Galaxy S9 review, Android P, and Google tries to fix the web (live @ SXSW 2018)

This week, The Vergecast is down in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest 2018 in front of a live audience. Nilay, Dieter, Casey, and Ashley run through the news and share their expertise about Google’s new plan to make the web faster, using Samsung’s Galaxy S9, and Android P for developer testing. If you wanted to see the show, sorry you missed it! But good news for you, I recorded it so you can listen to it whenever you want. And here’s the articles discussed on the show this week: 00:45 - Google’s latest plan could change how you browse the web 10:03 - Amazon has a fix for Alexa’s creepy laughs 17:16 - Samsung Galaxy S9 review 27:17 - Android P is available for developer testing 32: 57 - Paul’s weekly segment “Shoes — You’ve got em” 35:24 - On Twitter, lies spread faster than the truth 41:02 - Snap confirms layoffs of ‘just over 120’ engineers 45:00 - Barack Obama is reportedly planning Netflix shows 50:59 - Q&A 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. The flagship podcast of OSM.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if Jim knows that joke. I don't know if the CEO of the company knows that for a year I've been calling our show "The flagship podcast." Jim, now you know. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate your support. I'm Eli, this is Dieter.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  This is Casey. This is Ashley. Paul will be maybe making an appearance in some forum later. You never know. But we should just start with news.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  We're at South by Southwest, there's a lot going on. And I was not joking when I threatened you with web standards talk. We're gonna start with AMP because Dieter Bohn is the only person in the world who understands Google's AMP project.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  It's a very huge burden.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Also, I know there are people watching on the stream on YouTube, but we're at South by Southwest Interactive, which is a show for web nerds. It's a conference for like web nerds. I assume these are web nerds. I want, see? I want you to sound smart at parties later on. So, Dieter is just gonna be issuing soundbites for the next few minutes, being like, "Web packaging is the future of distribution in a trustless environment." And then you can just say that whenever you want over the weekend.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Wow, that was really good.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm in it.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  "Web packaging is the future of distribution in a trustless environment."

• 1:18Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  We're done. See you, see everybody. All right, Dieter, tell us what is going on with AMP.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  All right, so everybody hates AMP. Nobody likes it.

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, quickly define what AMP is.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Okay, AMP, it stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. And it is, the origin story of AMP is two years ago, there was Apple News, there was Facebook Instant Articles, and we, at The Verge, were doomed because we knew that instead of just publishing to the web, we would have to publish to 50 different things: Flipboard and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, Google said, "Well, we can fix that. We're gonna make a thing and it's gonna be the web," which is debatable, but, and then you'll be able to take that thing and then it will become another standard. So, we all thought of it as like a direct competitor to Instant Articles and Apple News and all the rest, which it kind of is, but their vision was not for it not to be that. And they claim that from the beginning, they wanted to like build this thing and then make it a web standard.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  So, what this thing is, is when we publish a page, there's a version of it that has a limited set of HTML that can, we basically, when you publish an AMP page, you can say, "Hey, if somebody else wants to distribute this..." Cool, you are free to redistribute this page. And it will always be updated when we update it, and you can trust that it came from us. And that means that when you go visit an AMP page, it can load instantly. Because Google did this completely insane iframe hack where when you, there's an AMP link in Google search or Twitter or Bing, it preload the page in the background, so it loads right away.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  How many of you have Android phones? Some of you.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  So your phones have the Google, Edie reminds me of this all the time. Your phones preload the verge in the background in the feed. So when you swipe left, there's the Google feed.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  And all the stories in there are preloaded through AMP. You don't know it, we don't know it, until you read it, and then it sends us the analytics signal. Which is crazy, right? That's not how anyone thinks the web works. You click a link, it loads, thousands of advertisers track you, and then you see some content. But AMP is like, it's preloading these packages of content underneath everything else, and it's built on hacks. So why is it controversial?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Because it's Google, and Google's taking over everything. They, everyone assumes they own the entire web. Maybe they do, it's scary. And, you know, also AMP usually sucks. Like, in terms of the experience of using it, because scrolling in an iframe is really awkward. People aren't very good at designing them, because the very first iteration of AMP had like, really like, limited set of stuff you could do, so like, the AMP pages don't look good. They're just weird. And then the URLs are awful, because they're like, come from a Google cache often. So it's got like, you know, weird extra crap in it that you gotta like, delete if you want to share it. So they claim they have solutions for all of these things, and they've spent two years making AMP, and now they want the rest of the world to make their pages just like AMP.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Which is, like, everyone's like, "Oh, but we hate AMP, it sucks, so we don't want to do that." But they're trying to like, turn it. And so they're going to take all the stuff that they built, that they understand, and they're gonna go to the Web Standards Committee, the W3C. Tag. There's also the W I C G, which is a whole other thing. Plus, there's the I T F.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  All right. Okay, hold on.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  And they're gonna, they're gonna try and make this a standard. It's gonna take forever.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  All right. So my question is, so let's say that we at The Verge decided we love AMP, which, by the way, most publishers do love AMP because it's now the source of the majority of all traffic to our websites. So if we decide, all right, we want to do like the amplified version of the web, like, what would that look like? Is it something we have to do? Does the web standards body have to do it? Do we have to redesign The Verge? Like, how does this work?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Uh, what, the way it's gonna work is, for the next however long it takes the web standards bodies to figure it out, which could be years, people are just gonna keep using AMP and be terrified of Google. And then, once they figure it out, there will be a new standard by which you can publish a webpage that you allow other people to distribute for you. And then, we will just follow that step, web packaging standard. So it's gonna be, if you wanna make a webpage, you, instead of just knowing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you'll have to know that stuff, plus like, the magic new packaging standard. So it'll be on us to build it. But we have to wait for the process of everybody arguing at each other about the web for two years to shake out.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Sure. But we already published AMP, so like, what's gonna be the difference?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  AMP will be one of several of these things. There's not a name for it yet, but it'll, AMP will be Google's implementation.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  So great at branding.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna call it Hangouts.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 5:33Nilay Patel?

  Hangouts Web.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  You, what's, what's gonna happen is it'll become another chat client for Google.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, a new, a new messenger. Fantastic.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  No, it'll, AMP will be Google's version of this thing. And it'll be the one that pretty much everyone's gonna end up using. So they're gonna continue to have like, quote unquote, "captured" a bunch of the web, still.

• 5:51Nilay Patel?

  Here's just how I see it.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I told you this is gonna be deeply nerdy.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  No, they're fine. They love it.

• 5:56Nilay Patel?

  That guy loves it.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  What's really funny is a bunch of people, like, Neil, I just said, he did the, the bad thing was he showed me a tweet of somebody who said I was in the can for Google with this article, right before we came on stage, so I'm all like, angry about it. I end the article by like, calling them an idiot, about how they communicate.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, so here, here's like, my overall read on it. So Facebook is across the street, I believe. Facebook is a company, as you know, they go all in on whatever they're gonna do.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  They make no designs. Their goal is to like... Anything other than to completely suck in the web and have you live on Facebook. Right, like Facebook is like, are you a developing country? We've just air bombed like 5,000 Facebook phones in your country. Now your internet is Facebook. Live video is the future, we're gonna pay everybody to do live video. Yeah. Facebook subsumes the internet. They do instant articles. They, they, literally, they just don't pretend that they wanna do anything else. Google, everyone is afraid will subsume the internet. And so the, the deal with AMP, the reason Casey's saying you get traffic is if you participate in Google's weird AMP solution, Google will send you traffic, right? You get higher ranked in Google's search results, which everybody cares about. Google, I just, I don't think they have the ability to just turn the screw all the way.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're holding the knife, they're looking at you. They're like, ah.

• 7:11Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I just can't be this person today. And they're like, put the knife down. They're like, web standards it is. Yeah. And like, I think that's just the cycle they're always gonna be in.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Well, sure, but I mean, that's the difference between the web and a wild garden, right? Facebook can control everything because everything happens inside Facebook. Like, at the end of the day, Apple still exists and makes Safari and will have something to say about, you know, whatever Google is trying to do with AMP, right? Facebook just doesn't have the same kind of competitor in that way.

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Dieter will disagree with me. The web is so close to being Google's garden, right? It's just so, like, search is really important. Chrome, like, dominates. I know that there's this Safari team in mobile Safari, it's big, kind of, counterweight.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  What about Edge?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Firefox.

• 7:55Nilay Patel?

  I got it.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're using Edge.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Well, I'm using Chrome. But it's only because Google Docs is pretty bad in Edge.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, I just, like, Google is right at the point where they could take over the web.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all.

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  And the web is their revenue platform as well.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:11Nilay Patel?

  Uh, cuz they own DoubleClick, they own Open, like, their, their ad tech powers everything. When you talk, so they could, I just, they, they just can't. Like, there's a part of me that just wants to see what fully evil Google looks like. Ooh. Right, where it's like, sooner, like, Dark Sundar shows up, and he's like...

• 8:29Speaker 03

  He's got like red eyes.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  But, okay, so let me say this, though, because I think we have to say we're being a little self-serving here. Why does AMP exist? It was because publishers larded all of their webpages with too many ad trackers and too many disgusting widgets. Pages were too slow to load, right? And there were a lot of reasons why this happened. And, you know, by the way, I think we're a lot better than most publishers, but still, there needed to be a counterweight. Like, somebody sort of had to come in and unwind what the rest of us had done to the web and Google for them to ensure a future. They have to create a web that, you know, people like our audience here actually want to use.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's why they need the search carrot. That's why, like, they have that top stories carousel, which shows just AMP stories, and they're saying it'll show this other weird future standard someday.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  All right, so what happens next?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Anyway. What happens next is a bunch of people argue at each other. They yell at Google, they yell at each other, they decide whether they want to make this web packaging thing, which does have other uses beyond, like, instant loading. It will make webpages work offline better. It'll do a few other things. And then, once all the web engineers yell at each other and yell at Google, at the same time, Google and Apple will yell at each other about browsers, but they won't do it publicly because they don't yell at each other publicly. Mozilla will have a little piece of that, too. And then in two years, maybe we'll have this. Or not, or we'll just end up all using AMP and Google will take over. Those are like the options.

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  Dark Sundar. Yeah. If you want to send us fan art. Fan art has started to come in. If you would have liked to drop a picture of Dark Sundar, I'm available on Twitter, which uses AMP.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  It does.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  It really does. Let's talk about Amazon for one second.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Ha, ha, ha.

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Good luck. So I'm like all in with Alexa's. You've got Alexa's at your house. Dieter, you are like, you and Lisa have this constant battle between Alexa and Google Assistant.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  We have both, yeah.

• 10:18Nilay Patel?

  But actually, you have none of these things.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  No, and this story is basically why.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to walk us through it, Ash?

• 10:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I mean, literally, people on the internet were reporting that Alexa randomly just started laughing, like, out of nowhere. They would just be in their house.

• 10:34Nilay Patel?

  This happened to anybody here? See?

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Okay, well, yeah, there's some footage on Twitter of people literally just, like, walking into their kitchen and then Alexa just starts laughing. And no one knew at the time why. And I don't know if Amazon's even fully figured out. They've now disabled the command where you can make Alexa laugh.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Their explanation is not good. No. Their explanation is like, sometimes it heard the command, Alexa laugh. And it's like, what did you change? You changed something, because it wasn't happening before. No one's walking around muttering things that sound like, Alexa laugh. No one's, like, calling that out in their sleep.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Some people were saying it's like when they ask to turn on the lights. Lights, laugh.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Listen, I will say, so I never had the laughing issue, but I had, I had something else, which was I was watching TV, and then Alexa came to life and it delivered an inspirational quote by Jeff Bezos. I know that sounds like a joke. It is not. And, like, all of a sudden, it was like, here's a quote for you. If you want to succeed, you have to work very hard. Jeff Bezos.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  Did you turn off the TV and get back to work?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. I was like, listen, it worked for Jeff. So, yeah, clearly, Alexa can be a little too sensitive at times, and it makes things up. But, what a perfect story that just kind of crystallizes all of our anxieties about artificial intelligence into a single place, you know? Like, there are so many people out there saying, oh, you know, everybody's so worried about AI. Everybody needs to relax. It's just machine learning. It can barely do anything. And then it just started to laugh at us in 2018. Like, nobody thought we were going to get there this fast.

• 12:09Nilay Patel?

  So, Ashley, you're saying this is the reason you don't have it. What would make you put an Alexa in your house? Is there any? I feel like I ask you this question, like, every other week.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I don't, I just feel like I can't speak in voice commands. I don't know. Whenever I've, I've used smart lights, and I have some that would be like, set the light to 10% brightness. And I just don't think that is a command that I would ever use. On and off is fine, but when, with smart lights, if I want to change a color, or adjust the brightness, like, that just, for me, is not a natural command. So, I don't know if I can ever learn that language. My, I don't know. Am I aging out of this? I don't know. Weird.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, you and I, it's all old dudes who are into it. Like, we're the people who are like, oh, yes. It's like the terminal.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Babies are on the Alexa level. They're like, they could talk to Alexa all day.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I fail at asking the Alexa constantly. Like, I always ask everything twice. And Becky's like, why do you do this? Yeah, no. Like, I'm just gonna Google this for you.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  And the app is always faster for me. I'd rather just use the Smart Light app. It just works every time, it's done.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So, we use Alexa through the Sonos speakers. We have Sonos One, a surround system setup, and it is god awful in terms of its, like, recognition. You have to ask it three times, and then an Alexa, a random Echo, like, three rooms over, answers for you. And you're like, no, ah, and you gotta, like, go and close the door, because it doesn't do the thing. And I, like, realized, the reason that Alexa failing is so frustrating is you just have to sit there and experience it. Right? No, when there's a bug on your screen, you know what you can do? You can look at a tree. Right? But when an audio thing fails, or an audio thing has a bug, or it laughs at you, or there's something creepy happening, or god forbid it gets, like, properly hacked, there's no escape from it. It's all linear, it's all happening around you via audio, and you can't, you can't look

• 13:53Speaker 01

  away from it. You have to, like, have this immersive experience of computer hell. Whereas at least when there's a malware or a bad pop-up on a screen, you can look at a tree.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Or you can, like, throw your Windows PC out of the window.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, yeah. You can't do that with Alexa. I mean, you can, but you have to wait for it to finish.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  There's just something really awful about having to, like, ask a robot to do something twice, you know? Like, you already feel, you already feel like kind of a lazy bum for being like, hey, what's the weather? Like, because you just won't look out your window, you know? But then when it doesn't recognize your voice, like, oh, here we go again. I guess I'll enunciate really clearly this time.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wait, so you have Alexa in your Sonos?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I have, yeah, I have a, I have a standard OG Echo, and then I got a Sonos One, which I've been super disappointed with, for the reason that Dieter just mentioned, which is that the recognition is really bad. Also, the Spotify integration, which is the main reason I bought it, is super wonky. So, you know? But when it works, I will- I'll say this, when I had the original Echo, I put it in my bedroom and I would do like three things with it. I'd like ask it what the weather was every morning when I got out of the shower. I would use it to set alarms and I would like use it to play music like, you know, when I was in my room. Those are all good things and like voice control is great for that. But I think voice control actually hasn't gone very far beyond that unless you're one of these super hackers who wants to like set up a smart home routine for yourself, which I just don't.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I feel like Sonos benefited a lot from the HomePod review cycle. Because virtually, this is true of mine, it was true of everyone else I read. It was like, if you want a smart speaker that sounds great, buy a Sonos one. And then there's like the dark underbelly of the Sonos one, which is it's not a first-class Alexa device.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  So I don't know if you are familiar with one, if you've seen one. Literally, the integration is there's like an Alexa device sitting on top of a Sonos device. And they talk to each other through the cloud, which they're sitting right next to each other. So it's like a little weird. So you talk to Alexa and it goes and talks to Sonos that then sends a play command back to the speaker. And that round trip is just like there are robbers on that road. And they will just stop that from happening, literally it will. So it's gotten better when I have the Dot in my regular Sonos. But when you have like one, I think people just expect it to work like one thing.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  And that Sonos is not.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Because that's what Sonos said it would do. Sonos wasn't like, buy this if you want a pretty good Alexa. They were just like, finally, all your dreams have been realized.

• 16:19Nilay Patel?

  How long until Amazon just buys them?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Buy Sonos?

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  See, I've always bet that Amazon will just create incrementally better speakers over time and the need for Sonos will disappear. Sonos is an amazing hardware company, but they're living in a software world. And I just don't think their software chefs are ever going to be that good. So I don't know, I don't know how much Sonos is worth. So maybe Jeff Bezos decides it's worth it to snap it up. But man, I wouldn't bet against Amazon in a year coming out with something that sounded as good as the HomePod that could connect to, you know, the entire ecosystem of streaming music services.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  If Amazon had an interest in making things that sounded good.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  They would have done it by now.

• 16:56Nilay Patel?

  They would have, I mean, they wouldn't have shipped any of their products.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  Like even the new one that like, sounds good.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, as I'm thinking about it, it's like, the best Kindle, like, it still feels like you got it out of a like carnival drop down claw.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  Alright, speaking of hardware, we should move on. Let's talk about, is anybody buying, did anybody preorder Galaxy S9? Cricket! Oh, Samsung. Utter silence and one guy like chortled.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Yeah. I want to know why, but none of you have microphones, so I'm just gonna guess. Because it's, it looks like the S8. Well, you yelled something out, what did you say? I work for Samsung?

• 17:42Nilay Patel?

  Not anymore.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, because it looks exactly like the S8. Yeah. It, we played with a camera on Circuit Breaker Live the other day. Um, let's talk about the AR emojis. So you, this is like Samsung's like sad copy of the emoji.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Well, it's funny because Apple used Animoji to sell the iPhone X, in addition to like, the display and everything else. But this was a big part of their marketing pitch, was the Animoji's on the commercials. And now Samsung's like, we can do it too. And they launched these horrifying Bitmoji-like video avatar things. And of course, I was, I had to try it immediately, like Dan, our reviewer, I was like, give me the phone. Uh, and so it scans your face and then tries to create an avatar of you digitally. And a perk of it was, it actually scanned my face and detected my birthmark, which was kind of crazy to me. I was like, wow, okay, like, it's actually working. But it's just horrifying. It's scary. Like, no one wants this. And Bitmoji's just so much cuter and better. So, stick with Bitmoji, even though they don't move. Well, Snapchat now, you kinda can.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  My favorite thing about Samsung is just like, there's always that hint of tone deafness, right? Which like, comes across in the AR Bitmoji. But my favorite thing about the S9 was that, you know, they released this phone that is basically just an S8, and the ad campaign said, "The phone reimagined."

• 19:01Speaker 01

  That made me so happy.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's got a headphone jack.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And that was the reimagination process. They're like, we're gonna go back in time.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  But my issue with the S9 is actually what I ran into with the iPhone 8. So I still have a 6S and I need to upgrade, like it's time. And I was like, okay, do I want to spend a thousand dollars on a phone for an iPhone 10? Hmm, kind of a tough sell. And then I looked at the iPhone 8 and I was like, this looks just like my current phone, except it's missing a headphone jack and it's running the same software. So I just, like, why am I gonna spend more money to upgrade to basically the same phone that just works better? And I feel like the same thing with the S9 now, where it's like same software, pretty much same phone. I feel like that's a hard sell, to get people to spend the money to just get what looks like the same phone.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we have a story on the site today, actually. This headline is super surprising to me. A study by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the well-known SERP.

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  I bet they're well-known, there's probably a SERP person here. I'm sorry, sir. You're great. Study finds people are more loyal to Android than iOS, which...

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Are they loyal to Android or are they locked into Google services?

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  I don't think, I don't know.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Is that a distinction or is that a difference?

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  I think that people buy Samsung phones and then they keep buying them and they keep having them. But that is counter to everything that Apple says about the iPhone, which is people are switching it faster and faster rates from Android to iOS. I think we're, we are just definitely at a point now where whatever's happening with the iPhone is the sales are slowing down, right? They're flattening out, they're still going up. And Apple is doing things like focusing on their services business or making you AirPods. There's a rumor they're gonna make high-end headphones now. And they're trying to build out the universe of things that you buy because you have an iPhone. And Samsung is like sort of doing that because they've always done that. They're like, also, we sell refrigerators and submarines, like...

• 20:57Nilay Patel?

  Have good thoughts about us, but they don't have that. I think they don't have that loyalty. There's no reason that somebody with a Samsung phone necessarily goes out and buys a Samsung TV or like level headphones or whatever else.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  They got there with the Gear smartwatch insofar as anybody bought smartwatches.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  No, Verizon just forced you to take one away.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 21:14Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're like, "Did you, you bought a Samsung phone? You now own a Gear smartwatch." You have no choice in this matter.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  This is what I mean about like when you're a hardware company in a software world, right? Like, the genius turned out to be owning the operating system. And then if you were making the hardware for it, you could make money, but you weren't going to be in as good a position as somebody like an Apple or Google.

• 21:32Nilay Patel?

  I think... Isn't the counter of this product right here that runs Windows? Right, like, Microsoft makes a bunch of money, but their hardware is not the same.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  So, okay, on the S9, I was talking to Dan about this a lot when we were editing his review. The phone is very, very good. The hardware is great, it's just iterative, but it's good. The camera is slightly better. The aperture thing is a pointless gimmick, but it's cool, whatever. It's Dan's take, that might take. Anyway.

• 22:01Nilay Patel?

  Name one thing you like. I feel like we've only hated...

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Not a headphone jack, no. The hardware's amazing, the screen is amazing, it doesn't have a notch, it's incredibly well-made, battery life is decent, has a fast processor. Everything about the hardware is good. They didn't like, they didn't get the best, best camera, but whatever. Like, the phone is a whole group of things. But because the hardware was basically iterative and basically good at Samsung's very high quality, I meant that, okay, well now let's look at the software. And the software is the same as it ever was, which is, it's Android with a bunch of Samsung stuff on it, and Samsung every year were like, "They did slightly better at not having so much junk on it." But because there wasn't a huge shift in the hardware for us to pay attention to, like, "Ooh, look at this whiz-bang new thing", it has become clear, like, more of our attention is able to be directed at the fact

• 22:48Speaker 01

  that it is inexcusable that there aren't updates. I think actually Google releasing the Android P preview around the time that the S9, the Galaxy phones come out is maybe a little bit intentional. It's a reminder that like you have to wait for updates. And I also think that I'm just done giving Samsung excuses for like duplicate apps and like the general extra cruff- crufftiness. Like, if you think the Samsung browser is better, and many people do, and I actually don't disagree entirely, then like, don't preload Chrome on there. Like, go full evil if you're gonna go full evil. Or back off. But they can't, right? Because they like have to get the Google Play deal, but... At some point, like, I'm done making, like, be a phone company and do the thing. Or don't, or don't maybe be a software company and don't do the thing.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm, I'm tired of, like, eh, it's fine, I'm into some Samsung stuff, but if you're really good at it, you can turn it off if you don't want it.

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  So you're proposing, like, the Galaxy S9 Pixel Edition?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, I mean, they tried that. It was the Google Play Edition, right?

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I bought those phones.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  I bought them on this show.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  No one else did, and yet it still took Google six months to deliver them.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  I just, I, I, I don't think that they get the benefit of the doubt in the way that they used to when it comes to software. And, like, we haven't even said the word Bixby yet.

• 24:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I was waiting.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  We're all gonna say it together, ready? Bixby! Now we've summoned him. I wish, if I had thought this through just a little bit more, there would have been a dog with shoes. Like, I really did not prepare for that moment. Can everyone leave and come back tomorrow? Because I'm gonna get a dog with shoes. So we played with it on the Circuit Breaker Show.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  The dog with shoes.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  We did not play the phone. The Circuit Breaker Show took a wild turn. We were playing, and it is shockingly fine. Dan did not agree with us.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:35Nilay Patel?

  But there's a part of it where what it's trying to do is interesting.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  And then there's a part of it where the execution of that is, is not interesting or good, but the, what it's trying to do is, like, you talk to your phone. Did everybody see the tweet we sent from Dan's phone? It's like the most nonsense tweet. It's like, I think it says, "I love Paul, good, excellent, enable." Which it was supposed to say, "I love Paul and Eli." And Bixby decided, "My name is Enable," which is good. That's my Ready Player One name.

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  Great. But the idea that you can just, like, yell at your phone, like, "Hey, open Twitter and send a tweet for me," and it, like, can operate the phone for you, is really neat.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  It's very slow. You should be able to remap that button, and it doesn't actually always work. But the idea is, I'm trying, man.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Why, why should they get credit for the idea?

• 25:29Nilay Patel?

  Because it's the most interesting thing people are doing with voice systems on a phone.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, the, the HomePod, a bunch of people gave Apple credit for the idea without actually judging the thing, which was, Siri and the HomePod is not that good.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Like, we should, we should use that same, like, clear-eyed judgment on Bixby.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I don't think anyone's out here like, I'm the only person who has ever made a case for Bixby.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Except for Dr. Bixby, who's at Sam's, and he's like, "Name it after me." Like, that was it. That was as much of a defense of Bixby as has ever been mustard. And I said, "The idea is good and the execution is terrible."

• 26:04Speaker 01

  We're also accepting fan art for Dr. Bixby, by the way. If you want to send that.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

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• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  So find out today why ZipRecruiter has been used by growing businesses of all sizes and industries to find the most qualified job candidates with immediate results. Right now, Vergecast listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That is right, free. Just go to ziprecruiter.com/verge. That's ziprecruiter.com/verge. And try it for free. Ziprecruiter.com/verge. All right, do you want to talk about Android P?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, so it's a preview, developer preview. Don't install it. It's only available on pixels, which means it's not available on any Android tablets because Android tablets are going away. They're getting replaced by Chrome OS tablets. You heard it here first a few episodes ago. So the thing everybody's paying attention to is it has support for Notches. In the screen.

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  It's horrible.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  It's fine, whatever. The, the reason they had to put support for notches in is we saw Mobile World Congress a couple of weeks ago that literally every Android manufacturer not named Samsung is making a notched phone and they're all gonna be garbage and have bad implementations because they don't know how to do software. And so like, Google had to do it to like, save Android from everybody making notched phones. It's the only option they had.

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  It's just sad. I'm not, I don't have a reaction to that other than

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  A deep wave of sadness.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  But like, think about just what that meeting must have been like when the like, Google Android Manager had to go in and tell the design team that they had to make a version of Android to support what was basically an iOS feature.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Speaking of iOS, so they, they moved the clock over to the left, which I have very strong, like, I don't, why?

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Unforgivable.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I don't get it. Why? Even on the right. It's worth the lobs.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  What else?

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I think, we haven't really talked about this much, um, because I haven't fully read up on it, but there's a bunch of security stuff that actually matters a lot in P. So, yeah, we already saw that they are disabling access to like, the sensors, like the camera and the microphone when an app is in standby in the background, uh, so that you, we can't listen to you or like, open up your camera. But they're gonna require HTTPS for apps that communicate over the internet. Uh, they're doing, they're doing encrypted backups in a different way. You can randomize your MAC address so that people can't track you across different Wi-Fi networks. Uh, apps aren't gonna be able to access the device ID anymore to also fingerprint you and identify you. So there's a bunch of stuff in Android P that makes it slightly harder for apps to

• 29:15Speaker 01

  do really skeezy things to track you, uh, which is a huge change.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  And I hope that it works.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Is this Google just slowly locking their version of Android down more and more?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  For sure. Uh, in fact, if you have an app that, uh, so the way apps on Android work is you quote unquote, target a version of Android. So you're like, this is targeted to like, 32 or 45 or whatever, like those, that, that API number. And if you target, if your app is designed for an older version of Android, when a user installs your app or opens it, Android P will throw up a warning saying, yo, this app is old.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And then you'll be like, "Well, I don't want to use that." And then the developer will be sad. And then they'll maybe update their app to target the new version.

• 29:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Is the idea. But again, we shouldn't talk about a new version of Android without noting that in a year from now, once it's out and it's on whatever the next Pixel phone is, that, I don't know, 300,000 people will have it. And that's it. And everybody else, at most, that's who will have it. And everybody else will be on some older version of Android. I don't have a ton of faith that the stuff they've done in the past couple of years to try and get more companies to update their phones faster is actually going to take. And the reason I don't think that is because Samsung is not updated.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But Samsung just wants to sell you a new phone.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  They don't have this other business. You know, like if you buy an app on the Play Store, Samsung gets none of that revenue. Right? The way that Apple gets a cut of the revenue on every little purchase that you make on the iPhone.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  I think Samsung is like, "Yeah, our phones, after a while, they suck. You should get a new one." And like, you know, I think Google has a different idea with the Pixel, right? Because they do get a cut of that revenue over time. They can see that. How many people here have Pixels? The Samsung guy.

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  I feel like you're trying to, you're like making an announcement here today. Like, "Do you have some personal news?"

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  Do you guys like your Pixels? Love it. Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm going to switch.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  No, you're not.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  It's...

• 31:17Speaker 01

  You're just not.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  It's just iMessage.

• 31:23Nilay Patel?

  I have so much to say.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  The security news is interesting to me because Microsoft also announced this week that they had a new security update, I think for the next version of Windows, that addresses people's concerns about keyloggers in the software. And so I feel like all of these companies are responding to everyone being deeply paranoid that we're being spied on by these companies.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  And then the Alexa news comes in, and of course, that doesn't help things either. But it's just an interesting way that they're dealing with our paranoia.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for Google in particular, the thing that they, the circle they have to try and square is, a bunch of the really good stuff in Android happens in the granular app updates, which they can release whenever they want, unlike Apple, which still has everything in a big dumb package once a year. And a bunch of like, other little like, Google Play services updates. So if you're on a Google Play Android phone, you actually get a bunch of new stuff all the time, but nobody ever pays attention or notices. So, I don't know, in Google's ideal world, they'd be treating Android the way that like Chrome, the Chrome team works, where it's like, version 66 and version 67, and it just rolls every six weeks. And that's what they're basically doing with Google Play. But nobody notices, nobody pays attention. We pay attention to the big, you know, version updates.

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  Because those are where the UI changes come.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  That's where the UI changes come, yeah.

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  That's, even when we write about it, right, we wrote, here's Android P, and then I think the most popular story that we had, in our like, huge list of Android P stories, were here are the visual changes.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  And literally, it was like, there's support for a notch. And that's the whole change.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  The support for a notch, the corners on some of the boxes are rounded now, which is...

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Mateus like drank his way into that one. I'm on it. All right, you might notice that Paul Miller is not here, sadly. Paul.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Paul.

• 33:01Nilay Patel?

  But every week, Paul does a se... I hope we're ready for this. We prepared for this. The dog with shoes was not a, I wish I'd... But every week, Paul does a segment.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we never forget about it.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Here, here is that thing.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  Another year gone by, another South by Southwest that I sadly could not attend. I'm here at an art gallery, surrounded by an amazing installation of televisions. But if it helps you feel better, we can pretend like it's a brand activation

• 33:44Speaker 05

  for some sort of underwear company.

• 33:48Speaker 05

  You know, whatever floats your boat. So, this week, just like every week, I'm gonna do my segment. It's called Shoes, You've Got 'Em.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Because everybody wears shoes. And this week, we're highlighting, very aptly, shoes from a brand. That brand is Pizza Hut. And the shoes are called the Pie Tops 2. Pie Tops have buttons on them. One button orders pizza. The other button pauses your television so that you can go get the pizza when it arrives. It's basically an all-in-one package. Shoes for your feet, and for ordering pizza, and for pausing the TV. What more could you ask for? I hope you have a wonderful time at South by Southwest.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Love the brands you're with, is what I always say. This has been Paul Miller, signing off.

• 34:57Nilay Patel?

  So, boy. I will say that no one showed us that before we were...

• 35:02Speaker 05

  No. It was all, all used to me.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I wasn't prepared for how disturbing it would be.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  Right? It was dark.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Are those real shoes?

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, those are real shoes. Our producer, Andrew Moreno, earlier, he was like, "I'm trying to get them." He's like, working on it. We'll have the shoes. They're probably here.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  It has to be, yeah.

• 35:21Nilay Patel?

  Someone find the Pizza Hut people and bring us the shoes. All right, Casey.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Every week.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Every week. No, I'm... We just listed here Twitter and Snapchat.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:33Nilay Patel?

  I feel like you and Ashley are the people I come to, to explain to me what the hell is going on with Twitter and Snapchat.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, there was this interesting story that I thought would be fun to talk about today. Our colleague Angela Chen published it yesterday. There was a new study that came out where researchers had access to the entire Twitter fire hose of tweets. They analyzed millions of tweets. And what they found was that fake news spreads way faster than the truth. And so, and by the way, the problem isn't bots, which, you know, we've written plenty about, but it's humans. And so, what they found was that if you share a true political article on... Twitter, that article is unlikely to reach more than 100 people. But for the top 1% of fake news that gets spread on Twitter, it reaches more than 100,000 people.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  So, you know, there's this old line that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on, and this is sort of the empirical proof that at least on Twitter, that is the case.

• 36:33Nilay Patel?

  So I read a nuance of this study.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Which is that lies are more interesting.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  So it was actually, it was claims that have been fact-checked as false, spread farther than claims that have been fact-checked as true, because the lies are more fabulous.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Right, which is so freaky, because when you think about what gets you to share something on social media, generally it's because you've found something really novel, right? But when you are unconstrained by the truth, you can think of the most novel things in the world, like, hey, aliens landed in our backyard. And so that kind of thing can just spread really quickly. So when you think about, you know, if you work at Twitter, or you work at Facebook, and you want to try to improve the integrity of the stuff that gets shared on your platforms, what do you do? Because people are never going to want to stop sharing these novel things. In fact, it's the thing that drives them to share in the first place, but it turns out that makes these networks really susceptible to all kinds of falsehoods. So I think it's a really important thing to think about as we sort of head into like 2018 midterm elections.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Were you shocked by this? This seems like obvious, like, duh.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's like, you remember that there's an old like SNL like Weekend Update segment, where they'd be like, "From the medical journal, duh." Just like say the most obvious thing in the world. So on one hand, yes. My understanding is, when people went out and talked to researchers, they said, "Yes, we sort of suspected this, but we've never had data this good, and this study was really well-designed." And Twitter, by the way, I would give them credit for this, worked really closely with the researchers, gave them access they don't give to everyone. Like, it actually is trying to understand the nature of how these things work. So we now have a lot of data, and hopefully, if you're Twitter, you maybe have some ideas about how you're going to defend against this in the coming months and years.

• 38:14Speaker 04

  And this is why, like, the trending boxes have been such an issue, right? Is because trending, you would hope, would be very reliable, truthful stories, but in reality, it's like a popularity contest, and the popular stories are the fake ones.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Right, and, you know, that you can create, you know, 10,000 Twitter accounts, and I'll get them tweeting the same hashtag, and then all of a sudden, you have a globally trending story, even if it's just, you know, two dudes in Russia.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  Sweet.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Ash, you like recently cleaned out your Twitter, right? You cleaned out your archives and like started over.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, I deleted it.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  Why did you do that?

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Well, I have Twitter, so I deleted all my old tweets.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Why's that?

• 38:47Speaker 04

  Um, it's not because I ever think I tweeted something like bad. I've always been a normal, good human, but I promise. Um, I just deleted it because I felt it was time. I just, I haven't been able to scroll back to my original archives from literally 10 years ago in forever. So I was like, you know what? White and clean. See ya.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Did you download your archive before you did it?

• 39:10Speaker 04

  I did download my archive. So I have it if I ever really feel like reliving freshman year of college.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Right. Has it, has it, has like anything about the experience? Because I've been thinking about doing it, but I'm not really sure.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  It was just weird at first because it's your brand. So when you go to your page, you're like, oh my God, who am I? And then when you tweet a few times, you're like, oh yeah, that's me. We're back.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  You, I mean, your whole show is about emergent behaviors on platforms.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  We're doing an episode about unfollowing, which is a little bit different. But some of the reasoning actually has to do with a little bit of this.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Do you think there's been a big change in how people are using Twitter with all this? I mean, like Jack Dorsey's out there being like, I don't know how we're going to fix it, but I will fix it. Like, do you perceive a change in how people use it or how you use it?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Uh, not, I'm always shocked when normal humans use it. Like, like Caitlin and I always talk about like Kim Kardashian uses Twitter all the time. And we're like, Kim, why? Girl, get off Twitter. Like, it's not, what are you doing there? Um, but no, I mean, I think, I think we're all, everyone here in this room is aware of the issues the platforms face. I don't think, no, I don't think things have changed though.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I always just look at, there was, I was tweeting yesterday, like Michael B. Jordan bought some girl a retainer because she broke her retainer.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  Oh God.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  Took his shirt off in Black Panther. Like, I, like, that's, it's a great little three tweet story. Like, the algorithm creates those moments, I think, with increasing frequency now.

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  Is that like, do you think of that as like being a good thing? Or is that balanced out by like Russian bots?

• 40:40Speaker 04

  I was never one of those people who had like a very intense Twitter community, but I know a lot of people who have and they like miss those days of, "Oh, it was just a bunch of friends connecting about our really niche interests." And now it's like, you can't log on without facing something horrible. But yeah, I think those days maybe are gone a little bit. And I don't love like Chicken Nuggets guy or whatever his name is.

• 41:02Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so then my next question for the two of you is Snapchat. And Ash, I want to start with you as well. Like, I feel like I have just stopped considering Snapchat. It's like on my home screen, which is pretty precious real estate, and I never open it.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Same with Kylie Jenner.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  She hates Snapchat. She felt sad about it. She doesn't hate Snapchat. She misses Snap, I think.

• 41:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Is that over as well? Casey's like, Casey's a raring to go.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Casey, you do the thing.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  So I don't think it's over. And in fact, after they did their redesign, which a bunch of very vocal people screamed and yelled about, their downloads went up, which is often an effect of redesigns like this.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  I think Snapchat is still a really good messaging app, and I think it continues to not get enough credit for deleting people's messages by default. There are so many good reasons to just like have fun offhanded chats with people that aren't stored forever on a Facebook server, and Snapchat still does that. And so my question for them is sort of, you know, where can they take that and can they build a real business around it? The other side of Snapchat is discover publishers putting stories. I've never basically seen a good one or one that I liked. You know, granted, a lot of it is maybe aimed a little younger than I am. But that continues to just be kind of a nonstarter for me. But as a messaging app, it's really fast, it's lightweight, it's fun. They have something there. They have, what, 180 million daily users? Like, there is something there. So I haven't ruled them out.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  My, you know, my concerns about them have more to do with like their, their corporate structure and the fact that they can't get an executive to stick around for longer than a year, like more than, I don't like the design.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  I think the teens love Snapchat still. Like, they're totally all, that is how they talk to each other, Snapchat. So, they got that.

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you think the Instagram just ruthlessly ripping them off is having any effect at all? Like, that's what killed it for me.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  I stopped, I started watching stories on Instagram and I stopped watching on Snapchat.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it like, basically, anyone older than like 24 or 25 immediately started putting all their stories on Instagram because that's where all their friends were for the most part, and Instagram did a really good job of copying it. It was a lot more kind of fun to use, I think, in some ways. And it just absolutely killed Snapchat's international growth because there were many, many people who had never seen stories before. So, yeah, it definitely put Snapchat in a tough spot.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  And Snapchat had always been neglecting Android anyway, things like that, and it came back to kind of bite them there.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because they just screenshot the video camera, right? Like, they're still doing that on Android phones, which is not, it's like deeply impolite.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  It's like, we know you have a phone with a camera, but what if we don't give a shit about that? Yeah, I don't know. Like, what do you make of the layoffs? Because they're laying off 120 people in their engineering division. But, so out of how many?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  It was about 10% of their employees is what I have heard. I will say that was surprising. You know, there was an earlier round of layoffs that affected people kind of more in human resources roles and other kind of non-essential stuff. You know, my question is, what were those 100 engineers working on? That's sort of be the most interesting question, right? Companies are generally very loathe to get rid of engineers because they're hard to attract in the first place. I'm sure Snapchat's saving a lot of money by laying off 100 engineers. And apparently Evan Spiegel had sent out a memo last year saying that he really wanted to break even in 2018. So, you know, maybe they are going to try to cut it down to the bone. But, you know, in a certain way, you could see that as a smart move. Like, I've criticized Snapchat a lot for the fact that they lost like more than $400 million in their first quarter as a public company, right?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  That's like, it's like really hard to lose $400 million on disappearing messages, and they did. So, this is a good step, I guess.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  It's just weird that they're not.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  It didn't hit sales, or their media division, or like whoever's in charge of Discover. Or, like, that's where the revenue is for them, but it's not their product.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Right. Again, I don't think we really know what these 100 engineers were doing. So if you know, if you know, please DM me. I'm very curious.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  All right. And then I also have on the list, Ashley, you were very excited about this earlier. Barack Obama reportedly talking to Netflix.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  I mean, I just am fully here for a Barack Obama Netflix show. Please. Yeah, no, Netflix says that they're in talks with Barack and Michelle about a possible show. And Netflix also says that they're really going to try to get more into original content, which makes sense, because Disney is coming in. They're gonna have their own platform with Disney, Marvel, everything, pretty much. Like Netflix kinda needs to get on it.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  So, okay, Netflix said that they're gonna, they're expecting to have a total of like 700 original series in 2018. And it was, that includes 80 movies. Every time, every time I open Netflix, there's just like a million new shows I've never heard of. And like, I assume they're all good? I don't know. I assume a bunch of...

• 45:51Speaker 02

  They're not. Alter Carbon is not good.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Alter Carbon, fair. But Ugly Delicious is really good. There's like a bunch of...

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Queer Eye is amazing.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Queer Eye is amazing, except for the one episode with the cop. That was terrifying.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  I need to watch this show now.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  You really do. But it's gotten to the point where, like, I used to like Netflix because I would feel like I'm participating in a cultural moment, and I'm experiencing a thing I know a bunch of other people are experiencing, but we're all gonna, you know, watch this show together. But now it's just like, oh, there's just a million things here. And I don't know, like, I'm assuming their strategy is you don't need a cable subscription anymore because there's always something on Netflix that's pretty good. But I think they're basically there now. Are they just, I don't, so I don't know if there's a next thing for them. If they're gonna like, try and like, get stuff into theaters again, because that hasn't been going super well for them.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I feel like it's the blockbusters. Like, when I was watching the Oscars this last weekend, like Icarus won. And I was so excited because they're like, oh, this is a Netflix. Documentary, so I immediately could go on Netflix and watch this Oscar winner, which for me was a huge thing, and you don't get that with the other big blockbusters that are from traditional studios.

• 46:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, you did a whole episode on password sharing last season on Why'd You Push That Button, and I feel like the new cable bundle is just you and six friends. Sign up for six services.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Everyone here, I would assume, is sharing passwords.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  This is a startup. You guys are at South by. I encourage you to get drunk tonight and propose this startup where people just manage password sharing. The Samsung guy is like into it. He's like in a... And it's like, we're just gonna share our passwords, because it's really expensive to sign up for all these services. Yeah. It is actually much cheaper, I did the math recently, it's much cheaper for me to have every single channel on my cable bundle and just use those apps than it would be for me to sign up for Sling TV and Hulu and Netflix and whatever. I mean, I sign up for them also. I also have a title subscription. I'm not a good example.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  But if I just use the cable apps that I have, I actually get more stuff, and it's like way cheaper. But I think some people just have Netflix, and that's all they...

• 47:55Speaker 04

  I think a very large number of people just have Netflix.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  Do you think they're gonna...

• 47:59Speaker 04

  The only reason I can access cable is because my parents still pay for it. Thanks, guys.

• 48:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so do you think like Netflix is missing a cultural... I mean, they're not gonna lose this Obama deal to Amazon or whatever.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  No, I think that it's too important to them. Yeah, it's an incredible business. Like, what a story. I don't know, it's a really fascinating company to watch. But yeah, I think they're in a very good position. I think if you want to, you know, identify some long-term threat to them, it really is Amazon, because Amazon gives you all of this really good TV programming, and it's not even their core business, right? Like, they essentially use TV to subsidize everything else. And so if you're Netflix, like, that's probably a little scary, but that's exactly the reason why Reed Hastings is gonna spend billions and billions of dollars on original content, because he's not... He's gonna make sure that Netflix feels radically better than whatever is on Amazon Prime.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. There's a really good variety story by a reporter named Yanko Rutgers, who we really like. And he went to Netflix, he saw their testing, but there was a nugget in there that I thought was really interesting. That Netflix makes deals with TV companies, putting Netflix buttons on remotes, which we always think of as like bloatware. That button drives more Netflix viewing than almost anything else.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:13Nilay Patel?

  So that deal, so people, like 70% of Netflix launches are that button on TVs, which is like incredible. I don't think anyone's pushing the sling TV button.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  They're just hitting the Netflix button.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  They're hitting the crackle button.

• 49:26Nilay Patel?

  I have a Roku with a crackle button. I feel like I should like frame it. Be like, here lies another Sony idea. Put like a, like one of those like memory sticks next to it, just like line them up.

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Mattress Firm. I have one question for all the "I'm gonna listen to a podcast to help me fall asleep" people. You struggling to get some sleep? If you answered yes, you're in luck, because there's a great tip for how you can fall asleep more easily. And that is basically to buy a new mattress. From Mattress Firm, America's neighborhood mattress store, which lets your budget stretch farther when you're looking for ways to improve your sleep. They're more than mattress experts. Their whole package helps you transform your mattress into a bed, from adjustable bases and sheets to headboards and bedroom decor. Do they make soft mattresses or just firm mattresses? Every kind of mattress. They got you covered, literally and figuratively. Go to mattressfirm.com/podcast to see what deals are happening right now. As I read this sentence to you, "There's 120-night sleep trial to ensure perfection and 120-night low-price guarantee,

• 50:23Nilay Patel?

  so you know you paid the perfect price." So, go to mattressfirm.com/podcast, learn how your sleeping can be monumentally improved. And if you're still awake, we're gonna start the podcast again right now. All right, we have like 10 minutes left, and then we're gonna do some questions. Uh, there are some microphones floating around. I'm terrified of all of you.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  This is your moment, but if you don't take it, then I won't be... There we go.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 50:52Speaker 06

  Do you think there's a future for Tidal?

• 50:54Nilay Patel?

  For Tidal?

• 50:56Speaker 06

  Spotify?

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, Tidal. Man. Um, so there's a lot of people who do. Um, I...

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it sounds better. I was like, people are gonna yell at me. The tweets are coming. I don't think any human being can actually hear uncompressed music that way. I think what you do get is you get, you get more dynamic range. So it's like louder. I think louder things generally sound better. Like when you go to the store and you listen to speakers, the one that sounds loudest is the one you're gonna buy. Just like the brightest TV is the one you're gonna buy. So I think Tidal occasionally sounds louder. I don't think it sounds better in any meaningful way. I talk to a bunch of the other streaming services all the time about this. It's the one question everybody has about Spotify. If Spotify had flipped the uncompressed button and just streamed uncompressed music, Tidal might just be dead, right? Because everyone would have the bigger catalog. And every other streaming service says, "We don't think people can hear it. We do the A/B test all the time. Nobody can hear it."

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  That's Tidal's, that and exclusives are their differentiators. They don't have this burgeoning hardware ecosystem that both Apple and Spotify are building. There were some jobless things for Spotify hardware the other day, which to me is a nightmare of ecosystem lock-in, but whatever, they're doing it. Tidal is just, they're just access to some music. And as long as that music is better or more interesting than other music, then what they have is a content business. They don't have this ecosystem.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Right, so Apple Music.

• 52:19Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  For Spotify, what's your primary music service?

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Apple Music.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, Spotify.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  Spotify.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Spotify.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  There you go. You were gonna say something, Ash.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 52:28Nilay Patel?

  You were looking at me expectantly.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  No, I was reflecting on a previous conversation I've had. I'm like spoiling every single episode of Watch the Throne right now, so I'm trying not to like chime in too much, because this is literally just, I don't want to spoil it, anything.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  You should watch the tape, and every time Ashley like blinks, you're like, "Oh, we're ruining, we're ruining another episode of this show." Uh, Casey, what were you?

• 52:49Speaker 02

  I think of Tidal as like a local record store where they have some cool stuff that you probably can't get anywhere else, but it's like a small business. Like, you can't grow, like, there's a certain number of people who are, I will say like the most frustrating musical thing in my entire life is I love the song "No Church in the Wild" from Watch the Throne, and it's not on Spotify or Apple Music. Like, you can only get it on Tidal or I guess YouTube. And like, I would love it if I could get that on a streaming service, but I'm not gonna pay Tidal $10 a month so I can listen to "No Church in the Wild."

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  But you could just buy the record.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  On Apple Music.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  And it'd be well-integrated into your library. This is why I use Apple Music.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Sure, and like I have the MP3, like I did buy that record at some point, but you know, what ultimately, I think all of us just kind of pick like a single listening home and you want as much of your stuff to be there. Like you just, you go there because it's easy. If you have to switch between five apps, like depending on your mood, that's a terrible experience.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  So I, my primary listening thing is Spotify, but I also use a combination of Google Play Music and Apple Music depending on what phone I'm using at the time.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  So you're the one, Google Play Music?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am, I'm that one. Well, I have a, it's free because I have a YouTube Red subscription.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have the same thing.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  I had a Google Play subscription and then I got a YouTube Red, but now I think of it the exact opposite way. But I use the other service when I want to listen to music at work because I want to listen to something like ambient and chill. But if I do that, Spotify just wrecks all my other recommendations.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Like I'll go in the car and I'll want to listen to, I don't know, rock and roll, and I can't. I'm just listening to Weird Electronica. Like they don't, they're very bad at separating out my moods in a way that the, so I just like, those services are for like mood music and then Spotify's for actually listening.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Apple Music respects the fact that I own some of my music, which is literally the only reason I use it. Also, I now own a very strange Chinese iPod with an SD card in it, which was remanufactured and they actually printed the back different to reflect its new capacity, and I'm going to live that iPod life. Do you have any other?

• 54:45Speaker 03

  How you doing? I love The Verge, just wanted to tell you all.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, man.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  I read it every day, almost. So I wanted to ask, like, just kind of referring to the beginning with the Google Amp stuff. So like, don't you think it's worth giving Google some credit because without them, they're spurring these conversations? Kind of like giving, I mean, in two years, at least they're, you know, in my opinion, I think they're giving, they're adding this innovation like they've done with Google Fi, Google Fiber. So that's just, just want to hear what you all think about that. Because you were saying they're taking over the internet, but I think they're, you know, making it better in some ways.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  No, I think that's totally fair. I just worry about giving Google too much credit just because they are so big and so influential that it's better to have a default of skepticism with some of these companies. But I think their fundamental argument that if we hadn't done AMP and made it sort of googly from the jump and not waited for the standard and didn't wait for the standard bodies, if we hadn't done that, we would be living in an absolute nightmare and the web would be virtually dead right now. Because it was, like Neelai wrote the article, "The Mobile Web Sucks," and he was not wrong. And so everything was going to be really slow. And so there's a bunch of stuff that they absolutely deserve credit for, and AMP is on that list. And it makes humanity better, that there's a free and open web, and Google's one of the biggest corporate proponents of a free

• 56:06Speaker 01

  and open web. Not sure I want to give them credit for Google Fiber, because they didn't really stick with that.

• 56:13Nilay Patel?

  There's just a lot of stuff where you give Google credit for starting the idea. I mean, like, that's great. And then it just trickles to a close.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Someone just said Reader.

• 56:23Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, Reader was like...

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Brutally murdered.

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  They're like, "You really liked this, and now it's gone." But their entire messaging strategy is one of these things. Fiber is another one of these things, where they weren't going to be businesses that rivaled Google Search. So they just sort of let them languish and die. And if they just had a little bit more of that ruthlessness, they could have grown them into businesses that won in their category. I just think those categories, on balance, are small, right? They're small compared to Google. And so they split up the company into Alphabet. They're like, "We organized this. We got Waymo and Nest." And they're like, "Well, Nest is small. Now it's just part of Google again," right? Like, they keep kind of like shuffling these things around. And I just wish they would finish a thought from time to time, right? I think they get credit for a lot of these ideas.

• 57:13Nilay Patel?

  Even their hardware stuff, right? Like, the Pixel Buds are not great. The Home Max is medium, I would say. Like, it's a solid medium.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  The Pixel phones didn't ship for a while, the 2XL had the screen. Like, they need to finish these thoughts in a much more aggressive way.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  I think they're terrified to finish some of these thoughts because finishing some of these thoughts is going to get them in trouble with like anti-monopoly regulations.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  That's like, for a lot of stuff, I think the answer is they don't want to piss off their partners and they don't want to get accused of being a monopoly. And like, if they were like to fully finish like Project Fi, their carrier service, for example, they would so piss off Verizon and AT&T and, I don't know, Vodafone and whomever, that it would hurt their business. I think frankly, that's their problem in messaging, is they could have done the thing, but they're not doing the thing because they want carriers to continue to sell Android phones.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We had some more over here.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  With all the security features in Android P, do you think that's going to mitigate the fragmentation issue that they have with Android?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  I think that Android P is not going to completely solve Android fragmentation. I think nothing probably will, ever. The thing that has solved Android fragmentation insofar as it's possible is Google Play Services and that they issue updates that way. But, short of Google doing something much more extreme than they have shown a willingness to do, we're going to continue to have a fragmentation problem. But, I think that the fragmentation problem is way, way, way smaller than it used to be.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was going to say, it's amazing how with just all the events unfolding in the world every day, I've never been less concerned about Android fragmentation.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, also Samsung just sells all the phones. Okay, we have time, I think, for one more. The Samsung guy wants to announce these. Sorry, company. Let's go back there, we... Sorry. We'll get two more, okay? We'll do this one and this gentleman over here.

• 59:07Speaker 06

  Okay, speaking of events in the world, when we talk about choosing between Samsung and iPhone, usually we think about, that's what we can do in a free market. But what if all of the sudden, there was a trade war and our choice between a Korean product and an American product would start to matter? And that would be a ridiculous thing to say a week ago, but not today. What are your thoughts on that?

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, I will tell you that the one "Why'd you push that button" pitch that I... The one, the only one that I've ever rejected, was Ashley pitching me...

• 59:37Speaker 04

  We are now going to pitch over season three, just say it.

• 59:40Nilay Patel?

  Was "Why'd you buy an iPhone?"

• 59:42Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 59:43Nilay Patel?

  Which is the trolliest thing I've ever...

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Wait, I want to hear this pitch.

• 59:45Speaker 04

  Why'd you buy an iPhone? Want to know why you bought an iPhone?

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  I... These products are just too... Like... The real trade war is with China, right? The phones are made in China. Like, it's not an American product. It's, there's a company in America that makes iPhones, that designs them, but the supply chain for that product is completely worldwide, and it's manufactured and built by a huge set of Chinese companies. Like, I don't know.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Isn't there some weird thing with the way that the laws work, where Apple technically buys the iPhone from Foxconn?

• 1:00:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so this is in the Qualcomm case, which I still just desperately want to understand, because it's so confusing. And they, I think it's mostly so their executives can just like, issue shade to each other in the press. But Foxconn makes the phones, and Apple buys the phones from Foxconn. They buy them at a wholesale rate. So like, at the end of the day, you have to decide what that origin of that product is, and I don't think that's simple. And I think this trade war stuff is really interesting. It was weird, we were doing Circle Breaker Live, and we're like, playing with gadgets and like, screwing with stuff, and our YouTube chat was about trade policy? Which is not what you would expect on a YouTube chat on a gadget show. So I think there's just a lot of interest

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  in what is gonna happen to these companies. But I also think they're gonna, they're just gonna easily navigate around whatever particular tariffs, because the raw materials are not actually coming to the United States. It's the finished products. And I think that, I don't think Trump is many things. I don't think he wants to go up against finished products that feel American.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  I actually had a conversation with a phone company a little while ago, and they had mentioned to me the prospect of a Korean war, and how that would affect phone companies with OLEDs. Just because you can only get them, pretty much, from Korea. So what happens when, if, I mean, obviously in a hypothetical, if you could, these companies didn't have access to that. And it's something that actually I need to look into. But, you know, that's something we should think about as well, maybe. Like, is Apple gonna stockpile?

• 1:01:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's an oversupply of OLEDs. That's, all the Android phones have chins and a notch, because they're LCDs, and they need to drive it. Basically, we're doomed. Hold on to your... Buy as many phones as you can right now. Start being a phone prepper. There's a store down the street. All right. One more. I've been picking on you the whole time. This is your shot.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  When is Apple gonna buy Sonos?

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Apple gonna buy Sonos?

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  That's never gonna happen.

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think Apple thinks they made a really great speaker. They're very, very proud of that speaker. What they don't have, they need to ship AirPlay 2 so they can do the multi-room stuff. And then they need to make a really hard set of decisions around how big their audio ecosystem is gonna be. Are they gonna make a soundbar? Are they gonna make a little one for your bathroom? Are they gonna make that whole range of headphones? And if they do that, then I think their hardware business starts to look different because every iPhone user is gonna buy like $500 more Apple stuff that connects into their iPhone ecosystem.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  I think a better question isn't...

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  That's a fucking nightmare, by the way. I just wanna be very clear about that.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  The better question isn't when is Apple gonna buy Sonos? The better question is when is Apple gonna remember that they own the Beats headphone company?

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  And sell it off?

• 1:02:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know. Has anybody seen Jimmy Ivey? Can anybody locate that man? Okay, that's it. Thank you, guys, so much for coming. It's wild to me that we have lines for the show. It's wild to me that anybody listens to it at all. I will tell you that Verge produces a much better podcast called Why'd You Push That Button? It is far higher quality than the show. Ashley hosts it, along with Caitlin Tiffany. They're on at 4:00 PM today, talking about ghosting. They've got some great guests. Who are your guests?

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  We have someone, an in-house sociologist from Bumble and the lead engineering manager of iOS from OKQBit.

• 1:03:36Nilay Patel?

  Wow. So, come back at 4:00 for that. Kara Swisher and Maria Shriver are on today as well. There's more programming at this house a week. And there's also an open bar, where we are not serving my brand of vodka. But thank you all for coming. I miss anything else?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Promo code.

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  Promo code. That's it. Thank you so much. That was Verge's cast. Thank you all.