Can a redesign save Apple's software?

27:43They started releasing the newer models earlier in the year. And then everyone kind of like standardized. And then a bunch of stuff like the insurance industry and car values got tied to model years and perceived age. So everyone kind of landed in the same spot. But even right now, there's an arms race. Like the new, the new Cadillac SUV, the Vistik, is, it's out now. You can go buy one and it is a 2026. That's so stupid. And that usually doesn't happen. It usually happens around the fall where they switch the model numbers over. It's May. It's closer to 2024 than 2026. But that's what they're, so the arms race persists, but usually cars, they rev the model years towards the end of the year because no one wants to buy last year's model in December.

28:28Right? So in January and you save it 2024, like nobody wants this. So like they've landed in this sweet spot, but then every now and again, a company like GM will show up. You're like, screw it, 2026. And like that's, we're just going to have to deal with it. And that is just like pure psychology. Like all that is, is just a trick to make you think it's the future when you're buying your car. 100%. And that's what we're doing here too. But okay, here's what I don't understand. So you for forever, I don't know how long this lasted, but you had a MacBook that ran Snow Leopard. And you were very proud of the fact that it ran Snow Leopard.

28:59It wasn't Snow Leopard. It was... Wasn't it Snow Leopard? No, Snow Leopard was 10.4. I ran Snow Leopard when I was in college. Oh, okay. It was like El Capitan or something. It was like one of those. Okay. Mountain Lion. That's what it was. Okay, fair enough. But you were very proud of this one particular version of OS X, whatever it was. And what I don't understand is Apple has continued this sort of delightful, sort of weed-infused, according to Craig Federighi, naming scheme for macOS where they just named the operating system something. And what I don't understand is why they wouldn't just do that.

29:34Just name it all something. It's a much more Apple-y way to do it. Like tvOS 26 doesn't mean anything to anybody. But I don't think tvOS means anything to anyone. No. WatchOS means nothing to anyone. The only ones that mean anything to anyone are macOS and iOS. So then why name it anything at all? Because they need version numbers. I think all they're doing is arriving in version numbers. The fact that we are having this conversation, first of all, I'm confident, is driving some people bananas because it is of no consequence to anyone. And there's probably other tech that you just talk about. But it is also the point.

30:05Yeah. Right? Like they don't – what they're not announcing is natural language Siri. What they're going to announce is it looks different now, which always gets a ton of attention. And we've revved all these operating system numbers. And then it is certain that we will write something about how the operating system numbers work. And I will just write like 10 ,000 words on why they should have stopped at Snow Leopard. And that was the greatest time the computer's ever had in history. That's what I was thinking of. You love Snow Leopard. I love Snow Leopard was the greatest opportunity. You were running Mountain Lion, but you love Snow Leopard.

30:39Yeah. That was my attempt. Just like, stop it. It didn't work. I got a new computer. But I do wonder, like, your point that these are just version numbers, I think, I wonder if that's telling. Like, we were talking about this last week with all the Android stuff that Google has sort of hit a point where Android version numbers don't really matter. Not at all. It used to be sort of an event release that the new version of Android would come out and it would have a dessert name and it would have a bunch of new features and they would do a whole thing about it. And now your phone just kind of periodically updates and you don't think that much about it.

31:10And I wonder if this is Apple moving towards the same thing where actually this annual rev of all the operating systems, which you could argue for a long time has not made sense to hold features six months just to put them in a release every May. maybe maybe this is the end of that way of thinking that apple is like okay well actually expecting us to have a wholesale new thing every year is not what we're after and instead we just call it the year it shipped and it's a version number and that's it yeah again i think this is like of little consequence outside of the one we get to like make some news we get to harmonize all the numbers across all the things yeah but i what people want out of apple right now is to be able to talk to siri and have siri do things right like and maybe you hate ai and you don't actually want this but the broader ecosystem of like the market watchers and regular people who are using chat gpt every day are like why isn't siri chat gpt advanced voice mode why haven't these things just connected together in a real way like i don't want to just use the action button i think honestly you could level the same criticism of Google.

32:23Google Assistant is not Gemini. They're going to get there on some timeline, but it's still weird that hasn't happened. It appears some people, including our friend Parker Orlani, have gotten Alexa Plus. He's the only one I know. If you have it, let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it because none of us have it yet. But I think these Assistant interfaces, that's what a lot of people believe the next turn to be. And Apple doesn't have a move there. So the version numbers are just like, that's what I mean by it. It's a cut of paint. Well, and in that world, if that is in fact the interface of the future, version numbers sort of cease to mean anything altogether.

33:05I mean, I think back to like when Sam Altman said, and this is, I don't know, a year ago now, that he was like, we set up the GPT numbers all wrong, that now every time we release a new model, people expect it to be like the leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4 and like blow their minds and it's going to be a whole new thing. And actually what it is is all this stuff just sort of consistently incrementally gets better. And there's no point in having. So they just like made the numbers not make any sense anymore. And like maybe if you're Apple launching Siri to Siri three and Siri four doesn't make any sense.

33:37And so you're just they're just going to pull back on all of this. First, they have to launch Siri. Well, yeah, but but I mean, it makes me wonder, like, if all of that comes true, is this one of the last WWDCs that feels this big? I don't know. I think they will always have to rev the – they have so many devices in the world that I don't think they can do the constant phased approach. Right? It's like it would almost be too taxing. Too many things would kind of always be going wrong. Do you know what I mean? Drop all the bugs at once instead of like one a week all year. Yeah. Right? Like I think they can be prepared for something.

34:14And like I think that cadence is really important to them. I think it's part of Apple's DNA to be like, we have a roadmap. We ship all the things on our roadmap. We move on to the next part of the roadmap. And they've gotten better at some Delta updates. Like they announce a bunch of features at WWDC and things come out months later, almost till the next year. So they have started breaking things apart more. But I think they're organized around one big drop and one big announcement cycle. And importantly, this is what developers are for, right? Like you need all your developers to support your new features so that when the operating system arrives in September with the iPhone, the apps are ready for it.

34:47And that, to me, is the other big weakness in Apple's universe of weaknesses right now, that the developers are mad at the company. They're going to put out a new design language. This has been the rumor. It will look more like the Vision Pro interface, you know, sheets of glass. I keep calling it Aero Glass, which is the name of the design language in Windows Vista. But, like, it's got a lot of those moves, right, like transparent glass and layers. And what's fascinating about this is that design language is not where the rest of the industry is going right now. And Apple traditionally leads, right?

35:21They take the bolder steps. They push everyone forward. A lot of people just copy whatever Apple does. And I don't think that's happening right now. No. I think there's a generation of designers who came up independently of the iPhone. Like the iPhone was just the thing that existed. And they have their own ideas. And you can kind of see it. Like, you know, the new Airbnb icons are like 3D dimensional. Johnny, I've helped with that. You see it. Like OpenAI's design language is different than Apple's. Google just did Material U Extreme or whatever it's called. I think expressive was the word, but it was basically extreme.

35:58There are a lot of ideas about software design in this new universe. And it's not a guarantee that Apple's ideas will win. And it's certainly not a guarantee that their developers will exert the effort to redesign on their apps to match Apple's design right now. Right. Yeah, I mean, in fact, I think actually Airbnb is an interesting example because if you look at Airbnb's new design, it's not quite skeuomorphic, but it's very physical, right? And that's a huge trend in design right now is making everything feel sort of earthy and tactile. And that's a lot of what is even happening in the new Android stuff is it's designed to move and bounce and morph.

36:36And it's like everything wants to sort of feel alive and three-dimensional and apple is just like pains of glass and it's like i'm i'm sure it will be lovely and there are a lot of really smart things about the vision pro right like the the sort of big idea behind a lot of the design is that it's instead of being a bunch of different screens like a menu lives inside the button and when you tap the button the menu sort of appears out of it over top of what you're doing instead of launching you into a whole new experience there's a bunch of that that actually like makes sense in terms of like helping people know where they are on their device.

37:07Sure. But it is a completely different way of thinking about what your technology means to you than this idea of like, we want the physical world and the digital world to look and feel more like each other. And as we're like, especially as everybody is doing augmented reality and thinking about smart glasses, like it makes a lot of sense to me to start thinking about like, how do I make the digital world blend into the physical world a little more and apple is like completely the other way they're like spaceships it's all spaceships i you know i the vision pro who knows three we're going to talk about vision pro also be very funny if they rev the vision pro operating system to 26 like two years in from two to 26 like vision os 26 like here we go um a lot of and a lot of a lot of spaces left on the on the feature chart between here and 26 um but you know if you view the vision pro as a simulator and you're like this is how we will overlay digital information on the real world panes of glass kind of makes sense but like we're not we're nowhere close to this right like nowhere close and i think it'd be it's going to be interesting to see how that maps to like an ipad which is like not anywhere close to an augmented reality device right like it's like a big physical device you hold in your hand like it is the most screen that can screen in your hand and like how is that going to play so there's just like things here about apple's design language right now where i'm curious to see what the rev looks like i'm curious to see how it plays with their other ambitions but all these other like the digital world is getting more physical it's like it's a it's an interesting trend you kind of see everywhere but it it's a reflection of the fact that is still happening on screens yes and the apple's new design language at least as expressed on the vision pro is like very much like it's happening in reality and we're not there yet sort of but it's kind of like it's like what if there was an ipad floating in the air not what if this thing were in the world like i kind of i think apple has pushed like halfway down that road not all the way down that road and then again there's to your point there is the question of Like, is that what I want when I'm aware that I'm looking at a screen?

39:22Right? Like, is that, does that construct make any sense on the screen that I'm holding in my hand? Yeah. You know what's going to happen is they're going to play a video of like a button and Craig Federee is like, look at this button. And everyone, the crowd's going to go wild. Yes. And the developers will make the button. Anyway, that's WWC. Like the leaks are coming. I think what David and I are both pointing out is like, Apple has stakes here in a way they have not really needed to address the stakes in a long time. And I don't think they can just paper over it. and like muscle through it and be like, we're Apple, like take it or leave it.

39:54I think a lot of people are aware that there is another kind of application model being developed and you might hate it. I know we have listeners who hate AI, but I'm watching people every day build new applications using tools like NAN and Cursor. We get the pitches, we see the investment. There's something meaningful happening there. and I, you can't just ignore it. So if Apple participates in that, that's one thing. If they don't, I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure on the company to have an answer as to why. And right now the answer is because we were late and I don't think that's great for them.

40:34Right, well, and I think it's Apple's move always to pretend that nothing else exists and just like live in its own universe where it doesn't acknowledge other companies or other products or other ideas. and I think this time rather than projecting strength that's going to look like weakness. We'll see. Because there is this perception that Apple is way behind and it's either going to have to acknowledge it or it's going to look like it's just got its head up its ass. I'm dying to know. I honestly... I have too. It's going to be such an interesting... There's another week or weeks to come. We'll find out.

41:07But it feels like that's the framework because they're the last of the developer conferences and we kind of know what everyone else's moves are going to be. All right. We should take a break. We'll come back. I want to actually pick up the thread from Google and its confidence when we come back because it's a really interesting contrast. We'll be right back. Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we never wanted in the first place. But still, we stick it out.

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44:44All right, we're back. So, David, I want to talk about the Sundar interview that was on Decoder this week. And then the web. What's going on with the web? Okay, I'm in. So first, I just want to address some persistent criticisms we get of Decoder by admitting something that is true. That's good. What is the Vergecast for if not to talk about Decoder? It's true. That's all I need to do. I've tried, and I know this has disappointed a lot of people over the years. I have done my best, and I have consistently failed to arrest the CEOs of major tech companies when they appear on Decoder. i there there's some segment of people that is visibly frustrated with me when every decoder interview does not end with an arrest in jail time i'm doing my best i have said you're under arrest at the end of many decoders i do like the idea that every episode ends with like an animation of just bars coming down in front of their face decoder jail you're in it um some Some people have come close.

45:43Some CEOs have certainly self-immolated on that show in spectacular ways. And I'm saying this because I've interviewed Sundar a lot. He is very calm. He's very practiced. He is excellent at answering exactly the question he wants to answer, exactly when he wants to answer it, and not answering the question if he doesn't want to. And so Decoder for me is always a dance. It's always a race against the clock. And there's just a part of it where I know I've hit the wall. Like it's just not going to happen. and it's time to try a new wall. Let's see if I can get through a different wall. And in particular in conversations with Sundar, I think you can see me do that faster than ever just because I know him.

46:21And I know when I'm just wasting time. And I need to find a way to make that clearer, I think. I don't think it comes through that the way I experience an interview like that is as a clock. Like, I'm just running out of time. Like, from the second the conversation starts, the thing that's happening in my head is that I'm running out of time. Yeah. It's a tricky balance. The balance between this is the question I want you to answer and so I'm going to keep asking it versus at some point we have to make the rest of this podcast is a hard balance to strike. Yeah. And there's always a lot of stuff to talk about.

46:55So, like, sure. But I think the thing that people are really reacting to in that, and I felt it. I feel it this week. And there's a reason I want to talk about this is I asked Sundar, as I've asked for many years, about Google's relationship to the web. And he keeps saying this thing. He said it now for many years that Google is sending more traffic out to the web than ever, that they're committed to the web. They want the web to be healthy. They're the only company that cares about the web. You know, he always brings up competitors. Like, you know, Instagram doesn't allow links and captions. Like, I think this still bothers him that Google gets all of this pressure to make sure the web ecosystem is thriving.

47:32And, you know, many other platforms send no links out at all. Okay. Well, Google runs Chrome. Google runs Search. Like, that is their ecosystem. Their creator base, if you want to think about that way, is the web. In the same way that Instagram creators or TikTok creators are always mad at Instagram or TikTok or YouTube creators are always mad at YouTube, website owners are always mad at Google. That's just the nature of the relationship. But the economics are different because it's an open ecosystem, not a closed one. So TikTok creators are mad at TikTok. There's a natural connection there. TikTok can just make changes and change the lives of TikTok creators.

48:08There's an out for Google, which is like, I don't know, do some other stuff. Why are you so addicted to Google search? So you hear Sundar say we're sending more traffic out to the web. And then within minutes, a site like Business Insider announces layoffs of 21 % of its staff. They announced it just before we went on air. And the memo says we need to get out of businesses that have traffic dependencies we cannot control. We need to avoid these steep traffic drops we're seeing. And what they are talking about is search traffic, right? They're getting out of the commerce business where, you know, that you list the 10 best mattresses and collect affiliate revenue for clicks because that style of running a commerce business is search arbitrage, right?

48:50People search for best mattress. They land on the Business Insider page. They buy a mattress and Business Insider gets some pennies. And if you can worm your way up the rankings, you can make more pennies and then you can make pennies at scale and now you've made money. and we know lots of competitors that basically just do search arbitrage in this way and the bottom has fallen out of all of those businesses i mean we do some search arbitrage like we can just call that what it is everybody does some search arbitrage it's part of being a business on the internet that is part of the job yeah but we don't do it as ruthlessly as like the slop no buying guys much to the stagrin of some of the people at vox media it's true there are people who'd love for us to do it ruthlessly also we run like a formal reviews program like yeah we do it's true we make some pages for search and we see the demand and we we try to get that audience but if you're running one of those verticals that is purely search arbitrage right the content farms that do it their businesses are going away and some of those content farms are attached to things like business insider which does real journalism right and like you see the bottom falling out there and i there's a real disconnect and i i think i felt it on this interview more than ever where he's saying we're committed to the web.

50:00We're going to keep building on the web. We're going to keep sending traffic out on the web. And then all of the people building on the web are like, we're dying. And I don't think that disconnect is getting smaller. I think it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger by the day. And it, you know, I'm not going to go all the way out there and say the web is dying. I think the web is a place where apps are developed the best it's ever been. every single day there's like a hot new web app basically that is doing something that couldn't be done before or an app like figma is getting capabilities it never had before that's an incredible story of application development like i keep saying this like as a giant interlinked interconnected worldwide application platform the web is a miracle like it's just you would never be able to predict that something like that could exist and it does it's scale and everyone just sort of like takes it for granted.

50:54As a media platform, it's dying. And it's one of the reasons it's dying is because there's no way to get, move traffic around it. And Google was the last way to move it. And they, I would just say, I don't think they care. Like I really have come to the conclusion that they know this is happening. They can see, obviously see it happening. And they've just, they, it's just, they're over it. Like, I don't think they want the pressure. I don't think they care. There's also a bunch of lawsuits we should talk about. But we're just in a place where I think the web we knew is coming to a close. And another web that's primarily application-based or platform-based or whatever it is, is on the rise.

51:33And it might be masking the fact that an old web is maybe over. I think that's true. I mean, and I think I put this next to the work Google has been doing on its ranking stuff over the last couple of years, including a couple of pretty big ranking changes that like all at once tanked a bunch of publishers and this is the thing we've covered a lot the the the you know small like home goods reviews site that got absolutely destroyed by some sort of unknowable change in the algorithm that just downranked a bunch of new stuff and google's line and i i at a very top level i believe them that that this is the goal is the goal is to stop sending traffic to bad websites Right.

52:15And so like Google is actively trying to kill bad websites. Like let's let's not be unclear about that. Right. Like all the stuff you're describing, all the content farming stuff, Google not only doesn't care if that goes away, it would like that to go away. because again, like Google understands as well as anybody that if all of that stuff gets worse on the web, Google search becomes less useful and it all just like falls apart, right? And this is a thing we've seen happen. Search results get worse because websites are getting worse because they're trying to game Google and it's this like horrible death spiral of search arbitrage.

52:49Google is very happy to kill all of that stuff. Like I think all of the things where there's no more money in mattress reviews because they don't rank on Google anymore, I think inside of Google, they are going to call that a resounding success. Feel about that however you want. But I don't think Google's stance on that is at all unclear. I think to me, the question is like, Google is in an unusually active position right now of trying to decide what a good and bad web page is. And Google has always, always, always, always, always gone way out of its way to say that it doesn't do that. And to say that actually, we are not remotely interested in trying to decide what's good and bad on the internet.

53:26We're just sending traffic to where people want to go. And then there was this big SEO leak a year ago that made very clear that Google puts its thumbs on the scale in like innumerable ways to decide what it likes and what it doesn't. And now increasingly, it's like, okay, in order to take all the shitty stuff that has been created on the web to game the way the system worked, we're going to build a new system. Because it's better than that old system. And if all that stuff dies, that was trying to game our old system, so be it. And then the question is, and no one will answer this, including Sundar, is what happens when you also kill the good websites?

53:59They won't say that. They will not answer that question. And there is this big structural belief, and I think it was Demis Asabas that said this, that we're going to eventually have a web that is mostly for AI agents and may not even need a front end for people to look at at all most of the time. But what about the good websites? It's just a question they won't answer. And we're in such a like baby being thrown out with the bathwater situation where like in a sort of ruthless way, like, sure, let all the bad websites die. Let them all die. Whatever. There are a lot of good websites out there that will die as you kill the bad websites in order to make it easier for people to find what mattress to buy.

54:38And like Google, at least publicly, will not reckon with that. So I think one of the ways they are reckoning with it is by saying, well, the audience doesn't want this. and I don't know how to contend with that right their their point is like people are getting media from YouTube and TikTok and whatever else and like podcasts and that's all fine and that's like where the audience is going and like if you want to run a website great get your own audience like don't be relying on Google search to get your audience and I mean if anyone has listened to Virchias for like the past five years you know that I believe this in my bones like the deepest level that being addicted to Google is like bad for the media industry.

55:20But the media industry is addicted to Google. And there's no like transition plan. It's like, oh, we're just going to kill you. And they're fine with it. And I don't think the audience understands what's happening to the information environment that they're in. That to me is like the hardest part of this, that suddenly Google is full of summaries of things that might be garbage or the AI itself is hallucinating or the good sources information are now at war with Google and you're not even getting them because they're in a fight. So another piece of this is all just a swirl of what is going to happen to the web.

55:56The New York Times today, this morning, before we started recording, announced they are they've inked a generative AI deal with Amazon. And it broadly tracks the deals that like everyone has made with OpenAI. Vox Media has a deal with OpenAI. It's like this. Amazon's going to train on New York Times content, New York Times stuff will appear in Alexa and other Amazon services. It's a licensing deal. And a lot of media companies are setting these deals because they want to set a market for what the license looks like. So again, Disclosure, Vox Media is one of the deals with OpenAI. I have no idea what the terms are.

56:29But Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic, was on here, was on Decoder. And he was like, we need to set a market. Some payments need to be made. So there are some numbers for the inevitable court cases to come to some conclusion about. And Amazon is a very useful, rich company to sign one of those deals with in that case. So the New York Times can't sign a deal with OpenAI because they're suing them in Microsoft for copyright infringement. It's in a fight with Google. The Times executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. Disclosure, our executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance.

57:01They're furious with Google about all the changes to search and these traffic drops. They're a part of the publisher ad tech lawsuits, all that stuff. So they're in a fight with Google. It's who's left who has big pockets that can set you a rate for a fight. It's Amazon. Right. Which also, by the way, would like very much to make it more expensive for all the other companies to do this job, too. Yeah. Amazon wins if they just set enormous rates for Google and OpenAI. Yeah. It's fine. But like, oh, this is a weird because Amazon doesn't give a shit out the web. They want Alexa to summarize Times articles for you every morning proactively or like whatever they think Alexa is going to do.

57:36They're not out here. Like, what's their browser called? on Fire devices. Silk. They're not, whatever. You know what I mean? Their thing is they need the training data for their AI systems. They need to distribute it to their customers in new and interesting ways because they're not going to win as a web browser company. Right. Which brings me to the last little piece of the puzzle, which is the browser company, which David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length. They stopped making their browser. They stopped making Arc because there's no win there for them. Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out what the next bet is.

58:13They have this new browser called Dia, which is very much like, so far, I got into the beta. I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got into the beta. And like, holy God, is it just Chrome with a chatbot? And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with a chatbot? It's Chrome and also every other browser that exists. And so I think like for the browser company, the big bet was like, okay, if we can mix AI with browsing data with like a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful. Agreed. Great call browser company. It turns out everybody else had that idea too.

58:50And this is just what's coming. And then the flip side is like that stuff is being that stuff is being eaten up by the ChatGPT app and the Claude app and people using Siri badly and Gemini and all this stuff. And so there is this like, again, it's just what is a web page for anymore? And if I'm not in the business of showing you web pages, what am I building? And I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. And I think it's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day, every day. That doesn't appear to be the next thing.

59:30But no one knows quite what that thing is yet because it might not be showing you web pages. I don't think it is. That Demis Asabis comment at IO about what kind of web do you build for agents first? It's the whole game. It's the whole game. Yeah. So whatever you think Google search did to the web as a media platform, and it did a lot of things. First, it created an entire economy for the web as a media platform, right? People searched for things. They went to web pages. Just like revolutionized the internet. Like it created the internet as we know it in like meaningful ways. Then it created SEO, which was less good.

1:00:08Then it created the SEO industry and SEO slop and all this stuff. and it made a whole ecosystem that worked and didn't work in whatever ways it worked. And then even before AI showed up, Google started displaying more and more of the content natively. Right. What time is the Super Bowl went from being a thing that people fought for to a thing that Google would just tell you? And zero click searches, which is what they were called, were an increasing part of Google's product for just a long time. And the only searches that they would definitely send people to websites for were commercial searches.

1:00:42stuff where you bought stuff. And they were every, if you look at Google IO over the years, every demo has always ended with a transaction because once you're doing commercial searches, you get to charge for advertising. And so you can buy yourself to the top of a commercial search, the top result. You're the winner. You bought the AdWords auction for shoes. You get the shoes click. You bought some shoes. Everyone's happy in Google's ecosystem. And that has led to other weird outcomes, right? Where you search for the name of a product. you get the competitor first because they bought the ad for the name of the product weird outcome made google really rich that's the web we knew and then you see what ai is doing to that web right it we're just reading the entire web maybe that's copyright infringement maybe it's not and we're just going to summarize it for you and give it to you and businesses will die okay we're going to run that whole cycle that 20 year cycle in two minutes with web apps and agents Yeah.

1:01:39It's going to run so fast because the first wave of agents were not programmatic, right? It was like, we're going to go click around on the website for you. And Google has these projects. What's it? Mariner? Project Mariner is Google runs Chrome for you in its data center and a robot clicks around on a website for you and does the work. And what Demis is saying is, why are we doing this? Like, this is stupid. we should use these new AI first protocols which are basically just APIs but made for AI agents like MCP, A2A. There's a whole alphabet soup of these new protocols that are really interesting.

1:02:21And then the agents are gonna go to a website which will just appear like a text prompt database. They'll collect information out of the database and bring it back to you. And once you have that web, okay, now you really do have the giant worldwide interlinked application platform. but you don't have websites, right? You just have a bunch of smart databases talking to each other. Right. You're making me think of when I was talking to the Google search team ahead of IO, Liz Reed, who runs the search team, basically made the argument to me that the Google search ecosystem that we know now was just a construct of the technology that we had.

1:02:58that basically all we had the technology to do was look for words in a place. And it was something else had to put them in a place in an order that made sense. And all Google's technology was able to do was look for it, right? It was somebody else's job to make it something human parsable. And now we have technology that can make this stuff human parsable that maybe we don't need the middleman of somebody building a thing around it that I can look at. And I think that is like, i i don't think she meant it to seem like a as huge a statement as she did but to say like the and i think it reminds me of the thing you always say about twitter right which is that like uh criticism of the current twitter does not absolve past versions of the company from being terrible jack dorsey was also bad the nilai patel story right like i think the argument i think google is is making but doesn't quite want to say out loud is that the way that we've done it for the last 25 years wasn't the right answer.

1:03:57It was just the one that Google came up with. And now they think they have a better one. And so they're like, well, we sort of reoriented around one thing, and now we have a better thing. Why wouldn't we reorient again? And I think in a vacuum, that's like a reasonable thing to say, right? Like we built a better thing. We're going to do the thing. But then they're doing the thing that every tech company does, which is just utterly fail to think about the downstream effects of their decisions. Oh, I think they've thought about those effects you think and i think they have come to the conclusion after getting beat up for three years at io about ai and the downstream effects on the web and being in lawsuits like they're like we don't care like if we don't get here someone else will get here first and we better it will be better to take the hits and survive than to try to play nice and lose that's the mark zuckerberg joker story like that's what happens you get beat up enough times that you turn into the Joker.

1:04:51And that's what Mark Zuckerberg did. And I think they're also, not for nothing, they're looking at the information environment they operate in and be like, well, YouTube is bigger than ever. The information is on YouTube. I mean, it is probably true that if all the websites went away, Google would be fun. And I think Google kind of knows that. I don't know. I think that is more of an open question than not. Because all that's going to be left is slop. Like, the last domino to fall here, like, really the last domino, is some scaled media company opting out of being ranked. Right? So the New York Times says to Google, look, we've just had enough.

1:05:28Stop. Stop crawling us. Stop ranking us. Stop serving our news. And that no one has the leverage against Google yet. At some point, they will stop sending enough traffic that someone will make that call. And I don't think they've thought that through. Like, what happens when a web stops being universally available to Google? Right. in who knows who knows the answer that question you didn't honestly like what my immediate reaction to that was to say that'll never happen because the new york times needs google a lot more than google needs the new york times but like the the pure perception hit that google would take as a place that no longer sees the whole internet might change it like there's something would happen there there's some fine-grained controls are like very political here so like you can opt into google search but not google ai training but there are documents from the various trials it's you can see google executives working through those options and even creating those options and saying well maybe one day we're going to get to if you want to be searched you want to be crawled for the search engine you have to opt into ai training again if things continue the way they're going some big media company is going to say we're out yeah take us out of this i don't know when that's going to be, but that's the trend line.

1:06:45And that's when I'm like, the web as a media platform is just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's hard to see the through line, but I know when things are changing. I can't see the finish line. I can't see what it looks like at the end, but I know we're at the beginning of a new phase without any question at all. Yes. Something massive is happening here as Google is adding agents to Chrome. That's just a thing that they're trying to do. More and more people are talking about using the web is basically a series of database like sundar in that interview is like what is the web but a series of databases i also think like you you said to him a thing you say a lot which is that if you if we were starting the verge again today you wouldn't start a website you'd start a tiktok channel and he sort of pushed back but what he said was pretty much in in as many words he said sure you'd start a tiktok channel but it's only like two percent more work to have a web presence so you'd probably do that too and it's like even if that's true that is such a i don't think he realized the extent to which he was telling on himself by saying that yeah and i just i've been thinking about that ever since yeah when we started the verge a hundred percent of our effort was the website right like oh but sure you'll you'll like you know do a wordpress template and put it on the internet just why not all right no i think his answer is much more like Like it's 2 % more work because you will prompt Gemini to read your TikTok channel and stand up a website.

1:08:10Like that's what he meant by 2 % more work. And by the way, when I keep saying there's no way we would start a website today, what I mean is that we started The Verge in 2011 when cell phones still had three-inch screens. Like we launched The Verge as basically a desktop app. Those are the days. That's what the venture capital money was for. It was just a very different time. We would just never do that today. Like you would go address an audience in a different way. And that's what every new media company is trying to do, essentially. I don't know. I would just say go listen to that conversation again.

1:08:43You will hear more pushback than you think. And a lot of it is kind of predicated around, well, it's fine if these things die, right? Because other things are growing, which makes sense. Like on the broadest scale, that is true. That's just life. but you you see there's no longer a defense of like the things are dying it's look at all the stuff that's growing the one thing that could complicate this and by the time you're listening to this it'll it will have probably happened is that it's closing arguments in the google search antitrust remedies phase on friday tomorrow as you're listening to this it already happened that's the case where the government is asking for google to be forced to sell chrome and i asked Sunar about this.

1:09:27I said, can you do all the stuff you want to do if you have to sell Chrome? And he just didn't answer. And his final version of this, when I knew I'd hit the brick wall, he said, that's not even what we're looking at. And I was like, well, you should, because it might happen to you. I mean, to be clear, like two things, A, that's clearly a lie. And B, he can't tell you anything because it's like ongoing litigation, right? Like that's a thing a lawyer looks him in the eyes and says, hey, Sunar, you cannot say words about this or everyone goes to jail. But like that, you're right that that is that is the question.

1:10:02And I think whether this ends up being good for the web, though, is hard to know. It's clearly bad for Google, whatever is going to happen is going to be bad for Google. But does this just give open AI new distribution for chat GPT to do the same kind of stuff? Or is there a version of this that actually accrues back to the idea that the web as a place full of web pages that people go to is a good and valuable idea. 100 % TBD, like genuinely unknown. And I think it's part of what everyone has tried to reckon with in this trial is like, what happens if we do this? There is a sense that like, we're going to make it possible for a bunch of other companies to build search engines.

1:10:45But if you believe Google, the whole premise of a search engine is going away and all anyone will do is take that search index and build ai products and if that's what's happening then we've we've solved one kind of google problem but we've just sped up the killing of the web we so believe in google there and you know you have to believe them when they say like ai overviews are our most used product ever and it's because you put them in all the pages i know no one's picking like they're just doing what's in front of them i punched you in the face You've been punched. You loved it. We'll see. There's a lot here.

1:11:23The reason I wanted to add all these things up together is you can see the change. Like, you know, a year from now, the New York Times will run a story about how the web changed. And I'll be like, yeah, I listened to the virtual cast. I caught that a year ago because this is the moment. Right. Apple's weird weaknesses, Google's apparent strength, all kind of built around like where do the apps come from? How do you use them? Is the user interface just going to be a bunch of natural language? Google's vision is that you'll search for something and it will build you an app on the fly and make a new interface to data for you, which is pretty cool.

1:12:03That's a cool way to think about interacting with the search engine. Many things have to die for that to happen. But like the dinosaurs were cool. Mammals were cooler. Like, sorry, bro. Like it's over. Like the asteroid is going to hit you. That's where I perceive that as clearly as I can now. Like that's the change that's coming. Yeah. The application models are changing. And Apple's weakness is are they ready for it? And Google's perceived strength is they're ahead of it. But Google has big questions to answer to. And the downstream effects are like pretty huge this time. And if you're wondering, by the way, what is the best possible outcome here?

1:12:39The answer is the Fediverse. Like if you walk this back all the way to the beginning of you and I talking about all of this stuff and like how do we how do we take the things that are good about this and make it the size of the web and part of the web? That's how you do it. Yeah. That's stuff like big interoperability, which we have to demand as consumers this time. Yeah. Like that. I don't think the federal government is going to demand interoperability. Although they are in court. You never know. Some settlement could happen. All right. We have to take a break. We're going to come back with a lightning round, which I have been told.

1:13:11I don't know, but I have been told is sponsored. We'll be right back. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Every great company's story is defined by moments when their founders make bold decisions. These are high-stakes moments that risk the business, but can lead to greatness.

1:13:53I'm Murilov Boota, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and the host of Crucible Moments. We're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna, Supercell, and more. Share what it's actually like to navigate the make or break decisions. Crucible Moments is back on October 23rd. Until then, catch up on seasons one and two wherever you find your podcasts.

1:14:58All right, we're back. Now, as you know, if you've been listening to the show, David and I and the rest of the Virgin Newsroom, we don't do the ads. We refuse to do the ads. We're precious about it. That's our editorial independence coming through loud and clear. But the lightning round is sponsored this week. So someone has to say it. So Eric, our producer, Eric's going to say it. Eric, go ahead. Hi. This week's lightning round is presented by Google Gemini. that was great eric really good job well done i'm really proud of you there are gonna be so many reactions to that based on what you're doing very good don't worry though still full flavor because you can't tell us what's the flavor rating now how do you feel i i'm gonna i'll drink through this later all right it's fine it's great you you too can sponsor the lighting right the problem is when you cover for not getting the sponsors by insisting that sponsors are bad I did this to myself but anyway it's still full flavor because you can't tell us what to do the rich subscriptions are on sale you see what I'm saying I'm gonna get better at this David alright it's time speaking of people who would like to tell us what to do it's time once again for America's favorite podcast within a podcast a thing I can just say because you can just say things in America in 2025 Brendan Carr is a dummy according to the links I'm seeing here kind of a busy week for our man Brendan Like busy in inconsequential ways.

1:16:29Oh, Brendan's favorite. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people had reactions to Brendan this week. Okay. And, you know, Brendan continued to just like break stuff in the way that Brendan breaks stuff. But the chair of our nation's Federal Communications Commission is sort of busy just breaking stuff. So we ran a big story this week about the BEAD program. It's the Biden administration's broadband rollout. But lots of criticism of the Bede program, which is supposed to bring broadband to many, many more people, especially in rural areas across the country. We have long talked about how rural internet is like a disaster.

1:17:02And so Biden passes this big bill. The Bede money is supposed to go out. We're supposed to get internet connections. Everyone's like, where's the money? We didn't connect one person. Ezra Klein has sold millions of copies of his book pointing out that Bede didn't make one internet connection. It's fine. It's a meaningful criticism of this program. The Trump administration is basically shutting this program down on the cusp of it actually starting to do the things it wants to do. So Wes Davis, his last big piece for us as a reporter here at The Verge, is a deep look at Bede, where it stands and what's happening to it.

1:17:33And what is fundamentally happening to it is that the money was starting to go out to build fiber connections across the country. And everyone showed up, including our boy Brendan and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, looked at this and said, no, no, no, no. we want to give the money to Starlink, to satellite internet. Because when they say satellite internet, they only mean one thing. They don't mean HughesNet. Yeah, you're not giving it to Kuiper. Like, what are we doing here? They mean Starlink. Yeah. So we have all this reporting, all these quotes. Wes did a great job with this story.

1:18:07Basically saying they were very close to rolling out full fiber connections to every single person in West Virginia. That was the plan. for the bead money. They were going to be able to do it with$150 million to spare and ahead of its deadline. And now it's going to shift a bunch of that investment to satellite. And that's fine. Maybe you love Starlink. But the reality is, and I will disclose, Comcast, through its NBC, Universal Arm, is an investor and parent company, Vox Media. But they hate me, so that's fine. I'm not a friend of the ISPs here. But I'm just going to point out that wired connections are generally superior to wireless ones.

1:18:45Especially when they've already been built and exist. especially when there's already infrastructure especially when the wire connections are so much faster than the satellite connections and do not require line of sight which starlink still requires line of sight so we're just in this place where this program which there are many many realistic criticisms of it is now running into political expediency and in particular brendan loves to talk about starlink and satellite because he loves celine musk and he's captured moron so that's one for Brendan. $20 billion, by the way, is the number we've seen floating around that this is the beat is a 42.6, I think, billion dollar program.

1:19:27And the reporting is that as much as 20 billion of that could just get thrown directly at Starlink to do something. And it's fine. Wes did a great job of this story. I encourage you to read it. It'll be in the show notes. There are lots of people in the story who say, look, fiber is not practical for 100 % of the population. Of course we were going to also do Starlink and satellite and other fixed wireless solutions for a lot of people. There's an administrator in the state of Nevada who says this is what we were going to do there. But the ratios are being flipped to favor Starlink. It's just like naked.

1:20:00We're just going to put little ultra-wideband 5G things everywhere around America. It's going to solve all our problems. As 5G does. Speaking of 5G, you will recall, I think it was last week, a couple weeks ago, we had basically a moral dilemma because of Brendan, where we couldn't tell who the villain was in a particular Brendan story. Didn't like that. So Brendan sent a letter to Dish Network saying, hey, you were supposed to build a nationwide 5G network to compete with T-Mobile, AT &T, and Verizon. And you're supposed to do that because we allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and to preserve competition in America.

1:20:36We gave you Boost Mobile and a bunch of Spectrum and a bunch of money, and there's supposed to be a network, and there's no network and I'm Brendan Carr and I love being angry at stuff. And now I'm going to yell at you, Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish Network. And it's hard to tell who the villain in that story is. Truly hard. You're making the right criticisms for the wrong, totally politically motivated reasons. That's Brendan Carr on a good day. That's the best we can hope for him. Yes. So Dish Network has chosen to fight back. A bunch of partners of EchoStar, a bunch of its vendors are saying that Dish is actually building a network.

1:21:12They say that they have 7 million customers, the majority of whom are still basically roaming on AT &T and T-Mobile, but their own network is serving 1.3 million people. I'll remind you that America has somewhere over 300 million people. So as a nationwide competitor to the bigs, not doing great. What's wild is that even that number still seems too high to me. Like that 1.3 million is like. one of the 1.3 million people in america who are getting native 5g service from dish network call me yeah i don't believe you exist call me from your echo star phone that's like a huge 90s satellite uh and they're saying they they gained 88 000 wireless subscribers in april uh that means 88 000 people in april signed up for dish network's 5g service you tell me who you are i am guessing they mean Boost Mobile, which is their owned and operated prepaid service, right?

1:22:12Sure. Great. That's the state of play. Dish is fighting back by claiming it has 1.3 million 5G customers running on its network, and everyone else is effectively buying AT &T and T-Mobile service that Dish is reselling under its own name. All that sucks. Like, that is not what was supposed to happen. By the way, a deal that Ajit Pai made, that Brendan is, and Brendan, you know, he was part of that chain, and now he's trying to unwind it by yelling at Charlie Green. So I don't know what's going on there. I do know that Brendan, what does he want to do with the spectrum that he wants to reclaim from Dish?

1:22:43He wants to give it to Starlink. Yep. Other satellite companies have also started asking for the spectrum. This is just dumb, naked corruption that started with a dumb, naked, corrupt deal that Ajit Pai made that Brendan is carrying on. That's life. Last two little bits of Brendan. Like I said, he's just carrying on breaking stuff. Anna Gomez, who's the last Democratic commissioner on the FCC. They're supposed to have five and it's supposed to be three, two, depending on whose party has the presidency. Right now, it's three, one. So we're doing great. She's on tour. She's doing this like First Amendment tour pointing out that Brendan is a threat to free speech.

1:23:26So she's like going to college campuses. We've talked about her before. I'm gonna try to get her on one of these shows. Do you think she's our competition in the Brendan Carr as a Dummy podcast space? like i hear she's going on tour and i'm like maybe we need to go on our own tour we should go on our own tour we should combine forces um i mean she's also a politician and i have a number of questions for why the fcc is totally ineffective and weak that i could direct at her as well as i've done to every fcc person that has ever appeared all right so we're gonna go on a tour that exactly matches her tour and we're just gonna be like one building away yep it's gonna be like you know they all suck um anyhow she's on tour she's the party speaker and microphones just yelling at anna go this.

1:24:05We'll get a bigger party. We'll get that JBL, man. That thing's hot. Anna is saying that it's an administration wide effort to chill speech and stifle dissenting voices. And she says it. Brendan is leading a clear effort to quash dissent. She's basically picking the fight. She's like trying to get fired. She's even saying, I will probably get fired for doing this. And so far, Trump hasn't fired her. I don't think that he knows that she exists, but it's coming. This is the next turn. She's going to make enough noise and get fired. and she's... I mean, you don't do this unless that's the outcome you're assuming is happening.

1:24:39Her quote, she says, I don't know why I'm still in my job. And then she says, if I get fired, it isn't because I didn't do my job, it's because I insisted upon doing it, by which she means protecting free speech. So I feel every time you and I record the Verge cast. That's very good. All of this has ended in maybe the most pretzel-like logic of all in the pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section where they have attacked Brendan this week for being an authoritarian censorship machine. And their response, because of the Wall Street Journal, is that the entire FCC should be shut down and turned over to the private market.

1:25:18Give it to Starlink. Just like full horseshoe theory of politics. Like even the most libertarian opinion section that you can get in the Wall Street Journal is like, yeah, that dude sucks. Like he's misusing government power. Shut it all down. I do like the idea of a privatized FCC. What could possibly go wrong? You know, it's not like the scarce wireless spectrum and you want to protect things like the FAA from people's cell phone emissions. Like, whatever. Why would you ever want to do that? Yeah. But it's great. I love it. I do love the fact that Brendan has united left and right in just pure hatred of his moronic censorship machine that he's building.

1:26:01He's a dummy. And it's rare that I'm like, you should read this Wall Street Journal opinion page piece. As always, I remind you, the only politics we consistently express in the show are that free markets are pretty good. Competition makes better products. And you should be a little bit less racist than Brendan Carr. If you think that's wildly leftist, you are free to believe that. But that's what you get from us. And also now I'm telling you, I agree with the Wall Street Journal subpoena pages. I'm telling you, man. Strange bedfellows these days. It's weird times here in America. As ever, Brendan, you're welcome to come on the show and defend any of this stuff.

1:26:35You can appear via Starlink if you want. You too can be sponsored by your buddy Elon. But I don't think you will ever do it because I think you're a coward and a dummy. So if you want to prove me wrong, all of our platforms are available to you. I will say that David and I are both having children soon, so the clock is ticking, my man. you gotta get on here Brendan if you want to host the Vergecast this summer get at us we can talk about it that door is shockingly open

1:27:03dying to know what Brendan thinks but you do have to do Brendan Carr as a dummy every week I love it alright we need a palate cleanser what do you got it's almost switch time did you buy a switch I did not I play one video game Madden and I'm at the point now where I've mastered last year's Madden just in time for the new one to come out. Oh, I mean, that's the ideal Madden scenario. Yeah. I'm also waiting for Metal Gear Solid, Snake Eater, Delta Force, or whatever it's called to come out. Pins and needles for that one. But that's not Switch stuff. Okay. No, but the Switch 2 is coming next week, June 5th.

1:27:41Easily, to me, the gadget of the year. Like, not knowing everything we know about the rest of the year, I can't imagine what would have to happen for the Switch 2 to not be the most consequential piece of hardware that's coming out. We're learning a bunch of stuff about it already. As far as I can tell, Nintendo seems to have been pretty tight with like who's getting, it's not like there's been like a, you know, Casey Neistat hands-on or like a bunch of like lifestyle influencers getting to use the thing. Like not that many people seem to have Switch 2s yet, but stuff is starting to trickle out.

1:28:13Somebody, there was an unboxing video that somebody did that got immediately yanked offline. We've been covering kind of the run-up to it a bunch. J. Peter's wrote a really good story, basically being like the Switch 2 is the Wii U done correctly, which is both like a good point and kind of a sick burn on all of Nintendo's history. But I just think this is like, it's a really interesting gadget moment in that I think if the Switch 2 is everything we think it might be, I kind of think it's a big deal just as a piece of hardware. Like if we have this thing that really makes portable gaming that is high-end and long-lasting.

1:28:50And the fact that the Mario Kart game is like an open-world Mario Kart game that you can play anywhere demands a lot of the hardware, demands a lot of the wireless. Like, if this stuff works, I think we get to the point where, like, there's just a lot of things that suddenly start to feel possible in gadget design that I'm very excited about. Which is a lot to say about a slightly bigger Switch, but, like, it's really how I feel. yeah I mean you're all the way in on catch of the year oh hands down like I what else could like I have such a hard time imagining something be more important than the switch to like if this thing sucks it's going to be devastating but also again like I think if if Nintendo just takes all these ideas that it had about the sort of modularity and the portability and this idea that you can have a thing that connects to all of your screens and all of your devices all at once and actually makes that like another other tick better in every respect it's just going to be amazing and there's so many ideas that if you just broaden it out slightly starts to change like oh how do we think about our other gadgets and like what if nintendo is doing all the like handoff stuff that apple has never successfully done with its devices like why can't i dock my iphone into my television neil i why nintendo figured it out yeah it's funny uh apple one of the other coats of paint rumors about apple so we're going to redo Game Center to make it more like Xbox Live.

1:30:14Oh, yeah. There's like a – it's a whole app. You can see the conversions here. Yeah. Look, I think it's possible the Switch 2 is the device of the year. I think certainly it will be the gaming device of the year. It's the one that people are the most excited about. Certainly the games look great from the coverage we've done and that our reporters have gotten to try out. But Cash of the Year is a big one. I mean, as somebody who covers gadgets, I hope I'm wrong. It's fun if I'm wrong. but I just think I mean this one's really interesting because the first switch when it came out was like cool and exciting but it was a it was a breath of the wild machine right like that's fundamentally what it was and this one is making much more of a hardware first play like there are lots of new games but some of the new games are also going to play in the old switch and there's nothing as sort of immediately earth shattering as there was with breath of the wild And so I think the idea that this thing is going to have to sell itself as hardware, A, it seems to be a thing Nintendo knows and B, is going to be super fascinating.

1:31:15And they're trying to do all this interesting ecosystem stuff where they're like, what if we sell you a third party camera that connects to the thing? I'm telling you, I have been wanting modular gadgets for as long as I have known you. And this is the closest thing to properly pulling that off if it pulls it off that I think we've ever seen. Yeah. All right. Maybe I'll buy one. i so here's my question for you is should i go stand in line at a game stop at midnight to try and buy this thing like am i just for the content do it for the gram yeah obviously i'm dying to know have you read uh any of this new apple in china book by the way no there's long it's it's really interesting there's a lot of reporting there but a lot of it is about how the apple we know is more shaped by like Chinese resellers standing in line than anyone can possibly see.

1:32:06Oh, interesting. And that's really the story of Gadget Lines now. Like we've all but stopped covering them because it's basically a bunch of resellers standing in line. Yes. And it's like, it's not like a joyous community. It's kind of gross in a lot of ways, but I think you should go and be like, I'm here for joyous community. And then just interview a bunch of resellers, see what happens. See what they're like. I like it. Be like, so you're flipping the switch. How am I? All right, well, I will report back next week, but I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to GameStop and see what kind of trouble I can get into.

1:32:35Yeah. All right, we should end with breaking news. The tariffs have been paused, David.

1:32:42While we were talking, the tariffs are back on. The pause of the tariffs was paused. Do you understand what I'm saying? We've unpaused. The Court of Appeals has blocked the pausing of the tariffs. I don't care. I'm over it. That's what I'm saying. Elon Musk is out of the White House. By the way, Elon Musk, you know, it's clear that he got himself. No one likes him anymore. So he's been off-boarded officially from Doge. He's on a toll interview circuit right now. Yeah. He spoke to Ars Technica with CBS News, I think, with The Washington Post. He's trying to make a big show of being back at Tesla.

1:33:17Tesla sales are tanking around the world. But, like, in ways that are, like, hard to cover. Like, in Europe, in one quarter, they're down. Right. they've cratered in Quebec. It's like, you gotta, whatever. There's a bunch of data that says a story in like weird, independent ways. And then they're supposed to launch the robo-taxis like soon. Yeah, and he's been saying they're like out on the road doing stuff, right? Yeah, there's driverless cars in Austin. So if you're in Austin and you see a party speaker or a robo-taxi, let me know. If you see a party speaker and a robo-taxi in one photo, we will send you Verge merch.

1:33:56I can't I don't know what it'll be, but I will send you something. I will send you a party speaker. Yeah. But I think that just the one thing I've been thinking a lot about with the Musk stuff is the thing he keeps saying in all these interviews is that he's like back to sleeping on factory floors and in conference rooms at Tesla. And it's like it's very much a show of I am back paying attention to my company designed especially to like, you know, appease investors who have been worried about Tesla being completely ignored by its CEO for a long time. I'm very curious to see how that helps Tesla's case versus again like with with these sales changes this ongoing disastrous branding that the company has gone through because of Elon Musk that is like he is the the company's greatest asset and worst problem and that's been true for a long time but for a long time at least financially asset outweighed problem pretty aggressively and it really feels like that has flipped and i i'm just curious to see if he can change that perception just by being back at tesla more but i don't i don't see it i don't either there's there's nothing to be done in the factory for him no what's he like he's not you can't invent a new car to fix it right now like yeah i think that's also increasingly clear to a lot of people uh is that the the sleeping at the factory might have been a bit and maybe not part of my man's day-to-day job well he's gotten more children than father um anyhow uh the tariffs are are paused you let me know there's a lot of updates if you're out in the world you let me know what the tariffs are doing it's gonna be a weird iphone season iphone prices are gonna be crazy because of these things uh all right that's it we've we covered as always we went long because there it was a slow news week this is what always happens to us.

1:35:49This was fun. It was a good one. We'll be back next week with much more WWDC preview. Lots of stuff. It's The Verge, everybody. It's going to be great. Pay us the money. You can't tell us what to do. That's it. That's The Verge Cast. Rock and roll.

1:36:06And that's it for The Verge Cast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

1:36:47Dave. Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. Lemo, Lemo. And Doug. Here we have the Lemo, Lemo in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Lemu? Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera! They see us! Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.

1:37:27Excludes Massachusetts.