Google adds RCS encryption to Messages / Congress gearing up to fight big tech / Windows 11 leaks

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to Verge senior editor Tom Warren about leaks of Microsoft's Windows 11 UI and announcements from E3 2021. Verge politics reporter Makena Kelly explains how Republicans and Democrats are gearing up to fight tech monopolies. Verge managing editor Alex Cranz joins the show to talk about Google's updates to Messages and a bunch of gadget news from this week. Further reading: Amazon’s COVID-19 test is now available to consumers Novavax says its COVID-19 vaccine is 90 percent effective Pharma is winning the big business popularity contest Windows 11 leak reveals new UI, Start menu, and more Microsoft Teams’ new front row layout arrives later this year Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella now doubles as the company’s chairman Microsoft announces Xbox TV app and its own xCloud ... Microsoft is bringing next-gen Xbox games to the Xbox One with xCloud Even the Xbox app has stories now The Xbox Series X mini fridge will be available this holiday season Microsoft Flight Simulator is landing on Xbox Series X / S consoles on July 27th The best trailers of E3 2021 Tech antitrust pioneer Lina Khan will officially lead the FTC How Republicans and Democrats are gearing up to fight tech monopolies House lawmakers introduce five bipartisan bills to unwind tech monopolies Senate bill would make it easier to cancel a subscription online after a free trial Google’s first retail store opens this week Google adds E2E RCS encryption to Messages, emoji mashup suggests, and more for Android Google Workspace and Google Chat are officially available to everybody Honor confirms Google’s apps will return to its phones with new 50 series Beats Studio Buds review: big ambition, imperfect execution Ikea and Sonos announce picture frame speaker, coming July 15th for $199 Watch the debut of Tesla Model S Plaid, the ‘quickest production car ever made’ The Realme GT lays claim to OnePlus’ ‘flagship killer’ mantle Oppo’s rollable concept phone is pure potential lacking polish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, Tom Warren joins us to talk all about the Windows 11 leaks, what happened with Microsoft at E3. Then McKenna Kelly joins to talk about all the antitrust action going on with tech companies right now. Then Alex Krantz joins the show to talk about Google and a bunch of gadgets that came out. That's coming up on the Vergecast now.

• 0:17Speaker 01

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

• 1:02Speaker 01

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

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the next generation of Windows. The problem with that is that sounds too much like how Microsoft would do its own branded content. Anyways, what I got today. I'm Neil, I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I'm the Excel sheet embedded in the Word document embedded in your Microsoft Teams chat.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  You're real fluid, Dieter. Yeah. Tom Warren is here.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Hello, I am here to give you all the latest and greatest on Cortana.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, it's a real winner of a show from the jump. Anyhow, we've got an all-star lineup today. Tom's gonna talk about Windows and E3 and what's going on with Xbox with us. Makena Kelly is gonna join. We're gonna talk about all the antitrust stuff that's going on. There's a lot of antitrust stuff this week. And then Alex Cranz is going to join us for the third segment of the show. I'm gonna go through all the other gadget news that's going on. So a lot going on in the Vergecast this week. I want to start where we start with COVID is always one of the biggest stories in the world. Lots of strange COVID news this week. Amazon had developed a COVID-19 test for their own employees in the heart of the pandemic. They were gonna release it to consumers. It went up on the Amazon website. We could just order a test from Amazon, which would be a big deal. Now it's gone.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  We assume it'll come back, but it would have been one of those big deals in the sort of the depths of the pandemic because testing was hard, as for chess listeners well know. Access to testing was a big deal. I think it will continue to be a big deal as the pandemic kind of ebbs and the virus becomes more of a seasonal thing. So Amazon having a test that's widely available to consumers, a big deal. We gotta follow up on where it went because it's disappeared. There's now a fourth vaccine, a company called Novavax. Says its vaccine is 90% effective. It's also two shots, but can be stored at room temperature. It's a big deal. That's good news. And then Nicole Wettsman wrote a pretty interesting story this week. You know, before the pandemic, big pharma was one of the most reviled industries in America.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  And after all the vaccine development and all the stuff, their popularity has really skyrocketed. Pfizer was not as popular as it is now several years ago. So kind of a big shift in how we think about pharma, how we think about pharma R and D, which is gonna have ripple effects. As always, the Verge Science team is doing just amazing work. So check out theverge.com/science. We've got all that. We've got other stuff. Nicole and I actually had a long conversation the other day about what she's gonna cover as the vaccine, is what she's gonna cover as the virus stops being the central story. And the answer is, oh, man, tech companies have been doing a lot of stuff. Yeah. There's actually a lot of like health tech to cover. So we're excited about that.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  But check out theverge.com/science, the team doing incredible work as always. Okay. Speaking of health, Windows. Keep them open.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Tom, I think my favorite story of the week was like your like two sentence post of Cortana on Windows 11 insisting that Windows 11 doesn't exist. It's pretty good.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was short. I tweeted it, but Sean delivered the verge goods.

• 4:58Nilay Patel?

  So Windows 11 has leaked?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it has leaked. It says Windows 11, which is kind of the last time I was on, we were basically saying it was going to be Windows 11, right?

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  No surprise there.

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  What do you think Microsoft's excuse is going to be for going to Windows 11 after they said for a couple of years now that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows and Windows is a service now, we're never going to change, increment the number again?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  I think the way that they framed it when they first launched it was like Windows as a service, like officially within all the marketing speak, but in like one of their developer evangelists kind of went off a build and was like, this is our last version and kind of everyone ran with that. And I think that that's obviously created the idea that they would never would be Windows 11. And to be honest, Microsoft never really came out and said that that was wrong. But I feel like they're probably just going to be like, that was something that someone said.

• 5:53Nilay Patel?

  Words don't have meaning. There's no consequences.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  We never really said that. I don't even know if they're going to fully address it or whatever, because yeah, like it involves throwing someone under the bus essentially. But yeah, I think that's, that's the kind of gist of it from the way I see it anyway.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  It would be nice if they're honest. They're like, PC sales have exploded, which we weren't expecting. And so we just need to like juice the number some like it would. I just wish some company would just be honest.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like from what we've seen from the leak and everything is that is basically a Windows 10x. So they were, they were happy to go with 10x as the branding. Yeah, a couple of years ago before the pandemic hit, like was it October they, they announced 10x? And then, you know, the pandemic began.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  There's the before time, there's the pandemic, and then there's like last week. And those are the only time periods I recognize.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, everything is March. So yeah, like they obviously had an idea to go with 10x at one point and they were happy with that branding, but they've obviously thought, you know what? We're going to do some extra work and let's, you know, let's, let's push the market. The marketing folks have been like, hmm, we could call this 11.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  And then obviously all the teasers been happening over the past few weeks and stuff. So, but yeah, it leaked and it looks like it's gonna be 11.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Okay, let's just start with start. See what I did there?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  It's good. I'm a professional podcaster. Why does the start menu come up from the middle of the screen? This is the only thing that I've seen in the like, I watched the little video you tweeted. I like looked at some and I'm just focused on the fact that you pushed the start button. It's in the middle of the screen.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think because macOS, Chrome OS, I think like that, that general thing. I think more broadly is that like people using Windows are using ultra wides now and bigger, wider monitors. And so having your like start menu on the left doesn't actually really make sense on those sort of panels. What I'm curious about is whether they move it for everyone. Cause there is an option to shift it back to the left. So like, if you installed it by default, it does actually move everything to the middle. But this is, this is a leaked early version. So who knows if, if you already have the menu on the left and are they going to force you into the center? I don't, I feel like they probably will force you into the center, but there is an option to go back.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  But I think, I think it's just, it's the evolution of like Chrome OS has gone that way. Obviously macOS has been that way for decades. It kind of makes sense in, in a way. And I think it's more of a decluttering of Windows as well. Like just, I think they're trying to get away from, at the moment, you can pin so much stuff to your taskbar, like you can have all your apps there because no one really wants to touch the start menu because it's kind of, you know, all these live tiles and it's a bit, there's a lot going on there. Whereas I think they're trying to bring that back, like no, go to the start menu. We've got your recent documents is actually useful, you know, like making it a bit more of a useful tool again. So doing that is, I think it's to discourage people from pinning stuff on, onto the dock, essentially.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it gravitates to it being in the center. I gravitate to they have, they've just given up on live tiles. They've, they've taken that out of the start menu. It now is like, they're not live tiles anymore. They're something else and they live somewhere else. And so now it's file, recommended files and your apps, that whole dream of mixing your personal information and glanceable information and starting your apps and putting all that together that started Windows phone is like, it's officially dead and gone.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? No, and that's fine. Like, no one really has liked it for the past couple of years. Design trends change or whatever. But yeah, like, the start menu is just, it's very, very Chrome OS-y now. It's sort of Mac-y, like the launch thing on Mac, but nobody ever uses that. And that's kind of bad. I don't know how, if I even think of this as a start menu anymore, if I got to be honest with you. Like, I feel like the start menu was cool because it had more.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  It's a launcher, right?

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a launcher, not a start menu.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  I think, yeah, and I think that's, that's, that's obviously intentional. Like you say, like, the live tiles, they were, they were super useful for, like, glanceable information, but then people soon realized, how much glanceable information do I actually want?

• 10:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  It's like, the weather and the news, like, two obvious points, but beyond that, it's like, no, I'm going into the app and, like, digging through. I don't really need the glanceable information. And they've put that, like, glanceable sort of weather, new stuff in the taskbar on Windows 10 currently. And then in Windows 11, they're actually moving it into a separate widgets panel. So, so they've obviously, there's still some of that elements of the stuff that they wanted to do with live tiles. It's just they're bringing back what they were doing with widgets in Vista instead.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, but it's definitely, it's gone away. It's a launcher now. Yeah, I agree. I don't really see it as like a start menu so much anymore. It's definitely a launcher. It's a portal for, like, quickly getting access to your documents, getting access to search, and your, and your apps, and, you know, your frequent apps and stuff, so.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like, it's so funny to me to think about the journey Microsoft has been on with this one button in Windows.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  And they're moving it again.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  And like, just moving it around, like, it was the revolution for Windows 95. Like, this was the thing. They licensed the Rolling Stones song because of the start button to, because literally people had no idea what to do when they sat down in a Windows PC. And like, here's a button, it's going to have stuff in it. And it has so far expanded. Then they got rid of it in 8. Then they realized that was the worst idea that they've ever had. They brought it back in this other conception. And now, it's just, it's kind of just going back to where it started. In a pretty real way, right? Like, here's a bunch of stuff that you might want to immediately do.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  They obviously removed it and I put it back in eight point one, but like they still had the live tiles interface.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  And then obviously Windows 10 came and just took things way back, but like kind of still kept those live tiles. It was like a really weird, like, they didn't fully step back, but now they're like, hey, we're not even fully stepping back. We're just gonna kind of get rid of the start menu sort of interface that we've been, we've had for like years now. And then just put it back to something really simple. And I think that that's simple or like a concept is broadly what this is. You know, like they're trying to simplify Windows a little bit more, which is what 10x was supposed to be. It was supposed to be like cleaning up Windows, right? Simplifying it and make it run on different hardware. But I think they've obviously seen that, why, why, why should we do a separate sort of product? Cause they've done that before and it's never worked, has it?

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  So it's like, let's just do this to Windows, but don't go too hard, like where you, you know, moving everything around. But do it in a, in a way that it makes sense.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, God forbid that they clean up the toolbar in the, you know, the, the File Explorer. What is the story? It's so, there's so much crap there.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, the rib, the ribbon is still there.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  File Explorer still looks the same. I don't know whether that's fully gonna change. Cause so a lot of the stuff that we do see, like if you look in the system tray, it kind of looks a bit weird with the date, like triple stacked.

• 13:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  And stuff like that, like that will all change. Like that's, that's definitely not what it should look like. It's just, it's an early build, but stuff like the File Explorer, I don't think that's gonna change radically.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  You know, it strikes me up File Explorer is we have this conversation about the iPad all of the time, right? Like the iPad is like fully abstracted the file system away from you. There's this endless debate that they've kind of re-engaged with iOS 15. Like, is this a spatial interface or is it a chronological one? Like, do you understand the core metaphor of this computer? And like with the iPad, we talk about every time, like the answer is no. Apple needs to do a better job. File Explorer to me is the most stubborn no from any computer company ever.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's like, it's full of the computer trying to help you in ways that are absolutely not helpful by exposing all of the controls to you and minimizing just the folder structure of the PC. Like, what I really want is like, here's the root level of the hard drive, and here are some quick links to where I might want to go. And instead, it's like, here's some recent things. Here's every command you might ever want to do with a file. Here's a dynamically generated list of like, things we think you use frequently, right? And then like, what human has ever looked at this and been like, I understand how to use this computer. And every time I open this window, my muscle memory will like,

• 14:38Nilay Patel?

  kick in and I'll do it well. And Microsoft has like, looked at that for 10 years and been like, that's cool.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  If you know what the easy access button is in File Explorer, and what it does and what its function is, please tweet at Tom Warren and let him know. Because I do not.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  The problem is, once they start changing things, that's when people are like, no, don't do that. Like, because there is, like you say, there's a muscle memory you build up with using this. And whether it's the interface that it should be or not is a different question, but it's the interface that people get used to using. That's the problem.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  But I think this is the thing that has always paralyzed Microsoft, right? They are so aware of the edge cases of all of their software. And they're like, what if we lose one Word customer?

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:23Nilay Patel?

  We can never change it. And I just like, Microsoft, like their software design is almost defined by how afraid they are of irritating some people some of the time.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they've described it like, in the past as like, creating pizza for a billion people, right? With different toppings. Like, that's kind of it. Like, there's so many different ways to do stuff in Windows, that then if you change one of those ways to a certain path, like, people, people get upset.

• 15:50Nilay Patel?

  It's just so funny, because like, what are they gonna do? Like, we live in the age of tech monopolies. Like, where are those Windows customers gonna go? Like, that's how all of the other companies handle this problem. They're like, yeah, that sucks. No meaningful choices exist for you.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  It's true, like there is, there is no competition to Windows, really.

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Like, I mean, Android is probably the closest thing that looked remotely like a threat. But obviously Mac OS is, you have to buy the hardware.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  So. Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  That's, that's not the same sort of competition. Um, but yeah, like from, from what we've seen in the leak, I don't feel like they've gone far enough. But then I, I don't want to say that because I don't know how far they're going to go next week and show this is early build and that sort of stuff. But I think still, I don't feel like it's going to go far enough to be, you know, I think to warrant the 11.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh. Yeah. I mean, that's my big question and like my easy dunk and it's like, it's a ha ha, you know, thing. But it's also, I think, really telling is you, you tweeted out that you can still go in there and find like some Windows 95 shit. Like the control panel is still lurking underneath all this pretty exterior, right?

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's like, it's definitely beyond the point where they should get rid of the control panel now.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  You can surface those settings within the main settings app, but that is literally just there for legacy and enterprise. So it's, it's like the same reason that Internet Explorer still exists in Windows 10 right now, even though we've had two versions of Edge.

• 17:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Like that is, that's literally why control panel exists. So it's just because like, there's a bunch of sysadmins that you use a particular tool or control panel applet that plugs into it. And it's like, unfortunately, that's a lot of their customers.

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just, I, I'm just like, what are they, they're going to install Linux? Come on, like piss them off. Like, what, what do you got to lose?

• 17:43Speaker 03

  It's like the age old debate, isn't it? It's like, they're, they're great at like supporting legacy stuff across Windows, Xbox, you know, back compatibility and all that sort of stuff. Like, that's one of Microsoft's greatest things that you can still run like apps from, you know, Windows 3, 3.11 on here. You know, like that's, that's kind of insane that, that you can do that. But it's also like just their worst enemy.

• 18:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it is very much the character of like, there's no way that that care, that DNA of Microsoft will not change, right? Like this is what they need Windows to be. It supports everything everywhere. They have a security model now that kind of demands that you keep updating Windows in this way. So they have to keep the legacy stuff going because. I mean, like, we also live in the age of ransomware attacks, right?

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  There's lots of reasons to keep going the way they're going. I just think it's a very funny that in the age of tech monopolies, Microsoft is like, what if we lose one customer? And it's like, I don't, there's nowhere to go.

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you want to play games on your PC, what are you gonna do if you're mad that a setting is gone?

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, they dominate that. They dominate it, but they don't like, they dominate gaming, but they don't really control it. It's totally out of their hands, you know?

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Like, it's Steam, it's Steam that really controls it, which is, which is kind of crazy to think about as well.

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  What else are you seeing in 11 and what are you hoping to see?

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, obviously, the start menu is the, is the main thing. There's a bunch of like, out of box experience stuff. So like, when you're setting up a new laptop, that's like a lot nicer. Cortana is no longer screaming at you.

• 19:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, thank God.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Setting up your PC.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  Thank God.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Anything like that. It, it, it's the niceties of around that. Some stuff's missing that we were expecting, it's like the store. Obviously, the store has been a bit of a pain point, really, since it's existed, to be honest. And there's rumors that that's going to be totally overhauled. We don't see any evidence of that in this leaked version, but I'm still definitely expecting that to be revealed next week. And with it, like, whatever changes they do to let more apps into the store. So I think that will be a pretty significant change to Windows, to be honest. So, because even though you can get these, like, you know, rival browsers like Chrome, you can go to the web and download them. Having them in the store just makes it a lot easier to set up your PC and restore and stuff.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  So, Windows event, June 24th, we'll obviously see more.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  Lots to come. Other Microsoft news this week, they announced that Satya Nadella is now the company's chairman, as well as the CEO, which is, feels like a big deal. He's now fully in charge of Microsoft in the way that Gates was, which is kind of interesting.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Like, they never gave this to Bomber, right? No, they went like fully independent with, um, what was his name? John? Trying to remember his surname, but anyway, they had an independent chairman.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  John Thompson.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  John Thompson, that's right. Now they obviously have confidence in Nadella to, to be sort of fully in charge of things, which it does show you how much influence he's had on the company since, you know, he became CEO. Um, and it's just how, how much Microsoft's changed really. Like I've, I've seen it in, in both their products and people really. I think before their accessibility work was impressive, but it was one of those sort of backstories, like they didn't really make it shine. But now they have like, you know, Xbox's adaptive controller. They have like all these crazy accessibility options in Windows. Like they've really pulled that to the front because of Nadella. And that's just a small example, but like, there's obviously a bigger trust with him there to put him in the, in the chairman role.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's funny that when he first got that job, I did a long interview with him where I asked him, why does Microsoft exist? And he had some like answers, but now he's like, he figured it out. Yeah. So that's exciting. Anyway, uh, Windows event, um, June 24th. But this week was also E3. Lots of news out of E3. No Switch Pro, which is like what we were all expecting, but it didn't happen. But I, I think some of the biggest news to E3 is around Xbox. They announced that they're going to make their own streaming stick. They're going to start doing an Xbox app on other smart TV platforms. Is it still called Xcloud? Xcloud is like, it's in my head. Their game streaming service is called Xcloud. It's not called that, but they're going to do apps on smart TVs

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  that should work with their controllers to let you stream Xbox games to TVs without any hardware. And then they're going to do their own streaming stick. Clearly, which will have the Xbox interface and be designed around that, but let you do all the media stuff too. If I had to say, there's a lot of obviously exciting games news at E3.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Metroid.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  But if I had to pick the one gigantic thing that will reshape the industry.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Metroid.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  It's Metroid. Metroid will reshape the industry.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  It already has. What can it do? I mean, the Xbox Series X Mini for it is not going to reshape the industry. That was very cool. But I just think like Microsoft decoupling its hardware and software is kind of a huge deal.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's kind of been like this. This stuff has obviously been super obvious. Like Phil Spencer sort of hinted that they were going to do streaming devices and and on the on the TV and all that sort of stuff. But like for them to say it and it's built upon what they've been doing the last sort of two, three years, really. Which is like this focus of like, we don't care about selling consoles anymore. At least that's, you know, that's our vision. And it's more.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  They said as they sold fewer consoles.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  And it's like, yeah, like they've had some serious competition against Sony. They've and it's amazing what competition does, right? It makes you do like innovative things and different things to your competition. So they've definitely gone a different, completely different route to Sony. Sony's like, we're going to sell you $60, $70 games. Microsoft's like, we're going to sell you a subscription and you're going to get it everywhere. And I think we spoke about this last time I was on, it was like a lot of people compare it to like the Netflix of gaming and all that sort of stuff. And to get there, you do need to be everywhere. You do need to be on TVs. You need to have your own streaming devices. You need to, you know, you need to cut these deals to make sure you're everywhere. And they obviously had problems trying to get to the iPhone. Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  That way, but they're obviously not going to have too many problems with TV manufacturers. They already have a crazy relationship with Samsung. So I can imagine Samsung's going to have some maybe not exclusivity, but they'll definitely be there day one, I'm sure.

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's just true about the the point with the iPhone is they had to figure out how to make this work in the iPhone's web browser. And almost all of the TV platforms are based on HTML5. So I think that work probably like paid dividends across the board. Because if you look at writing native apps for the TV platforms, almost nobody does it. A, because all they're really doing is delivering video streams. And B, you have to write a Tizen app, an Android app and a WebOS. And like, nobody wants to do that. So they've all settled on HTML5 apps as a way to cut across the board. And I'm I'm very curious if the work they had to do to figure this out on the iPhone and bypass the app store has paid dividends for them in the TV market.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm sure it has because they didn't actually do all the work themselves like they've they've actually outsourced a lot of it. Um, to I can't remember the exact name of the company, but they they use someone else's stack um to sort of bring bring it on board. So it makes it allows them to sort of focus on the actual server side rather than the the sort of platform of getting in there. But yeah, like I can imagine this work was ongoing before Apple said, you know, we're not gonna let you on the iPhone. So they were ready for that scenario. Um, it obviously just came a little bit later than when it launched on Android, but it's definitely. Yeah, that's definitely a big part of it was to go to TVs. Um, they've they've spoken about um going to Facebook Gaming because they obviously sold off um Mixer to Facebook. But we haven't heard

• 25:22Speaker 03

  much more about that. But that was another sort of area where they're supposed to be lighting up X Cloud. Um, they've obviously gone to the web, but the idea was that, you know, you'd have it in these streams and you'd be able to click a button like kind of similar to Stadia, right? Like where the idea was you'd be on YouTube, see a person streaming it, click play and be playing with them or be playing at the point they were playing at. Um, and I think they were supposed to be doing some stuff with Facebook there, but we haven't heard much more about that. But that's all part of like this broader sort of X Cloud. It's not called X Cloud. It's called, what is it called? I don't even, I can't even remember myself. That's how that's how bad.

• 25:56Nilay Patel?

  Xbox Live project. Yeah, just pick some of those words and you got it.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Xbox Cloud Gaming, I think it's officially called. But yeah, it's.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  X Cloud is way cooler. It's so much cooler.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  The the stupid thing is the underlying technology is called Project X Cloud and they still keep saying that.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I'm just gonna call it X Cloud. That's all I needed to know.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Okay, so like in in three years, uh, is the idea that you will only buy an Xbox console if you have crappy bandwidth? Is that like the vision here? Like you'll buy it if you want the very, very, very best graphics and you care a lot about that, or if you have really shitty bandwidth? Otherwise, why would you bother? You should just stream all your games.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I don't, I don't think that's the the vision for three years. No. Um, I think it's like, it's an add-on, right? It's it's like. If you don't own an Xbox and you don't want to own one, then go for it. If you want to play on mobile, then yeah, go, you know, get the subscription. It really is, it's to really push game passes, isn't it? Like it's any sort of entry point.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  But for the next, you know, three months, you know, you want an Xbox, you can't get one.

• 27:03Nilay Patel?

  But I mean, like, we are hearing the chip shortage is going to last another 12, 18 months. Like, there's also just a very compelling solution to the Xbox Series X problem.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, which is like, you can just stream your games. Like, you can't get a PS5 or an Xbox, like, just sign up for Game Pass and stream a bunch of next gen games. Maybe they'll look a little bit worse, but you're still getting next gen games.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  That sounds like a really good idea for like a game streaming service that like Google could put together, maybe.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  They should think about trying to make a game streaming service with that sort of a.

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  Google announced an AT&T partnership with Stadia and I was like, what are you doing?

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  Kiss of death, it's like a, like a Dementor from Harry Potter, it sucks your life force out of you.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  No, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, the, the world has shifted. It used to be that if you had an exclusive Sprint partnership, you were doomed. Now it's AT&T.

• 27:59Nilay Patel?

  AT&T breathes on you, like, petrified, never compete again.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Horrible. All right. Any other E3 news you want to talk about, Dieter?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said Metroid a few times. You know, I'm excited for some of the other games Nintendo's got. I wasn't really expecting a Switch Pro, but whatever. I thought that, I don't, I don't technically was this E3, like the, the, the Starfield stuff, the Halo Infinite stuff, like, all that seems pretty good, like Starfield looks really good.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, I think the thing that Starfield was like, kind of a teaser of what's to come. And that's not till, like, late, late next year, but it looks like an interesting concept. But the thing that really stood out for me was Forza. The tech demo of that was, was pretty, was pretty interesting. I think overall, like, just the Xbox E3, like, they, they did a really good job, which I was kind of surprised at, because I think they've, for the past sort of, I don't know, since the Xbox 360, really, they've been kind of flailing at E3. And, and, and behind these exclusive titles that Sony's just been constantly delivering. And I think they, they finally answered and be like, it's cost them whatever it was, eight billion or whatever it was for Bethesda.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  So it's cost them a bunch of money.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  I will say that I haven't wanted to buy a Series X like I've it's hard since I haven't been trying very hard, but I haven't even been trying because I have PS5 and it has what I need. But between Flight Simulator coming next month and that Forza, I'm like, all right.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, they got some interesting stuff coming. So I think it's it's it's kind of all coming like just constantly every month for the next six months. So.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, if something is cross platform, I default to buying it on Xbox, basically after this week. Cause like it there'll be a better chance it'll be on their streaming service. It'll just be a little bit more portable. Yeah, it's weird like my PS5 is going to become a PS5 exclusive machine and everything else I think is going to be on Xbox.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  I think Sony is very happy about that scenario.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think they care.

• 29:56Nilay Patel?

  They are totally fine with that. But you're going to become the person playing games on an Android phone. You're going to get your little Android game controller, you'll be streaming Xbox.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I've already got a Kishi, it's great, I love it.

• 30:06Nilay Patel?

  We gotta take a break. We're going to come back with Makena Kelly and talk about what's going on with the Anatris. Thank you so much, Tom.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Speak to you guys soon.

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• 31:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Makena Kelly, how you doing?

• 31:25Speaker 06

  I'm doing good. It's good to be back.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's good to have you. A lot of antitrust news this week, including like a secret switcheroo from the Biden administration with Lina Khan, which was very exciting for five minutes, a bunch of bills from the House. Let's start with Lina Khan, who was just appointed, confirmed to the Federal Trade Commission. That's a big deal.

• 31:47Speaker 06

  It's a really big deal. So this week she finally received a floor vote. It was a bipartisan vote, Republicans and Democrats, not going to say all Republicans, but enough to get her confirmed, voted for her. And that was early in the morning, about 11:30 ish. And then, a couple hours later, I was watching this hearing on smart home tech and competition, and Amy Klobuchar, friend of the pod, she leaked, she basically scooped everyone that Lena was going to be the chairwoman of the FTC and lead the agency.

• 32:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then there's like a mad scramble to be like, what'd she say?

• 32:24Speaker 06

  Right. And it was like, she must speak. And then all of a sudden Reuters was reporting, this is confirmed. And everyone was like, oh dang, okay, cool. So she took her oath of office on Tuesday, I believe, and she is currently leading the FTC.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. So Lena is somebody, also a friend of the pod. She's been on the Veritas before. Probably listeners know this, but quickly, she was a law student at Columbia. She wrote a really influential Law Review paper about Amazon called "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox", remarkable for a law student's Law Review article to be that influential. She ended up advising agencies, advising the FTC. Then she was on David Cicilline's antitrust Subcommittee, wrote a lot of the investigation, then was nominated for that. And now she's the chairwoman of the FTC. Like, she's in charge of overseeing mergers and acquisitions, of making sure the markets are competitive. Just a real rocket ship of her career from law school to leading the FTC.

• 33:21Nilay Patel?

  And she has not been shy about how she perceives the power of these big companies.

• 33:26Speaker 06

  Right. It's really remarkable, too. So when she was first nominated, everyone had assumed that she was just going to be another Democratic vote on the commission. And it's still really, you know, great for, you know, people who are critics of big tech to have someone on that, on the commission, like, point, you know, just as on its own. But the- The power that now she has to basically lead these investigations on these companies. And basically, she has the power to instruct staff to do specific rule makings. She can do these extensive 6B studies that the FTC can't necessarily subpoena companies, but they are able to compel these companies to reveal certain documents and things.

• 34:07Speaker 06

  So it really is the Biden administration saying by appointing her chair that they are going to take antitrust and tech extremely seriously over the next four years.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  Why do you think they weren't clear that she was going to be the chair?

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Because I don't think everyone would have voted for her if that was the case.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 34:27Speaker 06

  During her confirmation hearing in the Senate, she got a lot of bipartisan applause from Republicans and Democrats, right? They were both very excited for her. And it makes sense because over the past couple of years, Republicans have their gripes with big tech, Democrats have theirs, and Lena, both of them, both of the parties are really leaning towards competition as a way of remediating those concerns. And so having someone so progressive and having someone so aggressive on this front was good for both of them. Now, of course, the aggressive nature of this may be more than both parties might have wanted. So it's really interesting to see such a overwhelming bipartisan vote on Tuesday.

• 35:11Speaker 06

  And I think, I'm thinking specifically, like, the chairwoman of the FTC before Lena Khan was Rebecca Slaughter, and Slaughter used to work in Schumer's office. So maybe Schumer may not have even voted for Khan, and maybe some Republicans wouldn't have either.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  Wow. So she's in place, the Biden administration hasn't filled a bunch of these roles, but she's in place, that's a big piece of the puzzle. And that is connected to the five bills that were introduced in the House, one of which would really give more resources to the FTC. But let's go through the five. What were the five?

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Right, so they basically address

• 35:47Speaker 06

  Everything that was uncovered in these 16-month-long investigation that the House Judiciary Committee had last year and the year before it, and they vary from something that is, you know, very bipartisan, something that I could see more center-left, center-right folks voting for, and then also some things that are a little bit more controversial, right? But when they were introduced earlier last Friday, they all had bipartisan cosponsors, which was really interesting. A Republican and a Democrat introduced each of these bills. So we can start going through what a lot of them do. I'm looking at it now. You mentioned the one that would give, it's called a merger filing fee bill, and basically, a large tech

• 36:31Speaker 06

  company, for example, or any large company, would have to pay more filing fee in order for the FTC to really investigate whether or not the acquisition or merger is anti-competitive. That has already been passed in the Senate bipartisanly under Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley. And so that seems like a bill that could really get, you know, bipartisan support and really make it, you know, into law over the next four years. But then we get into other things. Another less controversial one is one on interoperability, right? And the ability for me and you to go to Facebook, ask for our data, and if we don't like Facebook, we can take it and go to Google Plus, right? Something like that. I don't know the type

• 37:13Speaker 06

  of person who would do that, but it makes, you know, it gets, the opportunities there for folks to do that.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  But this is, this is like data portability. It's not, they're going to force iMessage and WhatsApp to talk to each other, right?

• 37:27Speaker 06

  So that I'm not entirely sure. It's still a little, people are still trying to read the language and figure out exactly what all of these do. But let me get into the others. There's another bill that would basically empower the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to break up big tech companies and force them to sell off parts of their business that create conflicts of interest. So I'm thinking of Amazon carving off its house brands, like Amazon Basics or something like that. But the bills go through just basically everything for all of these individual companies.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  That one, to me, I think of these five bills as being kind of like a negotiating tactic, right? If you had one big bill with all the stuff in it. Then people would latch on to the worst parts they didn't like and maybe you wouldn't get the easy stuff. So you break them into five, you pass the filing fees, you pass this data portability interop thing that the companies are already kind of working on, right? Like, not very controversial, kind of, kind of SOPs, you know, like, okay, we're increasing the filing fees. These are the five richest companies in the world. They're going to be fine. Then you like move up the spectrum and you get to this one that's like, you can't have a conflict of interest, which just as I've read it and I have read the

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  unfortunate Twitter discourse around it. And the immediate response from the tech companies and their lobbyists were like, wait, people like this stuff. Like this bill might just die on the vine, right? Like, there's enough of an attack against it already, where it's like, people actually perceive Amazon basics to be good. The tech companies lobbying organization, the Chamber for Progress, made this incredible Twitter thread and like, this would prevent Microsoft from putting LinkedIn in Word. And I was like, wait, hold up. Like, that's good. Right that law immediately. But there's just like, long, there's just like, long list of things that you might have to sell or otherwise get rid of, right? Like default apps on the iPhone. Apple might have to change the way that works. And I think the second

• 39:34Nilay Patel?

  you kind of step into the law will change the way the phone works, the controversy will get higher and higher. And the rest of the bills, I think, had the same problem.

• 39:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. And David Cicilline, the chairman of the committee who helped with all of these bills, confirmed in a press conference this week that Apple, you know, iPhones would not have iMessage on them by default if these bills go through. They would not have, you know, calendar or all of these services that we're used to, you know, when you turn on the iPhone and it has all of the Apple services that we use every day, or, you know, that also have competitors on the App Store, too.

• 40:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I just, I mean, God bless him. He went hard. He told us he would, and he did. I just don't know if that's going to be a winning argument. And so that's when I say like, this feels like a negotiation and they put five chips on the table. Like, I wonder, you know, you've reported these are going to go into markup soon. They're going to change a little bit. I'm wondering if you see, if you see these bills as being written such that when they get walked back, they're still effective.

• 40:33Speaker 06

  Right. So of course, they had to come out swinging on something like this after such a long investigation. And then after like that huge hearing last year, you know, where they brought in Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and everyone, they really had to go hard on this. And so it's anticipated that these bills will go to markup next week. Right? That is incredibly fast. That is ridiculous momentum for Congress on something like this, especially something that is, that would, in theory, if all these go through, enact like such radical change to the tech industry. And of course, I mean, a lot of these bills, a lot of these bills that get introduced are just to kind of spook companies a little bit.

• 41:15Speaker 06

  But I do see, there's already come out, people have already come out in Congress saying that these bills support big tech companies rather than do anything to dampen competition or help, you know, benefit competition. And the House GOP leader, Leader McCarthy, already said, like, we're not going to let these go anywhere. So I think in order to get them through the House and, you know, caucus leaders will either have to rewrite some of the language, really take a step back and see how this affects the real world, how this affects devices and users, before any of them can really move to the floor for a final vote.

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we stopped at three of the five bills. What are the last two bills?

• 41:58Speaker 06

  Right. So I mean, like another one is just blocking companies like Facebook from buying nascent competitors. We've talked about this all the time, like the 2012 acquisition of Instagram. So basically, companies would be forbidden from buying companies like that. And how, how do you, you know, understand what is initially, you know, what could be a competitor, what could be not? That's kind of up for grabs. So that's the second to last one. And then the other one is,

• 42:25Speaker 06

  Barring companies from giving their own services, preference over rivals. So I think the classic example of that is in Google search, Google having its own products at the top of the page rather than other companies like Yelp or things like that.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and again, I think all of those sound great. All of them are going to get significant pushback. But your point that you've brought up several times now, there is a pretty huge set of Republicans and Democrats who are like, this is what we need to do. We need to push it really hard. And I, you know, the, the last set of tech regulation proposals that we talked about was 230, we've talked about it endlessly. And we're kind of like, both sides want different things. They're just mad. And like, here's a place where they can be mad together, but they actually have different goals. Here, they're upset and it seems like their goals are aligned and they're moving forward

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  to achieve the same results in a way that I think the poisonous 230 conversation has made people think nothing will ever happen.

• 43:30Speaker 06

  Right, and I think if you talk to policy think tank people in DC, you talk to lawmakers, you talk to Republicans and Democrats, folks are really more aligned when it comes to antitrust because they do believe, I mean, for Republicans, they're still mad, they're still tweeting about Parler being kicked off the App Store. Parler's back, but they're still really mad about it, right? And they want to make sure that there's more competition in the market, that Facebook can, you know, dominate everything, that we can have these more conservative entrants in the market. And competition reform helps that in theory. And then when you think about other concerns that, you know, company, Democrats have, having to do with pricing or just like small business concerns or all these kinds of things, they

• 44:14Speaker 06

  really do align on competition is this is something where Republicans and Democrats can really move forward together. And we saw that this week at the press conference. It is, it is just ridiculous to see somebody like Ken Buck. The ranking member of the House Antitrust Committee at this press conference, supporting all of these bills after when the investigation ended last year, he authored his own report. He did not agree with a single thing the Democrats came up with and offered a third way report, right? So just looking at Ken Buck specifically and his evolution on this and his, you know, his thinking on this changing. Um, I, I think it really makes the case that these could move forward and more Republicans could probably be swayed to vote for these bills.

• 44:58Nilay Patel?

  Kind of the wonky thing at the heart of this and, you know, connected to, to Lena Kahn and her Law Review paper was the idea of the consumer welfare standard, that we shouldn't look at things unless we can prove that prices go up. These companies all control prices to the cent. They can make or not make profits as they wish. So it was very difficult to use that standard. That's not in here, right? They're not changing that. That was the thing that Ken Buck really didn't want to do. And it seems like they just set that aside and they went with much more direct approaches to regulating the companies, which is really interesting to me.

• 45:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely. And I think even some Democrats have strayed away from, you know, changing the consumer welfare standard. I think Amy Klobuchar was on Decoder talking about it too. And I think you asked her about it and she didn't have a very straightforward answer.

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  She was a politician.

• 45:49Speaker 06

  It's a very testy subject. Um, and that's one that I see having, um, more problems on both parties, you know, than what was proposed in the bill this week.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just, it's, it's interesting to me as we talk about, you know, bipartisan solutions, something like, let's change the legal standard is like up in the clouds, right? Like it's, well, let's change the law and like, we'll try a new enforcement way and way of thinking. And you would almost expect that to work better than this set of bills, which is like, I'm reaching into your iPhone and taking the calendar app off of it, right? Which is much, it's a much more direct government intervention into products and services. And yet it has just been really surprising to me. That's where everyone has gone. They're like, we're just going to reach into the products and we're going to de-rank Google, Google's own products and put Yelp at the top. And that's what we want to have happen.

• 46:43Nilay Patel?

  So the government is going to basically say this has to happen. Whereas at least the consumer, it was like, it was just so much more airy, like we're going to change the way we think about the market. Which is like, you can just glue any emotion you want onto that. And that's how you bring people together. And that's not what happened here at all.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  I think, deep down, every single congressional representative wants to be a product manager. That's what they want. You know, they, they've, they've used a calendar app. They're annoyed by the button placement. They think the round recs are a little bit off. They, they, they just do it better themselves.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And none of them know how to fix content moderation. So they're like, we're gonna do default apps on the app. McKenna, what's next in this, in this complicated process?

• 47:26Speaker 06

  Right, so next week is the markup. And I think that is when we're really going to hear the problems that other lawmakers have with these bills. I mean, this organization called the Internet Accountability Project came out with a list this morning of Republicans asking people to call them and tell them to vote for these. They were like Jim Jordan. There are these very, you know, right populist leaning folks who would rather change all this stuff through 230. So there's some activism building now, even within the parties, to get people to vote for these. But next week, we will see all the gripes people have. We will see amendments sent to these bills to change the language. And then hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we'll see the finalized language.

• 48:10Speaker 06

  It'll get a vote out and maybe we'll see what the Senate comes up with. Because Klobuchar said she was going to try and introduce companion bills to these in the Senate. So they can have momentum on both sides of Congress.

• 48:22Nilay Patel?

  Amazing. I really do think kind of the tech industry's response to this has been, well, nothing ever happens. But like, things are gonna happen.

• 48:30Speaker 06

  Everyone was spooked. They all had these, they all had these statements and all these examples ready for how the world was going to change with these. It's, it's, it's an unusual amount of momentum for something this radical from Congress, for sure.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  And maybe one day it will be illegal to put LinkedIn to Microsoft Word.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  I was, I like read that tweet and I was like, is this really the best he got? Everyone's happy about that. All right, McKenna, well, it sounds like we're gonna have you back on several times as this keeps going. Thank you for coming on. It was great talking to you.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, it's great to be here.

• 49:03Speaker 01

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• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  Alex Krantz, welcome.

• 50:27Alex Cranz?

  Hey, glad to be here.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you've been a real hit these past weeks. All the tweets are coming in.

• 50:33Alex Cranz?

  I feel so loved. Like, I love getting all these tweets. Not many people slid into my DMs to complain about putting their taskbar and stuff on the right side of their screen, though, which was very surprising.

• 50:44Nilay Patel?

  We really did ignite kind of a long-running Twitter battle.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  I think we convinced one person to move their dock from the side to the bottom.

• 50:53Alex Cranz?

  I saw that.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  If you can improve one person's life, it's all worth it.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Amazing.

• 50:58Alex Cranz?

  I felt so good about it. It just really felt helpful.

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, no pressure. Your goal here is to improve one person's life.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  Don't screw up. All right, Dieter, lots of gadget news, lots of stuff to go through, but I feel like we're just going to spend most of this segment with you explaining to me what on earth is going on with RCS encryption in Google.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  It's actually very simple. What happened with RCS encryption is if you use Android Messages and you've got, you know, Google providing, if you use Android Messages, basically, you can get encryption for one-to-one messages if you're using the beta. And starting this week, they started rolling that out to regular people that aren't on the beta. So in the near future, once the rollout is finished, if you are having a one-to-one RCS message, you will be encrypted. You have the option to have those messages be end-to-end encrypted. That's kind of it. They rolled it out kind of quietly, like surprisingly quietly, like stupidly annoyingly quietly.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  In real time, Hiroshi Lockheimer is tweeting out, "We've added RCS. We've added encryption to RCS." He's tweeting, like, retweeting photos of his sticky notes from the last time he was on the Vergecast.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  It's like, oh, this is all happening at once.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. There was a bunch of, like, minor Android updates that came out alongside this, emoji mashups and some other earthquake detection in more countries and whatever. Here's my thing. I do not want to be known as the world's foremost RCS stan. I think RCS is fundamentally a compromised product.

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm so sorry, Dieter.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  With many, many problems. I think that it's broken in so many ways. However, I also think that we live in a fallen universe.

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  And it's the best we're gonna get for cross-device encrypted communication that isn't controlled by a single company, right? That's just bleak. It's technically, Google runs a bunch of stuff, but technically RCS doesn't need to be controlled by a single company. You can have servers run by any number of carriers. I wish that it could be more independent like Signal, but for default on-device communication that is encrypted, RCS is the thing that will work across all devices, except iPhones, within the next year. And so I'm like official, I tweeted, like, It's time, Apple. It's time for you to support RCS. That's actually the thing that you could do that would protect your own customer's privacy. Because if an iPhone customer tries

• 53:25Speaker 02

  to use their default messaging app to text an Android customer, they have less privacy than if they had an Android phone and they were texting that Android customer.

• 53:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  And so I tweeted this, not quite that vociferously.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Did Tim Cook like it?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  No, but you know who did retweet it was the product lead for Android Messages, Sanazahari from Google. And she said she welcomes everyone to participate in RCS.

• 53:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's nice. If you're a high-profile Google product manager, that's as spicy as you can get.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  That's it. You're like, I welcome everyone.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  Specifically one company that I will not name.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  But they are welcome here.

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  All right. So that's RCS. And then there's other Google messaging news. This is what I mean when I say there's, there's a lot on the list.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  So if you have RCS available to you, you know that RCS is available to you because it says that you can enable chat services. Google has another product called Google Chat, which is not RCS, which is Google Chat, that's built into Google Workspace, Gmail. And it is now available to everybody. So if you have a Gmail account, you can go into settings and like flip on the new experience of all the new cool Google Workspace stuff, the Smart Canvas Chips and Google Chat Conversations and Google Chat Rooms and Google Meet in your toolbar at the bottom. You can have all the new stuff. It's available to everybody. And that's the news. It was very difficult for me to understand that was the news based on Google's blog post about, about all this. But it's there. And, uh, hooray, you can go

• 54:57Speaker 02

  turn it on. Everything is, that's, that's the whole story. There's nothing more complicated about that. Oh, except they're going to change the names of rooms to spaces. Don't know why. They're going to evolve rooms into spaces and they're going to, they're going to start doing new stuff. And like spaces are going to compete with everything from like old email listservs to Discord to Slack, is my understanding.

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  Why don't they just make one product called GChat?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Well, there is a product called Google Chat now, finally.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  No, GChat.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Oh, you want GChat? There was never a product called GChat. It never existed.

• 55:27Nilay Patel?

  I know. I understand.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  It's like that movie. But I have fond memories of it.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  It was the best. Why don't they just make that product and put it on phones and inside of these? Services and then like use their dominance to win.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Um, because they're afraid of antitrust.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  You think that's it?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I absolutely think that's it. I think that's the whole reason they went with this weird federated RCS thing on Android. You can, you can install chat on your Android phone. Um, it'll probably be on deck and like one of the default apps. It's just not the default texting experience.

• 56:01Nilay Patel?

  Do you think it's antitrust or carriers?

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, I would, I would offer this criticism of Google and I'm curious what you both think of this right now. We just came out of I O and that, you know, they had their usual big ideas at I O and machine learning is gonna drive a car and draw a picture and do all the stuff it's gonna do. But Google, from a product perspective, has been in slow motion for a long time, right? Like,

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  They rename a bunch of stuff. They move stuff around. They like welcome partners. Some partners don't show up and like Google makes us sad. That's the true flock too. Their, their ad thing, you know, their hardware division, total slow motion.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Oh, but they got a store now, Eli, in New York.

• 56:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they got it. It was, but I was like, that's actually what made me think of this. Like, they opened their first retail store and it's like a bunch of stuff that has been out for over a year that all fundamentally works the same as the stuff that was out the year before it. And it's just like, is it antitrust? Is like, Google just afraid of doing stuff? Cause someone will yell at them. It's just weird that they're kind of like treading water. Am I, am I the only one who like perceives this?

• 57:12Alex Cranz?

  No, I think you're, you're totally right. They, they just sort of sit there with this stuff and

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Just raking in cash and controlling the internet.

• 57:21Alex Cranz?

  You know, they, they, they control everything, but then there's all these tools that we, that people use and they're like, no, but don't use that. Or like, use it, but don't use it like the way we want you to, you, you would normally use something. We're not gonna let you do that. You're, you're gonna have to like work for it. And it's like, but that's antithetical to, to what Google is, which is I never have to work for it. I just get it for free and I give you all of my, my data. So it's just like, they're, they're just kind of shrugging. It feels like just a big shrug emoji and like all of their, all of the stuff that I would normally find very interesting and be excited about, they kind of like. Wreck it when they announce it, like every single announcement is just like, sort of like, oh yeah, and we also did this and we're going to announce it like three weeks later

• 58:05Alex Cranz?

  and be really confusing about it. And also, I didn't know, like, I didn't know for six months that Google Hangouts had become Google Meets. Like, I saw the press release and I understood it, but I didn't understand it until one day when I was like, I can't find the app on my phone anymore. And I was like, oh, it's a whole new app now. Well, it looks the exact same.

• 58:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And everything is a phased rollout, right? So you kind of never know when things are happening. I don't know, Dieter, you pay more attention to Google than almost anybody I know, given your status is the only person who understands RCS, which you have, whether you want it or not.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  Is that perception accurate? Or are they just like doing a lot of things that we don't see?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  I think the perception's accurate for a bunch of their consumer stuff. I think that one of the things that's going on with this Google Workspace stuff is they actually have started making stuff and doing stuff. And that is feels weird. And I think it feels weird for Google too. And so they don't know how to talk about it. Because when they start making something, they're like, here's a new thing. Words, words about the thing. But yeah, I mean, hardware especially. I don't want to have existential feelings about the Pixel for the thousandth time right now. But I don't know, like, this is the year where they're going to have their own processor. And hopefully they'll do something with the camera and it's going to have this wacky new design. This is the year where like, they really need, they've got a store, a store.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  I think that they're getting close to put up or shut up time for their hardware efforts. They bought Fitbit. They're going to have a watch. The watch has got a whole new operating system that is, you know, merged with Tizen in some way. So there's a bunch of consumer stuff where they really need to show that they can be directly relevant. And if they can't, they should just like, stop and let Samsung just own everything. Huawei was in there for a second where they, maybe they were going to try and like, Google's going to like have an ecosystem of multiple hardware vendors making great stuff. But they got banned. Honor is back now, which used to be Huawei Division or whatever. They seem fine. But yeah, in general, I think that Google has not told a compelling regular user story for a while now.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, you said antitrust and I would actually, I would, to me, it's the flip side of antitrust. Google makes so much money doing exactly what it did yesterday that it hasn't really had any existential pressure to figure out what it's going to do tomorrow.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they can do nothing in print money from their advertising business. And every time they kind of like stray away from that, like eventually the grownups come by and they're like, no, no, no, hold on, go back to collecting the money. Right? Like, what are we doing? Why are we spending money when we could just make money for no? And I know this is like very reductive and I know a lot of Google people listen to this. I'm like, yeah, I'm being a little unfair, but where's the new stuff? Like, where's the big, the next big idea from Google that isn't an AI demo that I just keep thinking about? Two, three IOs ago, they had the, we're going to take the fence out of the photo demo and it never shipped. We haven't seen it. Last year, they had Google Assistant is going

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  to make you a dry cleaning appointment.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  That's sort of half shipping a little bit here and there. Like it happens, it pops up in the assistant. It's just like, like Alex, you had it pop up for you once recently, didn't you?

• 1:01:28Alex Cranz?

  I think so.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Nilay Patel?

  But that's a phased rollout. Like, I don't know if that's out or not.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you can't get hyped about it because it's like, well, I'll get it four years from now and I will have forgotten that it was happening. You'll be like, oh, this is a nice pleasant change of pace. You guys mentioned the antitrust and I put on like my little tinfoil hat. Now, like you've, you completely like convinced me. It's primary colored, right? Like it's in Google colors, but it's tin underneath. But like, it really does feel like they almost don't want us, because this stuff is successful. Like as much as we all complain about like these rollouts are slow and boring and all this other stuff, like the Pixel phone is, is, is still, it's not Samsung, but it still sells a lot of phones. It sells a lot more phones than a lot of other companies we talk about.

• 1:02:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's like a low, there's like Samsung and then like, you know, the bar, the bottom of the bar chart is just like a blend of colors. It adds up to brown or whatever. And like, Google has the biggest slice of the brown mess at the bottom of the bar chart.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think they're outselling LG and LG was like, this isn't worth it anymore.

• 1:02:33Nilay Patel?

  There was a report today that LG exited the smartphone business so hard that Apple is talking about selling iPhones in LG's stores in Korea.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:02:41Nilay Patel?

  That's how hard LG was out there. Like, there's literally a vacuum in the store. Would you like to fill it?

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  So we started the podcast talking about Windows and how Windows is sort of trapped by needing to be backwards compatible, even now, even still. And Google is trapped by its size. It needs it. Android is like the most used operating system on the planet, 3 billion plus people, right? Everybody uses Google. Everybody uses Chrome. Anything that Google does has bigger repercussions, and they just get spooked by that. And sometimes that's for good reason. But other times, it's like, it's, I think it's maybe slowing them down.

• 1:03:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just think it's, we just came off talking to McKenna with all these disanitrust action happening, and you can see it in two ways. One, they don't want to do anything because they'll get yelled at. And two, they don't have to do anything because they're already printing money is the foremost member of the advertising duopoly on the internet. And so like, why would you do anything if you're gonna get yelled at and it won't make you as much money as the money you can just collect by waking up every day? And like, yep, that's why competition is good. Something has to break that open.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I don't know if these bills are gonna do it, but it's just, it's, I don't know. Google used to do a lot of things all the time. They used to have gigantic ideas and then like ship them at like big scale. And like, I don't know, like.

• 1:03:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but they also like failed at all of them, right? Like Wave.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Glass.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  Daydream.

• 1:04:05Alex Cranz?

  Daydream. Oh.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  In Platformer this week, Casey wrote about how Facebook is making, making a bunch of VR acquisitions. And kind of the thesis, he was riffing off some tweets from our own Alex Heath. Facebook is like buying VR game studios. So they're gonna have this commanding lead by the time this becomes a real market. And I was like, well, yeah, but there's, they have no competition. Like, who are they preventing those game studios from working with? It's no one. Like.

• 1:04:30Alex Cranz?

  HTC?

• 1:04:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like it's, it's no one. And it's just funny because it could have been Google. They were like headed in that direction and they just kind of pulled the plug. And like, I don't know. I didn't mean to get that all this essential about Google, but it's, it just, I was just looking at pictures of the store and I was like, well, I already have all this stuff.

• 1:04:49Alex Cranz?

  You can go and sit in the store in one of the chairs in PlayStadia, which. Like, maybe the internet's really good there. That's my only reason to think to go.

• 1:05:00Nilay Patel?

  If that store should sell as Google Fiber, then everyone would go to that store.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I would live there. Just get like a little coffee in the background. Great.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter, there's a lot of just like little gadgets. You want to go through it?

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. Like, there's a bunch of stuff. I think the one that caught, captured the most attention in The Verge was probably IKEA finally shipped their picture frame speaker. But it's like, it's a, it's a big fabric thing. You can put different, you know, fabrics on the top of it. It's a flat speaker. Uh, it seems good. I don't know. Flat speaker on my wall.

• 1:05:27Alex Cranz?

  If I had a home that was not a New York apartment, where I think you guys can actually see my entire apartment from, from the camera view, I would 100% get that. Like, you put that on a wall on like your second, you know, the landing for your second floor. That'd be great.

• 1:05:44Nilay Patel?

  This is my theory of, of, of this Sonos market expansion. They're just counting on people buying bigger homes over time.

• 1:05:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  And with every home, you gotta buy one more speaker.

• 1:05:51Alex Cranz?

  I long to buy these speakers and have a place to put them.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  This is a company that is just betting on the American dream more than any other company in tech. Like, everyone will buy a slightly bigger house over time. I love them. You know what's really interesting about Sonos right now? It's almost impossible to buy their products.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Nilay Patel?

  If you want to buy a Sonos One, you're like, September.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I waited, uh, almost two months for a Sonos Five.

• 1:06:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just, I think, A, people are, have been at home, they have bought a lot of the products, and then the chip shortage is like real. So it's funny that they're like, well, you can't have the one you want. Picture frame.

• 1:06:28Alex Cranz?

  Two picture frames, stereo sound.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  You can use them as surrounds.

• 1:06:33Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:06:33Nilay Patel?

  If you have a Sonos, uh, soundbar, which is amazing. I cannot wait for us to get these in Tesla.

• 1:06:40Nilay Patel?

  Model S Plaid?

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  So I'm curious what you all think about this. I think it's great. I think that, you know, they improved a bunch of stuff. Uh, I think that the yoke steering wheel is the biggest misstep that I have seen Tesla make in a hot minute. It is, it just seems really bad and really like, when there, when there was like the center screen on the three and you're like, I don't know, I kind of want something right in front of the steering wheel. But eventually, you know, I think they got away with that. I do not think they're going to get away with this yoke steering wheel.

• 1:07:11Alex Cranz?

  This feels like 80s concept car bad.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  It's the, uh, it's the steering wheel from Knight Rider. We should just be honest about what this is. They watched a bunch of episodes of Knight Rider and they're like, what if Kit's steering wheel was in our car?

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Nilay Patel?

  And I appreciate and support that method of product development. I think they should have done the whoosh whoosh thing in the front of the car. We'll get there. We'll get there.

• 1:07:35Alex Cranz?

  Slowly, slowly.

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  Over time.

• 1:07:37Alex Cranz?

  They put that light on there, I will buy it immediately.

• 1:07:39Nilay Patel?

  How are you gonna make this car self-driving without the red whoosh whoosh thing? I don't know what it's actually called. I think it's technically called the scanner. Do you remember Knight Rider? Like, all of Kit's sensor ability was in the red thing.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  That went back and forth. Yeah.

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  That's the future.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Welcome to the Vergecast, where we talk about 80s TV shows that we remember, because we are super old.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  At the same time, Luminar, we had the CEO of Luminar, Austin Russell, he's 25. He is, makes me feel very old and unsuccessful. The CEO of Luminar, a LiDAR company, he was on Decoder a few months ago. They had an event this week in New York where they're showing off their LiDAR tech and their self-driving stack and all that. So, Andy Augen's driving a car, and their dream is that you will be able to identify a self-driving car with Luminar tech, because it will have, like, a piece of hardware on it that isn't a big, silly, spinning dome.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:29Nilay Patel?

  Right? And they had some, like, prototypes of what this might look like on various cars. What if it was the Knight Rider thing? See, I'm trying to bring all the threads together.

• 1:08:37Alex Cranz?

  Like, if he was a little older.

• 1:08:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if only Austin was a little bit older, he would know what I was talking about.

• 1:08:43Alex Cranz?

  Oh, my God, not on the top. We gotta put it under the bumper.

• 1:08:46Nilay Patel?

  We gotta make a Trans Am.

• 1:08:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, this yoke thing, I think the reason they're gonna get away with it is because this car is so expensive.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, it's

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  That's fair.

• 1:08:58Nilay Patel?

  What I think they're not gonna get away with is gear shift on the screen.

• 1:09:04Nilay Patel?

  And turn signals on the wheel.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Alex Cranz?

  That's very video game.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  But no, but the, didn't, I think, did they get, like, a pass from the National Transportation Safety Board?

• 1:09:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but, I mean, Tesla gets a lot of passes for being Tesla all the time. It's like, I think people are gonna buy this car and be like, these buttons are hard, and when I wanna go in reverse, I actually just, like, wanna put the car in reverse.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  Not have the car try to guess when I wanna be in reverse. And maybe get it wrong. And like Tesla's autopilot experiences suggest that it is not as good at guessing what you want is it wants to be. And so like I just very few people are going to buy a Model S Plaid. Some larger number of people are going to buy a new Model S. And I think that's when we're going to see. Because if you spend like $150,000 on a car, how much the Plaid costs, like you're motivated to be like, this is good.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Nilay Patel?

  As you come down, I think it'll be, it'll be different.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  I think the last thing I want to talk about is there's a bunch of BBK stuff happening. BBK, you may not know, or you may know, is the like umbrella company of a bunch of smartphone companies. So Oppo, Vivo, Realme, OnePlus. So the Realme GT, Sam, I forgot to look at it. It is really cool looking. And it's, you know, it's like, maybe going to take up the mantle of flagship killer from OnePlus. Oppo made a rollable phone. So like, it stretches out, just rolls out.

• 1:10:26Nilay Patel?

  The thing it does on the screen when it rolls out is like so chatty.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Nilay Patel?

  So if you're happy, you're looking at the phone, you've got it like, I don't know. I think we have a GIF with like a webpage on it.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  It looks like we're just stretching the image.

• 1:10:40Nilay Patel?

  It stretches the image and then it fades out and it pops back up as normal. And it's like, oh, that's not what you wanted.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  They're not going to ship it because it will only be good for 100,000 cycles, 100,000 opens, which is enough. Oh, that's. Well, they're aiming for 200,000, which is, I don't know, 50 opens a day for five years or something. I don't know. Anyway, the last thing, and the saddest thing is OnePlus is apparently going to like, start working more closely with Oppo or BBK or just its parent company. Oppo, yeah, it's going to work more closely with Oppo. OnePlus phones have been like basically redesigned Oppo phones and vice versa. And nobody ever wanted to admit it. And we kind of just accepted it and thought of it in terms of like, GM had a bunch of different brands and technically a Pontiac and a Chevy were different, but you know, kind of they

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  weren't. That's how I've always felt about OnePlus. Yeah. And now that's just sort of going back to the mothership a little bit.

• 1:11:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing the phone market in general consolidate and shrink. Like, it just didn't happen the way people thought it would happen, that there'd be lots of products and brands, different price points and segments. And so it's like natural this is happening, but it's also, A, we were always like, isn't this, aren't you just part of it? And they insisted it wasn't true. But B, it's like sad, because it was, they were the renegade that got to push.

• 1:12:03Alex Cranz?

  They were cool.

• 1:12:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Alex Cranz?

  They were fun. And I mean, I may be one of the weird people that actually has fond memories of Oppo, because like in 2006, if you wanted to watch some anime or something, you bought from China, you needed a region-free player, and Oppo had the best one.

• 1:12:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

• 1:12:24Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like Oppo did the best region-free DVD players. So when I was like, oh, they're getting into phones, I mean, I don't need a region-free phone. Good for you. So.

• 1:12:36Nilay Patel?

  I totally forgot that they dominated the region-free. I mean, what Alex is really saying is that she was a DVD pirate.

• 1:12:43Alex Cranz?

  I had way too many, like, eBay purchases. I don't know half of which were legal.

• 1:12:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Alex Cranz?

  Just great.

• 1:12:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I, I mean, we've just seen the phone, we were talking about LG, like, the phone market is just, it's kind of done, and people got to find the next big thing, and maybe this will help them find the next big thing. Okay, my two things that I want to end on. One, speaking of Apple, Chris Walsh reviewed the Beats Studio Buds, which are fascinating to me. He thinks they're pretty good. They do not have an H1 chip in them. Correct. They do not support things like iCloud syncing between devices. Correct. And he's theorizing is Beats knows that Android is a big market for them, and they made a product that worked well with Android phones, and they didn't need all the H1 stuff. Which is, I just think, whatever, like, Apple spent all that money on Beats, they bought

• 1:13:35Nilay Patel?

  a streaming service, a pile of executives who no longer work there, they completely retooled the streaming service, and they've got this headphones company that is still successful and throws off money, that they treat like dirt.

• 1:13:51Nilay Patel?

  They do not care about Beats at all. It is so funny to me. But good on Apple in this roundabout way for making a product for Android people. It's a thing they rarely do.

• 1:14:01Alex Cranz?

  That was really nice of them.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I wonder why not both, though. Why is it, does it just then become too much of an AirPods Pro killer? Like, it's too close in an AirPods Pro feature set? And so they needed to hold something back?

• 1:14:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. When one company controls the entire market, they make weird synthetic decisions about products. Like, I don't know, man. Like, it's just wacky. Okay, so that's one. You can go read the review. Christopher did like them. They seem great. And then lastly, you can sign up, there's a webpage to sign up for Dish Network's forthcoming 5G wireless service. So you will recall when T-Mobile bought Sprint, the Trump administration engineered this complicated deal because they knew taking the market from four national wireless carriers to three was bad. Every ounce of evidence in the world says this is bad for consumers. Once again, competition, the real theme of the podcast. So they were like, we have to still get a fourth one.

• 1:14:56Nilay Patel?

  We can't rely on Sprint to not suck, so we're gonna let you buy Sprint, but you gotta help Dish stand up a new fourth carrier, which no one has ever believed will happen. But today, we got a webpage.

• 1:15:10Alex Cranz?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:15:11Nilay Patel?

  That's all you can do. You can just put your email address on a webpage. The network is called Project Genesis.

• 1:15:18Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no.

• 1:15:19Nilay Patel?

  And the first S is a five.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:15:26Nilay Patel?

  Which is just very good.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  The website, by the way, you have to, it's like a concert and a whole bunch of people are holding their fists and hands in the air. And the tagline is, "Help us democratize wireless access and create the 5G network of the future", which is what you're going to do by giving them your email address.

• 1:15:45Nilay Patel?

  It's very good. Like, what does that mean? What does democratized wireless access mean? I don't know.

• 1:15:54Nilay Patel?

  I just think it's, it's very good and also hilarious because when, when we inevitably move to 6G networks, none of this will be valid anymore.

• 1:16:04Alex Cranz?

  Gen of six.

• 1:16:05Nilay Patel?

  Gen of six.

• 1:16:06Alex Cranz?

  There we go.

• 1:16:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's so good. Oh my God, it's so good. Yes. Okay, so here's my theory. My theory, so we're like, you know, the verge is turning 10 this year. And we're like talking a lot about rethinking and redesigning all this stuff. And like, a thing that constantly happens to me is our design team has like, the one they like, and they make sure to show me a bunch of stuff they don't like. Uh, Apple executives used to do this with Steve Jobs all the time. They'd like steer him towards the one they wanted by making the other ones really bad. My theory with this is the branding consultancy had one they really liked. And they put Gen 5 SIS, right? Is like the bad one to knock out, to make it seem like they'd explored a lot of things.

• 1:16:47Nilay Patel?

  And then Dish Network was like, ooh, 5G. And they had to pivot and take it seriously, which is why this website is just, just a field for an email address.

• 1:16:56Alex Cranz?

  Didn't Dish also do like the Hopper and it was just like a kangaroo?

• 1:17:02Nilay Patel?

  It was the Hopper and the Joey.

• 1:17:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, somebody there is just like, you know what?

• 1:17:06Nilay Patel?

  It's Charlie Ergen. He's just a whimsical man. When I, when I think of ruthless satellite CEO Charlie Ergen, I'm like, that guy likes kangaroos.

• 1:17:15Alex Cranz?

  Kangaroos and fives.

• 1:17:17Nilay Patel?

  You know, the, the underlying Hopper story, do you remember this? CNET gave Hopper the CES Best of Show.

• 1:17:24Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:25Nilay Patel?

  Yep. But CNET was, is owned by CBS and CBS was suing Dish Network over the Hopper. And so CBS made CNET's team take away the award over time shifting on the Hopper. And like, I don't think CNET's ever.

• 1:17:41Alex Cranz?

  Never.

• 1:17:42Nilay Patel?

  I feel like still mad about that. Yeah. But look, I hope Project Gen, Gen of Six goes well.

• 1:17:48Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be so good.

• 1:17:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, see, I, we, we were talking, I was like, we cannot over cover the launch of a ground up wireless network in the United States. Like, it's a big deal. But the idea that it's actually going to happen is also.

• 1:18:00Alex Cranz?

  Are they gonna like ship people their own towers?

• 1:18:02Nilay Patel?

  No, they've got this, um, it's like, we, we, you thought we were gonna wrap up?

• 1:18:08Alex Cranz?

  Nope.

• 1:18:08Nilay Patel?

  You did. You got 15 minutes on ORAN coming, baby.

• 1:18:14Nilay Patel?

  They got this idea. Right now, cell networks run on proprietary software stacks called radio access networks. There's a handful of suppliers, the biggest one of which is Huawei. The reason they're like democratizing American 5G, all this marketing, is they're trying to build something called ORANs, Open Radio Access Networks, that are interoperable. There are no suppliers for this. The suppliers that they have chosen are still based in Asia in various ways. Like, they haven't actually accomplished their goal, but they think that like Ericsson and all these companies can build new kinds of radio hardware for them. They'll, they operate cheaper. And then they just keep saying AWS will be involved in some mysterious way that they've failed to explain. So like, there's a lot going on with this Dish Network wireless idea.

• 1:18:53Alex Cranz?

  There's a lot of buzzwords.

• 1:18:54Nilay Patel?

  Just a lot of words.

• 1:18:56Alex Cranz?

  I love it. Yeah, not even buzzwords, just words. Just throwing words at us in the hopes we're distracted.

• 1:19:04Nilay Patel?

  But they're like, Amazon. And then like, the regulator's like, there's a fourth wireless network. And it's like, no, actually, what's gonna happen is T-Mobile's gonna turn off its 3G network, and a bunch of Dish Mobile customers are not gonna have service. All right, that was it. That was Vergecast. Thank you to Alex. She pretended to care about ORAN today. McKenna and Tom, thank you both very much. That was great. We will be back next week. There's a Windows event, so lots going on next week. Also, as McKenna said, mark up on these Annapolis. I know there's a lot of news. Decoder this past week, Jamie Heineman, CTO John Deere. I would say the response to the John Deere episode of Decoder is unlike anything

• 1:19:47Nilay Patel?

  that I ever expected. People really care about tractors, it turns out. Next week, Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon. That was like a deep creator economy conversation. So that's coming up. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Dieter's at Backlon. Tom is at Tom Warren. McKenna is at Kelly McKenna, her name, but backwards. Alex is Alex H. Krantz.

• 1:20:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that was incredible.

• 1:20:11Nilay Patel?

  That's it. Rock and roll. Snip, snip.

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