Inside the Meta monopoly trial

After more than a month of testimony, the Meta antirust trial is beginning to slow down. The Google search remedies trial, meanwhile, is about to heat up again, with closing arguments coming soon. The Verge’s Lauren Feiner has been in the DC courthouse for all of it, and has finally emerged to tell us about what she’s seen, and learned, from two all-important monopoly trials. After that, The Verge’s Victoria Song tells us about her latest experience with Google’s smart glasses prototypes, what Google is doing differently from Meta and Apple, and what she thinks Jony Ive and OpenAI might be building. Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline about what to do now that Mozilla is shutting down Pocket. FTC v. Meta: The antitrust battle over WhatsApp and Instagram Did WhatsApp really need Meta? Why the FTC argues Meta is a closer rival to MeWe than TikTok Instagram CEO testifies about competing with TikTok: ‘You’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying’ Android XR is getting stylish partners in Warby Parker, Gentle Monster Xreal teases Project Aura smart glasses for Android XR We tried on Google’s prototype AI smart glasses Android XR and Project Moohan hands-on: Gemini is the killer app Mozilla is shutting down Pocket Raindrop.io Instapaper Matter Wallabag Readwise Reader Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. 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.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of endless litigation. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting here down one of the deepest rabbit holes I have been down in a long time. So I started reading this book called Riptide, which I bought just sort of on a whim because it was like on sale for a dollar and it had good reviews. It's about treasure hunters. So I started reading this book, got very into this book. It's very good. Highly recommend it. And this has sent me just spiraling in the weirdest, most fun way on all things treasure hunters and shipwrecks. So there's this great New Yorker story about treasure hunters from a bunch of years ago. There's a great story from much more recently about shipwreck detectives. I've literally, I bought the game Uncharted to go play it now. I watched the movie Uncharted the other night.

• 0:48David Pierce?

  I'm reading about treasure hunters. I'm watching documentaries about treasure hunters. This is like a whole universe of basically puzzle solvers that is full of technology and full of interesting ways that people are doing research. It's like all kinds of just my interests colliding all at once. And I make fun of my wife all the time because she loves every true crime show you can possibly imagine. But I'm realizing that I am falling deep into like the treasure hunter world for exactly the same reason. And it is blowing my mind and it's also the only thing I care about. So if I bring up treasure hunting 65 times, or if three Vergecasts from now, I'm just coming to you from the bow of a ship,

• 1:31David Pierce?

  attempting to find several hundred years' worth of treasure, you'll know this is how it all started. Anyway, as much as I can, that is not what we are here to do today. Today on the show, we're going to do two things. First, I'm going to talk to Lauren Feiner, who finally emerged from a courtroom and is going to talk to me about the Google trial and the Metatrial and everything that we've learned about the antitrust case for and against two of the biggest companies in tech. Then V Song is gonna come on and we're gonna talk about smart glasses. She was at Google I/O last week. She saw the Android XR glasses. She's seen Project Moohan, Samsung and Google's project before. We have thoughts on what Johnny, Ivan, OpenAI are up to. We have a lot to talk about. It's a very fun show and V thinks more deeply about smart glasses than just about anybody I know.

• 2:16David Pierce?

  So we're gonna have some fun. We also have a hotline question about Pocket, the read later app which is shutting down. People wanted some alternatives. I have some ideas for you. We're gonna get into all of that in just a second. But first, I'm gonna go play Uncharted. It just finished downloading and I'm gonna go play it and then we'll be right back. This is the Vergecast. See you in a sec.

• 2:35Speaker 01

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• 3:02Speaker 02

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• 4:34David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Lauren Feiner is here. Hi, Lauren.

• 4:36Speaker 07

  Hi.

• 4:37David Pierce?

  I have been trying to drag you out of a courtroom to come talk to me on the first cast for like six weeks now, and we finally got it to happen. This is very exciting.

• 4:46Speaker 07

  Finally here.

• 4:47David Pierce?

  I'd like, real quick, just give me like an emotional check on how you're feeling after this much time sitting in mostly the Metatrial, but also some of the Google trial down the hall. How are you holding up?

• 5:01Speaker 07

  It's good. You know, I've gotten a lot of my steps in going between the courtrooms and media rooms, running up and down the stairs. Yeah, a little bit of Stockholm syndrome as we were just talking about. But, you know, overall, it's, you know, it's good to be on the other side. It's a little bittersweet because this is such a historic time, I think, that like so much has converged in this one courthouse. And I've been covering these cases since they were filed. So it is kind of crazy that it's now somewhat in the rearview. But, you know, there's still a long way to go, so don't worry about that.

• 5:39David Pierce?

  It is a weird time in that this moment feels both hugely consequential and also just kind of procedural. And I've been trying to figure this out about the Google trial in particular. It's like we're in a phase where a judge has to decide whether to break up Google, which is huge.

• 5:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:56David Pierce?

  But then Google is like, we don't care what happens. We're just going to appeal and we're going to do this all over again several, four times. And so part of me is like, what are we even, what are we even doing here?

• 6:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:06David Pierce?

  But it's also so important what's happening here.

• 6:08Speaker 07

  Exactly. And I think it's so clear to me with the Facebook case in particular, like how long it took for them to get to trial. And, you know, there were, part of that was because the initial complaint was thrown out and then the judge gave the FTC an opportunity to refile, but the original case was filed like in 2020. And you know, the fact that it took this long to get to trial and in that time TikTok became a huge player in the space, it's just, you know, really underscores how quickly tech moves and how slowly the legal system moves.

• 6:45David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think I mostly want to talk about the meta trial because I think A, we've talked a bunch about the Google trial and B, I think in a certain way, it's a little more straightforward just because of where it is in the process. We kind of know what everybody wants. We know what's going on. The meta trial, I think, last we talked was at the very beginning and there was this sense that, okay, the FTC is trying to prove a thing that is going to be very complicated to prove, which is essentially that MIWI is very important, right? And like there, we were having this big debate about whether this is the service that people go to that has monopolized talking to friends and family, that that is like, that's the market and that we're going to spend a lot of time over

• 7:27David Pierce?

  the next six weeks arguing about the market definition of this thing. And I think to your point, I hadn't really thought about this until you just said it, but I think this would have been a really different trial five years ago than it was. So much has changed in the market since this thing got filed originally. But I'm curious now, at the very beginning, we were like, okay, this is going to ultimately be about market definition and it seems like the FTC has a pretty steep hill to climb to prove its case here. How do you feel about how that's gone on the other side of this?

• 7:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I think market definition is still going to be at the crux of the judge's decision here. And, you know, I think as part of that, it's how important is, you know, this kind of core use case that the FTC is pointing to of, you know, being able to go on Facebook and Instagram to share things with your friends and family and see what they're doing. How important is that still to these apps and, you know, this market that they've laid out that they say that Meta dominates? And, you know, I think what is interesting here is it doesn't have to be necessarily that it's the main thing people do on these apps anymore. But

• 8:46Speaker 07

  The judge has to feel like it's important enough still that it's, you know, something that Meta can monopolize, that it matters to consumers, that it's not something that's like, you know, gonna die in a year or so. So I think, you know, when I read comments on stories we write about this, I see people saying, yeah, I don't feel like I can connect with my friends and family as well on these apps anymore. And I think that's something that we hear a lot. So, you know, obviously that's very anecdotal, but, um, you know, the judge is gonna have to decide, is that a few users who just really want to see what their grandchildren are doing on Facebook? Or is this really an important use case for consumers?

• 9:30David Pierce?

  Right. And it seems to me like, I think you're right, there's a lot going on here, but it does seem like a lot of the rest of it is downstream of that question, right? Because if, if, if the thing we're litigating here was, was it illegal for Meta than Facebook to buy Instagram and WhatsApp? The way you get there is by saying, Facebook was where people went to hang out with their friends, and then Instagram and WhatsApp showed up providing competitive ways to hang out with their friends. And so Facebook bought them to essentially quash a competitor, right? Like, is it, that line actually, to me, has gotten sort of straighter and straighter over the course of this case, that you, you don't have to believe that logic. And I think the question will come down to whether the judge believes that logic.

• 10:14David Pierce?

  But increasingly, to me, it feels like it is that few steps. If you start from, Facebook is a place where people hang out with friends and family, that's how you get where the FTC is trying to go. And it seems like that has actually sort of crystallized over the last several weeks.

• 10:27Speaker 07

  Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's a less straightforward case than the one Meta wants to make, which is that, of course, we compete with TikTok and YouTube because we're all, you know, everyone has, many people have all these apps on their phone and we're competing for people's time and attention to make sure they click on ours. But you know, I think what the FTC has been arguing did become more clear throughout trial that they're saying, you know, Facebook was worried that Instagram was going to compete with it at this time when it was struggling to do the shift from desktop to mobile and

• 11:07Speaker 07

  Instagram was built on mobile. And it worried that it would become a real threat to its power. And with WhatsApp, I think maybe the argument is a little bit less clear because it's so evident that the founders really were not interested in building a social network, although they've tried to undermine that argument a little bit. But I think ultimately the fear was also, well, maybe they don't want to do it, but maybe Google buys them and Google is able to make, you know, this major social platform by leveraging this power that WhatsApp has.

• 11:43David Pierce?

  Well, the other part of the WhatsApp one that is so interesting to me, and I confess that throughout this, I have found the WhatsApp piece of this to be vastly more interesting than the Instagram side of things. I think in a certain way, the Instagram thing is more sort of straightforward, which is maybe why it's less interesting to me. It's like, it was a competitor and did Meta buy it and help it or buy it and hurt it is like, that's the question. You can do that, you can do with that what you will. But there's like, it's so funny to rewind back to like 2013 before all of this is happening. WhatsApp was a completely different animal. It was like, they were charging people a dollar a year to like message their friends around the world. And it was growing like crazy. And it was a whole different thing and you never heard about them. And like 11 people

• 12:25David Pierce?

  worked at the company and they had no ambitions, or so it seemed of being anything more than just that. And yet, it was taking over the world. Right? And I think this is the thing that I keep just sort of spinning around in my head is like, at least from what I can tell and from what you've been reporting, there's been a ton of evidence to suggest that Facebook was terrified of how popular WhatsApp was becoming. Both because in theory, it could become that popular and then add a bunch of other social networking stuff. But also because even back then, it seems like Facebook understood that group chat was going to win and that like pretty fundamentally messaging among friends was going to be the actual next phase of social networking. And that if WhatsApp did that, even if they didn't make any money off of it.

• 13:10David Pierce?

  It was a huge threat to Facebook's business if people went and used this like adorable, mostly free service that had no ambitions of ever trying to be a trillion dollar company. And I just, it's such a weird thing. Like it both was and was not a competitor. And I have not, I cannot figure out how to weigh those things in my head.

• 13:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's so fascinating because I think one of the core arguments that kept coming up when it came to WhatsApp was like, no, seriously, the founders of WhatsApp do not want to build a social network. They have absolutely no interest. They don't want to have an ad model. Like, no one is going to strong arm them into it. And, you know, even when Brian Acton, the co-founder, came and testified this past week, you know, he kind of said that too. I was not interested in an ad model. I did not want to build a feed into WhatsApp. And my investors were not going to make me. Interestingly, on cross-examination, the FTC was kind of able to pull out, well, you know, when you signed this deal with Meta,

• 14:11Speaker 07

  you understood that the valuation they were giving you came in part from, you know, them thinking about how this would work in an ad-supported business. And he wasn't able to get them to completely rule out ever running ads on WhatsApp. I think there was some language about monetization in their contract, but, you know, it seemed like he at least went into it knowing that this was a possibility. And despite all the resistance, maybe if push came to shove, one day WhatsApp would have had an ad-supported model, or, you know, would have allowed some social features or sold to another company that would have made it into, leveraged it into a social play.

• 14:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, I thought that was so interesting. And I really liked the thing you said at one point, that it came up in testimony that Facebook overpaid by somewhere between $6 and $10 billion for its actual valuation of WhatsApp. And it's like, oh yeah, okay. Everyone understood that this was a massive overpay for the thing that you were getting. And the inclination was there's, you know, there's money in the couch cushions here. And Facebook was actually probably better equipped to get it than almost anybody. And ironically, never really figured it out. Like, we're still here in 2025 and WhatsApp is like, you know, titanicly popular all over the world. And it's still not like the earth-shattering, the humongous business that it needs to be to be worth that valuation.

• 15:35David Pierce?

  So like, history has proven all of that to just be more and more complicated over time. But what do you make of the WhatsApp side of it in particular? Do you think the story that is being told by Meta about what WhatsApp was going to be, or might have been planning to be, or why it could have been a threat or whatever? Is that, is that working? Who is winning this side of the argument here, do you think?

• 15:59Speaker 07

  I think it's hard to tell. It's kind of complicated because there are some things that seem like they could cut both ways. For example, you know, they show that there were several of these messaging apps that were really exploding at the time. And WhatsApp was particularly exploding and exploding in a lot of different markets, where some of these other apps like Kakao Talk or Line or WeChat were really more like localized to a certain region. But WhatsApp was actually the only one of those that wasn't really expanding into social features. So arguably, it's one that was, you know, the least competitive with Facebook's business. And that's the one that Facebook decided to go after. But on the other hand, you know, it was exploding in growth and, you know, they saw potential for it,

• 16:44Speaker 07

  maybe in different ways than they saw for these other apps. And so, you know, maybe that's a reason they did end up going after it. So I think there's a lot of things like that where it's hard to fully tell which way the judge is going to ultimately take it. And I think it's also tough when you hear over and over from the founders themselves, from everyone who's testified, who had insight into the founders, that they did not want to sell ads, they were not going to be pushed over by their investors. Mark Zuckerberg said he was surprised that, you know, they basically just wanted to run a lifestyle company and compared it to Craigslist. You know, like, these were painted as like extremely unambitious people in a certain way.

• 17:28David Pierce?

  As if that's like an outrageously horrible thing to want is to just be Craigslist.

• 17:33Speaker 07

  Right, but it's also, it's somewhat hard to believe when then you're seeing, well, these are founders who got billions of dollars for this app that they created. Like, were they really that unambitious? And were they really going to, you know, leave their investors and their employees hanging at the end of the day?

• 17:51David Pierce?

  They did go buy yachts. You know what I mean? Like, at some point, you did buy a yacht.

• 17:55Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 17:57David Pierce?

  Yeah. So I, I think, I, I think that's right. And it, one of the things that has struck me just in, in reading your reporting is that it, it seems so much like the, the vibe in the courtroom has just sort of whipsawed back and forth in a way that I think I'm not used to in covering a lot of these trials. You sort of see momentum kind of builds and, and waxes and wanes a little bit, but it feels like even like witness to witness in this, you, you've had these like wildly different stories about what's going on. And I just think about like from, from Kevin Systrom to Adam Masari, talking about what's going on at Instagram, even with the same people, asking them the same kinds of questions, just completely different perspectives on how all of this has worked. And on the one hand, like, of course, that's true. But on the other hand,

• 18:41David Pierce?

  this whole thing just strikes me as like, it has gotten sort of more unknowable than ever over time. And like on the Instagram side, it seems like the, the big question is, did Meta help or hurt Instagram? Right? Like, is that, is that a, am I overgeneralizing to say that's kind of what it boils down to?

• 18:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, I, I think for sure. And I think we saw that especially in Kevin Systrom's testimony, the co-founder of Instagram, where, you know, it was really about, okay, you know, he took this offer from Meta, thinking that they're really going to help grow the company. And in a lot of ways, it's really hard to look at Instagram and see, you know, billions of users and, you know, this huge platform for advertising and think that it's, could have been more successful than it is. Today, but on the other hand, Kevin Systrom seemed pretty confident that it could be, and he could have done it himself and that, you know, Meta withheld resources for growth,

• 19:43Speaker 07

  for integrity, that, you know, they could have used to make Instagram better in various ways. So it's really hard to say, you know, is this just another Silicon Valley executive, just like blowing steam, or is this, you know, really what could have happened? And I think that's always the challenge in antitrust cases is what would have happened if, you know, this major event didn't occur?

• 20:08David Pierce?

  Yeah. Have they used the phrase the but-for world a lot?

• 20:11Speaker 07

  Oh, yes.

• 20:13David Pierce?

  The Google case has also been full of the but-for world.

• 20:16Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 20:16David Pierce?

  Which I enjoy very much. And it's like a phrase I say to myself all the time now. And I'm like, well, in a but-for world, I wouldn't be having goldfish right now. But today I'm eating goldfish. It's very good. Have you found yourself, as an observer, being in the courtroom all day, leaning towards one side or the other of the Instagram argument? Is, are you compelled by one version of the argument or the other?

• 20:41Speaker 07

  I mean, I'd say it's not necessarily that I'm compelled one way or the other, but I find that the FTC has a pretty tough case here. Because I think it's just, it's not that they can't win it, and not that, you know, they haven't presented strong arguments. I just think it's, obviously, they have the burden to begin with. And it's really difficult looking at Instagram and seeing, you know, at one point, Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, testified about how Instagram has seen such growth that, you know, they have reached almost like all of the, something like 250 million potential eligible smartphone users in the US who could possibly be on this app.

• 21:26Speaker 07

  And to grow any more than that is that's really gonna happen at a much slower rate than it used to. And so later on, Judge Boesberg had brought that up to the FTC's expert and said, you know, could this really have been more successful than where it is now? They have like almost all the users they could get. And I think that makes this really challenging. But at the same time, I guess the argument from the FTC is, well, yeah, they have all these users, but they have nowhere else to go. So, you know, that's kind of the point there. Yeah, I think it's just, it's difficult because we're in a world now with TikTok. And I think friends and family does seem like it's still important. The question is

• 22:11Speaker 07

  just how important and for how long.

• 22:14David Pierce?

  Talk me through that, actually, because I think it was it was Tom Allison, the head of Facebook, who was on the stand just the other day, right, talking about this. And he, like some other Meta employees who have testified during this trial, kind of seemed to argue out of both sides of their mouth about like, yes, these are platforms where people connect with friends and family, and that is important and it is core to what we're doing. And Mark Zuckerberg is out here in the meanwhile, like talking about OG Facebook and wanting to bring all that back. And yet, over and over, these people seem very happy to talk about the fact that actually, no, this isn't for friends and family at all.

• 22:49Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 22:50David Pierce?

  Help me figure out what's really going on there.

• 22:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really interesting element of this trial. And I think something where I think the FTC does have something to kind of sink their teeth in here. And I think with Tom Allison's testimony, one thing that was interesting to me was when they brought up this new kind of, yeah, the OG Facebook, where they're focusing back in on connecting with your friends, like bringing you back to your roots. And to me, that felt like some kind of internal recognition from Meta that this is still something people want. And, you know, I think The company was kind of arguing, well, yeah, like, we know this is something that some people

• 23:33Speaker 07

  want. And the fact is that now, because most people really, you know, they might tell us they want to see friends and family, but if we only show them friends and family posts, they're gonna leave. And so that their actions kind of tell us they want more engaging content than whatever, you know, your uncle is posting on Facebook.

• 23:51David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 23:52Speaker 07

  So they end up putting more, you know, unconnected content, content from people you don't follow in your feed. So, you know, one thing that was interesting was Tom Allison said, if you did really want to see only your friends' content, you'd have to scroll like all day to see all of it, because you'd have so much of this unconnected content in between. So, you know, they figure for the people who really want to see that, let's stick it in a tab and they can go to it when they want. So, you know, on the one hand, maybe that says that this is really something that's a novelty, or, you know, just a small part of what we do. And now a bigger part is all of this like algorithmically recommended

• 24:34Speaker 07

  content. But on the other hand, you could say, well, they're recognizing that it is something that's still important, even if it's less important than, you know, things like reels and things of that nature. And I think that's why we heard throughout trial, Meadow would say something like, well, you know, it's becoming a much smaller part of our business. And then the FTC would ask, well, but in absolute terms, is it still growing? And the answer would usually be yes. So, you know, yes, it's small, but small on, you know, a really large base.

• 25:10David Pierce?

  Right. Well, I mean, to me, it makes me think of, like, have you ever heard the saying that there are there are three U's? There's the you you think you are, the you other people think you are, and then the you you actually are? Like, I've been thinking about this so much with Facebook in the context of this whole trial, that like, the the you that Facebook thinks it is. Has always been about friends and family, right? Like it is, it is a place for real people to connect to real people. And I think that is like the reason Zuckerberg is so into this idea of the OG Facebook is partly about people use it, but it's also about like, that is, that is his conception of what this thing does and why it is important and why it is valuable and why it became what it is now. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg's conception of why Facebook is great is because it shows you all the AI nonsense, right? But I think, I think that's what people see on Facebook now.

• 25:55David Pierce?

  That is, that is our conception of Facebook and that is what Facebook has become for so many of us. Like, I don't, I have probably been on Facebook to see what my friends are up to one time in the last decade. Otherwise, it's like Marketplace and groups. That's it. That's what Facebook is for me. And I think that's true for a lot of people. And so this question of like, I just keep seeing people on the stand be like, okay, yes, I said in an interview that it's for friends and family. Yes, it's on our website that it's for friends and family. Yes, we tell people all the time that it's for friends and family. But when you look at how people actually use it, it's not remotely for friends and family.

• 26:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 26:31David Pierce?

  Uh, like there was the, the thing, Tom, I think it was Tom Allison, who said, a lot of people now make Facebook accounts and have no friends.

• 26:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 26:38David Pierce?

  And that to me is so, that was such an eye opening moment of like, oh, that is a complete inversion of the whole idea of what Facebook was supposed to be when we get to that point.

• 26:48Speaker 07

  Exactly. Yeah, that was really interesting. And you know, I think he's basically saying those people maybe are going on Marketplace, groups, whatever.

• 26:55David Pierce?

  But I also think that I bet, and this would be an interesting experiment to run, you could show up on Facebook, make zero friends and still have an infinite feed of content immediately available to you.

• 27:04Speaker 07

  Yeah. And that's what makes the experience so different than it used to be. But I think at the same time, like if I just think as like a very casual social media user, if I'm going to go try to see what a friend's up to or, you know, message them or something, I'm not really going to TikTok. And that's kind of their point here. I'm going to Instagram or Facebook.

• 27:25David Pierce?

  Right.

• 27:25Speaker 07

  Um, and you know, maybe I'm doing those things less on Instagram and Facebook in general than I used to, and maybe I'm doing more of it in just regular old messaging. But I'm not really going to TikTok for that. And maybe some people are, but one of TikTok's executives even said that their friends tab, about like 1% of users are watching videos in there. So.

• 27:47David Pierce?

  I honestly didn't know the friends tab existed until they said that on the stand. Like straight up had no idea.

• 27:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think to me, that has actually been the most compelling part of the FTC's argument here is that it's not necessarily that this is the main thing people do. It's that if this is what you want to do, there is nowhere else to go. And the reason there is nowhere else to go is because of Facebook. Like, that's just true. Whether you can prove that in court, I don't know. But like, you and I have been covering the space to know, long enough to know that, like, Facebook ate that market. It just did. And then we get back to the question of like, if Instagram had been left alone, could it have done? And so that's a whole separate thing. But that piece of it, I find very compelling, that the FTC is like, this is a thing people want to do, and you have made sure that there is nowhere else for them to do it.

• 28:39David Pierce?

  And I think every time that they've done a successful job of coming back to that, is when I end up like, back on the FTC side of this case. Because I'm like, no, you're right. This may not be, we don't have to litigate everything that Facebook is. We just have to litigate that part. And I think whether the judge buys that sort of, you know, slicing of the pie of Facebook remains to be seen. But I do find that part of the argument pretty convincing.

• 29:03Speaker 07

  I agree with that, and I think that's where I wonder, you know, Judge Boesberg has kind of admitted he's not really a social media user. So, you know, Adam Mosseri, before the trial started, did a tutorial where he walked him through these apps.

• 29:16David Pierce?

  No way.

• 29:17Speaker 07

  Where it just, you know, felt like a, you know, teenager explaining to their dad.

• 29:21David Pierce?

  What I would give to be a fly on the wall for that. Like, in the judge's chambers, just scrolling through some Instagram.

• 29:26Speaker 07

  Oh, no, I was there. It was in the courtroom.

• 29:28David Pierce?

  Oh, you were there? Was it, was it, was it the most awkward thing in history? Or was it amazing?

• 29:32Speaker 07

  It was. So, I mean, throughout the trial, one thing that's happened is Judge Boesberg played basketball at Yale, I believe. And so everyone is working basketball references into their exhibits. So, we had some, like, NBA videos referenced in the Instagram demo.

• 29:50David Pierce?

  That's very good.

• 29:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  Let's talk about TikTok for a minute because you brought this up and it does feel like, you know, back to the what would this case have been like if it was tried five years ago? TikTok is sort of the big wrench here, right? And it has come up a lot, kind of on both sides of the argument. How would you explain sort of TikTok's role in what this case has been? Because it does seem like it is everybody's favorite comparison in all directions. It is very strange.

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I think TikTok is just kind of the elephant in the room because, yeah, it existed when the FTC filed this case, but it really was nothing like it is today. That has become such a huge competitor for Meta in a general sense of the term. You know, if you told anyone that Meta doesn't compete with TikTok, they'd be like, what are you talking about?

• 30:37David Pierce?

  Right.

• 30:38Speaker 07

  But, you know, we're talking about this very like legal case where it has a very specific definition about what is really a competitor. And so in this case, the FTC says that we're talking about personal social networking services, which are used to connect with friends and family. They have a social graph, which means, you know, they connect, they, you know, kind of map out like all of your connections based on, you know, who you know versus like what you're interested in, which is more of how TikTok does it. And they say in that market, it's really just Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and then some of these other apps like MeWe and BeReal.

• 31:19Speaker 07

  And so I think with TikTok, you know, they're saying that's more of a passive experience. You're, you know, scrolling through, you're getting served different videos that you might be interested in, but it's not really about who you know, or, you know, you're not really going to like message a friend on there. Maybe you will, but like, that's not really what you're going to TikTok for. And so I think that's really what it comes down to. And what Meta says is that, well, it doesn't really matter why users specifically come to the app because, first of all, a lot of users come to Instagram to do the same thing that they do on TikTok, which is scroll reels.

• 31:55David Pierce?

  Right.

• 31:55Speaker 07

  And second of all, they say it's really about time and attention because that's what really constrains our power is we're thinking about how do we make sure that people spend more time on our apps versus on TikTok or something else? And, you know, that's what we should be focused on because. Internally, you can see that that's what we look at. We look at, you know, how do we win users' time? We're not saying like, oh, let's like try to get more of the friends and family sharing group.

• 32:23David Pierce?

  Can't both of those things be true at the same time? This is what I say, I'm so hung up on this. Like, the, the, every time anybody makes an argument about TikTok, I'm like, of course you're right. It's like, everybody's like, no, people don't do the same things sort of in relation to each other that they do on Facebook and even Instagram. Like, my Instagram experience in terms of like how I interact with my friends is completely different from TikTok. But most of the time I open Instagram or TikTok, it's, it's for the same purpose, like you're saying. And so, uh, everybody keeps bringing up this like, was it an Instagram outage?

• 32:57Speaker 07

  It was the Meta outage in 2021.

• 33:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, so everybody brings up this outage, uh, and, and points out where people went. Uh, as, as a way of saying, okay, who are our actual competitors? Like, where do they go when they're not here?

• 33:12David Pierce?

  And like, it's the obvious play. Like, everybody went to YouTube and TikTok, right? And so, Meta is like, of course that's where they went. There, those are our competitors. And that's also obviously true. And so, like, I, I just don't know how to piece those two things apart, or if I even need to, that like, these two sides just sort of seem like they're saying true things that have nothing to do with each other.

• 33:31Speaker 07

  Right, well, then I think the other part of that is that the FTC then points out that, yeah, okay, there's like some percentage that was diverted to these other apps, but this doesn't add up to 100%. Some of these diverted users just like logged off. We don't know, maybe they went to, maybe they went to other apps, but maybe they also like touched grass or went to sleep. So, I think-

• 33:53David Pierce?

  We're suing grass. It's time.

• 33:55Speaker 07

  And, you know, actually Judge Boesberg has kind of touched on this before because he, when he was ruling on the motion for summary judgment late last year, he said that, you know, the fact that Meta competes with TikTok for time and attention is, quote, "true, but besides the point." And he also said, quote, "Meta competes not just with YouTube, TikTok, and X, but also with watching a movie at a friend's house, reading a book at the library, and playing online poker. Anti-trust law does not require consideration of such an infinite range of possible substitutes." So I think, you know, that's going to be somewhat of a difficult argument for Meta to make that, you know, it really does matter that we compete for time and attention. And I think they would say it's because,

• 34:41Speaker 07

  you know, people have multiple apps on their phones already. And yeah, we've like almost reached saturation, maybe, with how many more people could download it. So at this point, we're competing on, you know, who spends more time on each app.

• 34:52David Pierce?

  So this comes back yet again to market definition, because like if you can convince Judge Boesberg to buy the idea that there is a market for, I want to find my friends and family on the internet, then we're somewhere. But if you can't, I think all like rational evidence suggests that you can't come at Meta for it's a place for people to watch videos. And, and so this, this also now kind of makes the FTC's whole plan here make sense. Like we, we even talked about this at the beginning. This is a pretty tricky needle to thread, but by the, the way you're talking about it and the way the judge sees it, that's kind of its only move.

• 35:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, they have to, they have to show that there is this market, however small it is, that it's not so small that it doesn't matter. It still matters and it's still something that Meta can leverage, even over the users who maybe really are just coming there for reels and that that really separates them out. And I think one way that we've seen this throughout trial is Meta keeps bringing up these three screenshots of reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts. And it's like on the same video and they look exactly the same. And, you know, interestingly, the FTC's expert actually couldn't distinguish which was which, which was not a great look.

• 36:15David Pierce?

  That's a bad look for everyone. Like no one comes out of that looking like they're doing a good job.

• 36:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, but you know, I think it was TikTok's executive who had looked at the same kind of screenshot side by side and was like, yeah, you know, they do seem very similar, but when you click out of that experience, you get to what is core to the app. And for TikTok, this is the core, like that, that's it. It's the short form video player. And for YouTube, it's the long form videos. And for Instagram and Facebook, it's the feed and stories. And, you know, those are elements that the FTC says are really about sharing with your friends and family, even if they include some other kinds of content.

• 36:58David Pierce?

  Okay. As everybody's hearing this on Tuesday, you will be back in court for what we think is the last day of this, right?

• 37:07Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 37:08David Pierce?

  For now, the last day until the next first day. And then we do this all over again, presumably several more times.

• 37:12Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 37:13David Pierce?

  Okay, I like it. You and I both live in DC and I've seen you more in the DC District Courthouse than anywhere else since we've been working together.

• 37:19Speaker 07

  It's been great.

• 37:22David Pierce?

  I will not hold you to this and neither will all of the many people listening to this. If you had to call it right now, where do you think it lands?

• 37:32Speaker 07

  If I had to call it right now, I would say I think Meadow wins.

• 37:38David Pierce?

  I think that's where I am too.

• 37:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I just think it's, it's a tough case and it, you know, the burden is always on the plaintiff. That said, will I be shocked if the FTC wins? No, but I think it's just, we had Google go first. I think that was a very strong case and that was tough because it was the first one out of the gate. It's hard to be the first judge to make a ruling like that. But this is a very different kind of case. You know, that was really about contracts. A lot of it actually lined up really neatly with the Microsoft case. So I think it was very different. I think this is a different kind of case. And the judge in that same order on the motion for summary judgment in November,

• 38:22Speaker 07

  he said that the government's claims, quote, "at times strengthen this country's creaking antitrust precedents to their limits." So it's just, you know, it's a hard case to bring, given the state of antitrust law and where we're at today. But, you know, it's not out of the question. And I think Judge Boesberg seemed like he was asking really astute questions by the end. He didn't ask a ton of questions, but the ones he did ask seemed like, okay, he's really following this. So I will be very interested to see what he ends up saying.

• 38:54David Pierce?

  You and me both. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of these all happening at once. And this one, this one feels like maybe the hardest to call.

• 39:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:01David Pierce?

  But it's going to be fascinating. All right, for now, I will, I will leave you alone. But thank you for doing this. It's great to see you. Come, leave the courtroom occasionally. We're going to, we're going to do this more. It's going to be great.

• 39:11Speaker 07

  Would love that.

• 39:12David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk smart classes. We'll be right back.

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• 41:08David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. V Song is here. Hi, V.

• 41:10Speaker 09

  Hello.

• 41:11David Pierce?

  You have traversed America several times.

• 41:14Speaker 09

  I have. It's been a whirlwind 48 hours.

• 41:17David Pierce?

  We're recording this on Thursday morning, and you, like, you just got home. How are you holding up?

• 41:23Speaker 09

  Ah, this is my like, third cup of coffee.

• 41:26David Pierce?

  That's what we like to hear.

• 41:27Speaker 09

  You know, it's that post-conference high. I will crash later today, but right now, we're riding high.

• 41:35David Pierce?

  So what were, what were your vibes from I O? We talked a bunch about this on the, on the Friday show, but my, my sense from afar was that it was like, it was a pretty good I O in terms of like, Google kind of flexing its powers in the universe here. What was your sense of the whole thing?

• 41:50Speaker 09

  Um, it was a smooth I O. It was, um, it was an I O that I felt was more intentional than I Os have been in the past. This felt a lot more cohesive. It felt like Google had something to say this year comparatively about A I instead of just going, A I. Though there was a lot of that too with many charts, albeit with Y axes, unlike other conferences that we shall not name. And, uh, you know, I think this is one of the first years where we felt, where I felt at least that hardware was present in some way in, in the keynote, not in a large way, but in a way.

• 42:26David Pierce?

  Interesting. Well, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is it felt to me like, Google makes this like long series of product announcements about Mariner and Astra and A I mode and all this stuff where they're like, okay, what we want to do is make A I that is like interactive with you all the time and it can see everything. And it's always listening and proactive and all this stuff. And all I kept hearing all the time was it's smart glasses, that it's like, this is, this is a world you build if you believe that smart glasses are going to take over the world. Was that your sense too, that like, all of this is like kind of phony, but it's like, built for smart glasses?

• 43:04Speaker 09

  I 100% feel that way, uh, because what did they end on? Smart glasses, right?

• 43:11David Pierce?

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 09

  It was a very interesting concept because they went like, search, search, search. Here's a bunch of projects whose names you absolutely won't remember the difference between by the end of this conference and smart glasses at the end. Um, so I, I feel like they were just kind of handholding everyone to go to this thesis that Android XR is how they're going to embody all of this AI. Because AI is not really something that is tangible at the moment. Like it's software, right? It's on your devices, but it's not necessarily integral to your devices. And, you know, the thesis that Meta and now Google have kind of come up with in the last

• 43:53Speaker 09

  two years or so is that smart glasses are the hardware vehicle for AI for normies. We got the headsets for you, you early adopters, tech enthusiasts, you know, gadget nerds. But for the normies, we're pairing up with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker and you'll have smart glasses and you'll like it. That, that's kind of, that's kind of the vibe.

• 44:16David Pierce?

  Yeah. So you got a couple of new demos this time? What did you actually get to see and try at Ia?

• 44:22Speaker 09

  No new demos for me. I think this is the, the public unveiling of what demos they're comfortable letting out into the world with minimal guardrails.

• 44:33David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 44:33Speaker 09

  It was actually really funny because I came in my sneakers and running shorts under a skirt. As soon as the keynote was done, I used all of my training to run to the demo. I got there and they were like, you've got five minutes with everything. And I was like, oh my God, that's not a lot of time, right? And I think that's on purpose, not only because this was the thing that everyone was going to want to try, but because, um, you know, as they said on the keynote on stage when they did the live AI translations, it stuck out to me because they're like, this is a risky demo, because these are risky demos. Live AI demos are always going to be risky, but inherently so in a device that Google is known for failing at. So, um, the demos I got in Moohan, I was like, oh, here we go again. This is like what I saw in December.

• 45:18Speaker 09

  This is a Android flavored Apple Vision Pro that is much, much, much, much, much, much, like 10 times more comfortable to wear.

• 45:26David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 45:27Speaker 09

  But the demo I got in there was not particularly special as like.

• 45:33Speaker 09

  I have a problem because I saw all of it. I saw all of it. I think what's important is what they chose to let people try. And so what they're choosing to let people try is talking to Gemini in some very guided ways. And then for the headset, it was like, here's a ability for you to ask Gemini to take you to a place without opening the Google Maps app, but it's going to take you there contextually. And then you can look around. And then the other thing is like, also, we know people want to use headsets for immersive content. What if we took a video that was filmed on a drone and made it 3D? Yeah, eh, eh, spatializing, eh, eh?

• 46:14Speaker 09

  That, that, that was the, the Moohan demo I got, which I don't think is going to convince people of Android XR. I really don't think that's what's gonna... I actually think the lighter form factor is what is going to make people go like, oh, okay. Vision Pro, very cool, but wearable. So I think that's kind of the takeaway I had from Moohan, again, solidified. And the glasses, the glasses is what everyone was just like, move aside, Project Moohan. I'll get to you later. The glasses, let me have the glasses. And that was interesting because the three demos that they had everyone try, I think were very intentional and purposeful. So one of the demos was, hey, there's two paintings in here.

• 46:57Speaker 09

  Ask Gemini facts about those paintings and you can ask it questions contextually, like compare these two paintings. There was one that was very brightly colored and pointillist and another that was just like, you know, like in TV shows where they want to show you that the person is sad now. So everything is in like cool lighting. That was that, that was that picture. And you know, you, you go like, hey, you tap the side, the, the side arm and it brings up Gemini Live. And I think it was Gemini Live at least. And you know, you can see the little display in one of the lenses and it, it's like, hey, yeah. You have the little animation that shows that it's listening. And then it gives you Captain Obvious observations.

• 47:39Speaker 09

  Like, you know, if you're a seeing person, if you're not a seeing person, then that might be very helpful, what it's describing to you. But for me, they were just like, oh. Uh, the, the picture on the right is brightly colored. It has pointillism in it and the picture on the left has moodier subdued hues. And I was like, yes.

• 47:57David Pierce?

  It's on the level of like, you point the camera at a bag of nuts that says nuts in large letters and it tells you it's a bag of nuts. It's like, it's not unimpressive technology, but it's not hard work, right? Like this, this is stuff we know we have solved. And I think it sounds like that's a lot of what you're saying here. It's like, what you've described is a bunch of things that Google has known it's very good at for a while and is actually now just trying to do inside of glasses, which does present new kinds of problems, right? The cameras and the processing and all that stuff is like, that's new and different stuff. So the fact that even the easy stuff works is not nothing, but it's also not, you have not invented a new thing if you just give me a new way to do my camera.

• 48:41Speaker 09

  Yes, so these are very, very tightly controlled and like short, purposefully short demos that we were getting at this event, the other one in December were much longer. You were like able to ask Gemini to do more impressive things. Like one was you could look at a bookshelf and the glasses would remember the books that you saw. So if you left and you went, oh, hey, um, what was that book that I saw in yellow? Like the yellow cover? What was the title of that? It would be able to remember that for you. And that is something, if you're forgetful, you'd be like, oh, maybe I would use that if I could remember to use that. But you know, that, that is something that feels a little more magical and not something that we were able to try in this like setting where people are finally allowed to take

• 49:25Speaker 09

  photos of the prototype, where they're finally allowed to try the prototypes and they're finally allowed to take video of people trying these prototypes. Another thing, like a slightly modified version of that demo that I got where they had all these travel books on a shelf and they were like, why don't you try asking Gemini which book you should read based on like your preferences? So, you know, I come up with a persona and I go, hey, I'm planning a trip to Japan. I'm not an outdoorsy person. Which of these travel guides is going to be most helpful for me? And I picked one and I'm like, cool. I guess that's helpful if you're in a bookstore and you're like, I don't know which one of these books to choose. Why don't you choose that one for me? So ostensibly, you could do that, but.

• 50:09David Pierce?

  Well, but again, it's, it's the, the, the little bits of rails there, I think are what's so interesting. Cause it's like, it is one thing to do that from a series of travel guides. It is another thing entirely to just be in a room or a bookstore or whatever and be like, I'm going to Japan. What in this Barnes and Noble should I read? Which is like, that, that's the thing, right? If you're already standing in front of the shelf of travel guides, the, the question of, do I look at the Japan travel guide for my Japan trip? Is not interesting user interface stuff. But I think like, this is not to like diminish what's happening here. All of this is like a stepping stone to that. And I think this is where I go back to the, the sort of point, counterpoint between all of the stuff Google was announcing at I O and these glasses.

• 50:53David Pierce?

  Cause like all of the project Astra stuff, and you and I have talked about this before. All of that is smart glasses, right? The idea that this thing can be on all the time and seeing everything that I'm seeing and listening is like, and, and sort of proactively piping up when it has something to tell me, or remembering what all the books are and then telling me later. Like, that's all the stuff they're working on with Astra, this like universal AI assistant. All of that is for smart glasses. And they've said as much, like I talked to the team that's building this and they were like, we're doing it for phones and smart glasses. But it's pretty clear to us that the best version of this thing works on smart glasses. Because it can see all the things you see in here, all the things you hear. It makes perfect sense, but it is so painfully clear that putting those two things together,

• 51:33David Pierce?

  the glasses and the AI and the underlying like sensing technology. All the pieces of that are happening, but the, the shoving them together, I think is going to be way harder than most people are reckoning with.

• 51:45Speaker 09

  It's gonna be much harder. The parts exist, but the problem is that the parts have existed for a really long time. It's the putting together that's very difficult. And then on top of that, you know, uh, the problem with all of this is that I've seen it. Have you seen it? Do you get it? Do you get why these people are so gung ho about it? Because I can describe it to you. I can describe it to you at length. I can describe it to you in detail. You just don't fully get it, you know? And, and you know, the readers are just like, well, isn't your job to describe that to us? And I'm like, yes, I am. But what I'm trying to convey to you is that, um, I can be the most descriptive person in the world.

• 52:24Speaker 09

  I can hype it up so much, you're still not going to get it until you put a pair of glasses on. And then when you put the pair of glasses on, you still may not be convinced because the tech is so nascent at this point in time. Our brains and our cultural cues have not evolved to the point where we naturally think, oh yeah, this is what I'm going to ask it to do. Like within the whole keynote and the whole demo, the thing that I was like, aha, this is what's going to get people to think about the possibilities. Was that demo of the guy trying to fix his bike and just going like, pull this up. Hey, I'm looking at this. What do I need to do right there? Cause like, if you're trying to solve that now, what are you doing?

• 53:04Speaker 09

  You're pulling up YouTube videos, you're trying to sort between the five different YouTube videos, doing the same thing, all with the same tedious two minute intro. Where you're just like, just get me to the part that I need to know. And then you're having to physically reference other stuff, you know? And it's saying that it's going to do that seamlessly for you, based on what you're seeing. So that part, I think everyone can look at that and go, hey, I think there's a time where I would have loved that to be easier with less friction. So that, yes, people will get that. And that's why they did the low vision and blind use cases scenario there too. Because that is another clear cut thing where you go, oh, now I get why we might want smart glasses for this very specific subset of people who it could very much help.

• 53:48Speaker 09

  And those are the kinds of things that you need to get normal people on board. Whereas like, so the final third demo that I got, that they were ready to share publicly and they think is going to convince people that this is, this is it. Was the fact that you can take a picture with the glasses, which no bigs, snap glasses have been doing that. Metaray band glasses have been doing that. The difference now is there's a display. So you snap the photo. And you can see what it looks like. You get a preview. And the problem with the Meta Ray-Bans for a lot of content creators is that there's no framing.

• 54:20David Pierce?

  Right.

• 54:21Speaker 09

  So like when I tested the Ray-Bans, I noticed that I tilted my head a lot because all of my photos had an unintentional such angle. I was like, ooh.

• 54:28David Pierce?

  I'm so glad that's not just me. That's exactly been my experience too. It's like every time I think my head is straight, it turns out my head is actually at like a 20 degree angle.

• 54:37Speaker 09

  You know, it's at, it's at an angle. I, I was like, oh, I must be such a thoughtful person because I'm at an angle and I'm thinking so hard about what I'm looking at. Or, you know, I realized that if you're going to wear glass, smart glasses where the camera is usually in the hinges so far, you really shouldn't have bangs or you should tie your hair back because there were so many pictures where just pieces of my hair were ruining the framing in the shot. So if you have a display, you take the shot, you see what the picture's going to look like and you can go, oh, I've tilted my head. Let me just straighten my head and get this photo again. So, and it happens in a blink of a second. It's like really cool. Uh, it's a small thing, but it's also a thing that they're very subtly like, hey,

• 55:19Speaker 09

  you know, who can't do that just yet? Meta, meta. Yeah. We got the display. Yeah.

• 55:24David Pierce?

  I, I'm fascinated by how all of these companies are going to try to use those tiny screens because like, the screens aren't very good, at least in the, the demos that I've gotten in the past. Maybe these are better. But in general, the screens mostly suck, but they're there. And so you, you have to figure out what you can do. But even the thing you described where like it shows the animation, the Gemini is listening to you. Like I instinctively hate that because I'm like, actually your job is to not put interface in my way while something is not happening, right? That, that's the equivalent of like putting a loading screen in front of my face 24 hours a day. Like that's bad. I don't want that. But the like one second to frame your shot as you're taking a photo makes a ton of sense to me.

• 56:06David Pierce?

  And it's like, this is the thing I think is so interesting about smart glasses in general is we're just going to have to make a million of those decisions about how everything is supposed to work all the time because it should be as little screen as possible. But you also need the screen for lots of things. And I think like that, getting that balance right, I think is like kind of the whole product ballgame with a lot of this stuff.

• 56:27Speaker 09

  Yeah, we're at the spaghetti phase because I don't think we know what we want fully. The other thing that they're trying to do is heads up display. So they're talking about Google Maps. And this isn't exactly the scenario you're talking about, David, where, you know, your head's up. They're only going to give you the little kind of, if you have a heads up display in a car, you probably know what I'm talking about, where it's just like 500 feet and an arrow and a tiny little display in the peripheral of your vision. And then when you look down, it morphs into a little map. So you can kind of get a little, a little sense. Some people I talked to were like, I don't, I don't know if I like that because I want to see the map. I want to see the blue arrow floating in the sky. And I was like, I don't want to see that. I want something less obtrusive.

• 57:12Speaker 09

  I want to, if I'm, if I'm trying to get out of a New York subway, I never know what is up, down, north, south. Once I get out of the subway because I've emerged from the, the infrastructural depths of hell. And I, I want to know what direction I go in. If I could just look down and go like, oh, I'm supposed to go that way. Cool. And then have like a guide of where I'm supposed to go so I can stay interacted with my surroundings. That, that feels like a good use to me, but I, I met so many people who are like, I want the big blue arrow floating in space. I want to see that. And, you know, the prototypes that we saw, they were only one type of prototype that I know Google has. Because when I went for my December hands-on, where we were not allowed to have photos, we were not allowed to have cameras.

• 57:56Speaker 09

  We could just only see, and I, I almost feel like I was gaslit into thinking, did this exist? Did I see that? Because I wasn't able to take anything but my own written experience and recording and my notes out of that. I saw binocular versions. I saw versions that were sunglasses, you know? So it's clear that they're trying to refine what this display is going to look like. Because the ones that we all got shown in public was the monocular, single lens display in one of the lenses. But I saw versions where there were two, one in each. And that allows a much bigger screen to appear. That gives you more options. Like I saw a wild demo back in December where you could just like really kind of watch a movie.

• 58:41Speaker 09

  Inside of your smart glasses? Was it good? No. It has the same, all the, it was like the same problems that maybe watching a movie on a projector in your living room versus on an actual TV has. A lot of that same issue. Um, you know, and I asked them, hey, how did you solve the ambient light question? That's my gotcha question. And more people have better answers to that in the last few years than they have ever with regard to smart glasses. And they say, oh, you know, it has ambient light sensors. It'll be able to adjust the brightness based on where you're at. And I was like, cool, but we're in a tiny little room right now. We're not doing these demos outside in direct sunlight. Right. This is what I mean by guardrails. Controlled, trying to bottle the magic.

• 59:20Speaker 09

  Uh, I heard references to Iron Man and, uh, Jarvis, because ironically, I think Tony Stark looms large over our imagination of what smart glasses ought to do. Very much so. So like, you should be having Jarvis in your glasses. It should be able to project all this information. And then the reality is, is that, uh, that's not where we're at. We're probably more in the, I'm going to say the Kingsman, Egg Z scenario where you have a pair of smart glasses that look very discreet and you can see green holograms is like one, that these are actual glasses that people at CES brought where you can see like green light. Uh, cause that's their answer to ambient light. And I'm just going to say it, it's the spaghetti face.

• 1:00:02Speaker 09

  Everyone does not know what people actually want or what they will actually buy or what their reservations are. So they're like, here, here's a version with a display. Here's a version that's just audio. Here's a version with camera. Here's a version with a, where the camera is in the nose bridge. Um, what are we going to call smart glasses? Is everything going to be called a smart glass? Cause, um, here's another interesting tidbit in the developer keynote, so not the main keynote, the developer keynote, XREAL, uh, was announced to have the first official Android XR pair of, I'm going to call them smart glasses, but were they allowed to call it smart glasses? I don't know, because their press release said optical see-through XR device. Huh. So not glasses, but if you look at them, they're glasses.

• 1:00:47David Pierce?

  I don't even know what to make of that sentence.

• 1:00:50Speaker 09

  Well, what's an optical see-through XR device that you wear on your face? It's glasses.

• 1:00:55David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:00:55Speaker 09

  That's it's optical. You can see through it, but you know, XR, uh, X Reels made a name for itself, making like little portable screens that you carry around that happen to look like glasses that you have to plug into another device. And it's just like a portable monitor that you can bring around. This version, we have very few details. They didn't have it on hand. They were there, but they didn't have it on hand. And the render shows cameras in the nose bridge, which we haven't seen yet. We haven't seen cameras in the nose bridge just yet. So I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

• 1:01:25David Pierce?

  So it's like, if you're imagining you're cross eyed and that's how you take pictures. I love that.

• 1:01:29Speaker 09

  Or just trying to get beyond the bangs problem, to be quite frank. So it's interesting. It's an interesting reclamation of Google's history with this particular form factor as well, because I, Google, you ain't fooling me. That keynote comes out there, you have, uh, uh, Izadi out on stage and he's like, we've been in the space for 10 years. I was like, really? Cause I really do feel like you tried to bury that under the enterprise tech carpet for a good number of years.

• 1:01:59David Pierce?

  It's so funny you bring this up. I was thinking about that as they were saying this, I was like, cause when was the last time Google willingly acknowledged the existence of Google Glass? And I think it, A, it's actually a lot longer than 10 years, friendos. And B, you spent like eight of those 10 years trying to get everybody to forget that you had ever done any of this in the first place.

• 1:02:20Speaker 09

  Yeah, it, it like from the outside, it looks like, oh, oh, the Meta Ray Bans are, people actually want that? Oh, well, you know, we got like these 20 years of notes and research and partnerships, like let's get back on that, that train.

• 1:02:35David Pierce?

  It's actually the most Google thing in the world, right? This is the same company that like invented all of the important technology behind ChatGPT. And then ChatGPT launched and Google was like, you want that? Oh, we can do that. People like this? Sure, we'll make a product out of that. But I think on the glasses front, the, the other piece of news that I think I found even more interesting than the extra stuff is some of the partnership stuff that Google announced about who they're making glasses with. Uh, and these are companies you know a lot more about than I do. Can you just like set in context who these partners are for Google?

• 1:03:08Speaker 09

  So the big two that they announced on Sage are Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. I'm gonna guess most people, verge listeners, probably may not know about Gentle Monster. You know Gentle Monster if, one, you are Korean, because every Korean person, their mother turns to them and goes, "Did you know that company was Korean?" And so that's how I actually know about Gentle Monster, because it's a big brand in Korea and it's super popular with luxury haute couture. You have 100% seen Gentle Monster glasses, because Kendrick wears them, Kendrick Lamar wears them, Beyonce wears them, Rihanna wears them, Billie Eilish wears them.

• 1:03:52Speaker 09

  Everybody famous who has worn kind of a weird silhouette, cool pair of sunglasses or glasses in the last, I wanna say 10 years, guarantee you one of them is probably Gentle Monster.

• 1:04:04David Pierce?

  I'm looking at this collection now, and Gentle Monster, they have a bunch of the, like, very skinny, sort of like vaguely like Blade Runner futuristic looking ones. That, you're right, I've seen on, like, you see red carpets everywhere filled with this, like, there's like slightly wide, slightly skinny glasses, and now I'm thinking a lot of these were probably Gentle Monster.

• 1:04:26Speaker 09

  Or, or if you see someone with extremely large glasses, like extremely like, uh, "Don't talk to me, I, these are obscenely large sunglasses," those are also Gentle Monster.

• 1:04:39David Pierce?

  Love it.

• 1:04:40Speaker 09

  They're very artsy-fartsy, edgy, bold, that kind of vibe, so that's, that's an interesting pick.

• 1:04:48David Pierce?

  So like, less mainstream than Ray-Ban, but maybe like cooler than Ray-Ban at the moment?

• 1:04:53Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 1:04:54David Pierce?

  Okay, interesting.

• 1:04:54Speaker 09

  Buzzier than Ray-Ban, much bigger with Gen Z.

• 1:04:59David Pierce?

  That seems like a big win for Google. If you can't be like Meta and get Eslo Luxottica and have all of the glasses that exist in the universe as your partners. This is what you do, right? Instead of like, try to go, and Warby Parker is the other partner. And I think that's like, that's more along the lines of what I would have expected Google to do, which is not a ding, but Warby Parker is like very straightforward, very kind of like earnest, regular people glasses. And that's fine. And like, Warby Parker is like a very millennial company for millennials. And that's fine. But what, what you need if you're Google is something that is the like absolute cultural opposite of Google Glass. And Gentle Monster, from the way you described it, sound like about as close to that as there might be right now.

• 1:05:44Speaker 09

  Yeah. And my conspiracy theory is that they got it because they're partnering with Samsung. So, you know, Samsung is an institution in Korea. It is responsible for a huge chunk of the country's GDP. There's a saying in Korea that if Samsung sneezes, the whole country shakes. Like, that's the cultural cachet that Samsung has in Korea.

• 1:06:04David Pierce?

  So we're gonna start seeing like K-pop's bands wearing Moohan pretty soon, is what you're saying? Like, that's coming?

• 1:06:10Speaker 09

  You know, honest to God, probably yes. You will see BTS is back from the army. You're gonna see Jungkook in, in Moohan, probably Stray Kids as well, G-Dragon. These are, if you know K-pop, these are huge names that I'm, I'm listing right now. But, you know, Gentle Monster has done these huge celeb collabs. They know how to be like, we are the artsy one, we are the cool one. And I think from a strategic perspective, what you're seeing here is they're going accessibility, affordability, and people not wanting to look crazy with Warby Parker. That's a great play, especially because Warby Parker is direct to consumer, right? So it's easier than having to go to your Lenscrafter, which is what I have to do with a lot of

• 1:06:53Speaker 09

  Essilor Luxottica stuff, because that's their thing. And Ray-Bans, the Ray-Ban to Warby Parker is probably more of a one-to-one in terms of classic frames, things that, that are, you know. People aren't going to be afraid to wear. But then they're trying to get this cool, this cachet of cool with gentle monster that I don't know if Ray-Ban and Meta fully have that because the rumor is that they're going to go with Oakleys for their next thing and that's just targeting the athletes and I guess dads in Texas.

• 1:07:25David Pierce?

  Which makes sense, but it's a very different play than this one.

• 1:07:28Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's a very different play. I think it's a very interesting one. I think Maui Jim was another brand that was kind of mentioned under the, I forget the name of the company that they're working with in their umbrella of eyewear, but Maui Jim, they're also sunglasses that are ball my wears. So, you know, they're kind of going for that vibe as well, which is smart because the biggest eyewear brand in the world is Essilor Luxottica.

• 1:07:54David Pierce?

  I agree. All right. I'm going to let you go here, but before we do, I need to know what you think about this Johnny Ive, Sam Altman thing.

• 1:08:01Speaker 09

  I'm losing my mind.

• 1:08:02David Pierce?

  We think it's not smart glasses. The winds seem to be saying it's not smart glasses. People tell lies all the time. It might still be smart glasses. You never know. But what is your like earliest read on what you think this thing is?

• 1:08:15Speaker 09

  So here's what we know, right? It's not glasses because they've kind of outright said it's not glasses, sort of.

• 1:08:21David Pierce?

  Again, people tell lies, but it does, all existing evidence points to it's not glasses.

• 1:08:28Speaker 09

  Yeah. Joanie, I've kind of shaded humane and rabbit. If he's going to go that far to shade them and say those are bad products, probably not in that vein, right?

• 1:08:39David Pierce?

  Okay. Can I, can I just very quickly make the opposite case of that?

• 1:08:42Speaker 09

  Okay, yeah, sure.

• 1:08:43David Pierce?

  That's Apple's thing, right? Like what Johnny Ive did is the equivalent of putting up the slide of all the ugly smartphones before you announced your own smartphone. I'm just, I'm not ruling it out. I think the funniest possible outcome would be if they just made a nicer looking humane pin, which I still think is possible.

• 1:08:59Speaker 09

  So I'm sort of was just like, oh, they're not going to do a pin because he shat on the pin. And then the more details that slowly trickle out, I'm just sort of like, oh, he's not doing humane pin. He's doing plod. He's doing the plod note pin.

• 1:09:12David Pierce?

  That's a good take.

• 1:09:13Speaker 09

  Because that's that's kind of where I'm landing at now, because let's think of the components that go into AI hardware as we know it now. That company seemed to be converging on. They kind of want it to be screenless because as we've just spent a great amount of time talking about, no one can, no one can agree on what the display should be or how it should look. So cut that out of the equation. No display. And also you probably don't want to do the humane thing where you make people pay for a separate phone LTE connection thing. No one wants that. So let's have it connect through your phone or another device. They're saying it's the third device you buy because the first is going to be a computer. The second is going to be your phone or you could reverse that order.

• 1:09:56Speaker 09

  So this is the third device we want you to have. We want it to fit in your pocket, but also on your desk, but also maybe you could wear it around your neck. And I'm landing on the plod note pin or be that vein of device, but make it Jony Ive, make it beautiful, make it less stupid compared to humane. Under promise what it can do, but flaunt the fact that it's with OpenAI officially. You get the subscription to OpenAI and they send you this hardware. It could sit on your desk, that can fit in your pocket and you can wear it, but it doesn't need to be wearable. That's I'm landing on something that looks and feels like the plod note pin.

• 1:10:40Speaker 09

  Which, let's face it, that's kind of the category that's gaining buzz outside of glasses.

• 1:10:45David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right, V. Thank you as always. We got to take a break and then we're going to come back and take a question from the first guest hotline. V, go sleep. I'll see you soon.

• 1:10:52Speaker 09

  Ah, thank you for letting me ramble.

• 1:10:55David Pierce?

  We'll be right back.

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• 1:12:49David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is [email protected]. We love hearing from you. Thank you, by the way, to everybody who's reached out with responses to Allison's question about phone therapy. If you're going through a phone conundrum, we want to hear from you. We've gotten some really fun questions. It's gonna be a super fun episode this summer, so keep them coming, keep calling, keep emailing. This time I have one that I actually got a bunch of emails and calls about just in the last like couple of days since this news dropped. Let me just read you one email. This comes from Blake. Says, "I've been using Pocket since it was called Read It Later. The news that Mozilla is shutting it down is sad, but not surprising." Agree and agree, by the way. "Other alternatives I've tried, like Matter or Readwise, I've bounced off of.

• 1:13:32David Pierce?

  Is that the main recommendation now, or what should I be trying to migrate my Read It Later workflow into? Additional context: I do desktop reading in a Chromium-based browser, Arch Edge Chrome, most people do, and mobile in Safari, and ideally want a nice native app. I use Reader Classic for Feedly and Pocket, so I guess if I want to keep using that, then my options are limited to iCloud or Instapaper, and the latter of which definitely won't be around forever either. Thanks, Blake." Okay, I have five answers to the "what should you replace Pocket with?" question. And I will say, there are two different things people use an app like this for, and I'm a big believer in both of them, but they have different answers. So, the one version of a Pocket user is somebody who just like uses it to dump links into. It's like a

• 1:14:18David Pierce?

  searchable bookmarking system. For that, Pocket was never really the best option, and I think there are many better options out there. If you're an Apple user, there are apps like Anybox and GoodLinks that do that more specifically. There's also one called Plinky that I like. But the one that I recommend to most people is called raindrop.io. It's basically a bookmarking service, but it works on every platform you can think of. It's really easy to share stuff to. It has very good search, it has desktop apps, it's really good for exporting, which I think is really important. You can get stuff out of it really easily. It does cost money for some of the main features, but the free tier, I think, is actually plenty for most people. So, that's where I would start you if you're just like, "Where do I put all of my links?"

• 1:15:01David Pierce?

  I still think browser bookmarks are a terrible and underused system. I don't recommend that. I would start you with Raindrop and see where you get. But if you want a place to like read articles, there are a bunch of possibilities. One is like use the reading mode in your browser, and that's fine, but I don't think that's the answer. Like, if that's all you need, terrific, but I don't think that's all people who are looking for a way to replace Pocket actually need. So, let me just go in order of chaos, I guess. The simplest version is Instapaper, and Blake mentioned it, but I think...

• 1:15:36David Pierce?

  Blake and I disagree on whether Instapaper is going to be around for a while. So Instapaper has been through kind of a weird history. It was one of the earliest apps in this space. It eventually sold to Pinterest. It has like morphed over the years through a couple of different owners. But now the guy who owns it and runs it is this guy named Brian Donahue, who has been doing it for a long time. He's very serious about it, is doing a really good job. The app kind of languished for a while, but has really come up recently. And I think in terms of just basic, I would like a nice reading experience offline on my phone to read articles. Instapaper is as good as it gets. Again, there's a premium tier that you have to pay for if you want, but a lot of the stuff that you need is in the free tier. So I would say actually, most people who are looking for somewhere to go from pocket,

• 1:16:21David Pierce?

  I would send you to Instapaper. Option number two is an app called Matter. And Matter is amazing and beautiful and really clever and has some really interesting AI features. But it has one big downside, which is that it is expensive and it is Apple products only. So if you're on your iPhone and your iPad and the web, and that's where you want to do all of your stuff, fine. But if you are cross-platform or want desktop stuff, you're just sort of stuck going elsewhere. So that's option number two. Option number three is Readwise Reader, which I think is the best and most powerful reading app out there. It's the one that I use, but also like I read and research for a living. So I need much more than a lot of people. I really like the way that it does highlighting.

• 1:17:07David Pierce?

  I like the way that it integrates with lots of other apps. So I can get my highlights out into my note taking app. I like all the organizational systems that it has. I like the way that you can also add PDFs and you can add books and you can search through all the text of everything. And it is like, the app is not attractive and it feels like a work app, if that makes sense. It's much closer to like a B2B SaaS piece of software than to like a lovely little reading app. But for my purposes, it does the job. It has a great speech thing that lets you read articles out loud. It's expensive, like some of these other ones, but it is, I think, for my money, the best one on the market. That's option number three. Option number four is an app called Walla Bag.

• 1:17:51David Pierce?

  And Walla Bag is different than the other ones in the sense that it is an open source project that is kind of meant to be self-hosted. And the upside of Walla Bag is that means no one can take it away from you. You can run it pretty easily. It's really easy to spin up on your own hardware. It's a, I don't know, it's like a fine app. It's not great looking, but it's fine. It does the job. And if you are willing to do a little bit of work, it is a much more future-proof way to roll something like this for yourself. I think that's way more work than most people want to do. But if you want to do the work, Walla Bag is a great place to start. Then the last option I would offer you is, I think, to try and combine a relater app with an RSS reader.

• 1:18:35David Pierce?

  My guess is if you're a person who uses something like Pocket, you're also a person who might use something like Feedly or Feedbin or one of these other apps that lets you sort of put all of the things that you care about into one place. I really recommend doing that, by the way. I have been using Feedbin for years and love it to pieces and recommend it to everybody. But many of these things have a place that you can manually send an article into your RSS reader, and it just treats it like another feed of articles that you've saved. That's really useful in the sense that it is yet more stuff all in one place. The problem with a lot of these relater apps is it just turns into another inbox to check. And as the list of stuff to read gets longer, you want to check it less. And so it just becomes this like thousands of things, long list of stuff you're never going to read.

• 1:19:19David Pierce?

  Not bad, but if you put it in the place where you're actually reading the news all the day and you have this other feed of like, here's the stuff I want to get back to. I actually have found that that balance works really well. And there are a bunch of really beautiful read apps for RSS like Reader, R-E-E-D-E-R. And you can kind of make that whole experience work. So I would tell most people, if you're looking for somewhere to go from Pocket and you don't have like a giant, long list of additional future requests, try Instapaper first and see how far that gets you. But for my money, if you're willing to do the work and willing to spend the money, Readwise Reader is the best one out there. And I actually don't think it's super close. I hope that helps. I'm very sad Pocket is gone. Pocket did a lot of good for a lot of people for a long time, and it's a bummer to see it go.

• 1:20:04David Pierce?

  But this is what happens.

• 1:20:07David Pierce?

  Anyway, that's it for the show today. Thank you to everybody who came on and thank you as always for listening. As ever, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, if you have smart glasses you want to tell us about, if you are thinking about what's going to happen at the end of all of these trials and you have a theory that we haven't talked about yet, get at us. 866 VERGE11 is the hotline. [email protected] is the email address. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Will Por, Eric Gomez and Brandon Kiefer. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about more stuff with Johnny Ive and OpenAI, all of the stuff we're hearing leading up to WWDC and lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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