(Preview) An OpenAI Reminder, Netflix’s Expanding Appetite, Q&A on Remote Work, Taco Bell, and Data Centers in Space

Andrew and Ben begin with reactions to ChatGPT’s new image capabilities, a reminder of OpenAI’s strategic advantages vs. Google, Disney’s deal with Sora, and Gemini 3 Flash. From there: Netflix and its competition for attention, Netflix continues its foray into podcasting, and a question about movie theaters highlights costs that Netflix will have to internalize going forward. Then: Extended thoughts on SpaceX and the possibility of data centers in space, while a listener does some field reporting on AWS usage. At the end: Strategies for a successful remote work life, Tesla and Rivian’s aversion to CarPlay, the new United app and developer trade-offs, oenophile preferences, Taco Bell, Christmas traditions, and an attack on Andrew for hypocrisy.

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

• 0:00Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:08Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

• 0:20Ben Thompson?

  I literally just said this on Dithering, so I hate to reuse my takes.

• 0:24Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy.

• 0:25Ben Thompson?

  I made the analogy, you haven't experienced this yet, but once your kids go to school, the great thing is like, everyone's looking forward to Christmas vacation or spring break or whatever it might be. And what happens is the moment you get there, they immediately get sick. Because you're like, you probably remember this in your, your body's like, okay, I made it. I'm done now.

• 0:45Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. I mean, that still happens to me in adulthood.

• 0:48Ben Thompson?

  That's my sensation right now. Yeah. No, that's my sensation right now. I posted the year in review that I do every year last night and by having to remind my body, I still have two more pieces of content without one's down. This is the last one. It might get loopy, but we're gonna do our best.

• 1:04Andrew Sharp?

  There you go. The home stretch. I mean, I feel like school's already out. I'm in a great mood. It's gonna be nice and light mailbag episode today.

• 1:14Ben Thompson?

  I know. One of us has to do a good job here, so I'm trying to hold it together for the both of us.

• 1:19Andrew Sharp?

  Okay, good. Good. I like that that's the headspace you're in as we venture forth here.

• 1:25Ben Thompson?

  I need a lot of bullet today.

• 1:27Andrew Sharp?

  A lot of party in the back. Party in the back. It's gonna be a little bit of news up front and then a lot of partying in the back.

• 1:34Ben Thompson?

  No, but just to be clear, it happens every year. I will take care of it since you forgot to do it. This is the last episode for a couple of weeks. We'll be back the first week of January. You will still be podcasting with the GOAT.

• 1:45Andrew Sharp?

  I was gonna say, it's not actually my last piece of content because I'm recording the GOAT later tonight and we'll keep the GOAT rolling over the holidays because basketball never stops, Ben. So people can look forward to that. But here on Sharp Tech, that's right, we won't be back until the first week of January. For now, we did have some news this week before we hit mail, some news I wanted to address quickly. First news item, I'll read from Bloomberg. OpenAI is rolling out an update to ChatGPT that's intended to generate images better and faster. The latest move by the artificial intelligence developer to bolster its flagship chatbot amid heated competition from Alphabet Inc.'s Google.

• 2:30Andrew Sharp?

  The company is also creating a new section within ChatGPT's mobile app and website meant for people to make images rather than just doing so in an in an interaction with the chatbot. So Ben, you've had a couple of days to play around with ChatGPT Image 1.5. What are your impressions of this new feature from ChatGPT?

• 2:53Ben Thompson?

  It seems pretty good. I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

• 2:56Andrew Sharp?

  I am too.

• 2:57Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, I swear I was using Gemini for a little bit, which I think speaks to this was a really important area for ChatGPT to shore up. Like, that was a reason to go use Gemini is the image generation was really good.

• 3:10Andrew Sharp?

  It was basically the only reason to use Gemini over the last several months.

• 3:14Ben Thompson?

  Right. I mean, if you want to generate a picture of a turkey, go to Gemini. If you want the correct instructions for how to cook it, go to ChatGPT was sort of my takeaway.

• 3:21Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Ben Thompson?

  But, uh, but the, uh, but yeah, it seems I personally on what I've done on both. It's interesting because I had, I, I sort of wrote the daily update. I had this sort of long thread that had been going on for a little bit. And it was more a, you know, my single favorite image across both apps was actually from Gemini. But as a whole, I think I preferred the ChatGPT ones, but they're both great. They're both amazing and it's really important for people who already have ChatGPT to not think about going somewhere else. So I think getting this out ASAP, uh, you know, they also did the 5.2 update. Still the same base model. It's, it's sort of more, more post-training, uh, but you know,

• 4:04Ben Thompson?

  a good response by them and then we'll see what happens in the new year when supposedly their, their real next generation model is supposed to come out.

• 4:11Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, well, and it was a really clean user interface. I mean, ChatGPT is just good at this. Like even the name of this product, ChatGPT Image 1.5, clunky as ever, consistent with the OpenAI

• 4:25Ben Thompson?

  I thought you were about to say, you said that after they're good at this and then you listed another horrific name. I'm like, wait, where are you going?

• 4:31Andrew Sharp?

  But here's the thing. I mean, the upshot of that name is that everyone who uses this will refer to it as just ChatGPT, which again reflects good product instincts. I mean, I was hearing about Nano Banana for the last several months and it's like, well, where do I find that?

• 4:49Ben Thompson?

  Why isn't it called Gemini?

• 4:50Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, exactly. And ChatGPT is just good at this, man.

• 4:54Ben Thompson?

  And no, I think the new UI with the like giving you prompts for what to do. It's so funny, like how it's

• 5:02Andrew Sharp?

  It's really helpful for someone like me, just for the record.

• 5:05Ben Thompson?

  It's so basic and yet no one does it. Like, like, and this is one of those things I do come back to on the question of ChatGPT versus Google long term. And I always, there's a rule this week, I always say ChatGPT or OpenAI is better at product. And like, what do I mean by that? And it's funny that everyone talks about product in Silicon Valley. There's a reason why Apple just cleaned everyone's clock for decades. Cause it turns out technical people just suck at products because they know how it works. They know how to do it. How do you put yourself in the mind of a normie? And actually it's, cause the thing is, it's not just the capability, right? Everything in that new view was already possible before.

• 5:50Ben Thompson?

  And it's not just people needing to think of what can be done, like have ideas, which is in there, that's part of it, like generate a Christmas card, right? Was like one of the options in there. People don't know what's possible.

• 6:02Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 6:03Ben Thompson?

  Like, like AI can do so much and people have no idea and you have to weed them down that path.

• 6:08Andrew Sharp?

  People who do know what's possible will think, all right, the performance here is going to sell itself. And they don't go the extra step to make it idiot proof so that people could discover how amazing all of it is. And ChatGPT has cracked that code like nobody else in the space over the last two and a half years. And I thought that the release this week. Was a continuation.

• 6:30Ben Thompson?

  You were churning out images.

• 6:32Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, exactly. I was having fun with it. And as far as the competition with Google is concerned, I mean, to go back to your point a couple of minutes ago, and the advantages that OpenAI has, I never felt that compelled to download Nano Banana until four days ago, when a friend was making fun of another of our friends generating photo shops with Nano Banana. And I was impressed by how good the photo shops were. And I thought, maybe I need to check out Nano Banana. And then, literally a day later, ChatGPT releases this feature.

• 7:07Ben Thompson?

  That's why they needed to get it out.

• 7:08Andrew Sharp?

  Exactly.

• 7:09Ben Thompson?

  They need you not downloading Gemini.

• 7:10Andrew Sharp?

  Keep the normies in the ecosystem. And I still have not tried out Nano Banana, but I had a lot of fun with image.

• 7:18Ben Thompson?

  The other thing I thought was really interesting is I redid all the prompts from that other thread in ChatGPT. And it's funny, because that thread was, it was like this ongoing conversation, and there'd be some funny thing, like, it would be funny to illustrate this in AI. So I'm like, so I had the idea, and so this was AI as tool. I'm going to go and do this thing and go to AI and generate this image.

• 7:39Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 7:39Ben Thompson?

  Uh, so I did the same thing. I just copied all the prompts, exactly, word for word. And what ChatGPT did that Nano Banana did not, and again, this is like, it seems so obvious, but it actually didn't occur to me to ask for this, is there, there was like this, it made all the images consistent. Like, so there was like, characters that repeated, and the style was all the same. I didn't have to tell it to do that. So number one, it was, that was super delightful. Oh, yeah, this is actually way more fun, that it's more consistent. And whatever to do with the context window and using old images to sort of make the new ones is interesting.

• 8:17Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 8:18Ben Thompson?

  It made me want to make more images. Because it's like, it was like I was drawing a comic book of like, these different things that were happening. And then I wanted to like, build on it and go from it. Whereas with, with Nano Banana and Gemini, I only went to it when I already had an idea. So I had an idea, and then I went there to generate it. This was, it was pulling ideas out of me. And that's like another really important sort of product capabilities. It's it's not just that you know what's possible and in teaching you, but it's can it inspire you? Can it make you want to use it more? And again, these are things that it's funny because this doesn't sound like a mox. Like, well, can't Google do that? Yeah, they could, but they don't. They don't again and again and again.

• 9:01Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, so yeah, so I thought it was pretty encouraging from from a OpenAI perspective. Not just that the model was good. Because it's not just about models. It's also about products. And I thought this product rollout was more compelling than than I think you even realize when you look at like relative images.

• 9:20Andrew Sharp?

  Totally, and I sat there the other night, I think it was Tuesday night. Um, I spent like an hour just generating images of my kids in different scenes and having a great time with it. I do wonder how OpenAI is going to pay for all this over the next several years because I'm sure.

• 9:36Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, well, they had that super weird video about like, we don't have enough compute. It's like, uh, I mean, everyone, I've been complaining about the prospects of not having enough compute for ages and ages and ages. This is my whole thing about the API. Just let Microsoft handle the API. You need to be delivering the most compelling user experience for your consumer app, which you have the chance to rule the world with.

• 9:56Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Ben Thompson?

  So I feel bad that I backed down on my critique there because I was totally right. Uh, so there's my 2025 lesson, number one. I should have been even harsher on ads. If they had introduced ads in 2023, the app product today would be good and consumers would be habituated to it.

• 10:14Andrew Sharp?

  I feel like you've made up for that omission or blind spot. Um, not wasn't a blind spot, but you did back down and you've made up for it over the last two and a half months on the podcast.

• 10:25Ben Thompson?

  With vociferousness, I know it's making it even more. It's making it even more vociferous.

• 10:29Andrew Sharp?

  Admonition for Sam and the gang out there at OpenAI. But finance questions aside and compute questions aside, this week was another reminder of the very real advantages that.

• 10:41Ben Thompson?

  They're good, they're good at this stuff. Yeah, no, they are. And and I think the, um.

• 10:46Ben Thompson?

  The whole compute question, it's possible that OpenAI's biggest problem is actually that they got too popular too fast. It's like a real catch 22. On one hand, that's their biggest advantage. On the other hand, I can't remember if I've made this analogy before, but a problem Apple has with the iPhone, it's like, whoa, look at these other companies coming out of these new innovative features, like would be a flip phone or sort of like, like whatever it might be. It's a lot easier to roll something like that out when you're looking to sell single-digit millions or maybe low double-digit millions. If you're selling at the scale Apple is, it's really, really hard because you don't just need to invent it. It has to be reproducible at the

• 11:29Ben Thompson?

  scale that they're doing it at. And that just takes longer.

• 11:32Andrew Sharp?

  And an error affects 800 million people.

• 11:35Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, but just to be able to do it, right? They, Apple almost, this Apple's supply chain almost killed themselves when they introduced Face ID. They had so many difficulties getting that out and getting it working. And I heard some unbelievable stories about just like heroic missions by Apple's team to get that out the door.

• 11:55Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Ben Thompson?

  And that's because they sell so many freaking phones, like they could, the Face ID worked. It wasn't the issue of it working. It was, could you get it working at the scale of tens of millions of units? Like, and so they watched that, they could not have watched that a month earlier than they did. It's like, you know, I think even that phone was somewhat delayed, or I can't remember exactly, I think that was during COVID. I can't, I don't know, I can't remember exactly, maybe it wasn't. But that's just an example of it's really hard at scale with marginal, like it is, as long as AI has a marginal cost attached to it, OpenAI feels that to a massively greater scale than anyone else, including Google. If they roll out a ChatGPT feature, it's rolling out to 900 million people.

• 12:38Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Ben Thompson?

  That's really, really hard.

• 12:40Andrew Sharp?

  Every day, all day, and that's expensive. So another thing that OpenAI has rolled out, the other news that we haven't hit on the show, you hit it on Dithering, Disney licensed its characters to Sora. My question, does that matter? What do you think?

• 12:57Ben Thompson?

  No, probably not. I mean, Sora, I think was another like viral moment, which the fact that a company can produce multiple viral moments, I think is also sort of a positive indicator. It's like number 25 in the App Store now or whatever. You know, is it going to be a thing? I don't know. But.

• 13:15Ben Thompson?

  The point I came back to, and it's funny, I made this, this is the end of the year problem. Because I, I wrote this long thing about the importance of like totems for content. And then I was doing my year in review and I wrote an entire article about this like six months ago. Totally forgot about, I just linked to myself. But, uh, this idea that you need something to organize around. I was talking on the podcast last week and in a world of AI, I think that's going to give more value to like us. Right? Like, because there's tens of thousands of people listening to this podcast. They can talk about it. They can, you know, we should do more about this. Stay tuned. We'll see, see what goes on. But like the things that people have in common is really valuable.

• 13:53Andrew Sharp?

  I mean, it's why Warner Brothers is valued at $80 billion now as people fight over the IP that was generated 30 years ago.

• 14:02Ben Thompson?

  Yep. And so I, I think in this case, what did you see the day Sora watched? Or the first week, right? It's, it's all with a bunch of nerds.

• 14:12Andrew Sharp?

  Enforcement.

• 14:12Ben Thompson?

  Well, that's true. That was fun. You know, actually, so a few things. What I was going to go with is everyone who had initially was like intact insured AI. And so all the cameos were of Sam Altman. Like we, like, cause why? He's a common figure who was available. And so that's like one.

• 14:30Andrew Sharp?

  And anybody who wound up in the Sora ecosystem knew exactly who Sam Altman was. And so watching him do funny things was amusing to everybody who was.

• 14:40Ben Thompson?

  That's right. And to your point, they also did like no copyright to start. And it was funny to make Pikachu do absurd things. And, and so the, the, this speaks to, this is a very bullish signal for Disney. Even if Sora doesn't amount to anything, because what it's speaking to is not just the enduring value of IP. But I would argue the increasing value of IP that's widely recognized and widely seen. In a world where everything can be customized and individualized, things that are in common are going to be more and more valuable. And that applies to Disney pretty much more than anyone.

• 15:20Andrew Sharp?

  Yep. That makes sense. Um, I'm skeptical that adding Darth Vader is going to. Bring Sora back to life all of a sudden, but it's an interesting marker to lay down for Disney and a sign that they're going to be forward thinking in that space. In any event, speaking of Hollywood.

• 15:36Ben Thompson?

  They dropped the cease and desist letter on Google, I think, the same day or like the day before. And it reinforces this Google against the world aspect to AI. Google has their own chips, they have their own model, they're like, it's all Google, all the way up and down. Google doesn't like doing deals, deals don't scale. Like, Google is the ultimate everything must scale sort of entity.

• 15:57Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Ben Thompson?

  And on the other side, you have OpenAI and Nvidia and now Disney. This is where Apple should end up and OpenAI, you know, hire Johnny Ive or whatever. It's like, it really is Google versus the world.

• 16:09Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm. Well.

• 16:10Ben Thompson?

  And Google might win.

• 16:12Andrew Sharp?

  Yes, I look forward to tracking all of it in 2026. To keep it moving, we got a ton of great questions related to the last episode on Netflix and Warner Brothers. We have some new Netflix news to discuss.

• 16:27Ben Thompson?

  One thing that we, this is not on the rundown, but it happened this week. Google Gemini three flash did come out, amazing model that's extremely cheap. Like, like, there's a bit where even all along, the Gemini flash models have arguably been the more interesting and compelling ones.

• 16:44Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 16:44Ben Thompson?

  Just because they're the ones that are closer to the idea of AI. It's not zero marginal cost, but it's a whole lot closer.

• 16:52Andrew Sharp?

  So it's cheaper for Google to run when you say it's cheap?

• 16:55Ben Thompson?

  What's cheaper for Google to run, it's cheaper for you, for developers to use. Like, the API costs are drastically lower and that is almost the more interesting performance to look at. How good is the super duper cheap model that you could actually build a business on? And it's really cheap and it's really good.

• 17:12Andrew Sharp?

  Interesting. Okay. Well, we got a ton of great questions related to the last episode. I'll read one note that we got on the antitrust stuff. Full disclosure, a handful of people were striking this note and I chose the meanest email of them. So Grady says, Andrew and Ben, listening to last week's discussion of the Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers. Ben's choice to focus on attention as the scarce resource is facially arbitrary. Why is attention the marketplace on which Netflix should be evaluated? Why not the marketplace for protons, neutrons and electrons? By Ben's logic, surely that is the only scarce resource for which all companies compete. While Netflix.

• 17:54Ben Thompson?

  Do I need to wait till the end, or should I just start at the top? Or do you want to get this whole thing out?

• 17:58Andrew Sharp?

  Wait till the end, wait till the end, out of respect for Grady. While Netflix.

• 18:03Ben Thompson?

  Sorry, there's not a lot of respect for Grady.

• 18:05Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 18:05Ben Thompson?

  But anyway, I'll continue.

• 18:06Andrew Sharp?

  While Netflix.

• 18:06Ben Thompson?

  You've got to be honest here.

• 18:08Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Spoiler alert. While Netflix may perceive itself to be within a competitive marketplace for attention, where in law or common sense does it follow that the company's current strategic positioning is the only market in which anti-competitive effects can manifest? Netflix engages in many marketplaces for creative talent, for subscription video services, for network bandwidth. Ben paid lip service to this, but why does the company's competitive participation or positioning within one market make it so that anti-competitive effects in other markets are not worthy of public oversight and intervention? By that logic, Amazon's weak positioning within the market for streaming could justify

• 18:50Andrew Sharp?

  its acquisition of Walmart, despite that obviously being a contraction and competitiveness, a contraction of competitiveness in other markets. I sincerely hope you read this because I would prefer not to write off Ben's analysis of antitrust in the future. Please don't make me into an anti-monopolist. All right, so what do you think?

• 19:10Ben Thompson?

  No, just to be clear, it's the last line. Why I dropped the disrespectful comment.

• 19:15Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 19:15Ben Thompson?

  You can write off whatever analysis you want, framing it as Ben better answer this or you're out of my mind.

• 19:23Ben Thompson?

  That's not how it works.

• 19:23Andrew Sharp?

  Get out.

• 19:25Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, sorry. I'm going to drop my takes and I don't care what you think about it. So I would have stayed from the implied threats in the emails in the future if you want a respectful answer. So I don't think it's facially arbitrary.

• 19:39Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Ben Thompson?

  And I guess the confusion I have in this email. It sounds like Grady's been reading for a long time. It's the single most predictable take in the world that I say the only scarce resources, time or attention. It was awfully predictable. So where have you been, Grady? So, sorry, I need to also insult your reading comprehension and memory. Uh, no, this is all good fun, Grady, but, but the, but I'm, this is literally like a thesis of stratechery. Sure. It used to be, back in the day, the gating factor was actual physical distribution. In the case of movies, you literally had large reels. Mm-hmm. And you had a few of them that had to be transported to a theater.

• 20:22Ben Thompson?

  They would run the theater, a guy had to be up there to switch it over. You, if you watched, if you had like very good eyesight and like perception, you could see the switch over, like when it happened. Wow. Uh, there'd be like marker frames in there and things like that. And so the, the, the key in that market was, was controlling that distribution. This is why you go back to the 1948 consent decree about the studios not being able to own theaters. It was a problem that they had that top to bottom control because distribution was the most important thing. Right. On the internet, you can watch any video that you want. And, and, and I, I've had this knockdown drag out fight before with people.

• 21:04Ben Thompson?

  People would get like, they'd be like, no, distribution is not a zero marginal cost thing. You have to pay Google and Facebook. I'm like, you're not paying Google and Facebook to have your content online. Anyone can go to your website and see your content. You're paying them for attention. Yeah. For getting people's eyeballs on that content. And is it functionally, from a business perspective and your accounting, kind of the same? Sure, I get why people call it distribution, but it's actually really important to key in on the specific details, which is the dollars you were paying on the internet was not to, for people to be able to access your content like you used to pay for printing

• 21:48Ben Thompson?

  presses, or for CD presses, or for DVD presses, or for shelf space, or for the trucks to deliver it, or all these sorts of things. You get all that for free now.

• 21:59Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Ben Thompson?

  And it's because you get all that for free that the competition is infinitely larger than it used to be. Netflix is competing with YouTube. There's just no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You have a TV in front of you, and the question is, what's on that TV? It could be Netflix, it could be YouTube, it could be linear TV, it could be Disney Plus, it could be the Apple Aerial Screensaver, which I continue to love. Uh, like, but only one of them's gonna be on there.

• 22:28Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Ben Thompson?

  That is the plane of competition. And it doesn't matter if, if I have a game coming over a cable wire, or I have a game coming as packets over the internet, or a show, or a stream, or whatever. If, in any sort of, setting aside the antitrust political questions, in any sort of like, if I'm a business person, if I'm trying to make strategic decisions, you have to drill down to what is the constraint? Where is the bottleneck? And that is the bottleneck. It just is. Now, as I said last episode, that might not matter in court because this is a political process and people are going to draw these, if I can use the word, arbitrary lines.

• 23:12Ben Thompson?

  But you're the one drawing the arbitrary lines, not me. And by the way, you don't get to say, oh, Ben said this, but he didn't really say this. I said they compete in other areas. I acknowledge that. You don't get to dismiss it because I didn't say it strongly enough the way you wanted it to. Yes, there are monopsony type questions, like how many buyers are there for all these sorts of things? That's all true and valid, but that doesn't change the fact that from a consumer perspective, Netflix is 100% competing with YouTube. YouTube is by far their biggest threat, and I think it's impossible to make sense of this acquisition without acknowledging that.

• 23:44Andrew Sharp?

  I think that is all well said. I wanted to give you a, some room to respond.

• 23:49Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, I'm fired up now.

• 23:50Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, well, anyway.

• 23:52Ben Thompson?

  If you don't like it, that's fine.

• 23:55Andrew Sharp?

  No, stay Grady. We enjoy the emails. We enjoy takes from everybody, takes from all sides. Um, but yeah, we have to wait and see what the government does on any of this to talk with more specificity.

• 24:09Ben Thompson?

  And now I'm over my being mad at Grady thing. It's fine if you disagree with me on this. People disagree with me about stuff all the time.

• 24:16Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Ben Thompson?

  We're going, I'm going to think you're wrong and we could all be okay with that. And you could think I'm wrong.

• 24:23Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and I think the Clayton Act, the Clayton Act does-

• 24:25Ben Thompson?

  Well, just go back.

• 24:26Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 24:26Ben Thompson?

  For 12 years, this is, if you want to distill what Stratech, I wrote my 13th year interview this week. This has been arguably the central theme from beginning to end. So it just, sorry, it is what it is.

• 24:39Andrew Sharp?

  Totally. And look, if I were making Netflix's argument, I would point out that hundreds of millions of people around the world have TVs that have the YouTube app right next to the Netflix app in the ties.

• 24:53Ben Thompson?

  Well, just when you watch a great Warner Brothers, once you watch a great Warner Brothers movie on Netflix, you can see it win awards on YouTube.

• 25:00Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, that's right. It's all accelerating toward Hollywood's end game here and a new, really bizarre future. But I, thinking about Netflix, I think part of what's interesting about that company is that on one hand, they've come to dominate what was their original market, streaming on demand. And then on the other hand, they, it's a case where it's like the appetite grows in the eating. People say that about China sometimes. I think with Netflix, the end game for them for the last 10 years or so has been they want to just be a stand-in for all TV and all entertainment.

• 25:42Ben Thompson?

  No, I wrote that, I wrote that a decade ago or like early on, like Netflix, the bull case for Netflix is you went from the cable bundle to Netflix and it's the same experience.

• 25:52Andrew Sharp?

  And that's where YouTube is encroaching on their growth potential as we speak. YouTube, the more people watch YouTube on TV than Netflix on TV.

• 26:02Ben Thompson?

  Right. Netflix was seeking to replace Hollywood for distribution. YouTube is seeking to extinguish it.

• 26:09Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, exactly. And I don't think YouTube hasn't had any huge impact on Netflix, their pricing power, or their ability to retain customers thus far. But it's growing the business and monopolizing attention.

• 26:23Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, but you draw a line from YouTube to even five years ago, to five years in the future, or 10 years ago to 10 years in the future. And everyone in Hollywood should be way more scared of YouTube than they are of Netflix.

• 26:36Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, well, and Netflix is clearly thinking of YouTube. Another deal that was announced this week, New York Times, "The number of video podcasts set to flood Netflix next year is growing." "On Tuesday, the streaming giant announced a partnership with iHeartMedia, furthering its long-awaited push into podcasting and yanking a few more shows off YouTube, its rival in the modern entertainment wars." And on Wednesday, Netflix announced a similar deal with Barstool Sports. "Under these deals, at least 18 new podcasts will publish their video episodes exclusively on Netflix, beginning in early 2026," the company said.

• 27:18Andrew Sharp?

  And then a reaction from Tommy Viator, host of Pod Save America. "Huge news for Barstool, big cat, PFT commenter, and at Hen Eas, I believe that guy's name is Hank, who built by far the biggest and best sports podcast in the country from nothing. This move gets the show in front of a ton of new people and drives actual revenue to grow." That's a reference to Pardon My Take, which is, I think, either number one or number two, the biggest sports podcast in the country. It's them or Bill Simmons. I think it alternates. It'll be an interesting experiment to put all these shows on Netflix. I know Pardon My Take's audience was all pissed off about it.

• 27:59Andrew Sharp?

  Do you have any reaction to some of the deals that Netflix is doing in that space?

• 28:06Andrew Sharp?

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