Google I/O recap: AI is taking over Search

24:19It's neat. Play with it. Look at the demos. It's neat. It's definitely going to have, we're going to be talking about this for the next five years. I promise you. Oh, yeah. I'm going to ask it the worst questions as soon as I get access. It's bold but responsible, Alex. I'm going to have a bold but responsible series of questions for it. They also rolled out generative AI in a bunch of other products, most notably, I think, in the Google Docs suite, what they call Workspace. So Gmail, Google Docs, Slides, the whole thing. And all of that looked sweet. Yeah. Didn't it just, I was like, oh, this is all super useful.

24:52Yeah, I continue to think that like, we're in this phase of thinking about AI as this like huge thing that understands everything about everything and can answer all of my questions. And I think by far the more useful version of AI most of the time is going to be the one that you're just like, what is in this dumb document that I don't feel like reading? And like, there was a demo they did in Gmail where you just say, I need, I cancel my flight. It's essentially the prompt you give to Gmail. and it goes through your email, it finds your confirmation numbers, it finds all the information that you need about your flight in order to be able to cancel it.

25:27And again, I have deep, deep doubts about its ability to do this successfully and well every time, but at least this is the idea. And it just writes that email for you and it has access to all of that information. It's just sitting there in your email and it's able to comb through stuff that is yours, that you care about, that you have decided is relevant to you and make that stuff for you. And that's the stuff where I'm like, okay, this is real. This is something. And they showed off, what was it? Project Tailwind? That like kind of AI notebook thing. That's like their notion killer, right? Yeah, it's really hard.

26:01They framed it as like an educational experience, but you look at it and it's just like, this is just a research tool for anyone who stores and needs to make sense of information. And for me, it's just like, I can just like put a PDF of a lawsuit in there and just ask questions about that lawsuit to Google's AI. Like that is massively powerful. This is where bold but responsible has to come into play. So they said at the end of that part of the presentation, they're like, we thought about this for students, but like anybody, like a lawyer could use this. And I'm like, if I'm a lawyer and I'm like, here's all the cases I didn't read for this lawsuit I'm doing, summarize them.

26:39And this thing hallucinates a little bit. But it's like, oh, I'm so sorry you're going to jail. That's going to separate the good law students from the bad law students. Whether or not they pay for the version of Project Tailwind that hallucinates or not. It's like the next tier up in pricing. They had another demo in Google Sheets, which I thought was really interesting, where they were talking about colleges. And if you find me at college, it's good if I want to be involved in video games. And I'm interested in animation. And I made a list. and then the person demoing it was like, tell me if they're public or private at a table.

27:14And so it added another column to the list and it said whether they're colleges, they're public or private. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, this is super cool. Also, all that stuff we talked about with search where it has the button where it tells you all the sources, none of that's here. This is like the most dangerous place where you're now having it draft documents and do stuff for you and you have no way of checking. And when you're like, make a list that I will depend on in my college search, And you're going to like if it gets it wrong that a university is public or private, like I'm not sure the stakes are very high.

27:45Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't. But there's a lot of trust that's downstream of that. I mean, the average tuition, you ask it for the average tuition, then you get accepted. And then you're like, oh, this is actually one hundred thousand dollars more than I thought. I mean, if you get all the way to applying and you don't double check that, like I think that's 18 year olds are a different, different class of folks than us. One of the conspiracy theories that I've heard about Bard in particular is that it exists to make people do more Google searches because you have to fact check every single thing that Bard says to you.

28:13So it pops up this thing over and over, right? That's like, Bard is an experiment. It's going to get lots of stuff wrong. And then there's that button at the bottom that says Google it. And so it's like every time I, you know, fill out this table and then I have to go Google every one of these just to check to make sure it's a public or private university. And Google's like, sick. We just got 12 Google searches out of this. They announce these upgrades to Bard. Like, do you know, like, sometimes you have a friend who sucks and then, like, they get a little bit better. Like, I don't know how else to describe this.

28:42Like, what's a meaner way of saying, like, my friend got a glow up? Like, oh, shit, you're hot now. Like, you know, it's like that thing that's, like, very insulting. Bard used to be bad at math. And now it's good at math. Like, they said this over and over again. Seriously, they're like, Bard is now better at math and better at coding. And it's like, because it used to suck before. So they've improved this. And the big change here, they upgraded the model to something called Palm 2. So the model they have been very proud of is called Palm. They've upgraded the model to Palm 2. They're very proud of how big it is.

29:17There are different sizes of model inside of Palm. And they have, like, adorable names. There's, like, Gecko and Bison and Unicorn. Unicorn's the biggest, and Gecko's the littlest. And Gecko can run locally on a phone. So they're very proud of this model. And that's the thing that's now powering Bard. And that has led to a pretty fantastic capability increase for Bard. So maybe it won't be as confused and boring as before. And then it can now do really interesting things. It can definitely write code. But then they showed, hey, write code, improve your own code, and then leave comments on it in Korean.

29:50And it just did it, which is pretty cool. Like, I don't know if the Korean comments were any good. Again, Bard, a little shaky. But it was just cool that they could do that. And then they talked a lot about multimodal interfaces so that you can talk to Bard with pictures or you can have Bard generate pictures for you, which is really cool. And then they're doing plugins. So in addition to generating pictures for you, it can go talk to Adobe Firefly and have Adobe Firefly do generative AI images for you. Like the flex for Google is like, oh, we're Google. and we can just call all of these companies and say, do you want to plug into our thing that's going to show up with a billion users on day one?

30:29And they all say yes. The plugins thing I think is like the most interesting story in chatbots for the next couple of years because this is now what everybody has decided is the next turn of this, is that the chatbot is the interface, whether it's chat GPT or Bing or BARD, the chatbot is the interface and you're going to use these plugins to pull in all kinds of other data. And that's either going to turn out like the App Store, which is like a huge, incredibly successful business that has birthed entire new industries, or it's going to turn out like browser extensions, which are like neat and cool, but don't make anybody any money or solve any real problems for anybody.

31:06And it's going to be totally fascinating to see which of those it turns out to be. But I think you're right that the other advantage that Google has is it has most of those services already that it can plug in. Like Google doesn't have to go out and talk to Kayak to do a travel plugin for BARD. It just has Google Travel. It can just do that. And it has maps that it can plug in. It has Google Lens that it can plug in. And it's like all of this stuff, like AI is coming into search at the same time that Google is coming into BARD in a really interesting way. And all of this stuff is first party right now, but it could get bigger very quickly.

31:41Doesn't that kind of set Google up for regulation troubles? though, because that's essentially showing off just how big and huge and far-reaching Google is, which is the thing that has the FTC really concerned right now, rumbling about, well, we want to write Google up because it's too big. And they're primarily focused on the advertising section of this. But if you can go do what all of these other apps and all of these other plugins and all these other companies can do in one place, that seems like a really powerful argument for, yeah, break that up. Well, they've got to actually do it. I think like, yes, I think there's a reason that there are a lot of government affairs staffers walking around.

32:19Like, I don't want to I don't think it's possible to overstate like where we were. There was the press and then there was like large groups of people under signs that said government affairs. And then somewhere else there were developers, presumably. But it was it was a very obvious Google was like courting this group of people. And you're right. Like they have to walk this line. And when they did Google travel, they got into some trouble. Right. Like they had they bought a company. They bought a travel agency, basically. Like, all this stuff happened in the past, but it happened. And now Google owns it.

32:49And it's, like, pretty hard for them to get into trouble doing things that they already can do against deals that were already approved and went through. Especially when all they have to say is, like, well, there's OpenAI and Microsoft on the other side of the table. Like, we're competing against the fastest growing consumer software product ever. And, like, no one thinks we're winning. Is there a Bing travel? Yeah. I mean, like, Microsoft operates all these services. And like they're Microsoft. If Microsoft wants to stand up a competitor to Google, like it definitely can. And there's all these other startups.

33:19So I think that moment for Google is they're about to say we're adding AI to all these products and they need to keep the regulators happy. But they haven't, like I keep saying, they haven't actually done it. Like they're just showing us these demos that are really, really cool. But they haven't actually shipped it yet. They're being very, very careful. And they're saying out loud, here's all these bold ideas we have. We're going to roll them out responsibly. We know we've got these problems. To that end, one of their biggest announcements was every time you make an AI-generated image with a Google tool, it's going to get a watermark and it's going to have metadata embedded into it that says it's AI-generated and it's been synthesized media.

33:57And they want broadly the industry to adopt that. Is that going to happen? I don't know how to answer that question. But that's where Google's head is at. It's like we're not going to give you these tools until we've done what we can to make them safe and convince governments around the world that they should trust us that we can do these things. I think there's power to that approach for them. How much for you guys being there in the room with them, did this feel like kind of a response to a lot of those regulatory concerns? I'll give you one example, straight on. They showed a really cool demo where someone was speaking English and then they ran it through an AI.

34:30And I think it was in Spanish, right, David? I think that's right, yeah. And it came out and the person's voice had been remapped with perfect intonation into Spanish. and in the video of that person speaking, their lips had been remapped from English into Spanish too. Right. Super cool. And they are staring at a group of government affairs people and they're like, we know that there's a downside to this. Like, we know that this is like a very dangerous tool to unleash on the world. They actually said the words deepfake on stage. Yeah, we can now deepfake in every language. And they're like, and our solution to this is we're only going to give this tool to our trusted partners.

35:05Which is, on the one hand, great, right? Google is being responsible. On the other hand, it comes with a huge set of questions about how they will decide which partners to trust and whether or not they will cave to bad faith criticisms. All these big tech companies have caved to bad faith criticisms about who they trust and why they trust. Okay. And then it also is kind of funny because it sort of implies that Google is the only company in the world. And it's like, y 'all, people are doing this on their laptops today. Right. Deepfake revenge porn is a problem today. So you promising that you won't give this language translation tool to people you don't trust, like solves this problem 2%.

35:48Because the real problem is like arbitrary code execution on laptops, which no one can stop. And maybe no one should stop. And there's a tension in there that, you know, we could talk about for like the rest of our lives probably. So like in the room, while you guys were in the room, did it feel like Google was doing a job of saying that they were trustworthy? Like, did you feel, did everybody seem to sense like, yeah, these are the trustworthy ones. These are the ones they trust with AI versus OpenAI, Microsoft, and everybody else that's kind of in this space right now. I have spent a lot of time trying to decide how I feel about this because all of my instincts say that no, everybody is moving too fast and nobody is being trustworthy.

36:28But also, like in talking to these folks and even in watching the keynote, I kind of believe Google that it's trying to do this. I mean, one of the things that I think seems to be true is that these kinds of products have existed inside of Google for a long time. And it has been slow and careful in how it released them to the world. Right. And then I think when ChatGPT and then Bing happened, Google's hand was forced. And so it started having to play its cards much more quickly and much more aggressively. And I think whether that was the right call remains to be seen on a variety of different levels.

37:05But I do think Google is trying to do this the right way. And I think that's partly self-serving, right? Google has a gigantic search business to protect. Google has a huge number of regulatory issues that it's fighting against. So Google has a lot of really self-serving reasons to try and be the good guy here. But at the same time, I think Google is trying to be the good guy here. So, like, incentives aside, I do think the company is trying to be responsible. And it's possible that I'm just, like, being taken in by the narrative they're trying to spin because that's clearly the narrative they're trying to spin.

37:36But that is what it has felt like to me so far. There's a lot of people at Google who really, truly believe that they're five years away or ten years away from AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. Yeah. and that they should be the only ones to do it because they'll get it right and it won't kill everybody. And that's something. That's a certain amount of confidence. It's a take. I would say more cynically, if you're Google and Microsoft, what you want to be is the regulated monopoly. And I think if they can convince a bunch of lawmakers to effectively be like, we only trust AI to these three companies that we will regulate directly.

38:16Google's like, yeah, we'll be one of those three companies. I just, it's like the kids still have laptops, man. They're going to figure out how to do it. Whether or not the government says, like, and, like, there's just something in there that's, like, I'll give you the example of AI Drake. My favorite character in the entire game. You want to stop AI Drake, right? Okay, well, what are you going to do? You can go to Apple and say, don't let AI Drake into Logic. You can get a Pro Tool. None of that makes sense. That's not going to stop it. You can go to Google and Microsoft and say, don't make tools.

38:49Okay, but that's not going to stop it because the open source tools just let you do it. You're going to go to Dell and Intel and say, don't let this code run on your laptops. At some point, the kids are just going to run software and they're going to make AI Drake. And Google is in that kind of position with all of this stuff. There's a really interesting leaked memo or allegedly leaked memo from inside of Google that I think the headline is, We Have No Moat. And it basically argues that it's not actually competing with open AI, that they're competing with open source models. Like the meta model got leaked and they're saying we're competing with open source.

39:26Like that community is going to go faster than we ever will because we're like wringing our hands about safety and worrying about open AI. And that's just running at the speed of community on the internet. And like there's just something there that like what's Google what are a bunch of Google lawyers and a bunch of government lawyers going to do in a room to stop a bunch of teenagers making AI drink like that is just an unfair way from the jump. And like I think that's going to be one of the most interesting dynamics that we see play out because at the end of that all like a big decision is will we let people run whatever software they want on their laptops.

40:01And I think the answer is almost always going to be yes. Yeah, well, it just makes me think of like, that's one of the reasons Google is nervous, right? Because it's, it's going to be a lot easier for the government to regulate Google than it is for the government to regulate AI. And I think it may see it as a proxy for regulating AI to tell a couple of these companies what to do. But it's like shutting down Napster didn't end piracy. But it is it is one button you can press that does some of the work. And I think if I'm Google, I'm worried that I am the biggest, most pressable button in that space right now.

40:40Yeah. One thing I definitely want to talk about, and, like, the tweets came in instantly. Google demoed a new magic editor function for Google Photos, AI-based, generative AI-based, where they were like, now you can just edit a photo. And the demo was a child holding balloons on a park bench, and they just circled the child and they scooted him over on the bench. and then the general badge figured and like my twitter is pretty quiet i haven't tweeted in a long time but you know during events i keep it open just to see and the immediate instant what is a photo replies like this i i think i put it in live log this is a singularity level event for what is a photo like it is right there with produce an image of my child as a text prompt right we're looking at a photo and we don't like its composition we don't like the way the sky looks.

41:31We don't like this. And with a tap, with a circle, we can just instantly change it. Yes, there's some Photoshop conversation there, but this is different, like meaningfully different than that stuff. Yeah. The demo that really got me is there's this picture of a woman standing in front of a waterfall and doing the thing where you sort of stick your hand out as if you're like, you know, catching the waterfall or like the thing they do where you're holding up the leaning tower of Pisa or whatever. And she got the angle slightly wrong. But with Magic Editor, you literally just drag her over to the side of the photo so that she gets the angle right.

42:03And it's literally, it's just that simple that just like tap on the thing and just slide the woman over in the photo and then put it back and it looks just as normal. And you can change the sky, you can change the background. It's the kind of thing that it's like, this is like the natural finish of Instagram filters. If you just like take Instagram filters and play it all the way out to the end, you have this where you can just change every part of your photo, however you feel like. And this is another one of those, like on the one hand, like as a person who tends to take just slightly wrong photos all the time, this kicks ass.

42:37I'm going to use this all the time and it's coming to Google photos. So it's not just pixel specific. This is going to be applicable to like many photos that I take from now on. And yet I'm going to look at every one of these and be like, am I lying to the universe about this photo that I took every time? Right. No, it's like Photoshop exists. Right. And like, if you just think about Instagram is a really good example here because if you think about the Instagram norms that have changed over time do you remember when using DSLR photos on Instagram was like kind of a faux pas yeah like that was a norm on that platform that you were only supposed to use your phone camera it was like weird and that's gone like obliterated by the Kardashian machine like DSLR photos on Instagram are there all the time mirrorless photos on Instagram are there all the time and then it was you shouldn't photoshop so much Instagram like they have the filters but like a straight photoshopped it still needs to be a little bit raw.

43:27And that is fully obliterated too. And now it's like, oh, now everybody has this like completely like hot shit version of Photoshop that's AI powered that requires no technical skill. And you're like, the example that showed was, I think it was a gray sky. And like, do you want the sky to be as blue as you remember it? Which is an incredibly philosophically loaded question. Yeah. How blue do you remember the sky being on this day? Like, I don't remember how blue the sky was in the day I proposed to my wife, but if you asked me, It was the bluest it has ever been in world history. Should it be that blue?

43:59Like, I don't know. And so like, you just get to this place where it's like, you really could be like, as an influencer, like, you know, where's that place in Italy with it? Like the, everyone stands on like the hand and the cliff. Do you know what I'm talking about? You can just put, make a photo of me standing on this thing. Like, whatever. Yeah. Like, does it matter if I was actually there to take this photo? If I'm going to have the AI totally correct it? It does. Cause you're still a liar. like when you lie into a photoshop you're still like a liar but i'm saying the norms on instagram right and then they had another ai thing where like bard was generating captions of cute puppies and you could just see this thing being like all right i'm gonna like ai generate the photo then ai generate the caption and like automate an instagram account i'm telling singularity event for what is a photo i want to be more angsty about it but i just can't because i keep thinking about Every time we've seen these turns on Instagram, at some point, everybody's like, hey, you know, this is all just lies, right?

44:55And then there's like a whole thing like Jezebel and all these other sites are like, these are full of lies. This is destructive to body images and stuff like that. I'm not saying Instagram is more important than it is. I'm saying it's a useful thing to examine how like norms in a photography community change over time. Yeah. So you start with you shouldn't even use a mirrorless camera on this platform. Like that was a thing. And you're like all the way up to Photoshop is fine. You're all the way up to like there's a lot of professional photography on Instagram. And now you're all the way up to, yep, maybe there'll be some blogs talking about lies, but everyone's just going to use it and it's going to be fine.

45:32And like there's just something about the norms of photography in there that is interesting to pull out of Instagram. But I think it's broadly true of all the platforms. And it's not going to be a huge leap until you push the shutter button and the cameras start doing this stuff preemptively for you. It is already happening, right? That is already happening with Samsung and the moon. And like, hey, we see that you're trying to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower with, you know, your partner in it. We're just going to, when you hit the shutter button, we're just going to get to what you think you wanted.

46:03It's like, it's just like obviously the next thing that's going to happen. Yeah. I have deeply mixed feelings about this, but it was wild to watch. The demo where they scooted the kid over on the bench. the utility of that is a thousand percent obvious right oh yeah i wish my kid was in the center of this photo the magic eraser where they're constantly circling people and deleting them from photos like bye-bye like a generation from now some gen z boss is gonna like fire someone by deleting them from a zoom call like that is absolutely gonna happen just circling them on the call. Like, Tony, it's been good.

46:41It's just circled out. You're out. See you later. This is Steve Jobs. Let Tony Fidel know that he was going to get fired by deleting him from the contacts in the first iPhone demo. This is a real thing that happened. But, like, that's all just wild. It's like, we're just, we're very close to accepting Magic Eraser as being a normal thing that happens in photos. Take this person on the background. Take this distraction on the background. It's like this close to being normal. The phone's going to do it for you before you decide to do it. Very close to being normal. What is a photo? Singularity event for what is a photo.

47:09Okay, we have to stop because otherwise it will be the entire show. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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49:52All right, we're back. OK, so I want to talk about the most important. I cannot believe we forgot to talk about this. So Google organized I.O. into sections like you do. It's a two-hour keynote. So first, here's all the stuff we're doing. Here's all the AI we're adding to our products. We just talked about that. Then they're like, and then there's Google Cloud. And here's all the ways you as a business can add AI to your products using our tools. And they talked about their partners. And some of them are terrifying. Like, what do you think Deloitte's going to do with AI? I don't want it. Is it going to fire a lot of people, companies around the country and world?

50:28Yeah, it certainly is. Yep. With the power of Google Cloud. Like, what's Accenture going to do with AI? Yeah, dude, they're going to downsize your shit. Like, it's just like very obvious what's going to happen there. But then there is this moment, and I cannot stop thinking about it because it came up twice. First, the company said it, and then later they referred back to it. Google was like, and here's it in action. I just want you to listen to this and then we can all just figure it out together. Folks come to a Wendy's and a lot of times they use some of our acronyms, the Junior Bacon Cheeseburger.

51:00They'll come in and give me a JVC. You know, we need to understand what that really means. And Voice AI can help make sure that order is accurate every single time. Okay. Now I can be charitable here. We should listen to it again, shouldn't we? It's the Junior Bacon Cheeseburger. They'll come in and give me a JVC. You know, we need to understand what that really means. And voice AI can help make sure that order is accurate every single time. I'm just imagining just hordes of teens running into Wendy's screaming, give me a JBC. So, charitably, what this means is they're going to build some sort of voice recognition order taking system.

51:40Again, downsizing their workforce. And apparently the teens have started calling Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers JBCs and they need the voice AI to recognize us. Right. That's more or less what he's trying to say, if I understand it. He said that without any of this context. He just said it and Google ran it. So we would all understand that the problem of the robot order taking system not understanding what a JBC is, is so challenging that they need to use Google Cloud. I'm just going to say paying a human being like$15 an hour to understand what a JBC is, is a better solution than building a voice AI.

52:16I feel like they, maybe it's just because I'm about to move. And so I've been having to make a lot of calls to like utility companies in the last couple of days. And today I called, I've called a gas company to like get my gas turned on in my new place. And they were, they wanted to know what my phone number was. So I said my phone number and my phone number starts with an eight and they went, okay, your phone number starts with a one. And I was like, no, eight and one sound nothing alike. We need to understand what a JBC is. Like, yeah. Like y 'all can't even understand what a one and an eight are.

52:44And you're going to tell me that you can understand what JBC is. It's good. It was like a pin drop silence in the keynote today. In particular, the idea that Wendy's was going to invest massively in AI to take cheeseburger orders is very good. It's a perfect sign of where we are that Google was like, what's the best compelling customer case for Google Cloud? They couldn't get like Waffle House. You know, I don't know what smothered means. Tell me what my smothered hash browns be. Also, I just want to point out that understanding that JBC means junior bacon cheeseburger, you don't need AI to. You can just tell the computer.

53:22That's like a super easy computer science problem. That was the thing that kept jumping out. Like nothing that you just described requires Google Cloud. Like you're good. But no, I agree. I mean, I think so. I was reading Wendy's is obviously very proud of the fact that it's doing this. Like this reminds me of all the stuff that Domino's always does, right? where like anytime somebody launches a new technology, Domino's is like, we're going to use it to deliver your pizza. There's like that thing where you can order a pizza from CarPlay and they're really excited about that. And it's like, Domino's, that's nothing.

53:51Like you've done nothing. But anyway, so Wendy's is very proudly announcing this thing. And their CEO, Todd Penninger, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, it will be very conversational. You won't know you're talking to any but an employee. One, don't buy that. Two, is that what we're going for? Like this is back to the like everybody's just going to use AI to fire a bunch of people. Like I feel like I'm pretty happy talking to like a stoned 17 year old about my JBC behind the counter at Wendy's. Like I don't need a robot to solve this problem for me. Also, which side of the counter are you?

54:26Is it drive through or is it just walking in? Because walking in, don't they all have the screens now? What if you are stoned? I just like let's just walk through the situation in which you're yelling, give me a JBC. This is very realistic. Let's go. All right, LaserBong, walk me through the situations in which you are screaming, give me a JBC to a robot at Wendy's. I mean, that happens a lot of the times. And you're usually like, I want that and some chicken nuggets, the spicy kind. That shouldn't be hard. That's a very easy conversation to have. Because usually if you're stoned, you're saying it very slowly anyway.

54:56So you're enunciating. A voice act can help us understand when people want JBCs. All right, let's talk about Android. There was a lot of Android news at I.O. as well. Sort of. There's a really fun demo of like new lock screens. They like talked about Android, but they didn't talk about Android, right? Okay. Yeah. Like it was Android 14, but like there was a Pixel Fold. There's a Pixel 7a. There are new lock screens. They did a wallpaper demo that was like 96 % of the Android demo. It was just like Dave Burke, who runs all the Android stuff and is lovely and did a terrific job in his demo, just goofed around with his wallpapers.

55:35He's like, what up? We have a new Android. Let me change my wallpaper. I really liked the wallpapers. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed that. But yes, but like Apple, like half the time is like, look at my wallpaper thing. There was one part during the demo where he was showing off how they could make cinematic photos. And he was like, I did this thing where like, here's a photo of a kid in front of a lake. And like, I pushed the button and now I cut out the kid and generative AI is filled out the background and look at this parallax. And he's like, it's beautiful. And I was like, this looks insane. yeah i don't want my wallpapers to move that much yeah like it was wild okay so but there was android news like as a whole right there are new pixel devices a pixel tablet the pixel fold they a new home app at one point they were like rcs now has 800 million users and android messages and then very pointedly we're like we hope every phone maker adopts rcs and there was a cheer from the crowd and no Dieter.

56:32I kept expecting him. And yeah. And then all the spotlights shot shown on Dieter. But now it's like the yearly ritual of Google asking Apple politely to support her. And it's just never going to happen. If you recall at the code conference last year, someone asked Tim Cook a question like my grandmother hates the green bubbles or I can't send photos. And he was like, buy your mom an iPhone. Like he doesn't care. The man doesn't care. They're not going to do it. There was a cheer for Matter, which is like Google is just like a very different audience. Like when Apple's like, and this will support Matter.

57:07Like, first of all, you're like, I'm in a parallel universe. Apple said the name of an open standard. It's not going to happen. But there's not rarely cheers. This was like, and it supports Matter. And there was like a cheer from the crowd. And they're like, RCS. And there's like a cheer from the crowd. So that was cool. They added a new Find My Devices update. Alex, you're in on this, right? Yeah, it's going to be better at triangulating, right? Because right now Apple does this too, where it uses all the Apple phones to better triangulate so you can find your thing. And now they're going to do that with Google and Android.

57:39But the difference is Android has way more users than Apple does. No offense to all of the Apple fans listening. I'm sorry. It's just the fact Android has way more users. But I'm curious how, like, there's some stuff we don't quite know, I think. Like, what version of Android do you need, right? Because there's a lot of Android users out there, but most of them aren't on the newest version. So if you need the newest version, this becomes a lot less useful than the Apple one. I feel like this is like a perfect microcosm of the potential and peril of Android. Yes. Because a lot of the stuff, especially in that demo, was stuff you can do with Apple devices for your other Apple devices.

58:21And what Google is saying is we're actually going to make this a standard that anyone can tap into. And, you know, tile devices are going to use it and other companies' devices are going to be able to be part of this. And actually they're working with Apple to do some of the work on the unwanted tracking notifications. If there's a tracker that it doesn't recognize, it's following you around. It'll alert you and try to help. And that's really great. Matter is the same kind of thing. Google is doing the same kind of stuff with FastPair. It's like the best version of Android basically takes all of Apple's good ideas and makes it available to everybody.

58:48And that is amazing. And in theory, that actually assumes that Apple goes first on a lot of things, which it doesn't. But that's the idea, right? It is an open, successful version of this that plays nicely with everybody. Except that it cannot get its shit together enough to put everybody on the same version of Android, such that if you use a phone from 15 minutes ago, you're on the wrong version of Android and none of this works anymore. And so Google has tried to solve this by selling a lot of pixels, but it can't figure out how to sell a lot of pixels. And so it's like what Google is trying to do is right and powerful and good and would be massively successful.

59:24And it just it just can't do it. And I don't know. It's possible that that approach those two approaches are actually like mutually exclusive, that if you're going to be the open one, you actually can't force everybody to like play along and update their software. But it just it just breaks my heart every time. So they gave some stats here that were really interesting, though, that kind of support your point. Right. That it's like a long tail play. and it was like there are 300 plus pairs of headphones that support Android fast pair. And it's like I didn't know that number is that big. I didn't know that there are literally 300 different kinds of headphones that support Android fast pair now.

59:58And that rules. That's awesome. That's awesome, right? And it's like, oh, that just happened over time. They announced this like several years ago and then, you know, all the new phones came out with last year's version of Android. And over time they all just inherited Android fast pair and the headphone makers did it. And that's like pretty cool. but you can't announce it, right? You can announce it at the beginning when no one can get it. And then you can announce it now when like it just sort of happened. And in the middle, there's like this vacuum of news. Whereas Apple's like, I don't know, spatial audio, everything has it now.

1:00:27And that's a tension for Google. I think this goes back to why Android wasn't a huge feature of IO this year, or at least the big keynote, right? Like they're going to do a whole Android keynote too. Most years, Google IO is like Android 14, Android 13, Android Oreo, whatever. And this time it was like, Android, yeah, that's here too. And they didn't really focus on the timeliness of it. I think it's because they can't, right? They just are too diversified. There are too many phones, too many devices out there. There are, but they did the thing that they did, which is they announced the Pixel 7a, the Pixel Fold, and the Pixel tablet.

1:01:01And so to some extent, they solved their own problem. Yeah, but they're no longer focused on what's new right now. What is the thing that you're going to go be able to download on your device tomorrow to have a lot of fun? And said it's like this is stuff that's going to come down the pipe eventually. You're going to be really excited about it. Well, you get emoji home screens. What they're focused on is you're going to spend$1 ,800 on a phone that turns into a tablet. And here's a bunch of tablet optimizations. Do you know how many times they mentioned that Google has updated 50-plus of its apps to run better in tablet mode?

1:01:32Yes. Oh, and they did the thing where they, like, nagged themselves again when they introduced the tablets. They were like, so tablets kind of suck. They're in a weird middle place. And sometimes you buy them and you shove them in a drawer and you don't use them anymore. You should buy our tablet. It was like, oh, that's a weird sell. So the Pixel tablet is cool. We saw it. I would not say it looks remarkable except for the stand built into the case, which is really cool. It's like a metal ring. It's very clicky. It's cool. And it's got a charging dock that comes with it. It's$4.99. The charging dock by itself, I think, is$129,$149, but you get it for free if you buy the tablet.

1:02:10It's cool. It's an Android tablet. There's nothing about it that's not an Android tablet, except when you put it in the dock, it does the cool photo frame thing that Nest Hub's do, and it has a new smart home Google Home app. Other than that, it's an Android tablet. This is why we talked a little bit about this on the Wednesday show with Dan, who got an early look at some of this stuff. But I think the thing about these large screen Android devices is that apps are bad and they have always been bad. And Google has begged and pleaded many times to make them not bad. And all the developers say, we don't care.

1:02:42Nobody sells good Android tablets. We're over it. And there was even a great moment in the keynote where Rick Osterloh was like, we have a better lineup of Android tablets than ever. And he showed like three tablets no one's ever heard of. And that was it. He's like, would you like this Lenovo Android tablet? And everyone's like, no, this is nothing. But the Google optimizations are all well and good, and I'm very excited about that. There was a suspicious lack of really great big screen third-party Android apps still because Google has such a massive hill to climb to make anyone care enough to build these big screen devices.

1:03:13But I think the genius thing that Google did with the tablet was essentially treat it like a TV screen, right? Like the demo that we saw, Nilay, has a big Google TV widget. It has Chromecast on it. So you can cast to it, which is really cool. So it's the first. right it's the first android tablet that you can cast two right which is a big deal and and it is like very clearly this is a thing that like it'll run the google apps that you want but mostly this is for you to watch things on a screen and most apps that you can watch things on have a button that you can press to make them full screen and that does the job so they've like so aggressively constrained what this tablet can do that you almost don't have to worry about the app problem i think the foldable phone is a very different thing that is going to have a much higher hill to climb.

1:03:56But the Pixel tablet, I'm like, I don't know that I'm going to care all that much because Netflix is going to look fine and Peacock is going to look fine and I'll move on with my life. How many apps are people using on tablets? Yeah, they're using consumption. What is a modern TV? Go look at the TV in your living right now. It's an ARM processor. It's a Linux-based OS. And it's a bunch of video playing apps. It's a giant Android tablet. That's all it is. And now they made a little one and they made a doc for it and that's cool like i can definitely see myself buying it i wish that the camera could be electrically disconnected i do not like having a camera on those kinds of on smart displays in the house it's just like that's the line for me it's like i'll put i'll put microphones anywhere like i wish there was a button or a shutter or something on that camera by the way they showed a video uh where a celebrity i think she's the narrator of the circle that's what he was telling me michelle buteau was taking meetings she's like i take three to five zoom meetings a day and she was just sitting in front of a tablet on the dock with like no keyboard and i was like this didn't happen is that this is not the way to do it no i but i'm definitely gonna buy one i'm gonna suck for this i'm also thinking about buying the fold because we played with it and it is exactly the right form factor like they got the size and shape and hinge of this thing right the hinge is right off the surface duo like this is what the Surface Duo should have been.

1:05:21But it folds perfectly flat. The hinge is really tight. It's not tall like the Galaxy Fold. It's just the right size and shape. I have some concerns about the screen, though. And also that it's$1 ,800. Well, that's like... Those two things are related for me, right? Because I think to just hold it as an object, it's very impressive. It's really well made. It's really solid. It feels really good. It's basically an iPhone X that opens into an iPad mini, which is like the dream that is literally that is what i want size wise but it has that crease down the middle of the screen that is very much there it's a little better than the galaxy fold but oh boy do you still notice it but the big thing that threw me was and we were using it outdoors in a relatively sunny place in mountain view but like the glare on that thing was awful like really really really bad there was a cheapness to it i don't know how else to describe it like and there's a screen protector that you can see so like there's the edge of the screen protector and then the display itself and then like the little lip of the bezel just learning nothing from samsung on that one yeah it was right there like i want it and it's cool and like the tricks they gave it where you're like watching a video on the thing you open it it pops up in the video there and then like you're taking a selfie with the back camera all that was neat um we all tried to open it with one hand which was just a terrifying experience like you're we're outside holding 1800 phones and like like Like, trying to open it with one hand.

1:06:48Alex, I wish you could have seen the face that Neelai made. So it was Neelai, V song, Alison Johnson, and me. And we're all standing around this wooden table. And we all decide we're going to try to open this phone with one hand. And I go first and sort of like push my thumb in and try to pop it open. And just fully almost drop the thing. Like I had to like bobble it to catch it. And Neelai literally goes, oh! whoa, just reflexively makes a noise. It was terrifying. It was so good. And then we all did it. All of us in turn were like, what if I made my other friend have that experience that I just had?

1:07:26The phone cannot be opened with one hand. We did see Dieter. He did insist that he could do it. He was like, you just do da-da-da. Like he's Dieter. That's a very Dieter move. None of us have mastered it yet. V thinks she's mastered it. I will say that. She had a thumb thing that she was better at it than the rest of us, for sure. It was like she was pushing it straight up into the air. It was getting higher from the ground from disaster. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. This thing is not made to be opened with one hand. Yeah, but there's just a little bit of... Right in the middle where the crease is and the hinge, the bezel stops, and there's a little flat plastic piece.

1:08:04And it's just like, ugh. Is it smushy? No, it's not squishy. It's just, I don't know. There's something about it that just didn't give me$1 ,800. And that's weird because it's nicer than the Fold. Right, David? Oh, much. All Pixel products are that way. They always are the same price as Samsung, the same price as Apple, maybe$100 cheaper, just not quite as nice. There's something about it where it's just a little cheaper, just a little more affordable feeling. I know. I will say this is the right size and thinness and aspect ratio. They got all that right. It looks gorgeous. And I do love the idea of just like opening it and like doing a thing, you know.

1:08:45Yeah. No, like we've talked on this show about how 6.1 inches is the correct size for a smartphone screen. And this is not an invitation for debate. Like that's just a true fact. This is the official position of the Vergecast. Don't worry about it. Keep going, Eli. Keep going. Bold. Bold. old but it is it is i would be curious to see you know slight variations on it but this size immediately felt right to me and like alice and avi were able to close it and slip it into their pockets you're you're able to hold and use the thing in one hand you can open it and hold it in two hands and type on that split keyboard fairly comfortably like i agree i think this is really right just sort of blueprint wise for what one of these is supposed to feel like like you can use it closed and it's just a regular phone it looks and feels like a regular phone but that protector on the display i'm just looking at the photos of it is it that like in dan's photos it's really big is it that big in in real life yeah it's like i said there's just like a little a little touch of jank in there like you know just spice it up a little bit uh i think i think david had like the best take on it at one point david you were like i can't wait for the next generation of this and it's like yeah that's that feels about right change nothing about it except make everything a tiny bit better is like yeah luckily that's kind of the whole pixels move So I'm optimistic.

1:10:01Or they'll shut it down in 12 months. Or if they're going to shut it all down. On that note, we also saw the Pixel 7a, which is a very nice$500 phone. There's a review of it on the website now if you care to read it. Nothing much to say. We also saw a very impressive demo of Google's Project Starline, which is their video conferencing thing with stereo cameras that look like you're looking at somebody in 3D. It was awesome. BJ loved it. He saw it a year ago, I think, and adored it. No, so we saw the new version. Yeah, this uses regular cameras, right? Yeah, so it's just a 65-inch display and cameras on three sides of it.

1:10:40Yeah, because the original version, you had to have a whole setup. You're like, I have to go down to the Starline office. Yeah, this still had a whole setup. We were in a special booth. It was very controlled. It's a tech demo. But it still felt closer to like, oh, this might be achievable for normal people one day. Like this, here's a piece of hardware you can put in a conference room and it will make sense. And it was very cool. And it's nowhere near shipping. But, you know, Google made a cool thing and we saw it. It is really cool, though. And the idea is basically it's just designed to be it does a lot of work on like gaze correction.

1:11:14So you can make something that feels like you're approximating eye contact. They've done a lot of work on latency. They've done a lot of work on the depth so that like me and I both had the experience of like the guy we were talking to, Andrew Drucker from Google, would hold out an apple and you can actually see the apple in like real true high fidelity because like he's large and you're on this big screen and then and he was like you can look at it and you sort of instinctively lean towards it and then he's like you know i'm reach out and take it from me it feels just like you're taking it from me and like no it didn't it like super super didn't andrew it like it felt like i was reaching through a ghost like that's what this was yeah but uh But still, the demo, as far as virtual conversations I have had with people, that was leaps and bounds better than anything I've ever tried.

1:12:00And the display tech is really cool, right? Because it's just a flat 65-inch screen, but then it's got a lens array mounted in front of it that sends different images to your right and left eyes. That's so cool. And it's doing head tracking. And it's just like, that is cool. And they're basically interrupting the stereo sequence of images that you see. and so they're just sending a different picture to your left and right eye and doing it with head tracking. So it's basically just a TV with like a lens array in front of it. That's nuts. And they're trying it with like a handful of customers. I think Salesforce has one and T-Mobile has one, but it's still very much tech to know.

1:12:36But it's cool. It was fun to play with. When does like James Cameron get one? Yes. The next Avatar movie, in order to save on costs, is you alone will go into a small booth and talk to a Navi. Just like straight eye contact with a Navi and he's like, you're really really messing us up dude disney's thinking about disney's like working on this right now can you imagine making like dead on eye contact with an avi person and they're like i'm gonna be honest with you the way we have sex is by putting our hair into each other

1:13:09well now i can also it works with our animals but that's different i feel strongly that we should take a break. Probably. We'll be back. The JBC is for all.

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1:15:45We're back. We've talked about Google enough. Let's do a lightning round. Alex, you want to start? Yeah. I'm going to fight David in a little bit, but we each chose ours before the podcast started and David got here first. So we're going to fight later. I chose mine first. So I went ahead and went with Apple is launching Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on the iPad with new subscription pricing and mainly because I didn't know people were still using Final Cut Pro and this like blew my mind this week. Like there was like an hour of Dan Seifert trying to explain to me in Slack that no, everybody does this.

1:16:17This is very normal, but I didn't know. Yeah. Like MKBHD, a lot of creators use it. I'm very used to Premiere. Premiere, like Final Cut Pro was huge. Then 2011 happened. There was a really bad version of Final Cut Pro called Final Cut Pro 10 and everybody stopped using it. And then apparently everybody started using it again. And now it's going to be available on the iPad. It sounds like it's pretty, like the feature parody is good. It's going to have a lot of the same features that you've already find in the Mac version, which makes sense because they're using the same processors. So this is exciting.

1:16:51If all you have is an iPad and you just really want to edit, there's still a lot of questions we're waiting to hear. And if you are one of those people that uses FCP now, just message me. I just want to know like what's your life like? I know there's a lot of you, but this is still like blowing my mind and I want to know more. I want to understand you. They're like straight up open letters to Apple being like make FCP great by doing these things so we can switch from Premiere and like from the Hollywood community. So like there's, it's been around. It has a very loyal user base, especially among solo creators because it's cheap.

1:17:22It's really, really fast on Macs. I remember Jonathan Morrison used to edit 4K footage on a MacBook Air with Final Cut Pro because it's so fast on M-Series trips. That's wild. Yeah, I just want to know when that turn happened. Because I remember being like, I had my copy and I was like, ugh, 10 sucks, and I threw it out. Yeah, so that was 2011. I think I actually physically threw it out. And that was 12 years ago. And I'm like, when did things change? The relentless passage of time, Alex Gumbs Russell. I know, but when was the moment? Call me. Let me know. No, I'm fascinated by the subscription pricing with this.

1:17:56If they bring that to the Mac, I think it's going to get real weird. And I think like the Luma fusions of the world will have a big opportunity. Because that's one of the big reasons people hate Premiere. And as I understand it, that's one of the reasons Final Cut Pro became so popular is you could just buy it and be done. Whereas with Premiere, you're spending, I think,$50 a month minimum, maybe$20 if you do certain kind of gross versions of it. Yeah. Don't do that, especially for an iPad app. This is a big deal, right? Apple's bringing pro apps to its supposedly pro iPad, which has the same chip in it as some of its Macs.

1:18:28especially after adobe spent years being like we're doing it too and it's always just not quite good enough yep and and apple just went and did it yeah i mean and there are a lot of there are a lot of things about editing on an ipad that are better than editing on a mac that like direct input being able to move things around with the pencil and your fingers and it's like it's actually a really great powerful editing machine once you figure it out and i like i know a lot of people for image editing in particular, who will like use their Mac all day until they have to do sort of really detailed, fine image editing.

1:19:01And then they will actually like punt over to their iPad and do that work there. And I think the video interface for that is hard work. Like iMovie is not a great piece of software on the iPad. iMovie has been totally replaced by CapCut. We could do, if anybody wants to write the story of how CapCut, which is basically the TikTok editor broken out, has just replaced iMovie and Apple missed it. I'll take that pitch 10 days out of 10. It is a wild thing that has happened in the industry, and it's kind of unremarked upon. Yeah. No, I think that's right. And I think the thing that Final Cut has had going for it is that it is most of the power of Premiere without most of the overhead of Premiere, both financial and performance.

1:19:42And so if they can figure out how to actually map that to the iPad in a way that really works, I think it's going to mean a lot to a lot of people. Yeah. To have the subscription money. All right, Dave, what's your landing ramp thing? I just want to say, just last thing on that, it is super funny. that Apple announced that the same week that Google announced a Pixel tablet that basically doesn't do anything but play movies. It's just like, his two companies have very different ideas about what tablets are supposed to be. And I think that's delightful. My lightning round thing is Disney just had its earnings.

1:20:11And one of the things that announced is that it's putting all of Hulu content into the Disney Plus app. It's also raising the price of its ad subscription and not killing Hulu or running away from Hulu. Because it can't. It can't and also doesn't seem to want to, but it definitely doesn't seem to want to buy the rest of Hulu from Comcast for what would cost at least$9 billion. So it's just doing this weird move where it's going to sort of quietly try to obviate Hulu and just let it die to make Disney Plus more successful. Because Disney Plus, they're now going into ads, and one of the things that we've seen is that actually, if you can build a subscription slash ad hybrid business, that can be super successful.

1:20:55It's working really well for Netflix. Disney, like everybody else, is losing an insane amount of money on streaming and needs to find ways to make more money. As a longtime Hulu fan who has debated canceling Disney Plus because I don't watch anything on it anymore, this makes me sad. But this was always kind of inevitable, right, Alex? I feel like this was always where this was going to go. Yeah, this was always because right now they have to decide whether it's Is Comcast going to buy Hulu? Is Disney going to buy Hulu? And Disney's been putting a lot of money into stuff to go on Hulu, but it still owns the rights.

1:21:28So it can just pull all of that stuff and put it on its own service and be like, all right, Comcast, enjoy your three shows that are still on the service. Suffer. And I mean, Hulu Live, I think, is still an important product that bears some thinking about, right? That's their live TV function. it's basically the biggest competitor, I think, to YouTube TV. So there's still something there. But it's very clear right now that Disney is cutting costs. They're also saying they're going to drop stuff from Disney +, some of the shows and stuff. We don't know what, but they're going to be dropping content because they don't want to pay the licensing fees for it.

1:22:05This kind of idea that, oh, wow, you have a utopia. You go and you pay for a streaming service and you get all of the content ever is just rapidly disappearing. So everybody go bust out your Blu-ray players. Start collecting your media again. This is the moment. We'll put a pin in that. All right, here's my lightning round one. Google announced it's bringing YouTube, Waze, and Zoom to cars with native Android, which is very funny. As David pointed out to me, everyone seems to be very interested in making your cars more functional when they're in park. So now you can watch YouTube in park. I think this is because of charging.

1:22:36They just think people with EVs are going to be sitting in their cars charging for 20, 30 minutes a time. Well, you go and you buy your JBC, and then you don't want to go home and eat it. You got to eat it fast. You're like, it's a JBC. And the robot's like, what do you mean? There's a data center on fire trying to figure it out. You're just getting salad after salad. You didn't want that. This is not actually my lightning round item. My lightning round item is that David came to pick me up from the hotel to go to dinner last night. Oh, no. And it's Kia Soul. And he looked at me with absolute swagger in his eyes and said, wireless CarPlay.

1:23:09And then the wireless CarPlay immediately didn't work. like immediately didn't work. We didn't even make it out of the driveway before it broke. We literally didn't even get out of the driveway. I have never been so disappointed in Apple than I was at that moment. This rental Kia Soul is like, it's a hot whip. But he was just like, why are this CarPlay? It's great. And he like Google mapped the restaurant. And I was like, this thing is, this arrow is not moving. The app kept quitting. And then Nilay got out of the car and it worked fine for the rest of the night. And then again, it has worked fine today.

1:23:45There's just like, there is like a Nilay Patel force field that just destroys CarPlay. I don't understand. CarPlay's like, I don't want it. I was just 100%. He was like, why is it? And then just, I hit go on the directions and just nothing happened. No, no. He had to pick up his phone and use Google Maps on his phone. It sucked so much, Alex. I can't even tell you the shame that I felt in that moment. I'm going to pick you up one day, Eli, in my car with wired CarPlay. It'll work. All right, that's it. We got to wrap this thing up. That's the Vergecast. I'm sorry that we're completely loopy. It has been a long day, but a fun day.

1:24:22It was fun to see everybody. We saw listeners at IO. It was great to see all of you. Really cool to be in person. We've got lots more from IO on the site. We have hands-ons with all the gadgets, all the stuff. We have lots more coverage of Google coming this year, as we've already previewed. So look on the site for that. I'm really interested in your thoughts about Google. Search changing is a big deal. So let me know what you think, because I wanted to shape our coverage a little bit. And if you want more on the hardware, the Wednesday show this week was Allison and Dan talking about all those hands-on.

1:24:51So there's lots more about the hardware if you want it on the Verge Cast Wednesday show this week. All right, that's it. That's Verge Cast. Talk about it.

1:25:01And that's a wrap for Verge Cast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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