Google faces antitrust lawsuit over Google Play Store fees / Nintendo announced OLED Switch / 'EV Day' event held for Stellantis

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Adi Robertson discuss the new antitrust lawsuit Google faces from 36 states, the new hardware Nintendo announced this week, and what happened at Stellantis' ‘EV Day’. Further reading: Who needs COVID-19 boosters? Moderna starts human trials of an mRNA-based flu shot Full approval could make the difference for the US COVID-19 vaccine campaign Exposure notification apps could be more effective if they’re better at assessing risk Google faces new antitrust lawsuit over Google Play Store fees Google feared Samsung Galaxy Store and tried to quash it, lawsuit alleges Apple and Google crowd out the competition with default apps Donald Trump files sweeping, nonsensical lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google Twitter has lost legal immunity for users’ posts in India, government argue Nintendo’s OLED Switch: all of the news about the console upgrade Don’t count out the Nintendo Switch Pro A bigger, better Switch screen is exactly what I wanted Stellantis, parent company of Dodge and Jeep, had an ‘EV Day’ and it was extremely weird Verizon has its own version of spatial audio and it’s already pushing it on phones AT&T joins T-Mobile in switching all Android phones to Google’s Messages app for RCS Elon Musk just now realizing that self-driving cars are a ‘hard problem’ iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 preview: a first look at Apple’s latest software Maine passes the strongest state facial recognition ban yet Welcome to Simulation City, the virtual world where Waymo tests its autonomous vehicles 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?

  This week on The Vergecast, Addy Robertson joins the show. We talk about the big antitrust lawsuit against Google for Play Store fees on Android, go over the new Nintendo Switch OLED model, and we talk about some pretty intense EV car company slogans. That's coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 0:15Speaker 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.

• 1:00Speaker 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.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast, the spatial audio, but the Verizon version. They should just pay us. Verizon, if you're, Hans, if you're listening. This is a branded content opportunity like you wouldn't believe. He's not listening. Anyway, I'm Neil. I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I'm here. No, wait, I'm over here. Andrew, make sure that you switch my voice from left to right on that.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  Addie Robertson is here. Hi. There's a lot to talk about this week. There's a lot going on. There's an endless variety of antitrust news. There's a new Nintendo Switch. There is, in fact, a hilarious Verizon proprietary spatial audio codec. As always, though, I want to start with COVID. Still not through the woods yet. Still a lot of things going on. And the ripple effects of COVID are really starting to appear. So starting the side about who might need vaccine booster shots. There's a lot of curiosity about this. You should go read that story. The mRNA vaccines appear to not need them yet, especially against the Delta variant. They seem to be very effective. There are some scientists out there who got J and J early, who won mRNA booster. But we've got a big story about that. You should go read it. Super interesting.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of the mRNA vaccines, you're living through it right now. You're living through a paradigm change in medicine. Right now, at this second, pull over in your car and consider the fact that you are, right now, living through a paradigm change in human medical history. Because mRNA-based vaccines are now the thing. So they were quickly developed and brought to the forefront because of COVID. There is mRNA-based HIV vaccines that are being tested and developed. And Moderna just started human trials of mRNA-based flu shot. They call them platforms, which I think is great in the context of the show. But an entirely new vaccine platform technology has been developed and is going to become what seems like the most widespread

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  and quickly engineered platform for vaccines. It's amazing. Like, all this bad stuff happened. This is like a change, amazing change in medical technology. It's happening because of COVID. Like I said, second, third order effects. It's like a 16th order effect, but it's amazing. Speaking of COVID vaccines, there's a push to have them fully approved by the FDA. People are hoping that the full approval will push vaccination rates even higher. They're still not high enough. And then.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  I feel like we keep chasing the exposure notification app story because we just wanted it to work. Do you remember when like nothing was working and everything was chaos and like, we couldn't even make a website. We could not make a website. Like, Google couldn't sign up for Squarespace in time. Like, it was horrible. And then they like, Apple and Google are like, we're gonna do it. We're working together. We never worked together. And like, Sundar Pichai was on the show and we asked him like, what decision he had to make with it. And then none of it worked. The exposure notification systems did not work. So there's another study that's out about how those systems could be effective in the future. Ideally, there is not another pandemic. So we don't have to like, use this information. But they're still out there. The states are using, I still have one on my phone. I just took a trip. My phone reminded me that I was

• 4:47Nilay Patel?

  in Illinois instead of New York and like, told me to switch locations. But they're not good at assessing the risk of various contacts. So there's some conversation about how those apps might be more effective. But man, do you remember that? Like, Apple and Google are gonna fix it. Tim Cook and Sundar, they had a phone call and they're gonna fix the pandemic with our phones. It didn't happen, everybody? Still good at playing Candy Crush, though.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I remember the privacy debate over it and like, trying to decide whether you were gonna make the sort of sacrifice of giving up location privacy.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  Right, but they built this like, complicated Bluetooth, like aggregation system, where like, they were sending identify, like, they built all this technology to like, try to calm you down.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was gonna be part of the operating system. Yeah.

• 5:32Nilay Patel?

  It is. I don't know, man. It just didn't, I just read the book Nightmare Scenario because somebody, Nightmare Scenario is one of the new books that came out about the Trump administration pandemic response. And someone tweeted at me that it had a section about the website. Oh. And I'm like, I'm going on vacation. So I buy this book, like, reading it by the pool at the 4th of July, and I get to part about the website. And it's like, nobody knew what they were doing. He didn't know it was being announced. Google didn't know. Like, the retailers who were supposed to have the drive up, none of them were prepped for this announcement. Like, the CEO of CBS is like, what are you talking about? We don't even have tests. Yeah. And even if we did have the tests, we don't have swabs to put in people's noses. I highly encourage everybody to read that book. It is very depressing. And I realized,

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm actually really quite angry. Because like, reading the book, and I was like, oh, I'm still super mad about this. Yeah. Exposure notifications, they were gonna fix everything. Maybe one day they will. Okay. Speaking of people who are mad at Google.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  It's my transition. Every government in the world is mad at Google at every level. So the Department of Justice is currently suing Google for antitrust violations about how it pays to be the default search engine on a variety of platforms, including the iPhone, the state of, well, so the federal Department of Justice is suing Google. The European Union has a number of complaints against Google, as it always has and as it always shall. I'm actually pretty sure it's like in the EU Charter, like as a band of independent countries coming together as the European Union.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  We will sue Google once a year. So they're always doing it. They've got another one. The state of Texas has one about ad tech. It's actually another EU one about ad tech. And then yesterday, 36 states sued Google for, what else? App Store fees in the Play Store and how Google uses its contracts with OEMs and carriers to enforce those fees and keep competing app stores down. And I want Addie to tell us about the complaint and about how this works, but just as I read it, I was like, oh shit, it's another Vergecast episode. Like, here's, here's a, here's a lengthy document about how Android is quote unquote "open."

• 7:40Speaker 02

  But not really.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  But the contract for Play Services gives Google all this control. And there's a real tension between, we want Google to leverage its control to keep Android from fragmenting, to push RCS, but then, there's a real tension in there.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  There's, there's one section that I don't think we'll end up talking about, but I just want to call it out as the most Vergecast thing ever, which is there's a very long discussion about whether or not API should be part of Google Play Services or part of core Android. And there's like, is there any reason for this API to be connected to Google or not? And the answer is no, and therefore it's another tie to the Google Play Store. And like, they just go through like APIs, like notification APIs is like a part of this whole thing. It's great.

• 8:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, like you should read the complaint, especially if you're a listener of the show and you'll be like, oh, they're just, they're just Vergecast listeners. They're just 10 years behind. Like, this is like the stuff we're complaining about with Honeycomb. Anyhow, Addy, tell us about this complaint.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the complaint, like you said, is that ostensibly, Google has this open model with Android where anybody can install an App Store and/or sideload an app directly. And they're able to bypass Google's fees that they would otherwise levy through the Play Store and that this distinguishes it from iOS. And in reality, they're saying Google just absolutely shuts that down on a variety of levels. Some of those levels are technical, like that they make a big deal out of in the complaint, the levels of warnings that you'll get when you download an app and try to sideload it that say they'll tell you this app isn't trusted, that you have to, you can cancel it or you can hit settings and it's not necessarily clear that you can install it through settings.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  It's like all of these little dark patterns that Google is saying are for your protection, but are there, the complaint says are just sort of ways to keep people from knowing that they can install these things safely.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  The complaint even points out that sideloaded itself is a scary word because it implies that it's not a normal thing that people do. It's like, it's wild. They get into like the linguistics of the phrase. Anyway, I'm sorry, Addy.

• 9:41Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's like screenshots of like the various screens that are like, do you trust this app? This app, like, I think one of them is like, this app is unsafe. And you have to like, your choices are settings or cancel.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're like in it, saying Google is like psychologically motivating you to not use these things.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  So that's like this very purely technical level. And then beyond that, you get into things that are much more business-y, like the, a big part of it is dedicated to the Samsung Galaxy Store, which Samsung is this, the sort of giant in the Android space. They're one of the places that if you're going to try to mount a challenge to the App Store, that's what you have. And they're arguing, look, yeah, that Google basically tried to pay Samsung to just not make the App Store competitive, its App Store competitive. And that it's, on top of that, use these lockout agreements that, yeah, if you're going to make an Android phone, you have to sign these non-fragmentation agreements that then end up limiting you to the Play Store. And that even within the Play Store, some things that this is then when we

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Start getting into in-app purchase territory that you have to use Google Play's like in-app purchasing systems if you get your apps through that store and that Google actually just pretty recently implemented a rule that's basically an anti-steering rule that says that you can't try to sort of nudge people outside the play billing system if you're an app developer, which is a thing that Apple has had for a long time and that was kind of at the center of the Apple versus the Epic versus Apple trial. So it's this this whole series of behaviors that are in the complaints view kind of putting the lie to the idea that Android is actually an open system with competition.

• 11:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, one thing that's fascinating, by the way, I should point out Epic is suing Google, too.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they're suing Google for the exact same reasons they sued Apple. We just haven't gotten all those emails from a trial yet. Like, the complaints are kind of the same, right? They're slightly different, but the core thing that people are complaining about is Google makes you pay their fees. So Epic is suing Google's private company. The states are suing Google, is obviously the states.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  If you read the complaint, there's a bunch of redactions. So we've got all the discovery from Epic. I'm very excited for the discovery and all the, you know, for this thing to go to trial. So we can see what's behind those redactions because there's enough stuff here. There's like references to like Google's secret program codename redaction to try and get Samsung to redaction. And here is an email about redaction and then it's like a giant square block. And it's like, oh, there's stuff here. There's something. Yeah, this isn't just they're mad. They actually like have got some evidence.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  And some of the evidence is the stuff that we we got from the congressional hearings. The stuff is all obviously happening in an intertwined manner. So there was the big congressional hearings and investigation into digital marketplaces. Now there's a state lawsuit. They're drawing from it explicitly. They're saying, as we learned in the hearings, and then they've done their own investigation. They've got their own documents. One thing that really strikes me, so we should talk about the Samsung Galaxy Store. It is true that on the show, we dunk on Samsung all the time for building literal clones of the services already provided to you in Android.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:56Nilay Patel?

  Right? So there's Gmail and there's like the Samsung Mail client. There's Samsung's browser and the Chrome browser. The Galaxy Store has not been a success from what we can tell. Their closest brush with success actually was when Epic pulled Fortnite out of the Play Store and then they signed a deal to put it in the Galaxy Store. And then they tried to sideload it and none of that worked and they ended up back in the Play Store.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? And part of the argument here is that Google, in fact, pulled the levers such that Fortnite could not be successful as a sideloaded product, right? That the distribution power of the Play Store was, yep, it was great. Obviously, the Samsung Store is only on Samsung phones. That was limited, but just the hurdles that you have to jump through to get a sideloaded app kept the mass audience from seeing Fortnite. They were just searching in the Play Store. That said, the allegation here is that Google sent a bunch of redacted emails to itself, like Google executives are emailing at the Galaxy Store. They recognized that Fortnite could make it a threat and they sent a bunch of redacted emails about what to do. And one of their ideas was that they would just pay Samsung a bunch of money to have the Galaxy Store be a front end for the Play Store.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  So it would look like you were using Samsung Store, but you were still getting everything from the Play Store, which, as I said earlier, Google has another antitrust lawsuit about paying a lot of money to be the default search engine. So they've got to move, which is they print money. Their advertising business prints money and then they just spend the money to be the default everywhere.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  This is very similar to what's happened with the EU stuff. Is one of the issues here that Adam is referring to is like the business stuff. When you are a manufacturer and you sign up to make an Android phone, you know, there's like things that you have to do. You have to put the Play Store on the home screen and like, you know, default apps and they can't be deleted, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the incentives that Google gives you is they will give you a cut of their Play Store cut. And so there's like a monetary sort of, I don't know, incentive or carrot here that this lawsuit alleges is monopolistic in some way because of course, companies are going to feel like they have to take that extra little bit of money because.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  You know, the reason crapware exists on Android phones is any incremental pennies they can make off of these things, they have to try and grab. And so Google is just like, they go into the room and they just like, they just lay a bucket of money on the conference room table while they're in a good contract. And they're like, there's a bucket of money here. And like, they just like, dare the manufacturers not to just grab the bucket of money.

• 15:27Nilay Patel?

  So there's a flip side here. And I think this is to me, the part that stuck out from reading the complaint. Okay, Android is open, you can just take it and you can be Amazon and try to make the Fire Phone and fail. But then you can also use it to make Fire tablets and have your own App Store and you have your own ecosystem. And those are actually successful in their way. But if you want to make a phone, you have to get it on a carrier. We know this. Yeah. Right? Like OnePlus tries desperately to get the carrier deals to be successful in this country, and it's really hard for them. Even when they do have carrier deals, they don't have the marketing spiffs that Samsung will pay to carriers. So the carriers control a lot of the conversation. And Google also has deals with the carriers, such that the carriers won't support Android

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  phones that don't have Google Play services, that don't have Google's App Store on them. And that to me is maybe even more unfair than the OEM deals. And I can't quite tell why I feel that way. Maybe it's just because it's more hidden. They're the same kind of deals, right? If you are an Android OEM and you, you want to make a weirdo riff on Android, yeah, Google's going to tell you, you can't have Play services unless you mean our things. And like, we think that's fine because we don't want Android to be weird and fragmented. Okay, I kind of get it. You can kind of see it. You can experience it in the product. I think I find the carrier ones ickier because nobody knows. Like, here's this like, point of control over this entire ecosystem that is basically hidden from you. But it means that all kinds of things, all kinds of phones have never been invented that

• 16:56Nilay Patel?

  might have otherwise been invented. Dieter, I'm just teeing you up to rant about carriers.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  I mean, the thing that gets me is, I don't know that I find, like, the carriers are icky, but, you know, I wrote the whole thing that Apple's a carrier now. Well, so is Google. Like, there are, you know, there are some Google apps that I don't want. I don't want Google Podcasts. It's bad. I'm sorry. It's never been good. I don't think that it will be good anytime soon. You can delete it. It's fine, but it's loaded on deck. And like, a bunch of the contracts and the negotiations that are happening behind Google Play Services and all this stuff, it's not as straightforward as you think, and it involves more of these sort of weird deals than you expect. And so, the thing that's frustrating about it is, there's this line in the lawsuit that's like, Android is open source and name only,

• 17:44Speaker 02

  or something to that effect. Yeah, Android is open source and name only. That's the exact line. And I kind of can't disagree with that anymore, right? Like, it's open source insofar as, yes, you're right. You can go and like, make a fire phone off of it, you know, a year after, you know, the OS has been out or it's stable or whatever. But, in actual practice, nah, it's a Google jam, except, I guess, in China?

• 18:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is like, maybe not the exact comparison you want to make, right?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  It's a market where Google isn't allowed to participate. Many other things have happened there. But the Chinese government right now is cracking down on tech companies left and right. They're saying, because it's for privacy and data sharing reasons. There are lots of other reasons that the Chinese government cracks down on companies. So it's like, kind of the model that you want to look at? Like, look at all this competition for app stores and distribution, and then kind of definitely not the model you want to look at.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Here's the grand narrative of phones, the smartphones. You ready? Here we go. This is, this is like, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, like, grand theory of smartphones. Everybody knew that smartphones needed to be a thing. The carriers didn't, and they imposed their own restrictions so that they could make extra money off of it, and they didn't understand it. And then Steve Jobs came along and said, "I'm making this iPhone. Do you want it?" And AT&T was like, "Oh, God. Yeah, we want it." And so, Apple took that control away from carriers. And then we had a decade of incredible innovation, where all these companies could make phones without the carriers screwing it up. Whilst that was happening, Apple and Google became the duopoly of smartphones.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  And they themselves have become carriers who are making incremental money on these phones in any way that they can. And that has introduced another round of invisible pressure on innovation that is very difficult. It's impossible to say what we haven't got, but I feel very strongly that there's, we're not getting something that we would otherwise have. Because Apple and Google are like imposing certain restrictions on the phones in like weird ways. In the same way that carriers did before the iPhone.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  So Addit, one of the big distinguishing factors here between all the complaints leveled at Apple versus all the complaints leveled at Google is obviously. Apple systems are integrated. There's like just the debate over whether Apple can have a monopoly over the iPhone. Right. Which is like, you have to begin at like a deep philosophical level over whether you can have a monopoly over your own product. And like went through it with Epic. With Google, right? They give the operating system away. It is quote unquote free. And one thing that strikes me is because they have to make all of these contracts and talk about what other people are doing. The amount of evidence that they impose the control is potentially much higher.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  Like it feels like Google's at much more risk because there are these contracts and deals and negotiations. And freakouts over what other parties might do. Whereas with Apple, right? There's just emails inside of Apple. Right. And so like they're not imposing power, like Apple isn't imposing power over itself. Like that's just how a company works. But with Google, they're like, we want Motorola to stop doing X. So we will use our power to make them stop doing this. And that feels, that feels just a little more dangerous for Google.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was thinking about that too, especially because it means like Apple can end up with this kind of consistent, even if you think it's wrong. Like position that it's just too dangerous for there to be other apps on the, like an app stores on the iPhone. And then Google, it says that's like it, it's holds the position that that's not fundamentally true. And then you end up getting to see all of these very clear like financial maneuverings that are more obviously financially self-interested. And purely financially self-interested than say, Apple just saying, well, this isn't safe.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think we hold up, we came out of the. Epic trial, you know, just one consistent refrain was, well, if you don't like it, go to Android, it's open. And now we have this like other lawsuit and Google put up a blog post yesterday about the suit and it is literally the same exact arguments that Apple makes about why it has to control the iPhone. Like, sentence for sentence, things like safety, things like we strive to create the best marketplace we have, we compete for developers with Apple. And it's like, well, if you were competing, you wouldn't have the exact same terms, right? Like you would just lower your, you would lower your cut by 2%.

• 22:14Nilay Patel?

  You would say, Apple's 30%, we're 28%. Come over to Android and you would win, right? Like, that would be, you wouldn't just have lockstep the exact same terms. And it's fascinating to me that in the Apple case, people are like, well, Android is open. And now we have an Android case where we might see more pressure and the arguments are exactly the same as Apple.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  But there is a nuance that you can install a third-party app store on Android. And one of the things that's coming with the next version of Android is they're going to make those app stores a little bit less limited in what they're allowed to do, which is fascinating that they waited until now to do that.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what are they going to take? What are they?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I think it's, they're going to work better and they're gonna, they're not going to be so limited in auto updates. It's like, actually, part of the suit is like, you can't have an app update, like get auto automatic updates from a third-party store. Like, you have to actually open the store and then the store has to like figure it out, you know? It's like a frustrating thing when you buy something from an Amazon, the Amazon App Store, like the Galaxy App Store. The other thing about this blog post is it does this thing that just drives me nuts, where it's like, they're like, who, me? What? What? This is weird. It's, so it's strange that a group of state attorneys general chose to file suit, file a lawsuit attacking a system that provides more openness and choice than others.

• 23:33Nilay Patel?

  First of all, I thought you said they got the vapors as in there was a group of vapors at Google. That they're all just like vaping while writing a statement. That's not what you meant at all, but is an equally excellent mental image. Apple did this too, right? They, I just think it is, if you just look at it abstractly, you take away, I know there's so many differences, but if you just step back a little bit, they have the same terms, they have the same angry app developers, they have the same lawsuits, and now they have this almost exactly the same responses. And I just can't, yes, I know they're different. Everyone is going to tweet at us and tell us how different they are. But like, the shapes are the same, right?

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're more the same than different. It's very hard for me to say, oh, that's super competitive. And like, I think one question we've been asking forever is, why isn't there more competition within Android? Why aren't there more Android phone vendors doing cool things, fighting for peace in the market? It should be really easy to switch from a Samsung phone to an LG phone, or whatever, right? And it doesn't exist. And like, I think part of that is carrier control, we've talked to us forever. Part of this is Samsung will just like, fire hose money at anybody who looks at them, and make sure that they're the winner all the time. And part of it is, Google's control has limited what the phone makers are actually able to do. And so we've ended up with, who's going to be the first

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  to folding phones? Because if you can solve that hardware technology puzzle, like, Google can't stop you, the carriers can't stop you. But that's it. Like, that's where we've pointed all this effort, as opposed to, how does the phone work? Is it better for developers? The flip side of this, and I, it's like deeply ironic them saying this, is that like, five or eight years ago, we're like, these phones are too fragmented. Google should impose dictatorial control over the Android ecosystem, to bring things in line so it's more competitive. I don't know where that balances at all.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Eddie, can we, like, as long as we're talking about Samsung, we should talk about just what a big presence Samsung is in this lawsuit. It's got its own, like, entire section. And it's funny how big Samsung looms over the Android ecosystem, not just that they sell the most expensive phones, the most comma expensive phones, but also the most expensive phones. But it seems like every time there's some sort of fragmentation, or like, Platform or ecosystem debate with Android, it's because of Samsung. Remember when they freaked out over the the magazine UI like

• 26:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  States seven years ago and like Sundar had to like fly to Korea and tell them to cut it out.

• 26:06Nilay Patel?

  No, and they sold Motorola because of Samsung.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And they sold Motorola because of Samsung. And now, in this lawsuit, specifically, it's talking about stuff that Google has done with Samsung and its Galaxy Store. And then it just takes up a huge amount of their headspace.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a huge, like, it's, it's the only thing that comes close to being its own brand within this, within Android, right? Like,

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  As someone with a Samsung phone, like, I got a Samsung phone in part because it was the only thing that, like, I don't know, people would make cases for.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Right. Yep. That's one of the reasons when we do like the best Android phone, we often will land on a Samsung phone. And I was like, why didn't you pick OnePlus? How dare you? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why didn't you pick LG? Well, no one says, why didn't you pick LG?

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's like some LGPR people.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  But it's because you can walk into any store and buy a case for an S21. And you just can't do that with other Android phones.

• 26:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The relationship between Google and Samsung and the carriers, this is kind of what I mean. Like, if, because they're three independent parties with their own interests, who are arguing about how to get leverage over each other, the amount of evidence that exists of Google enforcing its leverage is just going to be higher in this case.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? And I like, I think the Play Services, I mean, and when I say this, the whole thing is like a Vergecast episode, like, the Android blogs 10 years ago were complaining that Google was exerting too much control over Android because of Google Play Services, right? Like, if you ship Android without Google Play Services, it doesn't matter where you get your apps from, they're not going to run.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  And so there's a big question over, as Dieter was saying earlier, like, what APIs are in Play Services? What APIs are in Android? Why can't you get Google Play Services without the Google Play Store? Tying those two things together seems equally problematic, right? Like, the reason Play Services is separate is, from a technical level, as far as I understand it, Dieter, is that's how Google gets around the update problem.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  How so?

• 28:08Nilay Patel?

  Because none of the carriers or OEMs update Android often enough.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  So they update Play Services over the air. It's their own component on top of Android.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yep, they got started with this with Chrome, with the Chrome engine, because that was a big vector of attack. So they started, they pulled the browser, which we think of as a really important part of an operating system, into Play Services. And so all of a sudden, if you didn't have Play Services, you had a deprecated browser, and eventually you like, basically didn't have a browser at all. And imagine trying to ship an Android phone and having to rule your own browser engine from scratch. Like, no thanks, right?

• 28:43Nilay Patel?

  Right, and notably in the EU, this case has already come and gone, and they have separated Play Services and Chrome from Android. And when you boot up an Android phone in the EU, you get a browser ballot, and then everybody picks Chrome, which is true. Again, the EU and Google is like this love-hate relationship. Like, what is Batman without the Joker? Like, what is the EU without Google? Like, nothing ever works, but they love each other. That part to me is, you can see this case ending up with Google has to deliver Play Services independently of the Play Store.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  And that would make sense. It's like, in this case, unlike the Apple case, where I can't see a real remedy that people will be happy with, this is like a weird technical business change that you can make to Android, that like, maybe would be invisible, and everyone would, everyone except Google would be happy with. And you could get there, and then you have questions about what APIs are in Android and what APIs are in Play Services.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Another thing that occurs to me is, the other thing that gets bundled with app stores that is increasingly driving me crazy is the security and privacy of the phone. That somehow the app store is the thing that's supposed to enforce that, instead of limitations and sandboxes and other restrictions on the apps itself, inside the platform itself. There's this guy. Alex Bressel is slightly late on Twitter. He just moved from the Chrome team over to the Microsoft Edge team. And he's got a long thread, basically taking Hiroshi Lachimer to task, saying,

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  You know what has all, you know what is a safe, you know, app environment is the web browser? Because everyone knows the web browser is like a, you know, scary, dangerous thing. And so they like, put all the guardrails around it so that web apps can't completely screw up your phone. And those guardrails around apps are like, not as high as they could be. And they're not as well sandboxed as they could be. And maybe, you know, Google Play is already running scans of every app. Google Play Services is already running scans of every app, whether you buy it from the Play Store or not, to make sure it's not malware. There's no reason that the security and privacy of the apps on your phone should be enforced by the App Store. That work can be done by the platform itself.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  And doing, and moving that work from the platform to the App Store is a way to force developers and you into that App Store.

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think one of the other pieces of this puzzle that's really interesting to me is the fact that Google owns YouTube. And I bring this up for this reason, and you can't make a phone that doesn't have the YouTube app on it.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, what is the surest way to guarantee you, to guarantee that your new product will fail?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  You know what else you're not allowed to do? Advertise a third-party Android App Store on YouTube.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  This is just like a content rule on YouTube?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, Google will not let you use Google's ad platforms to advertise your third-party App Store for Android.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  It's a good thing Google, Google is like the Duopoly player in advertising too.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Wop wop.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  You understand why the EU is constantly like, we should do something about that, Google.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't know that anything they've ever done is effective, but you understand why they keep trying. We published this data. I actually want to talk about this, maybe in some depth. So Facebook is very mad at Apple and Google all the time because they want better terms from Apple. Apple turned off the advertising identifier for advertise, all this stuff, doing the tracking stuff. So Facebook commissioned a study from Comscore, which I will just tell you is the proprietor of a website. I have deeply conflicted and angst-ridden emotions about Comscore as a measurement company. Yeah. As does every proprietor of every website in the world. Anyhow, but they're it. They're the industry standard. Facebook commissions comScore to say, measure the use of pre-installed

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  applications. No one ever does this. So Sensor Tower and App, any of the, I'll tell you about the, the third-party apps and who's hot, who's not in the App Store. There's other ways to talk about third-party apps. ComScore talks about third-party apps. No one ever measures the use of pre-installed apps. So Facebook, with a clear motivation, commissions comScore to measure the use of pre-installed applications. Alex Heath, our great new reporter, gets the data, we publish a story. I will tell you right now, Apple is pissed about this story. They are so mad at us about it. Because it shows that their default apps are just by far the most popular apps on the iPhone. I was joking with Dieter, you look at this list of what, what apps

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  on the iPhone and its monthly active users. You look at this list of what apps have the most monthly active users in the United States on the iPhone. And you're like, oh, the iPhone's a feature phone. This thing might, might as well be a flip phone. It's like, the phone app, the weather app, photos, camera, clock, messages, calculator, App Store. App Store being up there is a thing. Sure. What's the first third-party app that shows up? It's YouTube. Right. Because it's, it's just the most, it's the thing. When we had, when I had Nadella on Decoder, and I was like, what Google websites do you go to? He was like, YouTube. There's no competitor to YouTube. There's no, nothing like YouTube exists. And so, Google, with Android, can say, you don't have the Play Store. What they really mean is your phone won't have YouTube. And even

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  if you build a phone with another, another entire store on it, you're never going to get YouTube. And it's just another point of control, which might be fair. You might think that that is fair. But the fact that Google can withhold the most popular video service, and indeed, the most popular third-party app on the iPhone, and it's the third most popular app on Android, according to this chart, that's crazy. Like, I don't know. I, like, there's just a part of this where I, just like, these companies are too big. They have too much power. If you go after them one way, they're just going to say, we're not going to ship YouTube to the third-party app stores. And do you want the government coming in and demanding that Google put YouTube in stores it doesn't want to be in? Like, maybe it's just breaking up.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  That's a long way of getting me getting to you should break up YouTube from Google. Anyway, this this data, I just want to talk about it for a second. So we know it's motivated reasoning from Facebook.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  We know that comScore has problems and I like, talk to anybody who runs a website about how much they love comScore and and like pour a beer into them first and like you'll just be there all night.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  It's also like it's monthly active users, which is a particular kind of metric. It's how many people tapped on the app in a in a given month, right? That's what counts as an active user.

• 34:57Nilay Patel?

  So one of the big arguments here is it doesn't calculate user engage time. So I don't know, Apple clock is like fifth on this list. Yeah, everyone clicks on the clock. What if you have a user who has a third party clock app who uses that 10 times more than the other person, right? So you have 10 people, nine of them use the built in clock app and you have one power user who uses some other clock app 500 times more than all those people combined. Does that count? Does that change? And my thinking is, well, the reason we ran this is this is the first time we've ever seen any data about pre installed apps. So yep, we can argue about it, but this is the first cut at this data that anybody has ever seen or published outside of the companies themselves.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  And I think to measure market share, you should measure monthly active users, not engage time. The reason you measure engage time on a platform like Facebook or whatever is because that's how you sell advertising.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  You've got the one person who's looking at more and more stuff all the time. That's more opportunities to advertise to them, but it means that they're definitely not using the other thing. So I don't, I look at this list, I understand all the problems with it. But what is absolutely striking to me is these platforms are dominated by the pre installed apps. And anytime any one of these companies puts out another app that competes with a third party, they will use their distribution advantage on their own operating systems to crush the competition. And the Android one is particularly interesting because way down at the bottom, Samsung Calculator, Samsung email.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:26Nilay Patel?

  Samsung's pre-installed apps. The only app that shows up that is not pre-installed by someone is Walmart on the Android list.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Well, there's Amazon.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure carriers install Pandora.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  Amazon does show up on both lists.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  So here's the question then, what apps should be allowed to be bundled with the operating system? Because we had a whole big fight about Internet Explorer in the 90s on Windows. We're like, oh, it shouldn't be bundled. And like now, if anybody tells you that like, an operating system shouldn't bundle a web browser, that kind of doesn't make sense, because like, half the stuff that an iOS shows you is driven by a web view anyway. So at what point do you say that these things should not be installed by default, or these things should not be like, part of the operating system?

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, Addy, do you want to answer this very simple question?

• 37:16Speaker 03

  No, I don't. And I think about it a lot, especially because Sherlocking is also just the way that this ends up playing in with developers too. That then like, does that mean that if you make a really good app, that companies should not be able to clone it and like, make it an integrated part of the user experience?

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, we, again, this, we put up this story yesterday, people were tweeting about it all day yesterday. People were like, what, do you want a calculator ballot? No, I, I think it's totally fine for Apple to put a calculator app on the phone. What I think is notable about this, in particular in the case of iOS, Apple's apps almost always win. There's like, two things in here, maybe only one, where you can see how competition affects the use of the phone. So on the iOS list, Apple Maps doesn't appear, and Google Maps doesn't appear. Why is that? Because they have split the market for mapping on iOS.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  Right? So there's not just a winner, the way that, I don't know, Apple Messages is the clear winner here, right? There isn't another messaging app on this, maybe if you count Instagram and Facebook, but that's all been broken out into Messenger now. Apple Mail is here, Gmail's way at the bottom. That's, that was my other example. Apple Mail dominates over Gmail on this list. But to me, the Maps example is like, really... It's sort of like the exception that proves the rule, right? Google was there first. They were better. Apple put out a pre-installed worse product. They've split the market. Every year, Apple tells us how much better Maps is. We just came out of WDC. They spent a ton of time telling us we've improved Maps. Maps is better because they are in a fight for market share on their own product. And when, Dieter, when you talk about like, what is the innovation we don't see?

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  If Apple was just the winner, I don't know that they would be racing to make Maps better all the time.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  In iOS 15, you will be able to tap on one of your alarms to open it and edit it instead of having to hit the edit icon up in the upper left-hand corner and go into the edit mode and then tap on the time and then go into the thing to change the clock. If there were a real competition for clock apps on the iPhone, I guarantee you they would have fixed this thing. I have been complaining about this for a decade and it's just now getting fixed.

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just all these little places where, I don't know, like, competition is good. Like, that's what is the political philosophy of the first cast? All these big companies should fight harder for your dollars and your time. Okay, we should stop talking about antitrust. Before we go from this section, Addy, I just want you to say five sentences about this insane Donald Trump lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google, because they happened on the same day, right? And Trump got more attention, but this is the antitrust stuff, I think, is going to be more long-lasting. But we should talk about the Trump stuff, too.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, so former President Donald Trump would very much like you to give him money to fight lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey. And then he keeps forgetting that he also sued YouTube and Sundar Pichai, whose name he refuses to pronounce correctly still. And he calls him Sundar Poochay and says that these companies are violating the First Amendment in a series of very ill-considered lawsuits that say that they are public companies because of Section 230, which is also unconstitutional, but why he's suing them.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  And part of the argument is that Facebook collaborated with his own administration to fight coronavirus, and that is very bad to him. And all of this is ridiculous. And the two things that matter from it are that, A, it's a big fundraising thing that the people are already sending. Like just trying to get dollars from by saying that Trump is taking on big tech, which in this case he is very much not because the entire legal argument is just really, really bad and bonkers and not attempting to be serious at all. And second, that like, obviously, this does not mean that there are not serious issues with, say, the way that Facebook moderates.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Like, we found out today that Facebook, just like, they made a totally reasonable moderation policy and then they lost it, like, they literally lost it for three years because they switched systems and didn't put it in into the new system. It was like about how you can criticize, like, the imprisonment conditions of people who violate its dangerous policy rules. So the point is that there are like actual very serious questions about who can speak on Facebook and when and how to get kicked off. And Trump is not taking steps toward any of those. He's not seriously interested in any of those. He is interested in making money. And also, his lawsuits are, I just, I'm trying not to make fun of them. I'm trying so hard not to make fun of them because it's a crap.

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  Addie, right now in the video conference is doing the flames from the side of my face hand motion, like, you were literally just doing that from Clue. It was incredible to watch. Yeah, they're really done. And I will say that we all watched this press conference because Trump announced he was going to sue these companies. And I just had these enormous, I said at the beginning about the virus, like, I'm still really mad. Like, I just had these flashbacks to like, oh, we have to take this seriously. And the amount of relief as I listened and then I read this, I was like, oh, we don't have to take this seriously at all. We can just, like, move on.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Will we be able to just move on? I mean, that's my fear.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  These are gonna get dismissed in the first, the first time they show up in a court.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they've got money to appeal the dismissal. Like, that's the question. Like, how, how long are we gonna have to, like?

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  Pay attention to these ridiculous lawsuits.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  I mean, me as a writer who writes about this stuff, I'm going to have to be like, yep, this got dismissed. I'm going to hit that this got dismissed again and they have appealed. But like, so Eric Goldman, who is the, one of the most comprehensive chroniclers of section 230 law, tweeted a section from an upcoming paper. He's like, yeah, these cases, they pretty much invariably lose. They get dismissed very, very early because judges say, well, yeah, section 230, it's pretty settled law. And it says that, like, the law says these companies are private actors. There is not a precedent for the First Amendment governing the way that social media platforms moderate, except under like, these really like, specific situations where, say, the issue is a government actor using social

• 43:38Speaker 03

  media. There's just, there is absolutely no legal basis here. And unlike the section, and unlike when like, Trump would sign a social media order, there is not this apparatus of people that actually have to take things seriously, that have to follow his demands. Like, there's no FTC or FCC here that has to keep like, pretending to shuffle papers around in a way that will make this make sense. He is like, a private citizen filing a lawsuit, and it's a really bad lawsuit. So there's just, and he's defending it with his own, or with money that is not the US government's, at least at this point. So this is like, much less of a waste of people's time than usual. It's definitely a waste of his time and a waste of, like, the legal system's time. But it's less annoying than

• 44:23Speaker 03

  when he was president, by a lot.

• 44:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Look, we did 40 minutes on the actually important antitrust case. We did three on Trump, and I think that's about the right ratio. All right, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna get away from legal stuff. We're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about this new switch, which Dieter has already played with. We'll be right back.

• 45:17Speaker 04

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• 46:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Dieter.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  Here's my theory about the new OLED Switch.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Okay, it's the new Nintendo Switch OLED model.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  In parentheses. That's my theory. The fact that they were just like OLED model in parentheses means that all of my display whining over the past 10 years in the show has been completely validated and that all people care about is contrast ratios.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  That's it. I was right.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah, no, I buy it. So I mean, it's called, my theory is they called it OLED model so that everyone was crystal clear, no pun intended, that there's nothing else new about this thing. The processor is the same, the power is the same. There are a couple of new things that are worth noting. One is the kickstand is no longer a cheap plastic piece of crap that falls off when you blow a light breeze at it. Oh God, I hate the kickstand on the original Switch. It's a good kickstand in the style of a Surface kickstand where it can like go at any angle. And it has 64 gigs of internal storage instead of a measly 32. So you can maybe fit more than two games on it, which seems good. Other minor stuff, they added a wired ethernet port into the dock and

• 47:13Speaker 02

  the speakers are a little bit louder. But the main news is that the screen is now a full 7.0 inches and it is OLED instead of LCD.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  But it's the same resolution.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  It is still 720p. That's correct. And it still does 1080 when you plug it into a TV. It won't go to 4K.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. The seven inch 720p Pentile OLED screen is going to be like, maybe I was wrong.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  I don't know that it's Pentile. It might be RGB. I'm still waiting for confirmation on this. I took a loop to it, you know, those little, you know, magnifier things you put on negatives or whatever.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  And it looks like RGB to me, but I don't have the eye for screens that you do. If you don't, if you don't know what a Pentile screen is, it's a way of arranging the sub pixels in an OLED screen that isn't straight, you know, one color per pixel, one RGB per pixel. And some people see this and it causes their eyes to bleed and they become unreasonable rage monsters who can talk about nothing else. That's Neil I Patel. And then there's other people like me that's like, I guess it looks fine. I don't know. It seems good. And that's me.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  So it was a lot worse when the pixel densities were low, like the iPhone has an OLED Pentile screen. Looks great because it picks up pixel density so high. The whole hack is that your eye perceives green more than other colors. So if you put more green in it, you can get more brightness out of the same size panel.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  Early, they just looked horrible.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:31Nilay Patel?

  Now high pixels don't say they're great. I'm just saying 720p at a larger screen, you're not going to get more pixel density.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  You're getting less pixel density. And I played Mario Kart and I played Breath of the Wild. Both games are very good at looking nice on 720p, right? Like the way that they're visually designed, like if it's not, it's fine at that pixel density, I think at 720p. And so they looked good to me and the screen looks way brighter and crisper to me, like it's more vibrant. And if you look at like the grass or whatever, like you could see the pixels, you can see the like, if you look at like really thin lettering, you can like start to see the Jaggies a little bit, you know, like it's not anti-alias as well as it maybe should be. But like, here's the bottom line. It's bigger and brighter and therefore nicer. The end.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Fair. And the kickstand is better.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  And the kickstand is way better. Yeah, yeah. I would not upgrade. I'm gonna upgrade because I switched over to a Switch Lite, and that was a huge mistake, and I regret it every day of my life. And I want to go back to the bigger screen. But if you've got a regular Switch, especially one of the like, slightly newer switches that have the better battery life, I think this is a very difficult upgrade to justify, because the joycons are the same, the processor's the same. There's a little more internal storage, but whatever. Build quality is basically the same. It seems like it's a little bit better built. The kickstand helps. There's a glossy bezel around the screen instead of a matte finish bezel around the screen, whatever. But at this point, like, I'm getting into such tiny little details, like the power button is oblong instead of round, and it's recessed in a different way. Like, okay.

• 50:11Nilay Patel?

  Is it nicer? I would say like, the big knock for me on the original Switch is like, it's pretty, and Breath of Wild is like, a masterpiece. The hardware is like, kind of cheap. But just all the way around, it's like, kind of cheap.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  I'll say it feels like 15% nicer than the original Switch. I brought the original Switch along to like, compare it. And like, but the original Switch is also beat up from use, right?

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  I have no idea what this thing will be like when it's beat up from use. But it, you know, brand new out of the box, it's a nice gadget.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  Does it have like, I mean, obviously it has smaller bezels, like, is it like, I would just say the original Switch is like, kind of plasticky, like?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would say the plastic, again, it's like, it, to me, it seemed like 15% nicer plastic. Like, the matte finish is a little bit more matted than the original one. But also, I've been using the original one for years, and so maybe that just got worn down.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Eddie, there was like, a lot of rumors that it would be a Switch Pro, that there'd be a new chip. Do you have any sense of why none of this came to pass?

• 51:05Speaker 03

  I mean, there's the theory that like, the chip shortage has messed everything up, right? But I don't know.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  I mean, there's also just like, people keep expecting Nintendo to act like other game companies, other console makers, and they never do. And they have not done it again. They like, they just, this is what Nintendo does. They release tiny little changes to the consoles that are going well for them. And they might get some people to upgrade, but it's just like, it's another SKU to put in the store. That's how they do it.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I haven't used my Switch for a little bit, but I don't know. I feel like there are so many good games that don't require really intense hardware at this point, and the Switch is really, really good at playing them. Like, I don't know. This is also just speaking as someone who has other consoles and I don't need, like, I pretty much play the Switch exclusively as a handheld and I don't need it to, like, play AAA console games. But I kinda, like, I'm kinda happy with the Switch I have now. Like, I would be perfectly happy with there being a, like, a slightly iterative upgrade.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, so the idea of doing this upgrade is that people will upgrade, or you'll get new people to buy a Switch. Right? I mean, those are, those are your two choices.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's more the latter. I think it's people who haven't bought a Switch yet will go to the store and there will now be three options instead of two. The portable one, the regular one, and Nintendo specifically, like, told me, like, we're gonna continue to support the regular one. It's gonna stick around.

• 52:26Nilay Patel?

  Wait, support it or keep it in?

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Uh, I forget the exact wording, but I, they're not gonna discontinue it, is my, is my impression. It's gonna stick around. Uh, and then there's the one with a nice screen. And like, you pick your price point, or you pick your screen size, or, you know, which one you want. Uh, it's just like, there's the nice one, and it's called Nintendo Switch OLED Model. I don't know. The word "model" is what offends me about this whole situation, right? Just call it Nintendo Switch OLED, whatever. In fact, I think Nintendo only ever pronounces it OLED model. They don't ever say OLED. Ha. Uh, so you thought we won, Eli, but we didn't, because you still have to spell it out. Yeah, you just, you'll go and you'll, you'll buy the one that fits your budget, or, you know, if you're willing to splurge on the, the one. It's like, uh, you know, you buy an iPhone and you pick your storage option, right? You buy a Switch and you pick your screen.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  Isn't there, like, controversy on, like, Joy-Con drift with Switches? Are they fixing that?

• 53:15Speaker 02

  No, uh, who knows? They won't, they won't say. Like, they won't comment, you know? Trying to get Nintendo to say drift is very difficult unless you're talking about Mario Kart, so.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Amazing. When does this thing come out?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  It's early October, same day as, uh, the new Metroid, which, Metroid Dread, uh, which, yes, Metroid. Good. Happy, excited. I love me some side-scrolling Metroid. It's, it's, we're overdue. I can't wait. Uh, yes, please. Also, bring back Metroid Prime. I know it's not part of the main storyline, but, uh, I miss it. And you should be able to figure out a way to do that with Joy-Cons pretty easily, so please re-release that. Also, there's the new Zelda, which is the old Zelda, Skyward Sword, coming soon. Going to try that out, but I think I'm going to be disappointed. But that's okay, because the sequel to Breath of the Wild is still out there in the world. And I will watch Zeltic videos, looking at Zelda lore, trying to, you know,

• 54:12Speaker 02

  parse what's going to happen in that game all day long. And I recommend you do as well.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Is Hollow Knight's Silksong coming, like, is that, that still exists? I want Silksong so bad.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. I haven't been keeping up on that. I managed to finally defeat their creepy vampire boss expansion and felt so relieved that I finally did it that I had to set it down and walk away from it for months.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've played out Hollow Knight so much.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  All right, Addy, are you gonna get one?

• 54:38Speaker 03

  No, I have a, I have a Switch. I'm waiting. I'm just waiting for Silksong.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's gonna do it. I can tell. He's smiling.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Yes, I am.

• 54:45Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy one, because I actually need to finish beating Breath of the Wild.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Well, can't you just do that on your current Switch?

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  No, I need a bigger screen.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  I was trying to, what's the name of the dragon that flies by? I was trying to jump. I didn't want to finish the game before I had done this one thing. And then I just failed to do it so much that I put the game down. And so I've yet to actually beat it. It was like right there. And I was like, I'm not going to do this right now.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  You're trying to jump onto the back of one of the four dragons that fly overhead?

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh, I've read, I've watched so many YouTube videos about jumping on this dragon. So now I need a bigger screen. I can finally aim correctly.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Assuming I enjoy constant drift. I don't, I feel like we, this thing came out of nowhere and our, our team is like deeply split. We have like competing editorials.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  About why this is the best product and a total disappointment. I don't know, man. We should just buy one. Okay, we're gonna take a break and we gotta do a lightning round. We'll be right back.

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• 56:16Speaker 05

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• 56:47Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, where do you want to start this lightning round?

• 56:49Speaker 02

  I mean, we should start with the revolution in audio dynamics, the Verizon version of spatial audio. Because what I have been waiting for was Verizon to jump into that fray.

• 57:01Nilay Patel?

  It's preloaded on Motorola phones?

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm a full on spatial audio conspiracy theorist now.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  This thing came out of nowhere. There's like multiple competing formats. The studios are all in on it, right? This like is being pushed from the studios. And like somewhere in the middle, Dolby is like basically the only company that can generate this stuff. And it sounds bad. So I just turned it off on my iPhone. I'm over it.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  But I'm just telling you, like, a group of music industry executives decided a thing was going to happen to the listening public and then started shipping it on phones left and right. And like, it's not that it won in the marketplace. It's like, I don't know, like Universal owns a bunch of mastering studios that weren't being used enough. So they just like invented a reason to do spatial audio. I just like no longer believe that this has happened for any organic reason.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I completely agree. I think that I think that you should only be allowed to listen to spatial audio when you're watching a movie on a 3D TV.

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  It is bad. It sounds bad, especially rock music sounds really bad on it. I just like turned it off. And I tweeted that I turned it off. And like, my replies are all people being like, I turned it off too. People don't like it, the mastering is not good. But it's just very funny that Verizon was like, we also have a spatial format. Would you like to try this one on a mid-range Motorola phone? And I just put up more 5G towers, Verizon. Okay, mine is, my lightning round is, uh, Stellantis, which is further proof that mergers should not be allowed. It's a horrible name. Stellantis is the name of a car company. Did you know this?

• 58:37Speaker 02

  No, this is not real. You're making this, this is, this is a terrible sci-fi movie.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  So there once was a company called Chrysler, which owns like Dodge and Jeep. They merged with Fiat to create FCA, Fiat Chrysler Allmobiles. And then that company merged with like Citro and Impulio to create Stellantis. So Stellantis now owns Jeep, all the way down the line. So they had an EV day from Stellantis, the most unhinged car company presentation I've ever seen. You should watch it. At one point, they presented a chart of Dodge Challenger sales, noting that every time they increased the number of like the horsepower in the Dodge Challenger, the sales went up. But the chart was, the Dodge line was yellow. And then there

• 59:20Nilay Patel?

  were just two unlabeled lines in green and blue going down. And I was like, what is it beating? Like, what cars are those? Just completely unlabeled. Uh, the CEO of Dodge came out and insisted that Dodge was not going to make an electric car before announcing an electric car. And he's like, Dodge makes e-muscle cars, not electric cars. And we all just had to watch that for a while. They announced a bunch of mottos for all the new electric cars that Stellantis, or for all the Stellantis brands that are now making electric cars. Let me just read some of these. Uh, Abarth, which is a Stellantis brand, their new electrified motto is heating up people, but not the planet.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  God.

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  Fiat's, this is true, I'm not kidding. This is real. Uh, Fiat's electrification motto is it's only green when it's green for all. Uh, Dodge, again, which is not making electric cars, they're making e-muscle cars. Dodge's electrification motto, I swear to God, this is true, tear up the streets, not the planet.

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  Peugeot, which a French car company, also in the Stellantis portfolio, turning sustainable mobility into quality time. Yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  I actually, I kind of really want very like weird, earnest, satirical, inspirational posters of all of these.

• 1:00:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  Alfa Romeo, also in the Stellantis portfolio. They didn't try this one. From 2024, Alfa becomes Alfa e Romeo.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means. And then Jeeps is zero emission freedom. And then the Jeep video that they presented is fully unhinged. Like, they have Jeep Wranglers launching drones at night. And then the people just like lay down in the back of a Jeep to stargaze while the Jeep autonomously drives with a drone guiding it. The Jeep, the Wrangler in this video, has a windshield that has face recognition. So as you walk up to it, it recognizes your face and unlocks the door. But in the video, the Jeep doesn't have any doors.

• 1:01:36Nilay Patel?

  I just, everyone needs to go watch this. Like, we were watching it and like, you know, like Andy and Sean, our transportation reporters, like, you know, they're diligently doing their jobs, like covering all the new announcements, like Jeep is gonna launch by the whole range. And I was like, we just need to make a list of what happened here.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  We also just need to make a list. It was nuts. I, it was maybe the silliest thing that happened today. And I, if you have an idea for what The Verge's e-mobility slogan should be, for example, Stellantis has a brand that's just called Commercial Vehicles.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  That's just the brand, that's the name of the brand, Commercial Vehicles. And their slogan is the global leader in e-commercial vehicles. Which is like, that's their name.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  They, they set down a corporate decree like last week, and they're like, you must have a mission statement and it must have something to do with electric, probably, yes.

• 1:02:29Nilay Patel?

  Terrorist streets, not the planet. It's just really good.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Everyone had a rushed meeting, and these are the best ideas they could come up with in a half an hour. And they're like, you know what, they're never gonna use these, it's fine. And they emailed them out, and then whoever was putting this presentation to you, I was like, all right, here we go.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's good. We don't make electric cars, we make e-muscle. It's just, it's really good. Addy, do you want to, you have a lightning round one?

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Uh, everybody should go look at Jay Peters' Roblox explainer.

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it's very good.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  We do these explainers, we do these like very simple posts. And then they just like live forever. So like Mitchell's NFT explainer for like three months is the most popular post on our site because it turns out everything is confusing all of the time. Do you want to talk about RCS real quick?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Sure. By the way, Android Messages messaging app, SMS app, not appearing in the most used apps, most multi-use active users apps list at all, which is weird.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wait, can I say one more thing about FCA real quick?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Another moment in the Dodge presentation was they had to come up with an animal to signify Dodge's evolution. And they, what they, this is true. And they said Dodge is a hammerhead shark because it's changing.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Wait, what? I clearly don't know much about sharks.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  This is true. They put up a slide. It's like, yeah, the hammerhead shark that has thrived at the top of the food chain. And it's like, there's a bigger shark. Like, an obviously bigger shark exists.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Their entire truck line is literally named after an animal.

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  Ram is a different company now.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  So they split Dodge from Ram. And then Ram is, Ram's tagline is built to serve a sustainable planet. It's great. I'm telling you, this is, this is both the argument to forbid all mergers, but also absolutely the argument for mergers to happen.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  Because then you get giant, clumsy, hilarious companies.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Amazing. Speaking of giant, clumsy, hilarious companies, AT&T has, uh, AT&T has joined T-Mobile in just giving up, taking Google's money and making Android Messages the default for all Android phones on its network. So you'll get RCS, you'll get end-to-end encryption, which is also rolling out. You'll get the whole thing. So it's at least Verizon and, you know, whoever else. So yeah, Google has, after what, three or four years of trying to make RCS happen, finally realized that

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  It should just open the checkbook. I don't know this for a fact that Google just opened a checkbook, but I strongly suspect. And I'm very happy that we're no longer waiting for these carriers to like form their little coalition company and come up with their own text messaging app. So now that all, most Android phones and pretty soon all Android phones, especially in the US are going to be using RCS by default. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Apple, it's time.

• 1:05:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. This is funny because after the entire first conversation, we're like, it's a good thing. Google's opening the checkbook and forcing the carriers to do it at once.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Right? It's a whole vibe.

• 1:05:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm torn. I think, I think these problems are really hard. And I, I don't know, maybe if Pixel phones are any good, this would just be different, right? Like, maybe if Google had a winner integrated phone that it controlled.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  This antitrust case made me understand why, what the deal is with Pixel. I now know, I've solved it. I've been wondering why Pixel for, you know, five years, whatever, however long it's been. And now I know. The Pixel only exists just in case they decide they need to cut off Samsung or Samsung goes away. That's it. They don't need it. They don't want it to sell. They just need to be able to make phones. They just need to sell a handful of them and stay in the market. And it's just there because nobody else can serve as a hedge for Samsung. And so the Pixel is there as a hedge for Samsung, but it's in like pantry mode. It's not quite pantry mode. You know, pantry mode is that Google makes a product and then doesn't release it. It's just there in case a competitor appears.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  It's like open pantry mode. It's there and you could like, go get it, but they're not really, they're not, it's not trying. It's, it's only, they only have it so like, somebody is at least pretending to be a credible competitor to Samsung and Android. Cause like Huawei got cut off. There's a bunch of other Chinese companies like OnePlus, all of the, the BBK companies, Oppo, Vivo, Realme, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a bunch of that. But in the US, somebody, so nobody's trying hard, very hard, right? Nobody's having much traction. So Google's just there just in case they ever need to ramp it up, they can.

• 1:07:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And in the meantime, they're like, would you like to merge Tyson with WearOS? Right? Like, well, the thing that's they're actually getting closer.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, my last lightning round, more car stuff for me. Elon Musk said self-driving cars are a harder problem than he originally thought.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  Which, to me, is just very funny. Because I've how many car company CEOs have we had on Decoder or the Verchess over the years from like, how long till a car without a steering wheel? And they're all like, well, it's it'll happen. And then they just sort of look off into the distance and hope I won't ask how how long? And then I do, and they're like, not for a while.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they all stopped saying five years.

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  They did all stop saying five years. Okay, a few things I want to call out on the site that we didn't have time to talk about. We have our iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 previews up. We have our Mac OS 15 preview up. They have to change Safari.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Yes, they must.

• 1:07:56Nilay Patel?

  They have to. They have to just roll that back. Actually, speaking of competition, all this stuff, John Gruber had this incredible line about Safari on the Mac, because he thinks they should change it, too. Because it's bad. They put all the tabs at the top, it's all moving around. He was like, if Apple doesn't change this, they will lose market share to Chrome, Chromium-based browsers.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  That's it. That's the threat. You have to make a good product, or you lose market share for important things. Whereas like, if they just screw up Safari on the phone, yeah, you might switch to Chrome, but it's still their web rendering engine. No stakes. That's all I'm getting at. Everybody needs more stakes. Everybody needs to be more afraid of the American consumer. That's how I'm ending this Verchess. No, a few other things. We're talking about Andy, our transportation reporter. He's got a great story on Waymo as a self-driving company. They have a virtual city called Simulation City, that they are not allowed to call SimCity, where they test all their self-driving stuff. That's a cool dive into things. And then there's a bunch of additional regulatory things.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  The one I want to call out is the Indian government is arguing that Twitter doesn't have immunity for its user posts. So they have not 230. I said this on Verchess, I think, a couple of weeks ago. The relationship between the tech companies and the Indian government is like a preview of what's happening here. So we're paying a lot of attention to it. Go read that, sorry, because if you want to think about what a world without 230 looks like, there are actually lots of countries in the world. Where there isn't 230 and the government does interfere in content moderation, maybe not so great. So just a bunch of interesting stuff on the site to look at.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  Props to Maine for passing a facial recognition, government facial recognition ban and to our great facial recognition reporter, Dave Gershkorn for covering it.

• 1:09:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like the, the second one, right? Didn't Illinois do one?

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Illinois has a really strong biometric privacy law and there have been municipalities that have banned government use of facial recognition, but Maine's is like the strongest thing that we have so far.

• 1:09:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Again, it's summer and it's like a little slow, but there's still a lot happening. So all over the verge, we just wanted to focus on the stuff we focused on today. You can tweet at us. I'm at reckless theaters at back lawn. Addy is at the dextrarchy. We're back with the Vergecast next week, Decoder next week, another EV company CEO, CEO of Polestar, Thomas Ingleth. I have to tell you, this interview, just one of the wilder CEO interviews I've ever had. Just a very different kind of character. So that was a good one. So that's next week on Tuesday. We'll be back next week with Vergecast. That's it. Rock and roll.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Five stars. Rate us five stars. Find a place to rate us and then rate it five stars.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

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• 1:11:19Speaker 06

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