A threatening Greg

Special guest Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times joins Dieter Bohn, Nilay Patel, and new hype-seater Kirsten Frisina to talk ad blocking and the changing state of the internet, Alexa versus Siri, the house of the future, Google beyond search, the possibility of threatening Gregs, and more! 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.

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:07Nilay Patel?

  I did it. I did the whole thing. That's the whole show.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:12Nilay Patel?

  I opened it well.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  It was really good and that's it. I think that's the best we've ever done. Hello, it's September 17th. This is The Vergecast.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  It's my brother's birthday. Happy birthday, kid.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Wow, happy birthday.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  That's important. That was Dieter.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  He was wishing his brother a happy birthday. So Dieter's here, but then everything else is di- oh, I'm Neelai, I'm also here. Then everything else is different. Get ready to come through a portal. It's kind of like a podcast mashup today, based on what's going on. So, joining us today is Farhad Manjoo from The New York Times.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Hey, hi.

• 0:41Nilay Patel?

  You may know Farhad from The New York Times, also from Twitter, where I believe Farhad maintains one of the longest-running Twitter personas in media history.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I- people call it a persona. It's actually me. It's the real me.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  It's the real you.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  Alright, well, I'm interested in diving into that.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  The notion of a Twitter persona is very, very compelling to me. And then, so this is what I mean by mashup. Farhad has his own great podcast called Jay and Farhad Show with Jay Yarrow from Business Insider, where they come together and their media organizations do not fight, but instead collaborate.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  To create a content explosion. And that podcast was produced until recently, because we hired her. It was produced by Kristin Frisina.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  Kirsten.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Good try, good try.

• 1:24Nilay Patel?

  Kirsten.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Kirsten Frisina.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  Damn it, I was talking too fast. I was trying to get the-

• 1:27Speaker 01

  No, I've missed out that name on our podcast, too.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  I was trying to get the last name right and I blew the first name. I've been perfect on the first name this whole time and I've never had to say it.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  If you listen to the podcast, instead of watching it on YouTube or live, you are missing out on a very decked-out hype desk.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's something-

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  It's kind of like a college football hype desk.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Is that not how it normally is?

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no. So, I'll explain this. There's a reason she's over there.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  It's not.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  It's because Neil likes old timey radio.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  It's not a great reason, but we'll get into it. So Kirsten just joined us at The Verge. We took her away from Farhad.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  But now Farhad is here as well, so we brought them back together. But Kirsten's here, you might, if you're on our Snapchat channel, you see her multiple times a day. If you are looking at any of our social media accounts, you see her many times a day. Kirsten's here to engage with you, the audience.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Can I just say one more thing? We, we recorded our podcast today, just the more media mashup of the Jane Farhad Show, and our guest was Casey Johnson, who's from the All and Wirecutter.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  And so we've, I've experienced every media organization today.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  In a single day.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Are there ones that you are not allowed to, as a New York Times reporter? Are you like not allowed to go to the Journal?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. I bet there is, yes, probably the Journal and Bloomberg. I don't know, no one's, the Journal, if the Journal does a podcast, I will be on their podcast.

• 2:52Nilay Patel?

  I just like the idea that you're allowed to like hang with us, but then there's definitely a level at which like, there's like Times Police shadowing you and like, no, no Farhad.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:00Nilay Patel?

  Can't go on a film. Anyway, so Kirsten's out here. So Far, let me just explain to you the concept here.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  It's not, again, not a great concept, but one that we've been going with. So here on The Verge, we generally talk about the news. And so that's what happens here at this desk. And then that desk is the hype desk. That's the, that's the concept. She's in the hype seat.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  And what we do from time to time is as we're discussing news, new products, new things, new ideas, we hype check them to know how much hype. It's a formula in my head.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  It's a hype formula.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Which is hype versus reality over time.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Which complicated, really it's expressed on 110 SC, so like, for example, Kirsten, hype check the new iPhone.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  It's like a, it's like an eight.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, see?

• 3:47Speaker 03

  It's an eight.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  And we just do that from time to time.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  So, so eight is, is, is what?

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Eight is high.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  It's pretty high.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  That means it's pretty hypey?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, there's like a high level of hype against it.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  People are pretty hypey.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  People are excited for it.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I see, okay.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  About the rose gold.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  But over time, the hype might.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  It will probably dissipate.

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, this, because then it'll just be the iPhone.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  See what I'm saying? But then, who's ever in that seat also is allowed to just interject at will. So really, it's just chaos.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I saw, I saw one of these where, where Casey Newton was there, so.

• 4:14Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the Skype seat.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yes, that, yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I was very proud of myself.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's good, it's a good rhyme.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, man, you're just cold.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  It's a good rhyme.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  It's a good rhyme, we're moving on.

• 4:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, what else did I say?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  Hype check that rhyme.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Two.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Yo, right. Rough, rough all around. So, there's, there's a bunch of stuff to talk about this week. Um, I think we should start with, uh, what has sort of been blowing up today. And then I think, when, when we have new people on the show, I really like to just do State of the Union and talk about how tech is just doing across the board, instead of like really diving in granularly.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  So we should do that a little bit too. But let's start with, uh, a thing that blew up our site today, um, which is that yesterday iOS 9 came out. Have you upgraded iOS 9?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I, I've been using the beta, so maybe, I, I don't think, I, I still, I think I'm still on the beta.

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're, if you're on the beta and you're caught up, you should be fine.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Like, it's, it's not.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I don't think I actually have pulled the, like, last lever for the, the public one.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  The, uh, the, the public one is what I have on my phone, and it has the same bug that was in the beta, which is if you go search in Settings, and next time you open Settings, it will freeze and you've got to quit it.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I've noticed, I noticed several, I mean, the one really weird thing is that I, I just get phantom vibrations.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Really?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it hasn't, like, not tied to a notification, it just sort of buzzes.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think it might be because the notifications are, like, more granular.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, it may be that I haven't, like, I don't know what, what notification is triggering, triggering it, and, and like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to turn it off because I don't know which one, but.

• 5:48Nilay Patel?

  Right, I get random mail sounds.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:51Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, all of a sudden, it's like, mail.app is like, you know what? I did get some email. And it's like, why don't you, can you, which one is that?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Give me more info, yeah.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  I would love to, it's just like a happy little doo-doo, like.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, so with iOS 9, it came out, we put up a big review of it, it's great, it's iOS 9.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It's like iOS, but better.

• 6:09Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's like, it's, it's kind of like iOS, but Android. In many ways, like they switch the app launcher to, it looks much more like the Android app launcher. They've finally, the notifications are in reverse chronological order, which is

• 6:21Speaker 02

  how it gets so much better. Like everything about my life is full of happiness and joy.

• 6:27Nilay Patel?

  And then of course, you know, the thing that is really happening is that the app developers have to support it. So there's a bunch of Apple stuff that's better, like Spotlight is better. Siri is marginally better. But if you have an iPhone, you should update because you have to. So it's kind of like, it got better, it's gonna be fine. But the, the big feature of iOS 10 that everyone's sort of talking about today,

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  and I published a piece about today as well, is that it supports content blocking in Safari, which is actually expressed by people writing ad blockers who can ad block on the web.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Right. Do we know what kind of non ad, like what is the sort of non ad block thing that you could do?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  What if you just hate cats?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Just can't stand?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Cat content?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Felines.

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just anything cat gif, screw this.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  No, content blockers are very like euphemistic term that they came up with.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Well, the crazy thing is, you know, every, one of the arguments going on is, oh, well, there's been ad blocking on desktop for years. This, why is this, isn't a big change. It's just normal. But ad blocking on desktop browsers, it comes through like extensions and they're called like add-ons or extensions or whatever. And then you get an ad blocker that way. On mobile Safari, they didn't say, oh, you can do extensions now. They've got like their other little bits for doing that, that they introduced in iOS 8. No, they explicitly have a section called content blocker built into it.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Which is different than what we've seen before.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, so my theory is that Apple is like, you can now do this thing, but we're not going to do it. Like we'll let third party developers do it. And there's been a, there's a rush of them out. Marco Arment, who was a guy who started Instapaper and then sold it, but he started it. He just put out one called Peace. It's $3. It's one of the top grossing apps in the App Store today. There's another one called Purify, which is also doing very well.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  That's the one I got.

• 8:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm running Peace.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Figured I'd try it out. I gotta say, the web's really fast. Everyone's poor now.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Works well.

• 8:21Nilay Patel?

  But we're all moving much faster than before. Apple's rich. Everyone else very poor. So yeah, it's unclear what what else you'd be blocking, but they've built the system for people to be able to block ads and then people took advantage of it. In my estimation, that is Apple kind of being like.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Well, Apple couldn't release its own ad blocker. That would have been like a direct fight with Google.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I mean, they could. No, they could have. I'm saying sort of politically and and there's no sort of marketing reason for them to do to enter that fight very explicitly. Like, it's it's the way that they, you know, sued Samsung instead of suing Google. Like, they can get ad blocking, which hurts their competitor, improves their user interface, makes their customers happy. But it's just like another app on the it. They do it through third parties. They they allow developers to do it and it's and they leave the choice ultimately up to users who are obviously going to do it.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you've written about ad blocking and then I wrote today. And so my just to quickly do mine and then I want to talk to you about your piece. Because you have like that optimistic view.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  I have the much more sort of dark.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I'm just a writer on the and I work for a place that gets a lot of revenue from print.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  I mean, everything about this conversation has made me nostalgic. I'm like, we should just start a print magazine like tomorrow. Like, it'd be great. Like, no one's going to sit around with scissors at the mail depot, like, cutting my ads out before we mail the stuff out.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Well, the other thing we should say before we talk about this is that we are all biased in various ways. We're all compromised here. So.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm biased in favor of having a salary.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:00Nilay Patel?

  And then and then using that salary to purchase food and then eat it and remaining alive. I don't know about you.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  I like money and food. Yeah.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's good. Somebody told me that we're somebody tweeted me that we're paying that they were paying us in mind share. It's gonna be very difficult for me to pay the rent.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go to the deli after the podcast is over and see if they take Waffy.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  No, that's actually really funny. That's like the Cory D'Aturo reference, right?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  From that down at the Magic Kingdom. That's it. Anyway, anyway, we won't we won't fall down that rabbit hole. But so the context here, yes, we're biased. And I think this is one of those moments where the media industry and the tech industry are colliding and things will change because of it. But in almost every one of those times, the tech industry has won, right? Like, revenue has shifted from media to tech, right? So. Google built YouTube by basically stealing videos from people until Viacom gave up. And now Google controls an enormous amount of media power and money. And the other media companies are ever so smaller. And that's just one, the music industry is the same way. Anyway, so you can run these ad blockers now in iOS nine. You could obviously have run them.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  It's funny, on the flip side, ad blocking on the desktop has gotten really popular because of Chrome. So literally the rates of ad blocking on desktop track along with Chrome installs.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:22Nilay Patel?

  Obviously, Google runs Chrome. But what my point is that Apple's pulling farther and farther away from Google. And iOS nine is a collection of things that are kind of direct attacks on Google. So they don't call it spotlight anymore, but search in iOS nine. Now let's you search, it runs on Bing, you can search inside of apps. Google obviously can't read inside of apps on your phone.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  They can.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  They can, they can't.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, everybody has to build the right hooks for the right people.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:49Nilay Patel?

  It's not the web where it's just like crawl.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Well, and the way to, and, and, and you have to use like Google's app to do it. And like, Apple just has a much more streamlined way of doing it, so.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  Right. So they've got that, they've got obviously the content blocker, which again, to me is kind of like, well, we opened this door.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  Will anyone walk through it? Like, it's a very.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  There's candy inside.

• 12:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and just this sort of this collection of.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And Apple News.

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  And Apple News, right? And so, and in general, you know, like in Apple News, so they're, they're pulling publishers away from the revenue platform of the web, where Google runs the dominant ad server for publishers called DoubleClick for Publishers, DFP. And then all the crappy ads that follow you around, the network ads, they run Ad Exchange, which is runs those two. So you can move, you can take all the money away from Google's platforms and then say to publishers, well, but you can be here in Apple News, and no one will be able to block your ads here. So Apple News has ads in it, Apple News will track you, you can put the tracking beacons in Apple News. You absolutely can. And nobody's, it's funny, I was like, nobody cares about this today.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the reason people don't care about, I mean, first of all, very few people have used Apple News. But, you know, Facebook is sort of an analog to it. And I think the reason people don't care about it is because the UI is not, is not bad. Like, like, as long, you worry about things like tracking and stuff. If you see the pop up and then you feel like, oh, what's, what's happening there? But if you don't see it and it works well and it works fast, then I think you might not, I mean, I think the whole, like, they're tracking me is just kind of a proxy for like, bad experience generally.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that goes straight pop up. Yeah. People have been screenshotting instead of me all day. Like you look at the list and it's like Google, Google, Google, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, and then like one ad server and Chartbeat.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:31Nilay Patel?

  And it's like you, you're not, you're only mad because they're like 13 pop ups. I'm like, it's just Google and Facebook. Like it's the buttons that you log into our site using Google and Facebook and Twitter.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:41Nilay Patel?

  But I, so I think you're right. And I think all the conversation that is about performance. We're going to make the web faster by stripping all this crap we don't like. And that's cloaked inside of tracking. I think that's fine. I mean, I honestly, my big take on it is that sites like The Verge, like big companies will be fine. Because we make stuff that people want and Apple's not going to start a content company. Right? So like, we have media executives who work here. The New York Times has media executives who work here. They, I don't know what they do. They go away, they wear suits, they come back, they have deals.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have deals with Facebook and, and Apple and then your content's in there and we'll be fine.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have the resources to like remake our content and do all of these insane native ad or native news app platform. Systems. I can't talk today. So like there, we can do that. And then everything else will just be like, I don't know, you can like stick an RSS feed into Apple News, I guess.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's fine. And then there's Facebook and articles. So that's like me, right? Like I think The Verge will be fine, but I think that other companies, smaller publishers that rely on, we're going to make great content with a bunch of friends and like glue in some ad code and that'll pay for everything. They're doomed.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  So that's where I want to get, because you are much more optimistic.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, I think there's a very valid argument that they will be doomed because of ad blocking. I just don't know if the alternative is that they'll survive anyway. Like, if people don't get ad blocking today,

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Facebook Instant Articles is still gonna come along. And the web, and so if you think that the web, like, to me, the web is like a usability nightmare. Like, every time I click a link, I get sort of some weird pop-up. And it's slow, and it just doesn't feel like the kind of environment that is like going to survive, going to successfully compete against something like Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News if it's better. Over time, it seems like inevitable that people will either migrate to those other platforms, or they'll stay with the web and the web will be bad and like, I think-

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  But where is the web bad for you? The web is bad on your phone.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  Right, the web is not bad on desktop, and I think this is like, I wrote a piece a while ago that was like, there are no apps on the desktop, like, apps on desktop are not outside of like Photoshop, right?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:56Nilay Patel?

  Like, major professional productivity apps.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  The web is what you use on your desktop, right?

• 15:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, because the experience is really good.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  And then on the phone, and this is kind of like my, this is what I'm worried about. I'm worried that Apple, because they have dominance in the phone, they're squeezing the web ever so tightly to get people onto their platform and under their control.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  But, but do you disagree that the web is bad on your phone? Like, it feels like an experience that should be better, and everything we know about how people use, you know, how people use digital things is like, they like fast, right? Like, everything that's faster, even marginally faster, feels better if it feels more responsive, more people use it. And it just doesn't seem like clicking on a link and waiting, you know, 10 seconds for the thing to load up, and then like clicking three things before it loads up, is gonna be like a survivable environment.

• 16:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man, I just went to the Apple event, you were at that Apple event. They're like, we, the new iPhone 6S has a desktop-class processor and console-class graphics, and the fastest LTE that's ever been made, and the Wi-Fi will definitely run you over with speed. And like, there, those, these phones- Ultra they're more powerful than the PCs ushered in the web revolution to begin with and much faster in terms of

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I think you have a screen size thing thing though, right?

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's fair. I'll take that.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the pop up covers like, you know, but 30% of the screen and then you have to like hit a small button to to to close it. And it's not like those those pop up ads on web pages are not like on terrible sites. They're on like the big reputable sites.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  But we're setting up a false dichotomy here, right? Either you have to go and live in Apple's proprietary garden, or you have to live with, you know, the web's terrible shitty

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Do you think there's a middle ground?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Fix the web.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  How do you?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Or open up the Apple's thing.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  So that's that's my that's my argument about content blocking, like or ad blocking.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  We should really, I mean, like, we should, if you're listening to this and you would like to write us a content blocker that blocks some other content.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  If you want to block everything on the verge but the ads, like, I would love to just see that product. What does that look like?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  I'll pay you $2.99 for that product, actually.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  But so I think that if a whole lot of people, maybe not all, because it would be bad if all if everyone adopted ad blocking, but if a whole bunch of people adopted ad blocking, I think it would force advertisers and big, other big people who can who who create this like publishing and environment on the web to do better.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Oh, see, I think the incentives aren't that clear cut, because if if more people are blocking ads and the incentive is like, well, shit, we have fewer people, we need to ramp up how terrible the ads are.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  And the second thing is, if if you're even if you're right, that blocking more ads will incent advertisers to clean up their act and finally serve nice ads, once someone turns on ad blocking, it's on and they don't go back. And so, like, like, that's the problem with people, you know, we all know, it's like, you're you're part of the problem, your ads suck. It's like, yeah, we're working on making it better. But I kid you not, if we make our ads perfect and beautiful and fast, and they will never be, they'll never annoy you on the verge, like, we're still like, like, we fixed our house, but the neighborhood's still on fire.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's a tragedy of the commons problem, right? You suffer because there's some Other site out there that has low scruples and will run terrible ads.

• 19:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  People turn on ad blocking because of that. And then even if you have great ads. But, okay, so there are these companies that are marketing themselves to publishers to like circumvent ad blocking. And the way they do it is they serve kinds of ads, you know, like serve through different protocols that aren't blocked by ad blockers. Like you could imagine that there is some kinds of like tech arms race. Maybe the publishers won't win that arms race, but that kind of get around the ad blockers with better ads.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, no. So that's what I'm most worried about. Like, again, in the darkest timeline, which is where I live. The way that you, like, ad blockers are pretty brutally simple product, right?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  They block servers, right?

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just a list of servers you don't want to load from. So like, it doesn't matter where you load it from, right? Like, it's just there. So the one way to do it is to move all the stuff onto the Verge's core CDN and then load it.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, then it all looks like content.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  It's all great content. But I think the real move is something that's already happening in the industry. Because on desktop, ad blocking has been real and people have been dealing with it, which is to really start blending editorial and advertising. And like doing it, I think, like, for example, The Verge is really big. And so our sales team sits in a different part of the office and we don't talk to them. And there's a native content group that makes that stuff. And we don't really talk to them. So that's fine. And The New York Times has the same thing. And every big publisher has that. If you're a smaller site and Samsung's like, hey.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  I mean, Samsung's new software design is crisp and refreshing as a Fresca. I just, that's gonna be my review.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is that an ad for Samsung or Fresca?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's funny because like two seconds, we're going to do a Squarespace ad.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  Whatever. Squarespace is crisp and refreshing as a Fresca. And it's well designed as a Samsung. Wait, is that a burn? Like, I don't even know. What is that? What is real? What is fake? What is reality? No, but that's it, right? And you see it right now. I'm like, for example, on YouTube, right? There's tons of like people on YouTube who have big audiences. They want to monetize it. They click the button and Google will sell them some ads. But then on the side, they'll be like, I just got this phone for free. Or, you know, whatever, like the FTC had to crack down on mommy bloggers because they were all doing products for free. Like, you see how the money can flow into that seemingly editorial content? And you can't block that. You just absolutely can't.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  And that is, I think that's the danger, right? The money isn't going away.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  So, but it's still a danger for, it's still a danger mainly for small sites, right? And maybe the future, like as, as, as sort of terrible as it sounds to say this, like, maybe there is going to be less room for the small sites than there was in the, in the past. And it's not like, it's not like publishing a small, like a small publishing empire was easy in like the print era too. It's always been a difficult thing to like have a small publication. And it may have been that we just had like a decade and a half of like the open web. And then the web turns into something like TV. Like, I think that's a plausible end for the, for the, for digital content. And, you know, it will be terrible in some ways, but we also,

• 22:31Speaker 01

  I mean, there are sites like BuzzFeed that pail for a lot of journalists. And, you know, have native, native content as ads. And that is a plausible model for the future and it wouldn't be like the worst thing in the world.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, the thing I keep, and I think I've said this on the show a hundred times. I think the most interesting companies in media right now are BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox. And like, I happen to work at one of those. I think that's dope. The New York Times, also great.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it works out.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  Huge, huge. But in terms of like being the innovative, big digital companies, I think those are the three. But BuzzFeed's entire bet is on how do we learn how to make viral content? And then sell that ability to advertisers.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  That looks exactly like BuzzFeed content. There's rarely a difference. Casey Johnson, who you were just talking about, wrote a great piece. And I was like, the ultimate expression of this is a Friskies ad that BuzzFeed made. That's basically indistinguishable from something else.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  With like 25 million views.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Right. And so I would be okay if there if I would be okay if the future of like journalism on the web was part of the journalistic enterprise is like a bunch of people who are essentially running like a creative ad agency. Like are creating Friskies ads. It's sort of like what TV does, right? Like, like they're, you know, TV has entertainment and then they have, and then they find a news operation. Like it works out.

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it does. I just, I, I don't know.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  It's not what we think of it. It's not the like utopian, like everyone publishes stuff and makes money vision of the web. Like the Neil Dash vision of the web from like 15 years ago. But maybe that was a little bit optimistic.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I mean, like, here's, here's what I worry about. And I think about this a lot, like Matt Iglesias wrote this on Vox, which was Apple got saved by the web browser. Right? Like the Apple macOS 10 would not have been a viable product if the web didn't explode in popularity. And Apple spent all of its time desperately trying to make the experience of the web better on a Mac than it was.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  On the PC, which is why they did Safari and then they did Safari for Windows, which was crazy. And then they like turn that into their, their other business.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  And now Apple is in that Microsoft position.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  And there's no, there's no other thing that looks like the web to help challenge that position. Which I think is like, that's what scares me. It's not, it's not about like, I just, I'm a believer in obviously in like the open web and the idea that there are no gatekeepers between human beings and each other because of this, this one piece of technology. And like.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Well, but when we say the open web, like it's the open web that's controlled by Google. I mean,

• 25:10Nilay Patel?

  How is it controlled by Google?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  It's well monetized.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  It's monetized by Google. Okay, it's monetized by Google. So we're really talking about a platform that's run by Google. Like, Google makes the browser that people use to access content that Google monetizes. Like, it is Google's playground.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  And so, you know, it's open in the sense that like, Google is not blocking any kind of content on the web. You can create a website and be completely free of Google in a way that you can't create an app and be completely free of Apple.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  But if you want to start making money on this platform, like, you're gonna have to at some point go through Google or compete with them. And, or, and, and they're in the way because they're making the browser like-

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  Or, but like, or you could, I don't know, set up a paywall and have people pay. And it's like, there are other ways to monetize the web than just Google. It's just Google is the most dominant ways to monetize the web. Whereas, I think with Apple, there are very few ways to get on the iOS platform and play there. Unless you directly deal with Apple as a partner.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, you have to go through their approval process and you have to, if you have content they don't like, you won't be allowed in the store and, right. It's, it's a, it's a, the walls are higher in this garden.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Kirsten.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I should just let you hype check this entire situation.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, here, my main-

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Cause you're, you're much younger than we are.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, my main question is like, I just, it seems like everyone's been talking about ad blockers today as if 100% of people are gonna turn them on. And like, outside of this office, I don't know anyone who has an ad blocker.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I think 100% of people are gonna turn them on.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  I would argue-

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  You really?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I, or, I, or let's say, let's say at least 40 to 60.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Here's what I'll say.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  I'd, I'd say around 50%.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  I think that it's too hard of a thing for normals to set up.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  If you just get an app.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but people said that about Chrome.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the rates of desktop Chrome ad blocking are out of control. Like, it is a skyrocket.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  And it's easier on mobile, I think, than Chrome. Like, like some, a lot of people don't know about, about add-ons for Chrome. Everyone knows about getting apps, and that's what you do. Like, you just get, you just, it's as simple as getting an app. The app shows you like which button to press to turn it on, and then you do it.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but if you're not in tech, you don't know, like, nobody who's not in tech knows about this.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  If, if, if one of these ad blockers hangs out at the top of the most popular app list for a while-

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Normal people don't open their app store every day.

• 27:31Nilay Patel?

  That's true. The average number of apps on a phone is zero.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, if we're talking about normal people, honestly, I think the setup's just gonna be

• 27:37Nilay Patel?

  I will say this, I think mostly ad blockers I've used have a simpler interface than Candy Crush. Like Candy Crush is like a fucking Byzantine crazy ass, like, what is going on? Like a clown yells at you, so every, like,

• 27:48Speaker 01

  What?

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever heard of Candy Crush? This is like where I am in life. There's a clown who yells at you in Candy Crush.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, he's like, it's not a clown, it's a scary thing that I choose not to look at directly.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  I've never liked Candy Crush.

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's bejeweled, but with screaming. I know, it's like a very confusing.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  No, I think it's gonna be the kind of thing where people are like, a few, you know, early adopters will get it at first, but over time, you know, you'll meet someone and they'll be like, hey, why aren't you running ad blocking? Like my, I, you know, you pay for data, your phone is like significantly faster. Like, there's no downside to it, to get it, like.

• 28:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I think a lot of people, but I will say, and this is actually the funniest stat, today of all days, and it's like, everyone's turning it on, the thing's rocketing up, our rates of ad blocking are lower than an average day today. So usually, about 25% of the Verge's pages are ad blocked, and today it's 20, and I actually don't know why.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it's probably, I wonder if people whitelisted you? Because like, you know, on desktop, because this conversation has gone on.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  That'd be incredible. People are like, I'm turning on my phone, they're turning off my desktop.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  I mean, we are, we, we did recently change the Verge so that ads load after the rest of the page. So like, our total page load time hasn't gone down too much, but our times like, you can scroll and look at the content, is really fast now.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I, there's 100 people on our product team at Vox Media, right? Like, they are reading the stuff and they care about, it's like, they've been rapidly trying to make it better because they obviously care. But it's just, I think this conversation is fascinating because in many ways, this is the moment when I think the web goes from this like playground of innovation, where all of the money is flowing into it because building stuff on the web lets you get access to everyone, to kind of a, what the hell is gonna happen here? Google, you better fix it, and all of them. Money, so it's really flowing into the the Apple ecosystem because that's where people are. And that to me is and Facebook quite like Facebook is basically the answer for all the small publishers we're talking about.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  Facebook's gonna show up and say you can pay us replacement or use instant articles or buy promoted Facebook. They're gonna they're gonna make a product that says we're gonna save you.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  I'm going back to Gopher.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  The web is the web is over. And on that terrible note, let's talk about building websites together.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Great transition.

• 30:08Nilay Patel?

  Squarespace. Building a website can be tough and potentially doom you to a life of pain and poverty. But if you don't, even if you know your way around coding, it's gonna be hard. But if you want to just make something that looks good and works well, you should use Squarespace, whether it's for a business side, a portfolio, a restaurant, or whatever else. In this day and age, you probably need a website.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  For at least a little bit longer. Well, lucky for us, Squarespace makes it easy to build beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Squarespace provides powerful, simple, and beautiful websites that look professionally designed, regardless of skill level, no coding required. Not only does Squarespace provide you with intuitive and easy to use tools to create your website with, Squarespace also has state of the art technology powering your site to ensure security and stability. And you know you can trust in Squarespace for your website when millions of people and some of the most respected brands in the world trust in them too. I'm supposed to read a personal anecdote here, but I think

• 30:58Nilay Patel?

  what I want to say in this moment is please, please use Squarespace.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Please use the web.

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Save the web by using Squarespace because you can't beat the ease and simplicity of Squarespace. You get 24/7 online support, you get a beautiful website for $18 a month. You can get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for the year. So what are you waiting for except your own sense of impending doom and misery? Start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, please use the offer code VERGE. Get 10% off your first purchase. Show your support for this show, The Vergecast, which I pray you're still listening to, regardless of the chaoticness of this advertisement. And I would like to thank Squarespace for their support.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  Build it beautiful. There's it. I did it. I got through an ad.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Good job.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  Kind of stumbled through it a bit. All right. So this is the thing I want to do. So we talked about ad blocking. There is a world in which the world, everything gets better. And I think there's a world in which we move off platforms. Well, that remains to be seen. But I think that the more interesting thing to do, because Farhad is here, is just sort of do. Stay the even.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  All right.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  You don't want to talk about Amazon's brand new six pack of $50 tablets that you can buy?

• 32:01Speaker 03

  I'll just take a nap over here. It's fine.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  Hype check the Amazon tablets.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  One, like, actually, no.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  They're fifty bucks and they're not the worst thing ever made.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  Okay, fine. I'll give them a five because they'll give you like a six pack of them, which is cool. I'm like into, I'm actually into the idea that like for schools, that'll be really helpful.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, the Amazon tablets aren't like fantastic, but it's this, they're good enough.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Um, for a lot of things, like I have two kids, like they, I don't want to.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Are you gonna buy the kids tablet?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Um, I think I just will buy the normal one.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  But, I mean, I won't buy any because like we actually, our whole house is flooded with tablets, but.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  But, you know, for people who need tablets, like this is a good one to get. I mean, it's cheap. What's, why wouldn't you get a fifty dollar tablet? I feel like.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Uh, because you only, well, you buy a fifty dollar tablet, uh, and the only thing it'll be capable of doing is playing Amazon video.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  That's fine. I mean, a machine.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  That's worth it, right?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  And, no, I mean, it, it does like Netflix and stuff.

• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  Do your headphones work?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, mine.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  But my headphones are still working.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Would you like, would you like?

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  Keep arguing about tablets. I'll just, I'm just gonna wait. Who knows what I'm listening to now?

• 33:12Speaker 02

  All right.

• 33:13Nilay Patel?

  Now I'm just listening to Apple Music.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Can you realize you can't hear?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  I told you you were gonna argue about Apple Music.

• 33:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I can definitely, I can definitely hear you. Um, three grand, my headphones are working. Um, but yeah, but of course your house is full. I have like Nexus sevens, like just falling out of the woodwork at my house.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, but if you don't, if you, you have children.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  Like this is what you give to children to break.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, right. It, it's like, you're not gonna give them the two hundred and fifty dollar, uh, or I mean, the three hundred and ninety nine dollar iPad. Um, why would you? And like, they're not running like sophisticated stuff, right? They're running apps that you can get on, on the Amazon tablet.

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they're, they're running Netflix.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  They're running Netflix and like Amazon videos or like the tiniest, stupidest games, which are also available.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  Your poor kids?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  You're like, this game is garbage.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Well, it's Android, so.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  It's full of ads and weird stuff that's tracking them.

• 34:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. No ad blocking Android games. Um, well, so, so let's, let's just start with Amazon, right?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  Give me, give me the quick, what's up with Amazon i- in your estimation right now?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Um.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I think they're doing really well.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so the device stuff, they stumbled a little, I mean, they stumbled in a big way with the phone. The device strategy, I'm still trying to figure out, like their idea is to send out a bunch of cheap stuff. And then you'll get Amazon content through it. But otherwise, like their entire e-commerce business is like amazing. I suspected that they would be, they would have trouble competing with like on-demand companies, like companies like Instacart and like Uber, if it ever gets into logistics and stuff. But because, you know, those companies have the advantage of they can get you stuff and they're routing people through smartphones and they can get you stuff faster and like have perhaps wider selection from like your local area. Amazon seems to be competing with them okay.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  You know, they're building out their own like on-demand infrastructure.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And

• 35:13Nilay Patel?

  And they're doing drones, right?

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And they're, yeah, they're doing drones. That's the long-term path. But also like their media stuff seems to be going fine. Like it's a smart business to spend a hundred million dollars or whatever on, to create some TV shows, but then give those TV shows away because you can like copy them infinitely. So it's like a free gift to someone who subscribes to Prime. And so it seems like a bonus for you when you get Prime and then Prime makes you buy a bunch of stuff there. It's like a very smart strategy. I like, I don't know anyone, I don't like, if you're in a certain demographic and like can afford to shop at Amazon all the time, that's like the kind of shopper you are. Like it's become like the most attractive place to shop.

• 35:52Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Didn't Amazon also just make it so that you can download their shows locally?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  That for me is like, that is cool.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  That's, and that's something

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Netflix, copy that, please.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's something that, I mean, I wonder if Netflix, if, why they would do that. They're like, they, like, I guess they said they are not going to do it soon because it's like infrastructure, like it's more difficult and stuff. But, but Amazon doesn't care, right? Like they, they just are giving away the content as like a token for, for

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, I think it's really interesting about Just like what Prime is for for Amazon, like the whole, the number of services that it now encompasses.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Now the Washington Post.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Washington Post.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  I think that it's just really to, I think the idea is that if you're paying for Prime, you're definitely going to buy everything from Amazon.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  So they can just keep making Prime more and more attractive to you.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:44Nilay Patel?

  But this thing you're saying with their hardware efforts failing, I mean, the phone, did you see this? The Fire Phone team went to Google to work on Glass.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  That's just.

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  Which sounds insane to me.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Tornado of sadness.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 36:57Speaker 01

  When was that? A week or last week. Yeah.

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the, the Fire Phone team.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Well, a bunch of them. Well, a bunch of them have 26.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  That's gonna go well.

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it went to, um, they, they all just went, who knows what they're gonna do there. But it's gonna go great. Glass is gonna have four cameras. It's gonna track you in space and give you a headache even more.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  So the, the phone was like a departure for their whole product strategy, right? Like their, their idea in the past was to create like stripped down hardware to serve you content at a good price. Like that was the whole, the Kindle was expensive, but then it got cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to the point that we're like, you're crazy not to buy a Kindle because everything about it was cheaper. And that is also their tablet strategy and like arguably cheap tablets have threatened the iPad like.

• 37:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  And iPad, uh, I mean, it's like, it would have been a dominant computing platform that something, a, a whole bunch of people would have bought and Apple would have made a lot of profit on. If it wasn't for cheap tablets and Amazon was at the forefront of cheap tablets.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  Do you think it, well, when was the last time you bought, let me ask you a question. When was the last time you bought a new TV?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Oh, a long time ago.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. So I think iPads are just televisions. Like they're fundamentally, they're on that cycle.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  They're like, right. Okay.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  Right. You buy one, you buy, you watch a ton of video on it. You maybe like play some bad games. So like really.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  There's no reason to get like.

• 38:20Nilay Patel?

  It's a video consumption device.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I totally agree.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  So you don't need like the next version.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because you're just gonna watch Netflix on it anyway.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, no one needs like, all of my friends that have, like, I have a few friends that have the original iPad and now is the first time that they've ever considered getting a new one.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  So I think.

• 38:34Nilay Patel?

  Because it's gigantic.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, because it's the new iPad Pro and they can do the whole.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  So it's like, it's like a five year replacement cycle. I mean, that, that makes sense. Like it, it, it's, it's sort of on, I mean, it's where PCs are too, right? Like you don't, you don't really, like, unless you're like a professional who works with a computer. Like, my parents haven't bought a PC in the past five years. And like, you get one when like, the next thing is like substantially better. And your old one is like, breaking down.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, I think this iPad Pro thing is really interesting because it's, I think the biggest threat to Apple is that they, they didn't aggressively try to cannibalize the Mac with the iPad. So they're just rolling out multitasking, they're just rolling out split screen, they're just rolling out a proper keyboard situation. They're starting to make it.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Huh? I wouldn't call that keyboard proper.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  No, I think, I think they made the, the weird surfacy looking keyboard with the, I mean, I didn't.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  They made it junky on purpose so that third-party people would make something good.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, they just needed to make the connector. I think everyone will end up buying the Logitech one.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  I'll buy anything other than the one Apple made.

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Apple made it so bad. And Tom Warren, I don't know if you've seen Tom Warren, just like rage tweeting about how ugly it is compared to the Surface one. No, like, but they didn't do that, right? Like, they didn't, they, they're only just now saying, how do we make the iPad a true laptop replacement?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  I think there was a legitimate argument that, that multitasking on an iPad, like, that the UI would have been bad and they needed to figure out, they needed to get processors fast enough that they could like, run multiple apps at the same time and.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Processors, maybe, but like, the UI is not complicated. You swipe over. It's like, like Samsung screwed up their first stuff and it was overly complicated, but the UI now is like, it's the obvious thing. You swipe it over. Like, the thing that bugs me more than like, you know, waiting for so long is that it's still not truly multitasking to me. Like, if I'm gonna make the iPad Pro my computer, like, I believe it has the power to do everything that this tiny little new MacBook is doing, right? But what it can't do is let me have three apps going at the same time. And like, Windows, like, Windows are useful. I like Windows.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, but. Okay, no, I agree.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to be Windows.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  But windows are useful like when you're working, right? Like, I think they fundamentally, I think they don't think of maybe the iPad Pro. But until now, I don't think they thought of the iPad as like a working machine.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, they claimed that they did. They said that they did all the time.

• 41:01Nilay Patel?

  They're running around being like, this is for creativity.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  But they're, but they're, but the way they built it suggested they did.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, but that was their whole strategy, right? Like, I, I, they were just like, like, this is not for, just for consumption. And like, what killed them was it was just for consumption.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it seems like we should just start talking about Apple because that's, we were talking about Amazon.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  We're already there.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  You're already talking about Apple.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Why aren't we always talking about Apple?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Hi, check Amazon.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Everything we just talked about?

• 41:25Speaker 02

  No, no, Amazon.

• 41:26Nilay Patel?

  In life, in your life.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Like, uh, I don't, that's a lot.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Cause that's a lot.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Hi, check's a big job.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Their work, that's their workplace conditions, but also like.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  No, not their workplace conditions. I mean, you don't have to be that.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  That's kind of a part of the state of their company.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Not what they're doing to the economy.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  No, I mean, okay.

• 41:44Nilay Patel?

  Wait, aren't Apple's Chinese workplace conditions part of their story? They were like.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are.

• 41:50Nilay Patel?

  Who knows what it's like at the TP-Link factory where they're, where they're making the on-hub router for Google.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Seven, Amazon does some things that are amazing. Amazon, Amazon does some things that are horrible.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  We can't leave, we can't leave the Amazon conversation without talking about the Echo. Cause that's why.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, you're all about the Echo, aren't you?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  It's the best thing ever.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my favorite.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  I listen to my Echo all day today.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  I think, I think that is the future of computers. Like, talking to things in your house.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  It, it, and like, that machine, if it connected to like every, like, if it controlled my lights and controlled my TV, but it could also understand things like, uh, you know, I tell it to do something and remind me tomorrow, but also add stuff to lists. If it was just like the computer in my house that I could talk to, like the Star Trek computer.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Um, I think that would be amazing.

• 42:32Nilay Patel?

  I think the Echo is a brilliant hardware product connected to a pretty bad software service.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  I have to spend like all day Saturday figuring out music on my Echo.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Cause I'm like, Echo, play me some music. And they're like, okay. And then like one good song. Where'd that song come from?

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I said something I thought was completely, I said, well, I said one thing that worked, which was I said, play some music. And I was like, I'm playing you this, I picked a random prime playlist. I'm playing it for you. And I was like, three songs. I was like, that's pretty good. I was like, Alexa, I like this playlist. And she was like, that's great. I marked it down. And like, three days later, I was like, Alexa, play that playlist I like. And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, this is the simplest, there's one starred playlist in this whole system for you. Like, that's, the hardware that's brilliant is like, the directional microphone and the light that follows you. And like, the whole hardware design is brilliant.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  It's really fast, too. It responds, like, it's faster than Siri. Like, you say, Alexa, and it like instantly responds in a way that feels like a little bit freaky, because you're not used to computers being that quick. And like, and the other thing is, they're updating it really quickly. Like, it keeps getting better, kind of silently in the background. And you, like, I use it a lot for kitchen timers.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's almost all I use for.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  The other day, like, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that it could do multiple timers at the same time.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  And, and it was just.

• 43:58Nilay Patel?

  But they all have the same alarm.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:00Nilay Patel?

  So if you, if you set them pretty close, like, if you're like, cooking a bunch of stuff, and like, I want one at five minutes, and two minutes, so you're like, set another one for 10 minutes.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  You don't know which one's ringing, right? But I bet the next time we try it, like, they'll change that. Like, it's cool that it just updates you. There's no like.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Have you tried, like, hey Alexa, say, hey pizza to me in 10 minutes?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Maybe that could work. And then she'd just say, hey pizza.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  I will say that it is so sensitive that there were, when they do ads on television, oh, it's constantly responding. So that, I think, is one of the most interesting Amazon products that exists.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  And I think they got their, in the midst of all of their hardware turmoil and leaving people, letting people go, they got to a very simple idea, but a very disruptive idea way before everybody.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, it's surprising that Google didn't do that. Or Apple. I mean, it's not the kind of thing that Apple would do, because it's like, too unusual. It's like, a little bit bizarre.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  That's a little bit of a, little bit of a burn.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I mean, Apple's product, like, future seems fairly predictable, right? Like, even the watch wasn't like, a huge surprise. This was like, a out of left field product.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, because that, we were just joking with the on hub. And everyone's like, why isn't the on hub? And I think you tweeted about this, too. You're like, why isn't?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  But I think it's just because they're both cylinders. And the instinct is to say like, well, that's a cylinder. Why doesn't do the thing that but the router like sits away.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  That's possible.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  It's it's designed to not sit away. It's designed to sit in the center. That's why they made it.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  But it doesn't. It has to sit near your cable connection.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  That's the problem. Yeah. I wish I bought a huge giant ethernet cable so I could move mine into the middle of the house.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I just like the the the the echo is like it's just sitting in my kitchen. It's like plugged in.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  But so, I mean.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  I should set my echo next to my on hub and just have them be like friends.

• 45:51Nilay Patel?

  But so confusing.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  It seems if the echo idea catches on, if like a home automation catches on, you would imagine that that kind of thing would be built into um set top boxes, right? Like like into the Apple TV or I think Amazon's new fire TV thing has Alexa in it, right?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  It does. Yeah, it does.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Right, so.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  I don't want to leave my TV on.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  You know, I get the weird sense that Apple with the Apple TV wants you to leave your TV on. Like it's not like they didn't say it.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I mean, they built in like the screensavers that are like super gorgeous, in my opinion, but like they do definitely want you to leave your set top box on.

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just really strange. It's like I don't. That's like a dream. Like, that's like an early 2000s dream of what houses would look like. Like you would walk in and all the screens would be on showing you paintings.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  So maybe.

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  And then you would type and then you would like speak and all they were all light up.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  No, but you could imagine that like the TV could have the screen off, but the audio on like, and so it responds like like Alexa.

• 46:48Nilay Patel?

  So you definitely don't know that it's tracking.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  I don't know that that idea died in the early 2000s because like all of my friends, every time I go to a party with like 20 somethings. Every like TV has some kind of video or some kind of like thing muted playing and then there's music playing like for the party. Yeah, so like people will do like the like moving art stuff on Netflix or they'll find like slow mo videos on YouTube. Like the idea of having a moving art or like moving TV, I think, is.

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  You know, that idea is cool. No, you're right. But I meant to like, it's like a very Back to the Future 2, where you walk in and you're like, what's going on? And your boss is like, you're fired, and all your fax machines explode. Like, that idea where the screens are just on in your house all the time, like, you're not there and they're still on, is crazy.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  I mean, do you guys remember the stories about like Bill Gates' new house? Like, you know, like in like, the 90s where he, he had all this art, but it was like digital art on like big TV screens that were around his new house. And now it's like a normal thing. Like, like, I imagine that in the future, we'll just have like LCDs everywhere.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, but

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Will they still be LCDs?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Or whatever, like, very

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  We should, that's like a particularly Microsoft dream, that everything will be a projector and a touch surface.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should do a supercut of like all the Microsoft Home of the Future keynotes from CES.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, yes.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Put them all together into one giant house. Because you could do it all now, all the stuff they promised.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  And their vision was that you would have a Windows PC in your basement, just like handling it for you.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  Which seems not maybe what it feels.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Like, next to my water heater?

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. HP actually made one of these things.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  The home server.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like a giant tower you stick in your basement.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  This is like a thing, like, the, the goal, Microsoft's goal was that you would have basically a mainframe in your basement, in a cabinet next to your fuse box or something, and your cable would plug into it, and your power would plug into it.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  How long ago was this, like?

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  This is like, seriously, like, 2006. Like, the day before the iPhone came out.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  This is the dumbest sounding thing ever.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  Seriously, like, well, it's like cloud computing kind of happened because the phone was so much less powerful than these like mainframe PCs, right? So like, literally the day before the iPhone came out, Microsoft was like, what about a mainframe for your basement with like four cable card tuners and like 15, like, it was ridiculous. And all of that, like Windows, Media Center, all that stuff, is they're peeling it

• 49:05Speaker 02

  All out.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  They're peeling it entirely out of Windows because nobody wants that stuff anymore. Because instead of cables, we have Wi-Fi connections to cloud services.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  I want that, I want that server in my basement. I want a basement, first of all. Do you miss having a basement?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, because

• 49:19Speaker 01

  No, it's not a California thing, yeah.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so in my, in like, in California, you'd have like a shed with like a Microsoft. We gotta get you a Microsoft shed. That should be your next column for the time. Build, you should just build a, like a future home of the 90s now. Because all that stuff has got to be lying around.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gotta be available. You know, Sina just bought a house.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Oh, did you like?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  In Kentucky or something?

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they bought a warehouse. They have a warehouse full of washing machines. And they just bought a house.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  A giant house.

• 49:47Nilay Patel?

  Because CNN, like, you know, because they just review everything.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Oh, so they want like a stage.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  They literally have like a warehouse to test appliances in the middle of the country. And they just like, literally put up a post, it's like, we bought a house. And it's like, you're just going to change the door locks on this house like every week. That's going to be awful. Enjoy. Uh, okay, I gotta read this thing.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:06Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of the cloud.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  Softlayer builds a cloud built for results. Your business applications and computational workloads are unique, so you deserve cloud resources that meet your specific needs. Softlayer is one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers, otherwise known as public cloud, from a single seamless platform. All that's on demand, all that's connected to same open API, all that is connected to a global private network. And if your shit's crazy, you can scale your workloads up and down quickly and have ample space for your storage and sensitive tasks. Think about that, Dieter Bahn. Softlayer is an IBM company. In fact, IBM uses Softlayer as its cloud infrastructure foundation for all IBM cloud products and services. So even if you're not looking for infrastructure, you can benefit from Softlayer because you can just use IBM stuff and get Softlayer in the background. It's like buying a Toyota.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  They're all Toyotas, and you get the benefits of all Toyota resources. I know what that means. All of our listeners have the opportunity to get $500 with cloud infrastructure by visiting softlayer.com/podcast. You can order bare metal servers, you can put a mainframe in your basement, you can get a virtual server, you can get storage, networking, you can get security services. There's 24 data centers around the world. All of the services and services are connected to Softlayer's unique network of networks, which separates public, private, and management traffic, ensuring that your traffic travels more efficiently. So you can automate and control your cloud infrastructure with a granular API, or you can just use the Softlayer customer portal. Visit softlayer.com/podcast to get started with your $500 off of server, storage, network, and security on a cloud built for results from Softlayer.

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  Mainframe, Farhad's basement.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  Connected, connected to this cloud. Think about it. All right. That's not, that's not so great. Okay, so we vaguely talked.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  It's time for Microsoft. We're already like halfway there.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I feel like we're weaving Apple in and out of this. So we should, let's do Google, Microsoft, and then Apple.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Okay, Google.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  Google.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Um.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  I don't know. Google seems everywhere and competing with everything. And their future looks a little bit, I mean, if we're talking, if, if, you know, our earlier conversation was about the web, right? Like, if the web goes away, like, Google is screwed, right? Like, it's hard to imagine, like, they make all of their money from this platform. And then, and then search, right? Like, if search moves to something like the, the OS layer on your phone, that's terrible for them. You know, iOS users are the most valuable users. They're the ones that advertisers want. And so, if you can start searching for stuff, I mean, their saving grace is that Apple doesn't seem very good at this.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, they offloaded it to Bing, right?

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they offloaded it to Bing, but even like, the, like predictive stuff in the new iOS is not very good and sophisticated.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  There is one thing that's incredible, which is in the recent call list, if you get a call from a phone number that's not in your contacts, it will have already searched through all your email.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  And it'll make a guess at who it is.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've noticed that.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  It's crazy. That's crazy.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  You don't, well, you don't like the suggestions? Like, if you scroll left on your home screen and get the series suggestions?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  They're the worst.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  Oh, really? They're awesome for me.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  What?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I mean, do you?

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Those giant round icons for, like, coffee shops you'll never go to, or gas stations.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Not those, not those. It's that they show me the last.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  I live in New York. I do not need gas.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  No, no, no. It's not about that.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  You're saying the last apps.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  It's about, no, it's, well, it's about the last apps, but it's also about, if you scroll over, the, like, top section is like the four last people that you dealt with in any kind of, like, messaging or anything. So for me, that's super valuable.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  They had that in multitasking before. They just moved it to a different screen.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but this is faster and easier for me to get to, and it's right where I go when I go to search for, like, my app.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  I mean, but that's not at all, like, predictive or anything. It's not intelligent. It's just like the last people we talked to.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I mean, that is looking at data and then showing me something that I think I might want. So that is predictive a little bit.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  That list will change depending on time of day.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  One of Siri, one of Siri's suggestions for me in that list of contacts is myself.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Why do you have yourself in your phone?

• 54:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Why don't you?

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Why are you texting yourself?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  It used to be a thing. You'd always keep yourself in your phone so that you could like

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not even that.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  Has anyone ever actually done that?

• 54:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  It's literally

• 54:18Speaker 02

  You gotta beam it via IR. You gotta line up your phones and then beam it over.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  [email protected], which is an email address I received in 2011 from this company when it was called. I don't know why that's there. I haven't like interacted.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  That's weird, yeah.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  The email address doesn't even exist.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 54:32Nilay Patel?

  Siri just wants to remind me of the good old days. Like, that's what Siri's after right now. It's like, remember, you were young.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  That's what Facebook does.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  You were ID'listing.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  I will say that like, I don't need to get gas. But there are times that you do.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  No, but it should know those times.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  It's like, are you moving in a car?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  I should be able to

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  Actually, it should be able to know if you're moving in a car.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think phones can tell that, right. I mean, I think, but like, you know, if, search in the, like, people were holding it up. What happened?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  I just heard a noise.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  Someone's phone notifications have been on the entire time.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's me. That's who I am.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  You know, search in iOS, like, when they unveiled it at WWDC, a bunch of people were saying, like, this is gonna be a Google killer. I don't think it's gonna be a Google killer. But, you know, if they improve it to a certain extent, it could be bad for Google.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. What do you think of the Google Alphabet situation?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  I don't know. I thought it was a big deal at the time, but then the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's just like, a formalization of like, a structure that had already been in place and may not change anything. I mean, I guess since then, they've done some things, like they hired a new person for the car project, and it looks like the car project will become a bigger thing. Maybe they'll allow those other projects to become, you know, to become products in a way that maybe they've been hampered at some point. But it doesn't seem like it's gonna change like, the fundamental, like, the fundamental thing they need to do, that they've been trying to do for a while, is to come up with a thing to pay for stuff after search goes away.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Or, you know, alongside it, some new huge business. And, you know, they have time, but it's not clear if like, any of these other things is gonna be, you know, like, the blockbuster for them.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, I don't think search is going away. And I think this is kinda what you're getting to, right? Like, The app-based search or the home screen-based search, the OS layer search, it's gotta get, that's a, to compete with Google, it's gotta be as good as Google. It can't just be slightly more convenient because everybody knows to just press that Safari icon or like open a Google app and get there.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  But, so a lot of the searches I do are like navigation searches, right? Like, and if I, so if I do a lot of navigation searches, that's already gone because I'm just like loading up apps. If I'm doing like research searches, like, like, let's say I want to like find the movie times and stuff like, those aren't hard searches to do and Apple could do them. And then you could imagine like a whole bunch of like intelligent automated stuff moving toward like things like Echo or Siri, like searches that you used to do on your computer, like, like you, you may have like looked up your doctor to make an appointment or something. And then now you can just like tell some smart assistant to do it or something like that. Like,

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I imagine that we'll get to a future where like AI and will be so good that we will have to search less.

• 57:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's Google's feature. I mean, that's like, that was Google Now for a minute.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Right. No, I think, I think Google is like well positioned to do that, but there are all these other, like, they have to compete with Apple for this.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Do you think Google Now should give Google Now a name? Everybody else, like does Siri and Cortana and whatever?

• 57:46Nilay Patel?

  Uh, why do you think the name should be?

• 57:48Speaker 01

  You mean like a personality?

• 57:50Speaker 03

  I think it needs a personality name because if you think about all the other ones, they're, it's trying to simulate you dealing with like a personal assistant. Are you dealing with another person? And it's going to make you more willing to like, it's weird to say empathize with like an AI, but it's going to make you more willing to kind of accept that as a personality if it has a name. Like, I wish it had a name because I like Google Now. It's my favorite one to use, but I wish I could just be like, hey, Greg or whatever.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Greg.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  It should be Alfred.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Greg is the worst name.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Greg is like, it should be Batman's butler. Greg is like really good.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  I just named it.

• 58:23Nilay Patel?

  You know, like a particularly like very

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Well, it has to be like ungendered, right? Like it can't be a male or female. It has to be male.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Oh, no, it has to be gendered.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, because there's already two women.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  Has there ever been?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  No, that's not true. You can turn Siri into a boy. You can turn it British. You can have a British boy Siri.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  Uh, here's my question, and it's just a real question. Maybe you don't have to answer it now, just think about, has there ever been a threatening Greg? Because you need a non-threatening name.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  When has there ever been a threatening Greg?

• 58:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm just, I'm just asking.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Tweet me a threatening Greg.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  I'm sure there must have been a serial killer named Greg.

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. He's like, I'll show you.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:59Nilay Patel?

  I am threatening.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  You're like, let him in your house.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Is Greg Jennings?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Who?

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  He's not that threatening.

• 59:06Nilay Patel?

  But he's just a football player. Like, it's fine. Like, it's.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no Greg the Terrible.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  We used to have an accountant here named Greg. He was vaguely threatening because he controlled my expense reports. Like, I don't know.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we should do, very quickly, you have like two minutes left with us. Apple. Just give us.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Again?

• 59:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, we, we.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  I thought we talked about Apple.

• 59:24Nilay Patel?

  We just did, we did iPad in a context of Amazon.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  I mean, Apple's easy. Like, Apple's future is the iPhone and there's nothing gonna, nothing is gonna.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  Do you think Google, here's what, here's my question, the real question. If the web starts dying, do you think Google should just make a phone? Like, not do this Nexus garbage, which like, make its own phone and say like, this is the Google phone. Buy this one instead of the Apple phone. Because right now they're just dancing. Right? They're waiting for Samsung to do it for them and Samsung isn't going to do it for them.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, not going to do it well.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  And like, Google should like, the Chromebooks are like, hilarious joke. Like, then the move, the obvious move for Google is to say like, we're making our own operating system that runs on our phone and our PC.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Do you think Google can make a hardware-software combination that can compete with the iPhone? Like, do you think that it could be, you know, like, because I, so I think they can make something that's good enough, but at this point, there are so many people who are like entrenched in the iOS ecosystem. And Apple's future is to like, make that ecosystem better and better and like harder to go away from. That it would take a lot to get people away from that whole ecosystem into a new thing. I mean, Google's ecosystem is the only sort of competitor there is to, to, to Apple, but it's still like, if you live in an iOS.

• 1:00:37Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of Microsoft people are tweeting at you right now.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, like, even if, even if you accept that you can't convert the, the current Apple people because they're gonna be too volatile in Apple. There's still plenty of room to like, get new customers and like, other areas. They could do it.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I feel like the smartphone wars are over and Apple has won.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  But they didn't though. They have less market share. Yeah, they have, I understand that they make more profit.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  That doesn't matter. Like, they, they have the, the reason that we talk, the reason that we, the reason we think about.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  It matters if you're talking about Apple's stock, but otherwise it doesn't matter.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  The reason we worry about like content blocking on iOS is because like all of the business of entire digital economy occurs on this one device. Like, these are the most valuable people. And you, there is a future in which all those people who are running $50 Android phones, like, become the future of the tech industry and like become valuable and like you want to sell them stuff. But I don't, I don't really, I think those people are going to graduate to iPhones. Like, and, and that economy, like, it's really hard to pull away from the, from iOS once you're in it. Like, that's what the whole Apple TV is for. That's what like, perhaps what the watch is for, if it like becomes a thing that people want. Like, it's just going to tie you further and further into the super, super profitable device for them.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  And they don't need to get everyone. I mean, they just need to get like, the, the wealthy 30% of the.

• 1:02:01Nilay Patel?

  I just think that there are, there are plenty of people who would, who, it's like, it's like a new thing syndrome, right? Like, people just want new stuff.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  And I think there's plenty of people who would take a very serious look at a real, like, high-end Google phone, or a really high-end, like, Google app that could do more than just run Chrome.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  But I don't, I don't even know, how do you improve upon a smartphone to this point that like you're willing to switch? Like, smartphones are smartphones. Like, they do things really.

• 1:02:31Nilay Patel?

  People switch all the time.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  No, I don't think people switch.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  Oh, people switch all the time.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  I just call Dieter Google. And we're done. That's it. That's our show, everybody. That has been, I'm allowed to tell.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Google.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  This is Google. My hot match was here.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  All right, are we really done? Google, do you think you want to say?

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  My god.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  By the way, that's what they should name Google now. Dieter.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be great. Dieter would be good.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I would know, I would call it Dieter.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  But there is, by the way, there have in history been threatening Dieters.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  Threatening Greg's? No one's provided me a.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  But maybe that's, maybe that's the thing.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Just provided you with threatening Greg.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  It's a bunny.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Wait, Greg the bunny?

• 1:03:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  It's literally a bunny.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Not threatening, no.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  All right. Uh, do you want to take us?

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Uh, I would love to take us home, uh, but I have to find the home taking

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Uh, information.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, here.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  You got it?

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  Are you doing the engagements? Did you tell me to do them?

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I'm, I'm, before I take us home.

• 1:03:27Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if you noticed, we are terrible at starting and ending the show.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  We're worse at ending the show.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  The middle's great.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  The middle, the middle is mediocre as well.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  The middle is the middle. Uh, and also our, our podcast producer Jorge is incredibly aggressive.

• 1:03:42Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right, end the show, end the show.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  I can't end the show because I have one more ad to do.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay, while you're doing, no, that comes at the very end.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  Very end.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  I think you're wrong.

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  You need two sentences about Microsoft, real quick. What are they?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Oh, uh.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Dropbox just froze my computer.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Microsoft could do really well if people paid attention to them. I don't know. HoloLens looks cool.

• 1:04:10Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true. But man.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  If you want to.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  It's that, they, they have like, Microsoft has a real insecurity issue right now.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  If you want to follow us on Twitter, there are a few places you can do it. The most obvious place is at Verge, but did you know that there's an account called at Verge Cars? Which is all about Verge transportation? It's true. It's the truth. You should follow it too. We're also on Snapchat. You can see Kirsten do, uh, crazy hijinks there. That is the real Verge. And of course, uh, we are also on iTunes. If you go to iTunes.com slash The Verge, you will find us. You'll find a link to go give us five stars, which obviously you should do. You'll also find a couple of other podcasts that we make here, including Verge ESP, What's Tech? And I don't want to give anything away, but there might be another one.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's gonna be something.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  It's gonna be something.

• 1:05:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  You're really, really, really gonna want to listen to it. Like, really, really.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Like, totally, really.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you're the sort of person that routinely wastes an hour listening to this show.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Nilay Patel?

  I think you're gonna be really into that show. But if you're the sort of person, I don't know, that, um.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  That's not listening to the show right now?

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Not listening to the show, then.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Find those people and make them listen to that show.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  On Twitter, I am Backlon Neel. Is reckless for how does F man do?

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Sweet. Kirsten's Kirsten Frazina.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  And I'm at Kirsten Frazina.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, you get the at, the rest of us don't.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:05:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, I gotta read one more.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 1:05:40Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and we'd just like to thank Braintree. This episode of Vergecast was brought to us by Braintree. If you're working on a mobile app, searching for a simple payment solution, just please try Braintree. One simple integration, you can offer your customers every way they want to pay, like literally everything. Have you seen their billboards? It's like out of control, just a list of other payment methods. So, learn more and get your first 50,000 transactions fee free. Go to braintreepayments.com/vergecast. That was our show. Oh, and go to iTunes, give us five stars. Did you ever say that part?

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  I said that part.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, whatever. And Braintree, just get it.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Google.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Google.