My other car is a cargo bike

26:51I do remember one really eye-opening part of my brief schooner opening experience was suddenly you've like noticed differently how annoying it is to drive all the time in a way that I think is actually, we just don't notice it because we just do it, right? It's just life. And I think when you suddenly are sort of pulled out of the amount of time you spend looking for a parking spot and then looking for your car and sitting in traffic and waiting for red lights and other cars are idiots, like just having your eyes open to that a little made everything else seem more appealing. That it's like, oh, sure, I'm going to have to do like a little bit more work to like find the lights so that I can get home afterwards.

27:35But I get to park my bike right out front of the damn grocery store. and that is a pretty big win um all right i need to let you go here in a minute but first you've now had a lot of experience with this so if i'm if i'm shopping for a cargo bike which i hopefully will be very soon as soon as anna hears this and agrees that this is a terrific idea and good for the world uh what's what's the most important thing like having used one of these for now like what matters most if you're trying to buy a cargo bike i i would say maintenance and repairability making sure that whichever company you're buying from that has some sort of either a relationship with a local bike shop and a way that you can get your bike tuned up and repaired.

28:14Because the thing about e-bikes, especially cargo bikes, they get used a lot more than regular bikes. That's sort of like their magic power, their secret power is that you use them all the time. So they wear down a little bit. They're going to need to get tuned up. Make sure that your local bike shop is able to do that. And then I would also just say, if you have a little bit of money to spend and you don't mind shooting for something a little bit top-notch. Anything with a Bosch motor is pretty incredible. That company has a fantastic service reputation. Their e-bikes are, the motors that they build are really far and away a lot better than most others.

28:49So those are the things I would say to look for. That's good to know. Do you think there's a path towards these things getting less expensive? I think I've been waiting for years as they've risen and lithium-ion technology has gotten great and EVs are everywhere. I've been waiting for these things to sort of hit a price point that feels plausible. And like, I know you're going to say, well, it's cheaper than buying a car. And like, I'm sure that's true. These are really expensive bikes. Like, do you, are we, are we, is there a glimmer of hope that it might get more affordable over time? So there are definitely a range.

29:23You can get bikes that are more budget and affordable that, you know, won't break the bank. You can get a good car, a decent sized cargo bike for, you know, I would say around$2 ,000. You don't have to spend six, $7 ,000 on the premium model. Uh, but that said, you know, like I said, make sure there's a, an adequate customer service and maintenance and repair and repair, uh, uh, system in place. But yeah, I, I, I do have concerns because, um, the vast majority of bikes, uh, come from China. I think like over 95 % of bikes are built and made in China. And I think as long as we have this tariff structure and trade war situation going on.

30:01I don't see a lot of hope for the future. There have been legislatively some efforts to kind of try to bring onshore some of that bike manufacturing, offer some credits and some incentives to people to build the bikes here in the United States. But that's still a ways off, I think. Fair enough. So I'm stuck with the, at least it's cheaper than a car argument, at least for a little while. Yes. I would say that that's a pretty persuasive argument for a lot of people, especially as cars also going up in price. So, you know, if you look at it through that lens, yes, an e-bike and especially a cargo bike is still a lot less expensive than, you know, a RAV4.

30:40See, Anna? Andy said it, not me. Andy said that. I'm available for all questions. Andrew.Hawkins at TheVerge.com. Hit me up with your e-bike questions. I love this is the I'd much rather answer e-bike questions than get yelled at about Tesla. So please. I love it. And if you want to join the bike bus, just just hit up Andy. Yes, we'd love to have you please, please do. Please do. All right, Andy, thank you. As always, we need to take a break. And then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about ad tech trials, because that is what we do on the verge cast as we talk about the ad tech stack.

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33:58All right, we're back. Coming to you live from a Panera outside of a courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where it is time for Google to fight for its life in the ad tech world. Lauren Feiner's here. Hi, Lauren. Thanks for having me. So you're on lunch break. Describe us the scene. Where are you? What are you doing? You're on audio only. Just paint us a word picture of your life right this second. Yes, I am outside the beautiful Panera in Alexandria, Virginia, which has really great broccoli cheddar soup. That's true. And, you know, it's pretty nice out here. And I can use my phone. So that's something that I can't do inside the courtroom.

34:37Yeah. So this is, I just want to say, just an incredibly rude thing. that this courthouse is doing to you. You and I have both spent a lot of time in courtrooms over the last couple of years covering Google Trials. You, unfortunately, much more than me. But the thing where you can like sit in a media room and watch a stream of it while you're on your computer, nice, lovely, delightful, totally manageable. The thing where they like scream at you until you turn off all of your devices and you sit and you write with a pen on paper like our ancestors did, just cruel and mean. and I did not appreciate it.

35:13Yeah, yeah, it's pretty archaic, but yeah. I'm not a fan. But so the trial that you're in right now is the remedies trial for the Google AdTech case. And this is not the other Google antitrust case. It's the other, other Google antitrust case. But just real quick, for people who have not been following the twist in terms of the AdTech thing, kind of catch us up to the beginning of this particular trial. Give us the sort of Cliff Notes versions of what this fight has been about. Yeah, so I think the Google antitrust trial that most people will remember is the one over search where recently we got the court ruling saying that Google doesn't have to spin out Chrome in order to remedy its search monopoly.

35:59That's a separate case. This case was filed during the Biden administration and is about Google's ad tech monopoly. So basically, Google owns a series of tools that work in different sides of the ad buying and selling market. And the judges found that Google monopolized two markets with two of its tools, and also illegally tied together those tools. And why does any of this matter? This all sounds really complicated. Basically, I think, you know, the thing I often remind myself as I'm sitting there listening to all of these really complicated terms and acronyms is really what this whole case is about is the revenue stream that funds a lot of journalism and a lot of websites across the Internet.

36:51So the portion of advertising we're talking about is what is referred to in the trial as open web display ads, which are those ads that appear in kind of like boxes on websites you visit, like probably in the middle of a page or on the side of a page of like the New York Times, for example, or, you know, some other publisher site. And you might be thinking those are really annoying, but they are something that is an important revenue stream for a lot of publishers. Yeah. And I think the thing you said is important to keep remembering that Google already lost this case, right? They will inevitably appeal.

37:30And it's weird that we have to go through the remedies before they can get to the appeal. But there's a lot of like logistical nonsense in all of this stuff. But as with the search trial, Google lost. And the question now is, what do we do about it? And so the trial is now a few days old, and I think you've gotten to get a real sense of what both sides want to do here. So let's start with the government. What does the government at this moment think the right answer is at the end of this trial? Yeah. So at a high level, the government wants to impose both some behavioral changes on Google and what it's allowed to do, not allowed to do in terms of its use of ad tech tools.

38:10And then it also wants to impose what are called structural remedies or what colloquially we'd call a breakup. So it wants to do a few different things. Basically, the judge found that Google illegally monopolized the markets for two basically publisher side tools. So you have the market for publisher ad servers, which Google's DoubleClick for Publishers or DFP operates in. And that is a tool that publishers use to basically manage their inventory, manage those boxes on their website that they're selling for advertising. And then it also monopolized the market for ad exchanges. And that's a tool that basically publishers use to get bids from advertisers that want to place ads on their website.

38:54So it's like the exchange where literally these transactions are kind of meeting in the middle. Right. And it's worth saying that that's two out of the three parts of the process. And so the way that I think I've come to understand it is basically there's how the advertisers say what they want to buy. There's how the people with ad space, publishers and whatnot, say what they have available. And then there's the thing in the middle that connects buyers and sellers. And the argument the government made the whole time was that Google is the most popular and important player in all three of these things.

39:24And it uses that power to make all three of those things more expensive and worse to enrich Google. And the fact that it lost on two of the three parts of the puzzle is a pretty big deal, right? Like it seems like, to me at least, coming out of that trial, it was like, oh, Google lost this in a pretty meaningful way. Right. Is that helpful to you? Okay. Yeah, no, definitely. And we should say that, you know, Google did win on one count about its buyer side tools, the advertiser side tools, where the judge said that the DOJ didn't prove that it had a monopoly on that side of the market. But, you know, that side of the market is still obviously relevant to how these other tools work because, you know, part of the issue is that the judge found that Google illegally tied together its publisher ad server tool, DFP, and AdEx.

40:17It's AdExchange. And AdEx has unique access to Google's buy side of the platform as well. Right. And the government's case is basically like, you own all three of these things. You should not be allowed to own all three of these things. And so we are going to take at least one, but maybe two of them away from you. And thus, there will be more competition. Is it kind of that straightforward? Pretty much. There's a little bit of complexity. So I think the most straightforward is that they want to have Google divest ad exchange. It's ad exchange that sits in the middle there. And then it says, after that, we also want Google to have to open source what it's calling the final auction logic that sits within DFP.

41:01And so that's also a structural remedy. And basically what that means is that if DFP is where the final decision happens of who is going to get to place this ad on the publisher website. So you have bids often from other exchanges that might come through a thing called pre-bid or header bidding. And then you have AdEx gets to decide if it's going to bid. And then you also have what's called direct demand, which is, you know, deals that had already been negotiated. And the publisher has to decide, you know, when it's going to place those. And that final decision between those three things happens inside of DFP, which publishers say is basically a black box.

41:42And they don't know why anyone wins or loses besides, you know, on price. So you mentioned, obviously, this is a different trial from the other Google trial. And I think you and I have both had sort of beaten into our heads the idea that one trial is not necessarily indicative or predictive of another, even when they're happening simultaneously. But it does feel like the bones of what the government is asking for is the same in both cases, where the one thing is like, OK, you have to you have to divest the thing that makes you powerful or at least one of the things that makes you powerful. And then you have to give everyone kind of the secret sauce, right?

42:16And this is a big thing in the search trial too, right? Was the idea that like actually what other search engines need is Google's ranking data and some like real transparency into how Google actually built the thing that is so successful so that they can go and do it too. And Google fought that tooth and nail. And basically, Google's argument in the search case was like, actually, there's tons of competition. Nothing's wrong. You're all idiots. Everything's fine. Is that Google's argument here, too? In a way, I'd say it's a little bit different here in the sense that I think Google has, you know, some of their behavioral remedies look somewhat similar to the government's.

42:51I'd say, you know, there's definitely significant differences. Just the fact that there are behavioral remedies in Google's mind is something. Yeah, yeah. I think like in the search case, it was more like, we'll stop doing these sorts of contracts that were found to be illegal. They took the word exclusive out of some contracts and were like, is that enough? Yeah. Yeah. Here they would be, I'd say, somewhat substantially changing the ways that its ad tools bid into different places. And it would change a good amount of processes, open things up a bit more, but not as far as the government wants to go.

43:25And I should also say that a contingency that the DOJ has is that they want to reserve the right to force Google to also divest DFP if its other remedies don't do enough. Got it. Okay. But here I'd say that, you know, different from the search case, the tools that it's trying to get Google to divest have really been central to the case throughout, where during the search trial, you know, Chrome was obviously an important place where search is distributed, but it wasn't like the central tool that was like at issue in the trial. Yeah, this would be much closer to if the search app was like, or the search trial was demanding that Google sell search.

44:06Like that way, it's much more direct in that sense. And I think that that might be why it has always felt like Google is on more aggressive defense on this one, because it is like you're not just trying to kind of prop up competitors and, you know, slap us on the wrist for bad conduct. You're trying to take away the thing that makes us all of our money. Like this is, you know, you mentioned this is this is how a lot of the money moves around the Internet. This is also how Google makes a lot of its money. This is like it does a lot of, you know, first party ads and stuff. But this is like a true money machine for Google and has been for a really long time.

44:41And the way that this stuff works is a huge economy. And so far, the biggest beneficiary of it has been Google. and so yeah it's just it's just been fascinating to me to see Google seem less worried about losing Chrome than it seems about losing adx but I'm actually curious on that front what it has felt like in the courtroom because you've now been in both of the remedies trials and you've gotten to sense sort of the the vibes and the feelings coming from both sides what is this one been like compared to the search trial how does it feel just listening to people talk in the courtroom Yeah, I think that's an interesting question.

45:16You know, it's obviously the different attorneys have, you know, somewhat different styles. So there's a little bit of just that probably contributes to it. But, you know, I think this is a case where the divestiture of Chrome maybe felt, you know, I don't know if this was a feeling that was coming from within the courtroom or just a general sense of, you know, it's such a big ask and it's such a big part of the business and that would change so much. So I think just the scale of that felt different in a way, although I think, you know, it feels possibly like this might be a more attainable ask for the government in this case.

45:50So in a way, it feels like there's a lot of practicalities being discussed about how this would work. And, you know, I think something that I've been thinking over the past few days is there's times where I almost have to remind myself, like what you said earlier, David, of like Google did lose at least most of this case. And I think the Google attorneys at times are, you know, kind of, they're doing a decent job of kind of making you forget that, in a sense, because we're talking about, you know, I think there's suggestions of what would be fair to make Google do and, you know, how much engineering work would be involved in some of the remedies that the DOJ proposed.

46:32But, you know, we also have to remember that Google lost this case because it was engaged in anti-competitive behavior for a decade. And Google is also arguing things like that this whole category of advertising is declining. But, you know, some of the witnesses for the DOJ are saying, well, yeah, because it's been a market that's been dominated by one player and you have to go through this one player's tools to do these transactions. So it's less attractive to a lot of stakeholders. And it's, you know, not a place that people have been wanting to innovate or invest in because the sense is that, you know, all roads lead back to Google.

47:15Yeah, actually, I was curious about this. There was this whole sort of kerfuffle at the very beginning of this, because Google said in a legal filing, essentially in as many words that the open web is dying. And part of their defense is who cares the open web is dying. And then they went back and amended it to be like, no, no, no, no, just the advertising market on the open. And it's like, well, first of all, those are the same thing. And second of all, you said what you said, friendos. has that come up? Like, has this sort of existential crisis of the internet been part of the conversation this week?

47:46That hasn't really come up directly. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's hard to know what Google really meant in that filing in the first place. They did revise it to say, I think, open web display advertising, which is like the main term that is being used in this case to describe this like segment of advertising. But yeah, I It's come up in the sense that, you know, Google wants to point out that this category of ads is on the decline. And, you know, maybe this won't even be relevant in several years. And of course, you know, we're hearing about AI and what role does AI play? But really not at all to the extent that we heard about AI in the Google search remedies trial.

48:25Right. Yeah, AI was Google's whole defense in the search remedies trial. was that none of this matters because AI is making the, even if we did do all of this for 20 years, it doesn't matter anymore because AI is so important and so powerful that it's upending the market anyway. And I think to a large extent, Judge Meta in that case was sympathetic to that. And I think one of the things I've been thinking a lot about this week is that the listening to the questions that the judge was asking in that case actually gave a lot of information away about what was going to happen in that case. And he was asking a lot of questions about what overreach would look like and whether divesting things was actually going to accomplish the things that they claim to be accomplishing.

49:06So it makes me wonder, what is the judge saying? What kind of questions is the judge asking this week? Has anything kind of piqued your interest? Yeah, yeah. I think she's asked some really interesting questions. You know, she has made it very clear that she really wants to hear from technical experts about the feasibility of this. And I think especially the DOJ's breakup proposals and, you know, what would be involved here. And, you know, when one industry expert was on the stand, she kind of was dismissive of it and said, you know, this is window dressing. You don't need to concern yourself with window dressing.

49:40Speaking to the attorneys, she's kind of done with the industry witnesses who are just testifying about the impact on them because she heard a lot of that in the liability trial. So she really wants to get down to the nitty gritty. And I think, you know, there's been questions that are probably good for Google, good for the DOJ and maybe relatively equal measure. At one point, she kind of said something like, the devil is in the details and worried that the actual implementation of the technical things here would be a lot more complicated than what's being presented and wondering if the user experience might be different if some of these tools are migrated to another buyer, for example.

50:26But we've also heard her ask today about how exactly it would work to open source the final auction logic and where that would live and getting an understanding of what that actually involves. And I think one thing that came up yesterday that was really interesting was there was a Google witness on the stand who helped craft Google's remedies proposals. and this executive also had been involved in a couple of projects that Google did to analyze potentially spinning out AttX and kind of doing some of the structural things that the DOJ is talking about in slightly different ways. And Google found that they actually considered shutting down AttX altogether.

51:12And that seemed to pique the judge's interest and she asked, well, wouldn't that be a very simple and elegant solution here? because the Google executive was raising the concern of, you know, who's going to buy ad X and does it just recreate the problem if another ad exchange buys it or another big tech company buys it. So, you know, that was a really interesting thing, especially because that's not even something the DOJ is asking for here. So rather than force them to sell it, just shut it down altogether. Yeah, because, you know, there... That would be fascinating. It would, because there are actually a lot of ad exchanges that are out there that have testified in this trial.

51:48It's just that they don't have the same access to Google demand as AdEx does. And, you know, it's different from the publisher ad servers where Google is pretty much the only player in that market. Right. Yeah. And I think that's that's, again, a key difference between this trial and the search trial. Right. So much of the search trial hinged on why are there no other good players in this market? Like, why is it impossible to build a successful search engine? And I just like, I will never be able to get Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO out of my head on the stand saying, I would give you all of this for free, just to have the query data.

52:25And like, we are all so far behind now, there's not a chance anybody can catch up. This is different in that it does seem like it would be more straightforward to just blow the market open and say, well, everybody, there are a million potential competitors out there, we're just going to give them the same access that you have, and then we'll have a competitive market. I grant that I'm very unsophisticated when it comes to how the ad tech market works, but it does seem to me that it would be an easier thing to just sort of throw the doors open on this one than it would be to gin up a way to create 10 new search engines from scratch.

53:01Yeah, I think at a high level, that's pretty much correct. I think, you know, there are things in place here that just, you know, there need to be different pathways opened. And that's kind of what they're looking at, how exactly to do that. But some of the actual tools do exist. Yeah. So what do you think there is to learn from the other trial? Is there is there obviously, again, these are different things, different judges, every trial is different, on and on and on. And did you do you see anything happening now that is like rhyming with some of the other trials that you've been sitting in? Is there anything that you feel like is being carried forward here?

53:36Yeah, I mean, I think in a way it's hard to make that assessment yet because we have this one data point of this kind of like new era of tech antitrust. And that data point is that the judge was willing to call Google a monopoly, but wasn't willing to break it up. And I think we're kind of in the midst of the second data point. And, you know, so far, it definitely was notable to me that the judge seemed wary of, you know, doing something that might further harm the market, create a new problem, do something that's just technically not feasible, and, you know, kind of nonsensical from a technical sense.

54:13So, you know, I could see that potentially being an issue where she worries that some sort of breakup would be too complicated. But on the other hand, perhaps she does end up agreeing with the government that a breakup is really the simplest way to go. So that's long been the argument from people who favor structural remedies is, you know, rather than having behavioral changes that require a court to appoint someone to look after a lot of changes and make sure that the company is staying compliant, that, you know, structural changes, it'll take some time to get there. But once it's done, it's done.

54:50It's a separate company. It's not owned by Google anymore. So I think it'll be interesting to see which way that goes and whether Judge Mehta's ruling is instructive to that or if it is ultimately an outlier. Yeah, I think the behavioral remedies piece of it to me is really interesting because it's so much of what has happened in this trial has been about bringing to light the shady stuff that nobody knew that Google was doing. And I think about like all the first look and last look stuff that Google was giving itself, which to me is like the most sort of straightforward version of what you're able to do when you control the whole ecosystem, which is Google would run a whole fair bidding process and then give itself a last chance to win.

55:33And it was just like, what if you could see the winner of every auction and just decide whether you wanted to win it is like pretty clearly unfair and is not the kind of thing that Google was like, you know, advertising that it was doing. And so I think this idea that suddenly someone is going to be able to come in and like immediately suss that stuff out just seems suspicious. And so it seems obvious to me that that's what Google would want, because we're going to have this person who part of their job is to try and see what we're doing. And yeah, you can see why it is cleaner to just be like, no, just stop having adx be yours.

56:08But also why that causes a whole set of other problems. So I think, yeah, where this judge lands on sort of feasibility versus success, I think is going to be really fascinating and seems hard to know at this point. Yeah. And that's something that the DOJ brought up in their opening arguments, actually, that, you know, this is such a complicated space. And, you know, it's not hard to imagine Google being able to bury some code or some change that's difficult to detect that kind of recreates a problem all over again. All right. So you have another week of the Google trial and then some amount of time and then we'll get an answer from the judge.

56:45Is that is that what we're in for here? That's what we're in for. And, you know, remember, this is the rocket docket in the Eastern District of Virginia. So, you know, that is speedy in terms of legal time, not in terms of real people time. But, you know, that said, we could get a decision. You know, if you think about in the search case, which is, you know, not known as a speedy court. We had the remedies trial, I believe, in March or April. And then we got the decision, I think, at the very beginning of September. So, you know, I would think maybe a much shorter time frame than that to get a decision here.

57:20Yeah, so it does seem like this is one where there's just a lot hanging in the balance. And Google, I'm sure, is feeling good about itself after the search trial. But it seems like it's probably pretty wary of this one, would be my guess. And it'll be fascinating to see what they come in on, like sort of how hot Google comes in making its case. Because it came in pretty hot on the search trial that it was basically like all of this is shenanigans. Let's just move on. But in this one, I'm just curious to hear what tone Google tries to strike as it tries to navigate its way around this. Absolutely.

57:56All right, Lauren, you have court to get back to. Another week of the Google trial. Lots more to do. We're going to have to be back on to talk about how all of this shakes out whenever it does shake out. For now, we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and do a question from the Vergecast Hotline. Lauren, thank you. We'll be right back. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

58:28You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast. We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic. We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve. Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI. No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. Every great company's story is defined by moments when the founders make bold decisions. These are high-stakes moments that risk the business, but can lead to greatness.

59:19I'm Rolof Boota, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and the host of Crucible Moments. We're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna, Supercell, and more. Share what it's actually like to navigate the make or break decisions. Crucible Moments is back on October 23rd. Until then, catch up on seasons one and two wherever you find your podcasts.

59:56All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the VergeCast hotline. As always, you can email vergecast at theverge.com. You can call 866-VERGE-11. A thing I would like people to start doing is sending us video messages. So if you want to just like take a selfie video asking us questions and email it to us, there's like a Google Drive link or something. I don't know. Don't break my computer with malware, but send us videos. You know what I mean? Anyway, this week's question is about AI. It's a fun one. Let's hear it. Hey, VergeCast. This is Roy from Toronto, Canada speaking, one-time listener, first-time caller.

1:00:31And I have a question about YouTube and its relationship to AI, but especially Gemini. So I am what you might call a power user of YouTube as I listen to several minutes, sometimes hours a day. A lot of my podcasts, a lot of just general content on there. It's basically my main source of media consumption. And lately, I've noticed that Gemini does an incredible job of summarizing these videos. And I never realized the extent to which, especially as a busy family man who has very few minutes or hours to spare in the day, I never knew how much I watched YouTube videos just to get information. And the reason I know this is because I started asking Gemini to summarize videos for me.

1:01:29And it gives me a quick, accurate, factual breakdown of the main points of a video. Is this an existential concern for YouTube creators? Am I the only weird one doing this? Could this become a trend? Would love your thoughts. Okay, I love this question for a bunch of reasons. Because one, Roy, you are not the only person doing this. Two, this is incredibly intended behavior. This is what Google and all of these companies want you to do, is summarize things with AI. And three, summarization is one of the things that AI is actually very good at. I think if you ask open-ended questions of an AI bot or a large language model of any kind, you run all kinds of risks, right?

1:02:10Things get really complicated. Things go off in weird directions. But if you just give it a body of work and say, make this shorter, it's actually very good at that. And so you see a lot of these tools out there now that are like feeding a book to an AI model in order to get a summary back. And then it's like, well, you've now read the book and like you haven't. You've read a summary of the book and that's fine. But the summaries are often very good. And I've even started doing it in my own research with a lot of like white papers and studies. It's a really great way to just like quickly digest a lot of information.

1:02:43And I think one of the fascinating things about YouTube is that it is both a very good and a wildly inefficient way to just consume information, right? Like if you want to watch a video because it's fun, or it's interesting, or it's visual, or you like the people or whatever, that's fine. but like my favorite example of this is always when I have like some very small DIY house project to do and I just want to know how to take the thing out and then put the other thing in without burning my house down and what I have to watch is eight minutes of intro video before I get there and another version of this that exists on the internet is like the recipe websites where it's like I go to a recipe site and I have to read 2 ,000 words and scroll past 12 ads just to get to the recipe, like that exists, not because that's what the creators want to do, but because that's how they have to make a business out of it, right?

1:03:35Like all of the data on that recipe webpage is structured in such a way that Google will find it and rank it so that you will click on it and see it. And YouTube is very much the same way, right? Like videos are longer so that people can show more ads in the middle. The longer videos are, the more watch time they get, which means they'll get surface more. And it's just this incredible flywheel of things you have to do in order for the platform to give you the kind of audience and access that you need in order to be successful. So is a Gemini summary of a YouTube video an existential threat to the creator of that YouTube video?

1:04:08Absolutely, unequivocally, yes. If everyone stops watching YouTube videos and starts getting summaries of those YouTube videos, it's the end of that business for people on YouTube. You become a person who is making training data, not a person who is making content that people want to actually consume on YouTube. So like cast it out long enough and make that activity mainstream enough. And it absolutely all falls apart. The whole thing falls apart. And this is what this is what nobody in this industry is reckoning with right now is if all of this stuff works, it all collapses. But that is that is an existential crisis of my own that we don't have to do right now.

1:04:46So I think what I would say, and this is just my own way of thinking about like, how do I support the internet in a way that works for everybody is like, watch the videos as many as you can and as often as you can. But also understand that if what you want is a piece of information and that if the video is not giving it to you in the most efficient way, you shouldn't feel bad about not watching the whole video. You are not obligated to watch things just because they exist. And if what you want is a piece of information on how to take something out of your wall, it's okay to find the most efficient version of that information and frankly i think the fact that 10 minute youtube videos is the most efficient version of information is like insane on its own but watch the things that you want to watch go actively consume the things made by the creators that you like that that is the thing the all of the rest of the business and the system and the economy of it all works if you consume the stuff that you like as often as you can.

1:05:48Like, it is not exactly that simple, but it's close enough to that simple that that's reasonable advice that I can give you is it when you're looking for a piece of information, look for it in the most efficient way possible. And I think in many ways, as we've talked about on this show, AI search engines are really powerful for that. If what you need is sort of a piece of data in the haystack of the internet, AI bots and AI search are better at that than Google. and that is a thing that is going to change a lot about how the internet works and how money flows around the internet and we haven't fully shaken that out yet, but you as a consumer should not feel bad using the best product.

1:06:26But if what you care about is that the creators who make the things that you like continue to be able to make the things that you like, consume those things. Don't summarize the things and let that be enough because it's not. You should be engaging with the things that you like as often as possible and also tell your friends and put the video on in the background and mute your computer and just let it play on their playlist for a long time. This is like, do it with Verge videos. If you want to watch 700 consecutive hours of the Verge cast without ever watching any of it on YouTube, I have no problem with that.

1:06:54I would love that. Would be very grateful. All of this is to say, yes, it's all an existential crisis. And no, it's not generally your problem to fix it by never touching AI summaries. And I think if you feel morally icky about some of these things, you're right to and you should lean into that. but you also are not required to feel bad all the time. I hope that helps. Welcome to my own existential crisis. This is what we do here. Anyway, that's it for The Vergecast today. More existential crises to come, presumably in every episode forever. But for now, The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:07:29The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. You can always email us, vergecast at theverge.com. You can always call the hotline, send me non-malware-filled Google Drive links with selfie questions to your videos. we love hearing all of them. We'll be back on Friday with lots more news. We've got a lot of smart home stuff to talk about this week, some big stuff going on. We're going to talk about all of it, all the AI stuff, all of our feelings, and all of our existential crises. Until then, we'll see you next time. Rock and roll.

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