Epic wins for Epic and Threads

26:40Like, it went from 404 to 200. And you can tell they're just like playing with it. Now, the cool stuff is not there yet, right? Like this has been enabled on the level of what you might think of as RSS right now. Yeah, that's right. So they publish something on the thread server. Another server can pull it in. There's no interactivity. There's no true interoperability, right? You're just kind of pulling some content down. Right. That's still a big deal, right? For a company like Meta to be like, we will publish a syndicated feed of content from our platforms our social platforms still like a big deal but it's not the thing well and the beauty of it is this is the part that meta has the least incentive to do right like all of the rest of it is better for meta like the thing where in theory like you described me like you can read adam's posts on threads in your mastodon app uh that is a third-party app what meta wants and what's ultimately good for meta's business is when you can like or reply to that stuff and it funnels all the way back through that whole stack to threads, right?

27:40So Adam can be in threads and you can be in Mammoth and you can have a conversation with each other. That's where all of this wins. So you wouldn't do the thing where you just let your content go other places without real commitment to building all the stuff that brings it back and all the account sharing stuff they're gonna wanna do because it'll bring people to threads because threads is the best platform for it. Like this is not the one part of it you would do if you weren't committed to doing the rest of it. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think what I had to point out is the other part's way harder.

28:09Building an RSS feed is pretty easy, right? The part where you're like, okay, someone hit like in Mammoth or Ivory or whatever, Mastodon client, that like funneled to their server, which then talked back to our server, and that like showed up on the Threads app for somebody. That's very complicated. There are real security challenges there. There are real content moderation challenges there. It's not just likes. It's also comments and replies, reposts. Like all that stuff, as you bring it back onto your server, you have to moderate it. You have to care about it, whatever. And I think that's the stuff that's yet to build.

28:45But you are correct that that is the stuff that accrues value back to meta because it makes their community ultimately more vibrant. And I think what meta thinks it's going to sell is better product design, better user experience, better advertising, all this stuff, which, you know, if you're meta, it's a pretty good bet to make that you will outdo a handful of Mastodon server admins on things like content. moderation and advertising integration. Yeah, it was really interesting. I went back and when I was writing the post about this was just pulling some of Meta's old quotes about this stuff from the last six months or so as they've been talking about this.

29:18And they've been surprisingly consistent in a way I didn't even realize. Like Mark Zuckerberg in particular has talked about this as a creator play. The idea is that this network of open systems is what creators are going to want because they've understood too many times that if you build an audience in one place that is captive to that one place. People will eventually leave or that place will fall apart or whatever. And then you have to start from nothing. And nobody wants that. And so what Mark and Adam Mosseri have continued to say is the future is these more portable, more interconnected systems.

29:49And what Meta is betting is that it can build creator tools, right? It can build the best stuff to use, to post. It can build the best AI things. It can like bring Tom Brady into your life in a weird AI way. It can monetize you better. Like meta is actually sort of divorcing the idea of social networking is a good business, which it turns out it's not. Everybody has figured this out and leaning into we're going to outsource all of the like hanging out with your friends bits of this. And we're just going to win at how people make money on these platforms. And I actually think if I'm meta, that's a pretty good bet because meta has proven over and over it's better at that than everybody.

30:25Yeah. And I think it also creates opportunities for those creators or media companies in different ways. Like everyone knows what we're going to do it somehow. I don't know how we're going to do it. But, um, if you keep saying it, it'll eventually happen. It's just going to horsepower this thing into his existence. Look, we had, I'll just give you some inside baseball. Our company had an all hands today, just before we were recording. And our CEO said the word fed a verse during the all hands. And I was like, I did it. He did kind of say it. Like it was written on a piece of paper in front of him, but he'd never seen it before.

30:53Like I was standing behind the curtain with a knife. You know, like say it.

30:59Uh, Uh, that just means I've said it enough that other people think they should say, which is victory one. Uh, but I'll just use another example. Um, threads lately has been very thirsty for sports threads. Yeah. I don't know if you know this. They, they start out, they are a bunch of F1 fans over there. So they, even in Maseri's video about launching in Europe today, he's like, we want to bring sports communities that are deeply rooted in Europe, like F1. Yep. Which is an amazing way to say F1 is kind of fussy. Um, they did a whole thing with the NBA at the in-season tournament. The other thing that was happening in Vegas while I was there, they were a big sponsor.

31:31They brought in all the ESPN people. ESPN's having this fight with Elon Musk and Twitter. So it's a thing that's happening. So if I was running ESPN today, I would not be like, you can have my reporters for free. Right? Woj is not going to tweet scoops for free on threads the way that he's been doing for Twitter. I'm setting up a Mastodon server and you can federate with us if you pay us the money for access to the people. And that is just a new way of thinking about these businesses that it, I, you know, a bunch of media executives like don't like thinking in new ways. They're like, what if we make YouTube videos?

32:12Like, that's like how they all think. Have you heard of this platform? It's called TikTok. Like these are the dinners I go to, but they are all starting to think now, okay, well, how do we actually get paid for the stuff beyond just being like, we can make it go viral better than anybody else. And so there's just new opportunities for companies, for creators to stand up their own services and say, look, if you want access to us, like we need some revenue sharing terms, or you need to let us put advertising into our feeds the same way that you let Instagram creators put advertising into their feeds.

32:42And I just said, I don't know if any of that's going to work. I truly do not know if any of that's going to work. I know that it's new and no one has actually like, I can't point to anything else that has ever worked like that. And I can't point to anything else that could work like that. And so like new things are just like fundamentally exciting to me. Cause I think the way it shakes out will be different or potentially better or potentially way worse, but it's new. I'm just on the hunt for new, like we've been doing it. We've been doing it the platform way for like 10 years. We just ran our big package on Twitter being dead, which I don't know if people caught, like Twitter is dead.

33:19Yeah. It's not that we called it dead. Elon Musk killed the company and he renamed it X. Linda Yaccarina was on our stage of code and she's like, Twitter is dead. It's called X now. Okay, Twitter's dead. Whatever. But inside of that, I wrote a big piece about just like what the platform era of media did to all of us. And it just, Ezra Klein is in that And we talked about it on the Wednesday show, but I just repeat this. He's like, Twitter increased the scale of our communication and it reduced our ability to communicate. And what if we just like did some other stuff? And I promise you this activity pub stuff.

33:55It's at least the thing that creates the opportunity for people to think in new and different ways. It might not be the thing. It might not work. But I just I just have not seen so many people having new ideas about the Internet in a long time. What about social media in particular? But I kind of have one big question about this whole integration. What happens for people who have like a lot of followers on Mastodon and also have a Threads account? What do they do? So this is, I would argue, one of the most fun conversations about this right now, because no one knows the answer to that question.

34:32Because there is a way of thinking about it that is like, I have one omnibus Fediverse account, right? It would be the equivalent of having one account that worked across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and everywhere else, right? Your single account. You can actually make a really good case that that doesn't make any sense. That actually what you're going to want is a couple of different accounts in different places. and that the upside is that you choose where you post and to what. And so you could use your Mastodon account for just tweeting about the cool new glasses that you got, and your Threads account could be your work account, and that maybe those things being separate is useful.

35:08But the upside of it is that if I want to read your work account where I have my personal account, I can, right? So it's all sort of platform agnostic. But there might be a world in which people want lots of different accounts for different uses. But that just gets bonkers. Like, oh, I have 10 accounts for 10 different things, but you can access any of them from anywhere. It's like the UI of that totally falls apart if we don't do it correctly. So I don't know. My guess would be if I had to bet on something, I would guess that a lot of people will get threads accounts because threads is going to be it's going to be the Gmail of this space for a while.

35:44And then it'll just be sort of the default one to have. And then we'll get to see how it plays out in lots of different directions. But right now, like I think a lot of us, we've talked about this on the show. We sort of bet on threads, betting A, that it would eventually integrate with Activity Pub and B, that it was probably going to be the biggest platform for a while. And there are real values to being on the biggest platform. So like I've spent more time on threads than Mastodon. So when it comes to it, I will probably end up investing more in my threads account over time than my Mastodon account.

36:15But will I keep the math? I don't know. This is also weird. And this is why it's fun. To Nila's point, this is a new thing we've never actually had to figure out before. I've been talking with other friends about this too, because I never really used Mastodon. I've got an account there, but it just is a placeholder more than anything else. But I know people who are very, very active on Mastodon. And as they started seeing threads getting bigger, they're like, okay, I will go start an account there. So now they're active on both. And one, how do you have the energy? Yeah, I understand. I was like, well, what's the calculus?

36:45Then when this all interacts, do you maintain both accounts? Do you kill it? And they're like, I genuinely don't know. I don't think anybody does. I don't know? Yeah. I think there's some real value to having different places for different things. 100%. These were all people. I do not know how people are being goblins on Blue Sky and then being whatever LinkedIn version of themselves they're on. Also goblins. different kind of goblin but still pretty goblin they were in like a little tie on on threads um but like i can see a world again i don't know if any of this will work i don't know this is a good idea i don't even know if we can build any of this but i can just see a world where my work personality tweeting about tech and silliness happens at you know neilai at theverge.com and you can follow that on threads and that shows up in our home page and those are quick posts And I was going to federate it and you can, you can just follow me where you are.

37:42And then tweeting about Aaron Rogers happened somewhere else. Right. And that just seems better. And maybe, maybe you want to slam all that stuff together. Maybe some people will, but it just feels like for too long, we have just slammed too many things together. Right. And actually being like, okay, I've built one distribution channel for one kind of audience that I can cultivate and grow. I can build another distribution channel for my friends or my family that isn't like a wholesale platform shift. Like I'm this person on Instagram in the format of short videos. I'm this person on Twitter in the format of deeply snarky text posts.

38:27Right. I'm the most nihilistic version of myself on Twitter. And I'm this person on threat. Like that, having the format dictate what kind of thing you're doing, I think has forced just, it just caused a lot of weird shit to happen. Yeah. And I think saying, okay, you can have lots of different feeds or lots of different accounts and you can, you're kind of format independent, but you're chasing different things. You get new. I don't know if any of that's going to work. Yeah. Well, I think the thing that trips me up there is, you know, this kind of stuff, we've been doing more than one account for a while now, right?

38:58Like Finsta accounts and stuff like that. But what happens is people inevitably go and have that one account because that's where they have the most interaction. Yeah. And so, like, are you really going to want to take your reckless at GreenBayPackers.social account and only use that when you have, like, 50 followers there who also have the same feelings about Aaron Rodgers? I assume more than 50 people have those feelings. They do. But like, is, you know, are you going to want to do that? And then when you have this much bigger mouthpiece over here, and I'm just really curious how people are going to do feel about that.

39:35I feel, I just want to say this now, and this is, I apologize. This is about Aaron Rodgers. I've given him even more attention. Let's talk about Jordan Love, or as I call him, Flagheart. He's great. I need an account just for that, just to make Flagheart social. When you type Jordan Love's name into the iPhone to text your group chat about it, It replaces it with a Jordanian flag and a heart icon. So now we just call them flag hearts. That's very good. We can make this happen together. Jordan, if you're listening, and I know that you are, get out. Alexis, can I meet your wife and Jordan love and drive your truck?

40:12That's a road trip I would enjoy. I would go on that trip in a heartbeat. Just the weirdest four people in a Cybertruck. Dead quiet. So two of you are world-class athletes.

40:28uh how's it both of us were very active on reddit when we were young

40:39uh anyway i'm excited about it i think it's really fun if you have a mass on account just like do it do the thing follow my series already the third most followed person in the fetterverse by by one chart that i saw which is wild yeah follow some people on threads like just try it out. Like it will change your brain a little bit, right? It's like a follow button that you just don't expect to exist. And you're like, Oh, this is better. Like there's just something better about it being like, Oh, I'm in much more control of this situation. Uh, I don't know. I mean, I think it's going to be, I don't know about great, but it's going to be different.

41:12And I'm definitely in the market for different. Yeah. Agreed. Same. All right. We got to take a break. I'm going to come back. Sean Hollister is going to tell us all about Epic versus cool. We'll be right back.

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43:52We're back. Sean Hollister, welcome to the Vergecast. Thank you for having me yet again. I'm very excited to talk to you. You spent every single day in the courtroom for the Epic v. Google trial. You were there when the verdict came in, which was very fast. Was it like a month was the whole thing, Sean? How long has it been? A fortnight in fortnight court because it was 14 actual days of bigot court. I know a fortnight includes nights too, whatever. But yes, the trial lasted like four weeks plus like one day. We had Fridays off, but I spent 14 actual days in the courtroom. And on this last day, we expected the verdict might come in quickly for Google.

44:36and it came in quickly for Epic and none of me, not myself, not any of the other courtroom reporters expected that. That was a huge surprise. So I just want to congratulate Sean here, Inside Baseball. Sean beat everyone by minutes, if not hours, to publishing the story of the verdict. So congratulations, Sean. Well played. The power of a pre-written stub. Don't tell the people how we do it. Sean wrote 65 stories for every possible outcome. Sean Hollister in the multiverse. It was four. I pre-wrote four stories. That's ridiculous. So there's a version where Google wins, one where Epic wins, one where the courtroom explodes, and then one where the judge is just like, never mind, get out of here.

45:18All of you buy iPhones. Get out of my face. Exactly. So Epic won. It was a runaway victory that Google found for it on every claim. That's the headline. Let's back up here. A lot of people are very familiar with Apple v. Epic in which Apple won on virtually every claim. There are some key differences in the trial. What were these cases about and what were those differences? Oh my gosh. So I actually have an outline of the differences, because this is the question on everybody's mind. How could Google possibly have lost this case when Apple won? Isn't Apple the obvious monopolist with the walled garden and everything like that?

46:06But a whole bunch of things that I'd heard and read told me that these were very different. First off, the lawyers for both sides were telling me before we began, these are logistically different cases with different evidences, different judges. The Apple verdict doesn't carry any weight here. And not only that, they were not able to bring up the Apple case in the courtroom. The judge said, you don't talk about this. So carries no weight at all. The next big thing, of course, is that Google controls its ecosystem with all these third-party business deals, whereas Apple is its own OEM. There are more unfair-looking documents in more hands because Google had to, like, hand out all these contracts to these different companies.

46:48Google just has to, like, send more emails with more attachments. Like, literally, it feels like that was a big part of this. Emails. Absolutely emails. I'm just telling you, it's one word that means everything, and you can buy a shirt. We've known this for ages now. We wrote a piece in, what, 2011, 2012, one of the first years of The Verge, about the Skyhook case where we saw how Google tries to control the ecosystem through all these contracts. But so many of them came out in this moment, and so many of them looked unfair. unfair. And I don't know if unfair would have swayed a judge, but I think it may have swayed a jury who looked at these blatantly unfair, Spotify gets to pay nothing to Google to be in the Google Play Store while other companies have to pay 26 or 30%.

47:33That seems blatantly unfair. The jury saw that. They saw Google trying to keep it secret, and they didn't like that. Jury in front of a bench, that's one of the big things here. They saw that Google had a lot of things to hide, especially all of these chats between various executives that were being auto-deleted by the corporate policy at the time for document retention. The judge is like, what the fuck, Google? You're supposed to keep the documents for us so that we can look at them in the courtroom. And Google was like, nah, we never changed any of that stuff. So wait, can I just say one thing about this, actually?

48:12Because I was in court for USV Google when Sundar Pichai was testifying, and they brought this up to him, too. And he absolutely won that interaction, which was so fascinating to me because the case that he made essentially was there was this one thread that they brought up with him in which the last thing you see is him saying, can you turn off history, please? And so they turn off history, and that's obviously the end of the thing because they stop storing it. So they bring this up, and they give Sundar this whole long spiel about, you know, you're destroying evidence. This is a disaster. And his response is essentially, well, did you find any more versions of that happening?

48:48And they were like, how would we know? You deleted it. And he was like, well, you found this one because I asked them to turn off history. Did you find any other Times-Reyeson to turn off history? And the lawyer goes, no. And that's the end. And Sundar just, like, victorious, sits back. And that immediately went away in US v. Google. And it was such a non-issue. But in this one, it just kept being part of the trial. I want Sean to get into this. I just want to point something out that I think is often forgotten when we cover the legal system. One, we have an audience of tech people and people believe the legal system is deterministic.

49:19Like it's an algorithm. Like you put in some inputs and you get an output and you can predict the output. Not true. I think we've learned over and over again in America over the past couple. Not true. Almost completely random, especially when there's a jury involved. and then I'm a lawyer and I'm married to a lawyer and I have a lot of friends who are lawyers. So I'm just going to say this and we can all just react to it. Everyone. Some lawyers are better than other lawyers.

49:47And if you're epic, you can afford really good lawyers. And if you are the United States government. Hire better. It's just right. Like prosecutors, like, you just see it. You know, it's like, I'm just like, you can just react to that however you want, but you can just see that some lawyers are better than other lawyers. And that's a real difference in these cases, for sure. Epic afforded some really good lawyers here. I was very impressed with how, just how much and how often they put the witnesses on edge and turned Google's witnesses against Google and all these things. I was surprised that Google's lawyers didn't have a better defense, but they were in a very difficult position here because Epic spun this whole thing as this tale of good and evil with all of these unfair documents on the table.

50:46And Google was left to explain away all these complicated business deals, which might make sense and might have even convinced a judge, hey, this is just normal business practices. You've seen this in your courtroom a thousand times. But the jury hasn't. The jury hasn't seen all these unfair deals. And Epic constantly, every Google executive that came into the stand, every Google witness that was there got grilled hard about their emails and about these deleted chats. You know, how will we ever know what's in your what's in your chats? You'll never know. So Sundar, though, the judge was willing to let Sundar pass the buck.

51:25Epic's lawyer was all like, you know, you agree that you're responsible for everything that goes on at Google, right? But after the jury filed out of the courtroom, Judge Donato was, you know, okay, okay, Sundar, I accept that you got bad advice from your lawyers, maybe, but I want the buck to stop with somebody. Bring your chief legal officer into court. So the judge hauled in Google's chief legal officer for over – I want to say over an hour of questioning about how the heck this happened, and he did not look good on the stand. Google's CLO, judge was not buying it. His name is Kent Walker. Kent Walker, yes.

52:08Kent Walker, Google's attorney, sorry, Epic's attorney, whose name is escaping me right now, but she was amazing. And she just completely threw him off balance. The judge double teamed Kent Walker with this attorney and like, you know, I don't understand this either. Can you explain those things you just said to me again, Mr. Walker? and he wasn't having any of it. And he ended the judge, almost one of the penultimate things that Judge Donato did in the case is he said he's going to personally investigate Google for deleting all these chats and for abusing what one Google lawyer internally called fake legal privilege.

52:53We saw a whole bunch of documents during the case that were marked, you know, confidential and privileged. And Google executives, including Sundar Pichai, agreed that the only reason some of these things were marked confidential and privileged was so that they wouldn't be forwarded around the company internally and potentially fall into other hands. It's not a good sign when a judge vows to personally investigate your company after the trial is over. So here's what I want to know, Sean, and then we can dive into some of the merits of the case. This was happening. The judge is furious about this.

53:25We talked about this a couple weeks ago. We're seeing all these documents. You wrote a great recap of all the documents, all the deals. The judge instructs the jury, like, you can interpret the lack of documentation and the hiding any way you want, which is a big wink-wink on how to interpret them. And yet everyone thought Google would win. Why? Like, that's the part that doesn't, why was the vibe in the courtroom that Google would win quickly here? I think the vibe in the courtroom was that Google would win because of the key question that we always ask in an antitrust trial, market definition.

54:04Google's been arguing since the very beginning of the case that whatever it did, it was justified because it does all these things so that Android can compete with the iPhone. And if you say the market definition here is iPhone versus Android, Android is competing with iPhone, consumers are choosing to buy an iPhone versus an Android phone, how is Epic going to say, hey, Google, you have a monopoly on phones. Hey, Google, you have a monopoly on apps. Epic wanted everybody to think that Google has a monopoly on Android app distribution, very specifically, and on Android in-app payments, where it kind of does.

54:45Yes, there's a Samsung App Store, but Epic convincingly showed that Samsung's App Store accounts for barely any downloads compared to Google's. Everybody wants to use Google's. And that all of that is because of Google's abuse of the system. That Google has done the work to ensure that Samsung and others can't play nicely. That's the substance of it. For one second, I just want to sit on why everyone thought Google would win. I read that, right? Okay, it's a market definition. Apple just won. Android is technically more open than the iPhone, even if contractually it is not more open, as we've learned.

55:23Of course Google is going to win, right? The phone's more open on its face. And in so many ways, too. I mean, yes, you can have your other app store on the phone, but you can also sideload apps. Since the very beginning of Android, I was holding up my T-Mobile G1 phone. I would download an APK off the internet, and I would put it on there. I don't know if any of us in this room do that these days. Exactly. I don't know if any of us do it these days because so many things are on the Play Store already, and why wouldn't you go there? but like the idea that you can put an app on an Android phone so many different ways you can't put on the iPhone.

55:56How could Google have a monopoly on Android app distribution? The other thing that I think is just sort of reverberating here, and I think we all noticed it, was the lack of interest in the Google case compared to the Apple case. Like the Apple case was like a star studded, you know, our traffic charts are off the charts every single day. Google burbled along and Sean, you did a great chart. Like a lot of people covered the Google trial by just following Sean in the story stream, which is great. That's the service we provide. But we could see there was a different level of interest. And the thing that I'm honing in on is one, I think everyone assumes that big companies will always win their antitrust cases, which is wrong.

56:33And then two, I think people thought it was boring and it appears that the jury did not think it was boring. This is the key thing that everyone missed is the jury was like, oh, this is pretty exciting and interesting and dramatic, actually. Yeah. Not only was the jury paying attention throughout almost the entire trial, we saw some yawns. When a couple of the expert economists came in and spent a while explaining basic market theories, there were a few yawns. But most of the time, they were extremely attentive. They were looking over at the person asking the questions. They were looking over at the witness to see what the answers were.

57:10They were looking at the judge. They were looking down at their monitors, looking at all the documents, trying to follow along with some of the slide decks. And they asked questions. Literally today, we got to see a few of the questions that the jurors asked during the case. They wrote notes to the judge and said, hey, can you ask Google how many of the devices are in the RSA 3.0 Premier tier, which, by the way, is the contract that decides whether a OEM can preload another app store or not onto a phone. So they're like, oh, yeah, did Google actually keep anybody from doing that? They cared. So now let's get to the substance of it, which is the market.

57:49I think everybody thinks the market is iOS versus Android. But here, I think what we are really talking about is Google runs Android. It's a platform. It's open. Anyone can use it. And there actually is a market for Android app distribution. There are other stores. There are other ways to get Android apps on Android phones. There is not a market for iOS app distribution, which I think was a real problem for Epic. They couldn't argue that Apple was unfairly dominated market because no market existed. Well, that's why that one became all about payments, right? That was fundamentally the thing. And like the win that Epic got was the anti-steering stuff where you could start to tell Apple users that other ways to pay for things exist.

58:32But yeah, in that case, I went back and read a bunch of this. And there's so much of it that it's like Apple was able to get away with so much because specifically it is so incredibly locked down. And Google, we thought Google's relative openness was going to be a reason it was harder for Epic to win. And I think it actually went the other way and gave Epic a chance to make a case against Google that you just can't do because you have to pry open Apple as a company to do it. And that's not going to work. I think that's absolutely right. We talked about this with the beeper stuff in the first segment where Apple kind of has an obligation.

59:06Their whole brand is we shut everything down. We lock it down. And it wins them trial after trial. If you look at this and say, oh, yeah, the minute Google started saying, well, sure, we have a monopoly here, but it's Android and we're competing against iPhone, Google was kind of in trouble because that was never the argument the other side made. And they just kind of like – it felt like almost they ignored the argument that Epic was making to be like, no, no, but see, we're competing against Apple. And it's like, well, why would you make that argument when you really can't bring up Apple that much here?

59:38and two, that's not what the people suing you are complaining about. Yeah. So when I was reporting on this case in the courtroom, what I did not understand until the very end, and I don't know if it's always this way, but what I didn't understand until the very end was who is going to decide the market definition and how in a jury trial. In the Apple case, the judge said, well, you know, Epic, we don't think it's about, you know, iPhone versus Android. It's going to be about mobile game transactions because that's what you're actually suing over, right? V-Bucks and where people can buy them and how.

1:00:18And that meant that Epic had to be competing there with other game stores like Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft where it already pays the 30%. So why shouldn't you pay 30 % here on Apple too? But in this case, the people who got to decide the market definition were the jurors. They got to write it in on the verdict form themselves. And they were steered by the jury instructions and by a lot of the case towards the idea that it would be Epic's chosen market definition of Android app distribution and in-app transactions, in mobile payment systems, I mean. And so when they were confronted with that, and the judge was very skeptical of any other theories.

1:01:03Like Google really wanted you to think that this was not only just about Apple versus Android, but also they had one of their expert economists come under the stand and suggest it was going to be about the facilitation of mobile transactions. And the judge was not having that. The judge was like, isn't what you're saying, Doesn't that apply to any transaction on the internet? How does any of that have to do with mobile apps specifically? How do you get a job as an expert economist? You get paid so much money. Just be like, look at this chart. It means whatever who's paying me wants it to mean.

1:01:42It just seems like such a good and lucrative gig, right? It's like - Yeah, we heard like$1 ,600 an hour for this person to be delivering their statements in court, $1 ,200 an hour for this person. And it was funny that - The chart is all use of money in the world. Every time it was this back and forth between Epic and Google, hmm, I wonder if we can point out how much their expert is making. Let's just point out that they're biased. Bit of a double-edged sword there. But just to be clear, the market on its face, because it exists, is Android app distribution. It is. There could have been a better and richer Samsung app store, but Google paid some money.

1:02:19There was this idea that, what was it, Epic and Valve and a bunch of other companies, Activision Blizzard would start app stores and compete against Google. Yeah, they wanted to build the Steam of mobile to compete against Valve. But Epic, Activision Blizzard, I think it was Supercell was going to be part of that. They were going to build a Steam of mobile, they claimed, and put that on Android. And then you'd buy your games there, maybe. And then Google responded to this with something called Project Hug, where it just went and hugged people with money to make them not do it. That's a smooth move.

1:02:54That's what you want to do. It's a hug and you're like, is that getting a beat? Is it a weird little? Oh, no, it's just cash. I thought maybe the jury would get that it wasn't exactly a bribe because it's all like these co-marketing arrangements. Here, we'll give you some Google ad credits. And here's some revenue sharing over here. And here's, you know, the only company that I think Google directly paid, it was like, here's money for doing the thing. It's just a bribe. Is Motorola and LG. But yes, I mean, it all comes down to it's harder for anybody else to build the thing because Google is paying someone to build the thing.

1:03:30And this is why I think the fact that it's a jury trial is so fascinating because it's like there's a series of things in here, right? And I think Project Hug, which you just described, and then the Spotify deal that Google gave Spotify where it essentially doesn't – actually, can you just explain that really fast? because I confess I got hung up on what the numbers are about here, but essentially Spotify got a sneaky deal from Google where it essentially didn't have to pay anything to be in the Play Store, right? That's it. I mean, Spotify... Okay. Normally, an app developer pays, what, 30 % to be on the Play Store.

1:04:04They pay 15 % for their first year or something like that. And then there's a 15 % for subscriptions. There's a bunch of ways that Google discounts the rate. But some app developers said, we want to have our own payment system. And Google first said, no, you're not going to have your own payment system. And then they said, well, maybe we'll do this experimental trial thing where some companies get their own payment system and we'll give you a 4 % discount. And they called it something choice billing. So if you were on the choice billing, you'd have Spotify would theoretically have one system where it pays its 15 % to Google for subscriptions.

1:04:44or it's 30 % for one-time purchases, if that's a thing on Spotify anymore. And then if Spotify wants to use its own payment system, it would get a 4 % discount on that. So 11%. Which is nothing. And this came up a bunch, right? That by the time you pay another payment processor, you're going to be back at 15%. So you might as well just give it to Google because it's simpler. So that's not a deal at all. Google calculated to be paying more than that 4 % to get your own payment system. They thought it wasn't even going to be a choice. So it's a fully fake deal. They gave the money that way. Completely fair.

1:05:15But what we learned is Spotify secretly had an arrangement to pay not 11%, but 0 % when it used its own bill. Which is a deal. And that's quite a deal. But Google isn't offering that to anyone else that we're aware of. Google also said, hey, Netflix, you don't want to pay 30 % anymore or 15 % anymore? You can pay 10%. Want to pay 10 %? Netflix said, no. we're going to just bypass the store we're not going to let you buy your subscription to Netflix through Android you'll go buy it on the web, you'll buy it somewhere else we know you'll find it elsewhere that's like when one monopoly hits another monopoly like Netflix is like what are you going to do, not have Netflix?

1:05:55yeah we're not paying you money to sign up for Netflix no, you'll just have it in both that's Netflix's approach to content here's my question, that is also what Spotify said what are you going to do, just not have Spotify And Google said, okay, you can pay nothing. And at what point, at what point, Google said, they were going to do this to us if we didn't give them a deal. I didn't realize at that point that it was a 0 % deal. I thought it was, you know, maybe they get 6 % or something. 0%. What do you do at that point if you're Google? Do you say, okay, you get the special deal? Do you say, let's treat everybody fairly, like we pretend we're going to do and, you know, make that real and just give everybody the zero?

1:06:39percent what do you so google has to make the deal because there's the other there's the out right apple just says we're gonna not have netflix which is fascinating like their view and it's played out in different ways for apple in different platforms so on the iphone they're like we just want to have netflix and everybody caves like the idea of not having your app on the iPhone completely out of bounds. Apple tries to pull the stuff with the TV app on the Apple TV. And Netflix is like, no, we're just, we're no, what are you going to do? Not have Netflix. But at the same time, and Apple's like, okay, you don't have to put your app.

1:07:16Can you sign up on Netflix through in-app purchases? I don't think so. Netflix, Netflix has held pretty fast on that stuff. And, and there's, but the thing is, there's only a handful of companies that can get away with that. Right? Like I'm actually surprised Spotify rises to that level for Google or anybody. But I think if I'm Google, my worry is like, okay, Spotify's not in the Play Store. Spotify's going to be in the Galaxy Store. And you know what a hell of a lot of people might do to get Spotify on their phones is open the Galaxy Store. That's what I mean. There's a market there. They have an out.

1:07:44They can go and say, open this other app store. We're going to partner with Samsung directly and preload Netflix on the phone in a way that Apple is just like, no, no other choices shall exist. And Sean, you interviewed Tim Sweeney right after the trial, and I thought this was the most important thing that he said. He said, I wish Apple wasn't so clear cut on what you can't do. And I think the exact words he used were thou shalt not have another app store. And it's like, oh, that's why you lost against Apple. Because there wasn't even the possibility for Apple to unfairly foreclose. right like google's like oh there's all these outs they can take it might result in some fragmentation you can assign noble intentions to google here by the way you can say android had a big fragmentation problem you don't want all these different ways to get apps especially the big apps like if you get a new phone and to get spotify and netflix and tiktok you need to download three different app stores this is a bad outcome for google it's a bad outcome for i think it's important I should remember that we at The Verge spent several years writing reviews of Android phones where we were like, I wish this just had pure stock Android on it instead of layers of blood.

1:08:59Bone stock, I believe. Bone stock. That's right. That's right. Like, I want that for my phone. Motorola testified on the stand that it helped them sell phones. Like, I get why Google wants to crack down on fragmentation. We've written the editorial eight times here at The Verge. And these contracts are how it does that. But these contracts have also helped to make the Google Play Store a profit center for the entire company that makes ridiculous billions in revenue, would be a Fortune 100 company all by itself, and has a 72 % or something like that profit margin. Yeah. And by the way, one way you could cut down on fragmentation is by being more competitive.

1:09:40Right? Like this is actually really interesting. Make better phones. Right. You can make a better phone. You could make the pixel really competitive. There are a million ways to do it. And Google chose to do it by taking a bunch of money, firing it into the market, and making sure that no other competitors existed. Which, by the way, David, to come back to DOJ versus Google, is exactly what they do in the search market. And I don't know how that case is going to go, but the parallels are right there. The parallels are right there. And I think the difference, like back to the thou shalt not thing, like you can accuse Apple of many things, but you cannot accuse Apple of being inconsistent, right?

1:10:15It has been what it has been for a very long time, and you can dislike it. But I think one of the reasons Apple keeps winning is because it just keeps saying the same thing. And it's not unclear about what you are signing up for when you buy an iPhone. And when that happens, it might be different. Google, on the other hand, I think the sketchiness of all of these deals really worked against Google, especially in a jury case where like you can you can sort of talk yourself into some of these being like reasonable things that reasonable businesses do but like there's no question that they just feel gross and i think yeah to to a jury especially over time and i wonder how it felt even just sitting in the courtroom like my sense was even just like following your stuff in the story stream sean like you kind of got more and more of like an ick over the course of the trial watching all of this go down.

1:11:06And you just go from thinking like, oh, Google is a company that makes deals to insure to just being like, this just sucks. And I think like, I get the sense everybody sort of felt that over the course of four weeks. Yeah. I think maybe I was a bit of a proxy for helping our readers live vicariously in the position of the jurors so that they could see it kind of like that. If you were in the courtroom, would you feel the same way if you were one of the people, the nine jurors making these decisions? I do want to challenge what you said earlier about Apple being consistent. It has been, compared to Google, incredibly consistent.

1:11:39But Apple made sweetheart deals over private email too. I mean, Netflix had a unique relationship with Apple to do a 15 % revenue share, which was not enough for Netflix. And Netflix eventually did go its own way. But they did try and broker that similar kind of arrangement. That's true. There were a number of things like that that we saw back in the day. But not at this trial because you weren't allowed to talk about Apple at the trial for the most part. Exactly. Yeah, we had another trial. Alex, you were going to say something. No, no. I think mine was just an anecdote because when I was reading all of your coverage, Sean, and a friend of the family is a former judge.

1:12:16And I'd be like, okay, I have a question for you as a former judge. if someone has been going out of their way to hide a lot of documents and stuff to the point that it keeps coming up in trial? How would that case probably go for them? And that friend was like, not well. Just as a judge, don't do that. And then there was also a bunch of proof that they were doing these sweetheart deals. And other people do it, but they were doing it. And they're like, no, you're kind of boned in that respect. They used more polite terminology there, but they were very much like, oh, like it was – I think for anybody who wasn't kind of in that tech space and had seen the Apple case, but it has like any kind of grasp of this stuff, it was just like, oh, no, Google was going to get wrecked.

1:13:05Like you can't piss the judge off that much and expect to win generally. Yeah, where the judge is like, I will personally investigate you. That was a long night for Google's lawyers. Like a lot of McAllen was concerned. That's what I think Google's lawyer strength. Two things that I want to bring up. One, Alex, to your point, I think having the jury, you know, there's that phrase, like, you don't want to know how the sausage is made. And I think a lot of judges are like, oh, that's some sausage. Yeah. And the jury's like, this is gross. Like, I'm never eating a hot dog again. Right? I think there's just that element of it.

1:13:40And then I think in this, Sean, I kind of want to bring this together and wrap this up a little bit. there's just the element that all business works like this. And if you just like see how it happens, like maybe that's bad, right? Like Google's an advertising company and they do a lot of deals and they're really good at making sharky deals. And that version of Google is very different than the version of Google. It's like the new Google doodle is in different colors today, right? Like they they maintain that quirky silly image and then the back end of google is a sharky advertising company and when you see it it's like really bad and there was one moment that i still think is most fascinating uh where tim sweeney and sunarpa chai met for settlement and they couldn't get there and you talked to tim about it he wouldn't tell you about it but the specifics but it seemed like Google tried to make another deal at the last minute and Tim said no.

1:14:41That's certainly what Tim Sweeney was implying. He certainly implied that Sundar tried to offer me personally something again. And frankly, to your point about maybe this is just how the sausage is made, business deals happen like this, the judge also thought that Epic might take its own deal. In the courtroom, after the jury had gone home for the day, Judge Donato was like, hey, Epic, Google, have you tried settling yet? And when Epic's attorney, lead attorney, said, no, we haven't actually really tried that yet, he was like, what are you asking for? And Epic went off on some like, we want this for us and all developers.

1:15:24And the judge came back with, well, Spotify got this special deal for itself. I'm sure you could get that special deal for yourselves too. Go talk about it. And so the judge was under the implication that this wasn't going to be a blank thing for all developers. Maybe Epic should go get a special deal for itself. Yeah. By the way, most cases settle. This is a thing we should know. Like 70 or 80 % of cases settle. And judges want the cases to settle, right? The idea is that the American legal system should not resolve conflicts between two rat priorities themselves. You should go work it out. And that's fine.

1:15:57So I think the judge has to say that. But like the idea that he asked Epic, what do you want? And Epic responded with some potentially self-serving, but yet very idealistic screed perfectly in character for Epic. Well, and that's actually totally in character. That was the other thing I was wondering, Sean, is for what, three years now, Tim Sweeney has been trying to kind of white knight his way through all of these processes. He really wants to be seen and have Epic be seen as the good guy here, right? And he even said to you, he's like, we would never take a deal. We're doing this for all developers.

1:16:30We've always done this for all developers. Even when Google offered us a deal, we said, no, we want to do it for all developers. He dug up an email that they offered the deal that he didn't want. But then he sits on the stand and is like, yes, if this happens, we're probably going to make billions of dollars. Okay, so a little story about that. A little story about that. I thought that maybe Tim Sweeney is just that kind of personality where he walks up there and he doesn't necessarily know what he's saying is truthful, but maybe not the best thing to be seen publicly saying. Maybe this just kind of came out of him.

1:17:10Just testifying on Vives. It maybe just came out of him that he's laughing about how he could make billions of dollars by paying Google nothing. But no. But no. I ran into him later in the hallway. I think it was the next day. Because, by the way, he's been there every single day of the trail save one. I ran into him the next day, and he walks up to me and he says, you got the number of exclamation points right. And he's referring to this post where he's laughing about making billions of dollars off of Google. Interesting. How many exclamation points was it? Just one, actually. But one for that phrase and another one is awesome.

1:17:48It's awesome that he could avoid paying Google anything. So one there and then one for the billions of dollars. Two exclamation points total. So is Tim Sweeney still the white knight for all developers everywhere? At the end of this, as they appear to be winning this fight, which will get appealed and God only knows, but does he still seem like the champion of all developers or did he just line his pockets and laugh all the way to the bank? God, I don't know. I feel like a question in the back of my mind for three years now has been, does he actually think he'll ever win any of these lawsuits all the way through appeal?

1:18:24Or is he doing this to grossly embarrass Google and Apple because all of these documents and contracts are coming out? And because he's decided he wants to personally make his company's wealth go towards this effort. Which by all accounts would not be out of character for Tim Sweeney. I've never met the man, but everything people who know him say makes that seem like a perfectly plausible explanation. Absolutely. Yeah, a very funny Tim Sweeney fact is, you know, we have lots of ideas about on the record and off the record in the background. Tim Sweeney only talks on the record. That's just the thing.

1:19:01He just like won't, he won't even entertain the idea that he should talk to you in the background. That's him coming to us. That's usually the other way around. Uh, and I know people have like lots of issues with him as a personality and like what steam does and whether, let's see, uh, I know people have like a lot of issues with Epic and what Epic does and whether Epic is ruthless on the PC and when they're buying exclusives from the steam, like whatever. Um, but I, I do think there's an idealism there. Like it's, it's actually like a really interesting thing for a company of, of Epic size to be idealistic or to have a CEO who's idealistic?

1:19:34Like most CEOs are like, Sundar Pichai offered me billions of dollars. He even tried to be idealistic about the billions of dollars thing. I mean, the very next thing that happened was in that moment, he said, I think it would be billions of dollars. It'd be awesome if I could avoid paying Google anything. Google was very satisfied with that. And they said, pass the witness. Epic came back on and Epic said, you know, so why do you want, you know, why, Where do you think you get this same kind of deal where you avoid paying anybody else anything? And he said, that's how it's been on the PC with Windows.

1:20:08That's how it is on the Mac. You can put apps on there and not pay somebody to put your apps on there. So he may believe that this is part of the idealistic thing that he's trying to do. And I think that he has supporters who also believe that. I'm not quite sure which side I'm on of that. Yeah, I think that's an open question, especially because what's going to happen next is both of these cases are on appeal. And I don't know if this is true. This is just my interpretation of the Apple case. I think the judge ruled the way she did in the Apple case to set up an appeal. Right. There's a reason that the judge in California felt very comfortable saying the state law in California allows me to do a prohibition on anti-steering.

1:20:55But the federal antitrust law does – I'm not going to run into that fight. I'm going to let a higher – I'm a trial court judge. I'm not going to reinterpret the antitrust law of the United States. I'm going to kick that upstairs because she knows this appeal is coming. So that has always been my read of that. I think she's a very savvy judge. She developed a trial record. She kicks it upstairs. This judge had a jury. The jury doesn't give a shit about being overturned on appeal. It's a different case. The facts are different. The markets are different. Both cases are going to get appealed. Sean, based on your talk with Tim, you're covering the trial.

1:21:30What do you think Epic is doing next year? I think Epic is still going to wait, quote unquote, a little bit because we have until the second week of January before Epic's lawyers and Google's lawyers come back together and say, hey, judge, what is actually going to happen now that Epic has won? Because we don't know what the judge can or will actually grant Epic now that the jury has said, yes, there is, you know, this is an illegal monopoly as far as we're concerned. So there's that. Tim was like, oh, yes, we'll keep fighting everywhere. We've got all these other cases going on around the world.

1:22:02They're waiting. I think there were a couple of Australia cases that were kind of on hold because they wanted to see what was going to happen in the U.S. before Australia weighed in. Classic Australia. And of course, the Apple one is being appealed. They're both sides, both Apple and Google, are hoping the Supreme Court will take up the Apple decision, which has already been through the appeals pellet level. We'll see. All right. We have another year of sending Sean to courtrooms. I'm so sorry, Sean. Potentially in Australia. I haven't wanted to visit Australia for a while. Certainly is beautiful.

1:22:35All right. We got to take a break. We're going to do a lightning round. We'll be right back.

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1:25:21All right, we're back. Sean's sticking with us for the lightning round. Sean, you're the guest of honor, even cooped up for a fortnight in Fortnite court with Tim Sweeney. One of the best headlines we've run in a while, by the way. A Fortnite and Fortnite Corp. People got mad at us. They're like, you're too gleeful about Epic winning. I'm like, the company's name is Epic. What are we supposed to do here? There's not a journalist in the country or world that can stay away from Epic victory in this moment. What are you talking about? Epic win. Epic victory. For a while, we've read the Apple case.

1:25:50It's the name of the company. Yeah, it's not even like anyone who's reading that as an adjective is wrong. Epic win. It's a fact. Can you imagine the other way? Google win. Google victory. People just start searching. What did they win? Bard's like, I don't know. During the Apple case, we called the judge Epic Judge. Fairly often, that was fun. That's very good. All right, Sean, you're the guest of honor. You get to go first. What's your lightning round item? Opera's gamer browser now has a panic button for when you're caught in the act. I knew you were going to pay. Oh. I don't want to talk about the panic button.

1:26:25I want to talk about how Opera has a browser that has to go to these incredible, ridiculous, gamer-centric extremes in order to differentiate from Chrome, the dominant browser, because nobody else can compete. We've just been talking about Google competing with things. No, but this is the competition. This is. You need a browser that can set limits on CPU and GPU usage so you can keep gaming at your full frame rates and that has a panic button so someone walks in while you're gaming. It's very resource intensive. And there's a little known feature in Opera GX where if you die, hopefully you pressed the button that told it to delete all your history so that they won't see things that you were looking at when you pressed the panic button.

1:27:11My favorite thing about this is that when you press F12, which jumps you out of whatever you're doing into a quote unquote safe tab, one of the options they give you is to go to Twitch, which is like, is that better? Like, oh, I'm playing a video game. I don't want my boss to see me. Let me go to Twitch. Does it auto mute too? I have not sure. Does the tab auto mute? It should. I was going to say. Alex asking hard questions. You know what? I don't want to linger on this for one second longer. Rest of the round. If you're in a situation where you need a panic button in your browser, fucking volume should be off.

1:27:47Headphones, people. Headphones. Freshmen in college, get this browser. You share in a dorm room, you get this browser. Oh, my God. Can't wait to see their market show. Oh, boy. Thank you, Sean. For me. Why? Why did I do this? All right. Pierce, can you just clean us up? Mine is the Apple TV app, which has a new panic button, where when you're... Takes you to HBO Max. Apple... The dark recesses of HBO Max. You hit a button and you go to HGCV, just like that. It's like, no problems, whatever you're watching. No, the Apple... Somewhere David Zaslav is like, ship a panic button. This is how we win.

1:28:37Yeah, you can have that for free. No one can know you watch Guildenage. The Apple TV app just got a redesign on the Apple TV. Apple has had this, like, I don't know, 15-year-long obsession with, like, trying to solve the interface of television. And I think it's, like, the most quixotic thing Apple is trying to do. It's either that or build a car. Like, two equally impossible goals. But the new TV app actually looks really nice. They redesigned it. It has easier ways to get to some of the channels you can get at through Apple TV. It has some easy ways to get to like buying stuff from multiple platforms.

1:29:10Apple's big idea is to be like the TV guide for all your streaming stuff. So it pulls all the stuff you're watching, all the recommendations, all this stuff into one place. It notably does not have Netflix, which like immediately destroys its utility for a large number of users because this is what I'm saying about when one monopoly hits another one. It's also bad at a lot of other ones, too. It is Apple. Apple, I like I think is on the right path here. I just think it's impossible to do what it's trying to do. But I admire Apple for just continuing to believe that it is Apple. And so it can eventually bully every other company into being part of this.

1:29:42But the new app is very nice. I suspect we'll get a lot of this stuff on other platforms as well. And the streaming interface that we have sucks. And somebody should fix it. And I don't care if it's Apple. I don't care if it's Just Watch. Pick a company. I don't care if it's Plex. No one can. I actually want it to be Plex. I would like for it to be Plex. Plex, could you please do this? I just want to say that Steve Jobs did not tell Walter Isaacson and other staff deathbed that he wanted to build a car. He said he'd cracked the TV and it's about time they cracked it. It's exactly right. It's exactly right.

1:30:13Really? The whole company chased this like deathbed comment for too long. Do you think Steve just meant like he, he cracked his TV. He like threw something at a television and cracked it. And Walter just like.

1:30:29So we bought a new house. We're like, I'm building a home theater down there. It's like a whole thing. There's speaker wire everywhere. where the poor electrician just keeps looking at me like I'm crazy. It's great. So two things. One, in the meantime, we have a Samsung frame TV, which will eventually be the bedroom TV. And I have used Tizen now. The moment of silence for Neelai. Tizen support club. Please help me. But Samsung does one very smart thing with Tizen on this TV and built-in software. when you're watching youtube tv and you click out of it and you're trying to go back to any other place where there should be media playing it just starts playing it again as though you are just watching tv yeah it's it's just very it's just very clever it just restarts your streaming app and it just has media playing where you're like goofing around in the menus or whatever it makes it feel like a tv and not like the apple tv which very much feels like a tiny ios device that is very upset that you are not watching Apple TV Plus.

1:31:30Or like all the Fire TVs now, which are like, oh, you turn on your TVs? Here's some ads. Do you want to watch some ads? How about some ads? As soon as you turn it on. Yeah. So there's something there, which I think is just really clever and smart in Tizen. But it's part of the turn you're talking about. These interfaces suck because they're all trying to get you to do something you don't want to do, or they're all trying to keep you away from watching TV, or they want to show you ads. particularly like Alex writes about fast all the time, right? Like free ad supporting TV is a big thing, which means they're desperately trying to get you to watch free ad supported TV.

1:32:03That's weird. The second thing, uh, I've been thinking about this a lot with just Apple TV and like, what will be my primary device? And here's what I've settled on. I'm going to buy a Sony a 95 L. Okay. They're not in stock anywhere. And I'm just going to watch Bravia core Sony's proprietary streaming service that has the highest bit rates in the entire industry. Oh boy. in that Spider-Man's gonna look so good on that TV it's gonna be it has like four movies it's yeah yeah look it has I think it has four four four see see you're gonna that's they love to be like look how good Spider-Man looks with our high bit rate red is red is famously the hardest color to compress and Spider-Man's a great demo yep I'm gonna watch the hell out of Spider-Man that and red buses in England they're like look at it it's beautiful you're like it's fine Yeah, I don't know.

1:32:55It's just like all of my stuff, I bought a lot of movies in Apple. And now it's like this thing does not want me to – they shut down the movies app and the TV app, which I never use. But they shut down the movies app. And it's like, oh, I just wanted to see what was out and like watch a movie. And now it's like I have to contend with the morning show. Like here it is. Here's just do you want the morning? Pay for this. Yeah, watch it. And I'm like I just want to see what movies are out. I don't know. Are any of us holding on to discs? I just bought a bunch. I've still got my 4K discs. They go on my PS5.

1:33:25I just bought a bunch. That's how I watch my good-looking movies. I was going to do that, but brav you, Core Dog. Sean, I will say history is increasingly proving you right. Yeah. I was not here last week to be furious at what Sony did, removing all the stuff that people had bought on their PlayStations. But that shit sucks. And we are rapidly nearing a point where legitimately, if you want to make sure you can watch something, you're going to have to buy it on disc, which is like a dumb place to end up but feels like where we're headed. I've now got Michael Dudikoff's American Ninja from the 80s on DVD and like can't find that on streaming.

1:34:02All right, well there's Alex. What are you going to do? You want to watch that horror show? Only one way to watch it. If my sister's listening, I'm sorry you now know what you're going to say. That's one too many.

1:34:15All right, I'll do mine and we'll end with Kranz. Mine is a weird week for electric cars just around the board. But Cadillac announced the Cadillac Vistique, which is their next electric SUV. It looks pretty good. It looks like a little baby Escalade. I just want to point out Cadillac's prices for EVs are completely out of control. So this one is going to cost$90 ,000. and I will remind you it is called the Vistique with an IQ because that is Cadillac's branding. What is Cadillac? There's like the Lyric, which I assume is now pronounced Lyric, and the Optique, and there was like the Cintique and the Celestique.

1:34:59Like who at Cadillac keeps being like, you know what's dope is our Q names that are unpronounceable. Like stop it. So yeah, they start with a Lyric, which sort of makes sense. It's actually pronounced Lyric. Sorry, I don't know if I just want to. The Lurique is actually kind of reasonably priced. You can get one in the 60s, which for a Cadillac is in the zone. They have a cheaper one that's coming out. And then they have the Escalade, which starts at$120 ,000. Is there a Q level trim? And then the Celestique is$340 ,000. It's Escalade with a Q. Sorry, sorry. It's the Escalade IQ. They could not figure out how to jam the Eq on the Escalade.

1:35:41so like whatever it's the estelate iq like we're just here's an eek you can have it 120 000 please uh i will say though these cars are hot like i'm i'm very into the styling they have for these i have um i don't i don't need a car i moved back to civilization i don't live in the woods anymore uh i live in a very walkable place i'm like i should buy a lyric all the time I'm like, I should buy Lyric. And I'm like, why? I would never drive this car. We have a hybrid with 25 miles of all electric range. I haven't bought gas in three months because that's all we need. How's the pickup truck? Pickup?

1:36:18I love it so much and I need to get rid of it. And I... Still waiting for the Ioniq, which is a Hyundai vehicle, to get some NACS charging. Who decided that Qs are the future? Until they have the chargers. We need the chargers. One day. All right. I'm going to buy a Cadillac. All right. It does look pretty good. All right. This one's a little sad. 2003, I was in college and I met a guy and he said, he said, hey, panic button. Panic button. He said, hey, my uncle's a producer at like Today Show or something. he's going to E3, do you want to go? And I went in college to E3. And then I went for the next 10 years.

1:37:11Wow. Not always with his family and the hosts of the Today Show or whatever. It was great. And then I never went again because it got really bad. And it continued to get bad. And E3 just got less and less and less useful. And that is why this year E3 is officially dead. it was the trade show for video games. Like, Sean, did you ever go to E3? I feel like you went to E3. Yeah, it was kind of fun. Should I tell the story? Sean's like, I was born in the dark. It was fun. You saw cool stuff. You know, I went the year that they moved it all to Santa Monica, and you had to see all the video games in an airplane hangar.

1:37:54And otherwise, you just had to know a lot of people, and I did not. So I spent a lot of time on the beach, that E3. It was great. but that's what I should have done really really nice Sean what's your weirdest E3 story I feel like I can just see on your face you have a weird E3 story that you don't want to tell a weird E3 story I don't want to tell or do you want the good one the one about the good one give us the good one I'm just going to read from my CNET article because I haven't rewritten this and I'll just do my voice it'll be great I was playing Warhawk the first game for Sony's just-announced PS3 motion controller, where you could fly a heavily armored warplane just by tilting a gamepad.

1:38:37Believe it or not, those simple motion controls were revolutionary at the time. This was before the iPhone was announced, before Twitter existed, and even before the Nintendo Wii and PS3 were released, to give you some context. Yet on the show floor, there wasn't much of a line. I only had to wait a few minutes before I got to try this potentially groundbreaking title. The longer I played, the more people crowded around me. Soon I felt like a star. I was on fire, playing war like a champ in front of my very own audience. The more people watched, the better I played flying that deadly warplane with precision.

1:39:08Then it was over. I turned around and handed the controller to... Shigeru Miyamoto. This is a dream you had, right? This is not an E3 story. The father of Barrio Zelda was behind me the whole time. The crowd had been there for him. because they were watching the man who developed the Wii's motion controller try his competitor's product for the first time. And you're just like, wow. And so I just stood there, dovefounded, watching Miyamoto play this game, and his face had no expression on it. None. Stone cold. He was not as impressed with your playing. Was he? Yeah. I just saw like... Well, Sean didn't know.

1:39:51He wasn't paying attention. He was locked in. I was in the game. I was in the game playing for my audience. Paris Hilton and like those TV – or the T-shirt cannons. She had T-shirt cannons of – I never went to E3. I've never been once. There's so much weird stuff. Every instinct I ever had was to stay away. And I feel like it collapsed on itself, right? Like it was a trade show. The three big companies were there. I think in COVID, like Microsoft pulled out, then Sony pulled out. And there was like a question of whether it would come back. And I think those companies all were like, wait, this sucked.

1:40:24Like we can just do our own events, which is what all the tech companies have realized over time. And there was no chance it was ever coming back. For years, I heard people say, oh, E3 is going to die this next year. We don't need it. Particularly after that Santa Monica show where it got like really tiny. They were like, oh, we don't need E3. But what I kept hearing smart people in the room say was that the executives at the video game companies would always need a stage so that they could go glad hand each other. and they needed to have like some place where the meetings would happen. And now we have Jeff Keighley with the Summer Game Fest and all those things.

1:41:00And he'll gladly let people, executives, hand each other on stage even if they have nothing to show. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what happened. Like that 2008 Santa Monica show was, it had gotten too big, right? Like 2007 was enormous. It was really, really unwieldy. It was not a great time. And so they said, okay, we're going to shrink it down. And then they reopened it And they were like, well, we need more people So we're going to let anybody come And that just made it, like, not a trade show anymore But this weird hybrid that didn't make anybody happy And then finally, COVID came And, like, COVID effectively, like, they realized Oh, yeah, everybody realized Oh, wait, I don't need this I don't actually need the glad hand here Jeff Keighley and, you know, a web broadcast is enough for me.

1:41:52All right. Well, that's the Verchast. We'll be back next week with our CES community. The vibes are different for CES. People are pumped. Such a downer. People are pumped.

1:42:05Things that did not stop in the pandemic. Back with a vengeance, CES. No, that's it. Sean, thank you so much for coming. This has been really fun. Oh, thank you. Can I just say one more thing before you take us out? Um, I just, I just want to shout out a person on threads named Mark Prograno, who decided that what he would do is post at me every single day until I mentioned him on a Verge cast episode, which I had no intention of ever doing. And then he did it for two weeks to the point where threads throttled him and wouldn't let him post for a whole day because they thought threads thought he was harassing me.

1:42:38Uh, he's allowed to post again, but I just want to say, I hear you and thank you. And also please no one ever do that to me. very good very good site looked great this week go read Sean's coverage of the trial all sorts of other good stuff the twitter package is amazing if you haven't been on the scroll back of Alexandria I spent 90 full minutes just scrolling reading tweets and it is the single best way to kill time on the internet right now yeah that's it that's RichCast

1:43:16And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. This episode was mixed and edited by Xander Adams. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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