:00:03Nilay Patel?

  That's might be our most successful lightning round ever. Neil, this is great. Thank you so much for coming on the road, Chas. Katie, thank you.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Thank you, Delay. Thank you, Katie. It's good chatting with you both.

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing and wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 1:01:04Speaker 06

  Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic. Not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run subagents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the AmLaw 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai.