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30:36That's better. Yeah. I love that robot. So there's lots of fun robots. Lots of appliances. I always get excited about appliances. Sweet. And I think there's laptops, too, in case people are interested in those. Awesome. Well, I'm very excited. Everyone should stay tuned to TheVerge.com. We're going to have a lot more. Jen, thank you so much for hopping on to tell us all about IFA. I'll let you get back to the wild show in Berlin. Thank you. Absolutely. All right. We've got to take a break. When we're back, we're going to have Lauren Feiner talking about the Google antitrust ruling. Every great company's story is defined by moments when the founders make bold decisions.

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33:43And we're back and we've got The Verge's senior policy reporter, Lauren Feiner, here with us. Hi. Lauren, you spent a bunch of time this spring in a courthouse watching the remedies trial of the Google antitrust decision. This started, I guess, a year ago. A year ago, a judge decided that Google had maintained a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. Then this spring, there was a whole big to-do over what they should do about it. And that ruling finally came down. And people were expecting something pretty big, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, this even goes back, you know, another like, five years back to 2020, when this case was first filed under the first Trump administration.

34:30And then, you know, in last August, the judge finally said that Google is a monopoly in online search. And that was a huge landmark ruling, the first of these big tech cases by the government. And then there was all this anticipation of like, okay, what is he going to do to make sure that Google can no longer have this power grip over this industry? And that leads us up to this past week when the judge finally issued his ruling and said, basically, Google can't do some contracts, some certain terms in their contracts, and they have to share some data to help search competitors, get up to speed with them, but basically rejected the largest of the DOJ's proposals of how to restore competition to this market.

35:23Right. The DOJ like swung for the fences and they had these these pretty big asks that that I think the most famous of them was trying to get forced Google to sell Chrome. And then like everyone was coming out of the woodwork trying to buy Chrome, even though it wasn't for sale yet. And the judge is just like, no, that's absolutely not happening. He said the government really overreached to by by trying to get them to as a backup, maybe have to sell Android. Most of the big asks just didn't happen here. And I think most of the big ask just didn't happen here. Right. Like the DOJ didn't get most of what they were asking for.

36:01Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think you could definitely look at this and say, hey, the DOJ swung for the fences, you know, put out all of these really big ideas of how to fix this market. And it probably wasn't going to get all of them. But I think it was surprising the extent to which they didn't get so much of what they wanted. You know, the judge really didn't go all that much further beyond what Google had conceded to. And in some ways, having watched Judge Mehta throughout both the liability phase and the remedies phase trials, you know, you could see that he was really grappling with what to do here.

36:44He's the first out of the gate with one of these rulings in this kind of new era of tech antitrust reform. And he really seemed very cautious about not wanting to create a new problem and disrupt something that's already set in motion. Well, it's really interesting. In his opinion this week, he goes into the fact that AI changed how he ended up making this decision. The fact that AI is now seen as a competitor search made him, I think, a little bit more cautious in what he did here. He has this one quote. He says, quote, much has changed since the end of the liability trial. Artificial intelligence technologies, particularly generative AI, may yet prove to be game changers.

37:37And then he just says, like, flat out, the emergence of Gen AI changed the course of this case. And so there is this real thing here where I think possibly we could have gotten a much stronger version of these remedies against Google. But for the first time in decades, the first time maybe ever, Google actually is seeing some material competition. And I think, you know, V, you just did a whole Vergecast episode on this about people's use for AI. And search is one of the big ones now. I mean, you and I talked pretty heavily about using AI for search because, sorry, Google, your search kind of sucks now.

38:22It's so weird because on the one hand, we use Google the way that we use the word Kleenex to mean tissues, right? Google just means go search something on the internet that's in our vernacular. That pretty much would make you think that, hey, this is a monopoly because we don't say, oh, go Yahoo that thing, right? we say go google that thing but to our our verge cast uh discussion uh it's not good enough anymore because all of the seo slop has just changed that game so it's sort of like oh once again because i've been watching law and order and i had to have uh perplexity tell me what season it was that fin tutuola cuts off his ponytail um like ai was actually able to tell me like it told me a wrong answer and someone called me out online and then I looked it up again and then it told me the right answer so you do have to kind of handhold it a little bit but it's still telling you what's more likely to be a an answer when your traditional google search isn't going to help you anymore I had a situation this morning where my fridge was the ice maker was spitting out clay balls and I was like what what is happening here about that I'm very concerned why is my ice maker spitting out clay balls.

39:37And then I asked, and Google was not giving me any answers. And so I asked AI and they're like, well, this is either a sediment issue and you're just going to have to do a lot of work or something's wrong with your thing. And why don't you just empty out the ice bucket? And I was like, oh, I can empty out the ice bucket. New homeowner here. I've never had to do appliance maintenance before. And I found out that my spouse had put an eye mask with clay balls in them in the ice maker oh my god opened up a hole and that's why clay balls were coming out of my ice maker so i was like i didn't give me the right answer in this situation but it did kind of put me on a path that got me to the right answer for a search and a question that i had whereas just typing it into google did nothing for me so it's like a really i get where the judge is coming from but also i'm like come on man it is one of those ultra specific things i i again i did the exact same thing i was trying to look up um do you remember the chat app trillion i just like i was like how do i search for a chat app that was popular in 2006 with a weird like infinity logo and it was just right like i can't google that um but but you're right like it's it is it It is pretty remarkable that if this remedies trial had been held probably a year earlier, certainly two years earlier, we may have ended up in a very different outcome.

41:03Because Google, it seemed kind of borderline impossible that Google would see material challenge to its dominance in the search industry. So I'm just going to read out, I think, a quick TLDR of how I'm seeing the things that they actually have to do. And Lauren, you can tell me if this is about correct. But here's what the judge is going to require of Google, assuming that this sticks. The judge says that Google has to stop making exclusivity contracts for products like Search, Chrome, and Gemini. So they can still make default contracts, but they can't say it's the exclusive provider of those things.

41:41Google has to stop tying some of their apps to the placement or use of other apps on their devices. So they can't be like, if you want Gmail, you have to use Chrome. If you want Gmail, you have to use Gemini. They can't do that anymore. They're going to have to syndicate some of their search results. And that's like with an asterisk. There's like a big subset there. And they have to share some of their search index. Is that about right? Like it's a lot of like half measures here. That's right. And he leaves open some possibility that he could expand some of this in the future. For example, if he finds that these remedies aren't actually enough to restore competition, maybe he'll look back on the payments part of this or something like that.

42:28So there's some options here, but that's basically the extent of what Google has to do if these remedies hold up. Well, and actually, we should touch on the payments part because that was a big thing at issue here. And he thinks they're fine, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if he necessarily would say, oh, this is totally fine. I think throughout the trial, even the liability phase and the remedies phase, we saw, you know, he really felt like the fact that Google was paying Apple, you know,$20 billion to be the default search provider on Safari was pretty indicative that, you know, they felt like they needed to hold on to this position, even though they keep saying that they're the best.

43:11And so he really seemed to kind of hang on to that fact throughout the trial. But at the same time, I think he heard from both Eddie Q from Apple and an executive from Mozilla who said, you know, we would basically be pure losers here if you decide that we can't get these payments from Google because Google is still dominant. People, our customers are still going to want to go to Google and we have to provide that option and yet we'll no longer be able to be paid for it. So I think that was something that he really wanted to consider here and probably drove some of his thinking around whether Google could be able to make these payments.

43:54It's really fascinating. You know, I think the critics of Google are pretty upset about this ruling. They think that it's not going to go far enough, at least from what I've seen. but as I was reading the opinion you know you do sort of like see how the judge landed here and you start to feel for him in terms of the challenge of threading this needle because you look at the payments which were one of the big things at issue here and it's like okay so maybe you say you know what it is bad for Google to be able to pay to be the default and therefore crowd at everybody else and then you think from the judge's point of view okay does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Apple$20 billion a year, but Apple sets Google as the default search anyway because Google is the best product?

44:42Does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Mozilla a bunch of money and then Firefox dies and even more people have to use Chrome? And you just keep going through these things and it's like, oh, this is kind of tough. How do you make space for competitors without actually hurting the rest of the industry at the same time. Because all of these companies are just hooked on Google's money. And Google, you know, saving them a bunch of cash would actually be a perk for them in some ways. Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, Judge Meja talks a lot about, you know, judicial humility and, you know, not wanting to kind of take proactive action that will cause more harm or disruption or, you know, pretend that he can know the future.

45:33But at the same time, I think critics of this decision are saying, you know, he really didn't go far enough. And we already he already found that there's this issue in this market that revolves around how Google has conducted itself. And, you know, a lot of these critics feel like he hasn't gone far enough and instead did a sort of half measure that says they can't have these exclusivity in their contracts, but they can keep paying heaps of money to be the defaults, which, you know, already he's kind of found that the defaults act as a way that Google has been able to maintain its monopoly power.

46:12So a question I have is like, a lot of times with law, and one thing that I've learned just serving in unions is that you can want all of these ambitious things, but you really have to think about enforceability, right? Like when you decide you're going to do things a new way and you're like, hey, what if we do it this way? I think one of the challenges that I learned about was how implementable is it actually? So are the things that he's asking Google to do, are these things that materially make a difference? Are these things that the government can enforce or is it just sort of like we said that they're doing this here?

46:54but actually it's a status quo. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the reason why the Justice Department was pushing for a breakup or what they'd call structural remedies in the first place is that, you know, a lot of people who advocate for those kinds of remedies say they're the easiest to enforce because you don't have to monitor it. You don't have to babysit a company. You just break them up. You just say Chrome can no longer be owned by Google and they have to sell it and they have to break it apart. And obviously, that's easier said than done. But, you know, once it's done, it's done. These behavioral remedies, like, you know, having to, you know, not put certain provisions in their contracts or share certain search data, that's something that kind of does have to be monitored for compliance a little bit more.

47:46But, you know, I think in this case, it doesn't seem like so hard to do that. But I guess the devil will be in the details of how they have to do that if they actually get to that point. So the thing that I think is a little tricky here is I sort of see how he lands at, we can't ban these payments. As for how he lands at the rest of the remedies and what is required of Google to create competition, it gets a little more complicated, I think, because he actually carves this like pretty narrow path. And I don't know that this path is necessarily tied to the ways that Google created its monopoly and enforced its monopoly.

48:29And I think that's what a lot of the remedies were about, right? The remedies were Chrome enables Google's monopoly. So we will remove Chrome. Android enables Google's monopoly. And And so we'll threaten to remove Android. And kind of as I see it, what he's doing instead is saying, I'm going to create a little narrow path that will allow more competition to bubble up. You're saying that the problem is that Google has such a lead in search that no one else can catch up and compete with them. So I'm going to give you some basic tools so that these other companies can bubble up and start to create competition.

49:06and from my read of the opinion, he's basically saying, listen, all you other companies, you can have basically a map of what Google is doing and that's kind of it, right? We'll give you some supporting stuff. So you'll have a map, like the search index is essentially a map of the internet to let them understand what Google is indexing. They're going to get some basic search syndication, but they can only syndicate up to like 40 % of their search from Google. And that's supposed to sort of help bootstrap them. But the judge is pretty blunt about from there, you got to do it yourself. You can't keep going back to Google and getting more information about how they build their search engine.

49:51You need to invest and you need to build a good product. You need to compete with them, which is still a pretty big ask of the industry. Yeah, I think it's important to know that, you know, in antitrust law, when it comes to remedy is, you know, the goal here is not, you know, let's undo every anti-competitive thing that Google did up until this point, because some of them maybe are irrelevant to the market at this point. The goal is to restore competition to the market that Google has monopolized. So, you know, I think the goal with these remedies is basically to make it so that, you know, rivals really can compete in this market in a way they haven't been able to in decades based on Judge Mehta's ruling.

50:36So basically, he's implementing all of this to say, okay, let's give some of these rivals kind of a jumpstart in the way that they haven't been able to do that in years. Because basically, delivering valuable search results requires a lot of data. Collecting a lot of data requires a lot of users coming to your service and putting in a lot of queries. And if Google is gobbling all those up, then no other company is really getting that. So the goal is to kind of give these other companies a jumpstart in that way. And so that's kind of what he's trying to do here. But at the same time, he's kind of limiting that a lot more than what the Justice Department said would be necessary to really get them there by saying, you know, we're not going to let you have access to this on a periodic basis.

51:29You'll just get like one snapshot in time and that should give you a sense of like what Google knows or, you know, saying you can only have some access to some of these features for six years rather than 10. So I think that's kind of how he's tried to like walk this line. And he's really wary of making these rivals dependent on Google. He doesn't want them to feel like, okay, we have like a long runway to figure this out. And we could just like coast on Google's data. In the meantime, he wants them to build up to be their own services. Have you heard from, you know, the Mozilla's, the DuckDuckGo's, like how they feel about this?

52:11Like, is this going to be helpful to them? I mean, I think Mozilla is relieved that they will not be losing a huge chunk of their revenue that comes from Google for default payments for Firefox. I think DuckDuckGo was really not happy with this ruling. And they ultimately said, their CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, said in a statement, quote, Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors, including an AI search. As a result, consumers will continue to suffer. We believe Congress should now step in. And, you know, if you're calling on Congress to step in at this point after we've seen these bills shot down before, you know, that really feels like a last resort.

53:02So there's there's this take out there. And I'm curious your thought, like it seemed people Google Google clearly lost the the lawsuit. Right. They were ruled to have a monopoly. That is the last thing they wanted. But when it comes to the remedies, it kind of seems like they won. Do you agree with that? I do largely agree with that. I mean, basically what the judge granted was pretty much most of what, pretty much all of what Google had proposed that they said, we'd be fine with this, which is basically the exclusivity contracts aspect. And then he imposed somewhat more of what the Justice Department asked for in terms of some of the search data and other syndication that he ordered.

53:49but really the DOJ lost out on all of its other big ass. So, you know, it's not a total loss for the Justice Department, but it's far short of what they asked for and seems to be far short of what many critics here think would be necessary to restore competition. I want to ask me a bigger picture question. You had this story that ran on Thursday. You said the tech antitrust renaissance may already be over. Can you dive into that more? Because there was, I think, this big burst of momentum and energy toward, you know, tearing apart big tech. And it seemed like this was going to be the moment. And I think you're saying maybe it fizzled out before it even started.

54:33Yeah. I mean, I started on this beat about six years ago when a lot of this was starting to bubble up. And at the time, you know, there was this kind of feeling around antitrust for a long time that, you know, we should kind of just look at like prices and do prices go up or down? And what does that mean for consumers? And we should really be restrained in how we think about antitrust. And that was just beginning to change with things like Lena Kahn coming on the scene with a proposal about how we should look differently at markets that don't necessarily have a price tag for consumers, like is the case in digital markets a lot of the time, but still have a lot of power.

55:20And, you know, she kind of came onto the scene making a argument about how to go after Amazon's alleged monopoly. And then we saw this explosion of interest from lawmakers, from outside groups, and, you know, eventually from the enforcers themselves to actually kind of take this new approach to antitrust. antitrust. And in 2019, we saw the House Judiciary Committee start to investigate all of these companies. We saw the DOJ and the FTC begin to look into all of these companies. And all of that has resulted in lawsuits at this point against Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon. I mean, that's just unheard of for at one point in time to have huge monopoly cases against all of these companies.

56:09So it was really a milestone. And then, you know, in the last couple of years, we've seen these cases begin to go to trial and having the initial liability finding from Judge Mehta saying that Google is a monopoly in online search. I mean, that was just huge. That was such a watershed moment for this movement and seemed to really solidify like, okay, really, we can get the courts on board here if we put in the work, if we bring these cases. And I think getting to this point and seeing, okay, yes, the Justice Department got a court to find a tech company to be a monopoly, but then he does kind of the bare minimum to remedy it.

57:00that is that's a real setback. And I think it's, it just casts some doubt on how far courts will really be willing to go to address this problem. And, you know, it could be that in a few years, it turns out that this was the outlier. You know, there's Google is going to face the DOJ later this month in its other case that it lost to the Justice Department over its ad tech monopoly. And it's very possible that the judge in that case could say, I'm going to break up part of Google's ad tech business. And we could see some more aggressive rulings in some of these other cases. So it is too soon to know what the arc of history on this will look like.

57:44But I think it is just a kind of a warning to the optimism that's existed in this space that, you know, there's still such a long road ahead and the hardest part may be yet to come. I'm just curious because like you're kind of mentioning that this is a marathon, not like a 5K, just to use runner analogies. But, you know, I'm just curious how much of the environmental vibe shift plays into this, because if this started six years ago, then, well, a lot of this momentum and energy started under the Trump, the initial Trump regime, and then gained some momentum, I guess, during the Biden years. And, you know, I think everyone would agree that there's been a little bit of an energy change since, you know, the start of 2025.

58:31So I'm just curious, like, does that also play into this, like, fear that the Renaissance might be over before it began? Because, you know, ostensibly there's a long time before there's another vibe shift, maybe, or maybe there'll never be another vibe shift again. So just curious how much that plays into like thoughts regarding like how this is going to go with all of these big antitrust cases. Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, I think it's impossible to ignore the, you know, political influence here and just the way, you know, the political moment has shifted. At the same time, it's it's really interesting.

59:07And I've written about this a good amount. it's been such a bipartisan movement here. And it's not that it's like all sides of both parties really care about this, but it's, you know, a certain subset of each party is really invested. And you'll see like, you know, I think at one hearing there was like Matt Gaetz and, you know, we'll be saying something that sounds a lot like Elizabeth Warren. And so it's just like really perplexing sometimes. But then I think you end up seeing like in this moment, especially amid like all the upheaval we saw earlier this year with Doge, with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg coming to the White House right before his antitrust case went to trial.

59:52You know, all of this kind of fear about outside influence, corporate influence, and just how the Trump administration would conduct itself, his dismantling of different agencies and kind of taking Democrats off the Federal Trade Commission. I think all of that just kind of created this questioning and distrust among between the parties around all of this. So I don't know that it necessarily undermines the like policy goals that I think are kind of deeply held beliefs, at least within a lot of members of this movement on both sides. But I think it's impossible to ignore the possible influence of that and just kind of the different moment that we're in right now.

1:00:40I think you're right that at a bare minimum, this is a coming back down to earth moment. This is even if we get there, judges are typically very cautious in how they approach these remedies. And, you know, I think it says a lot that Google, at least as of the time we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, Google has not appealed. right they still could but i i tend to find that most companies about 30 minutes after an opinion comes down put out a statement saying this is terrible this is the worst thing that's ever happened and we're going to appeal and and google put out a statement that was actually like you know the judge he was very thoughtful in this case we were just like not not what you expect they didn't have that one drafted they had to write that one on the fly so lauren what happens next here, right?

1:01:30This still could get appealed. It could eventually be put into place. What are we waiting on? Yeah, I think it still is pretty likely that Google appeals. They said before this came out that they would appeal because basically they had to wait for the remedies ruling to come out to even appeal the underlying liability funding. And Google doesn't like being called a monopolist. It probably is going to appeal that part of the ruling. But, you know, we'll see what happens there. The other thing that could happen is that the DOJ or the states that also brought this case against Google could appeal to get more of the remedies that they were asking for.

1:02:13So we could see appeals from one or both sides here. And then that would go up to the appeals court and that could eventually go up to the Supreme Court. So even though a lot of these remedies could go in place soon. You know, they could all be kind of paused while all of this goes on. And it really could be a long time before any of this really comes to fruition. RIP, Lauren. Yes. You know where to find me. Stay tuned. Maybe we'll have AGI by the time the actual remedies come down. All right. We've got to take a break. When we get back, the thunder round is back and better than ever. Stay tuned.

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1:04:18Morning, Zoe. All right, we are back for the Thunder Round. There it is. As you all hopefully know, I have been on a power trip. A widely beloved, fan favorite, only positive reaction. I'm losing my adjectives here. Power trip. That, I have to warn you all, may come to an end as soon as next week. I'm going to have to fight David Pierce. Two podcasters enter, only one will leave to find out whether the Thunder Round continues. Listen, if you love the Thunder Round, if you support the Thunder Round, I'm going to need you to email vergecast at theverge.com. Tell us how important it is to you. This is the Thunder Round, five stories, five minutes each.

1:05:10When we're running out of time, we'll hear some rumbling thunder. When time is up, our producer, Travis Larchuk, will strike us down with a final crash. That means it's time to move on. All right, V, you're up first. What have we got? Okay, so my question is, would you pay$2 ,000 for a smartwatch? Because that's what Garmin is asking from some people. They came out with an announcement this week about their flagship Garmin Fenix 8 Pro series. So it's like an S-year for Garmin. The Fenix is their flagship line. and just like how the iPhone used to have an iPhone 4 then iPhone 4S, the S year is just like, ah, that many updates so they just came out with the S year Pro Garmin Fenix 8 and you know, there's some really cool things they finally added LTE and satellite SOS, kind of you have to use the Garmin Messenger app so it's not like you can have an actual phone number on your Garmin or fully, like how you would think of a data connection on that doesn't the apple watch ultra have that for half the price it's for ten dollars and it's eight hundred you know the the lte connection is generally ten dollars depending on your uh carrier and the apple watch ultra is eight hundred dollars but but they're saying hold on now the starting price for an oled display will be a twelve hundred dollars if you go a slight size up, it'll be$1 ,300.

1:06:40But if you want the micro LED display, which has a maximum brightness of 4 ,500 nits, which I don't think I've ever heard of any device with a maximum brightness of 4 ,500 nits, you have the privilege and the distinct honor of paying$2 ,000. And I was just like, you can't convince people to spend$2 ,000 for a foldable phone that does a lot of stuff. $2 ,000. $2 ,000. $2 ,000. Like people were losing their minds over the garments because Phoenix 8 being$1 ,000. $2 ,000. $2 ,000. For$2 ,000, this thing better like be 4K. Like I better be able to watch like Dolby Vision movies on my wrist. Like with this thing.

1:07:24So what is the outdoorsy use case where you absolutely need 4 ,500 units? Like it's like you exclusively hike in the desert with the midday sun directly overhead. and you just can't possibly rotate your wrist enough to see it? Yeah. Yeah, it's mostly so you can see things in bright, direct sunlight. But it's really funny because I was reading the comments and everyone was just like, what, no memory in pixel? Reflective display? Which, you know, will let the battery be 4 ,000 years long? Not with a display that bright. Not happening. No, no. So the microLED will be, I think, about a 10-day battery life.

1:08:05and for garmin you know if you're talking about for for an apple watch or a pixel watch or a samsung watch 10 days better like oh we sign me up bob uh but for a garmin where they measure the battery life in weeks and months 10 days they're like 10 days is this supposed to be like a part of the ultralight hiking movement so that like you don't have to bring your phone or your satellite phone but i don't get how you would be able to rely on this to send all your messages if you are an emergency uh yeah kind of like basically what they're doing because it's really hard to negotiate these carrier deals for the smaller i say smaller brands like garmin's a publicly traded company but it's just it's not on the scale of like apple or google right so it's harder for them to negotiate the the carrier deals so what they're doing is they're relying on the garmin in reach satellite communications to bring LTE-M to these watches and satellite connectivity.

1:09:06So depending where you are, if you make an SOS call, which is the big appeal of these things, it'll reroute you to the Garmin like response center. So Garmin is going to be like a middleman in every step of the thing. Your watch won't have its own cell phone number. You can only call other Garmin Fenix 8. So your friend who has also spent over a thousand dollars for garmin phoenix 8 and or the family members that you've badgered into downloading the garmin messenger app which is their proprietary app to enable text messaging more thoroughly on their on their um device and you know they introduced that last year i tested it for the garmin phoenix 8 review i had a friend download it and as soon as i was done with the review she was like so the review's up and i was like yeah she's like can i delete this app now.

1:09:53So it's great. Helps them compete more with Apple and all those stuff. But I can't help but feel like they've lost the plot a little bit for what their users actually want. So$2 ,000. That's my... They have taken the best and worst parts of micro LED, which is really bright and insanely expensive. Yeah. All right, Lauren, what have you got? Okay, so I'm here to deliver some devastating news that Amazon is cracking down on how you share your Prime shipping benefits with your friends and family. Yeah, this was huge news in my family because on the day that the Google search remedies ruling came out, my dad said, okay, yeah, but have you seen that you have to stop mooching off of our Amazon benefits?

1:10:44So yeah, basically they're making it so, you know, they're kind of changing this invitee program that they had into Amazon family. And under that program, you kind of, everyone who's part of that has to be part of the same primary household. So if you don't live with the other person in your family or your friend group that you share a prime account with, you can't kind of share that those prime benefits. It seems like from how I'm reading it that you could still just have, you know, your friend or family member ship you stuff from their account, just to like a different address or you could log in there, but you can't have like your own account and use their shipping benefits.

1:11:27I'm not letting somebody else see my Amazon purchase history. Like why I bought a tarp and a tomato plant stick and also 15 USB-C cables in the same order. It just doesn't add up. I had no idea that this was even a benefit that was allowed. Netflix password sharing, okay, that makes sense. These are just computers. Netflix isn't tied to my house. Amazon is very singular to me. Honestly, maybe I'm just out of the loop. Maybe I'm just left behind. i didn't realize i i barely even realized you could share it within your household so i was like that no oh i thought i was getting an upgrade it's not true jake you gotta get on the password sharing at least within your house because oh you're not you know for a while before like tied the knot said holy matrimony uh we were paying for our individual prime stuff and then when we found out that we were basically paying twice while living under the same household We were like, why are we doing this?

1:12:32Why should we have to be doing this? But I hate that Amazon is basically taking a page out of the streamers. But I mean, come on, man. We all got subscription fatigue. Let us have this. Let us have our shipping. Come on. Like the narrative, though, for subscriptions over the past, what, like two years at this point? And it was started by Netflix. And they were like, we're going to crack down passwords. And they expanded it globally. And now it's kind of everyone. like if they haven't done it already they have announced that they're going to do it I'm pretty sure it came to HBO I'm pretty sure it came or is coming to Disney Plus and Amazon Prime I'm going to say this one actually makes the most sense to me as a thing that feels very focused on a single location but nonetheless like these things are expensive and every time another company does a crackdown it adds another subscription to everybody else And so it's like each crackdown is hurting the next company that does a crackdown because they're just going to have fewer people who are willing to add a subscription.

1:13:36Like I am I am tapped out. I have too many things. I like when it comes to streaming services, I just like save it up until there's like enough like movies and shows that I want to watch and then like try to knock it out in like a month or two. Because I'm like, I can't keep all these going at the same time. This is outrageous. I think it's kind of surprising that they let us like have all these password sharing for as long as they did. And I think once like Netflix decided we're going to crack down on this and, you know, people didn't just leave in droves. I think everyone else was like, all right, I guess we could do it too, finally.

1:14:11No, that's so true. Like Netflix was willing to take the reputational hit. And I guess people actually just like Netflix enough that they're like, well, what are you going to do? I'll pay for some more Netflix. I mean it helps that there's like bundles now Or if you go to a carrier They'll be like we'll give you a free year of this And a free year of that And you can now within one bundle Get five different subscription services And you'll save money Than if you were subscribing to them all independently And here's a credit card thing But I was like why do we have to do this Why do we have to jump through all of these hoops I had a racket going With a bunch of six friends Where one person would pay for one service And then put us all as family and everyone was responsible for paying one subscription and we were all just on a big old racket and this is like falling apart.

1:14:59And so now I'm just like, do I need this service? I don't, I miss my subscription racket. I will say some of the companies that have done these crackdowns, they're not as good at cracking down as they say they are. There's, you know, listen, I'm not breaking any rules, but there might be some people on my accounts who are and nobody's caught on yet. All right. Next story. Okay. So I have been talking about this, I think the past three weeks, I am obsessed with the pixel 10 pros, 100 X zoom feature. So it has this feature called pro res zoom, where when you zoom into a hundred X, it will use AI to enhance the image.

1:15:41And I think when we first saw this, I was like, these demo images that I'm seeing seem like incredible. They're remarkable. I can't believe they look this good. And then last week I was like, well, I'm maybe seeing a few flaws here. This week, I think I'm ready to say I might hate it. I might hate it. So Alison Johnson went out with the Pixel 10 Pro and a Coolpix camera that actually has a 100x lens. And number one, you have to see what this camera looks like. It is this enormous black thing. It is like the size of a limb. It's huge because it turns out you need a huge lens to actually get 100x.

1:16:22But she did a bunch of side by side photos with the Pixel 10 Pro and this actual 100x zoom. Okay, so I want to show you two of the photos that Allison took. And I want to hear what which one you think is better. And this is I'm going to give you the one that I think is maybe the best presentation from the AI. So here are two photos of the tails of some planes. So here's photo one, and it is kind of like blurry and ripply, and it almost feels like you can feel the fumes or something coming out of the back of the jet engines. And here's another one, and I think this one is crisp and clear, maybe a little smooth.

1:17:03The colors are vibrant. I'm curious, do you two have thoughts on which of these two is a better photo? The one that doesn't look like amateur impressionist art. So you're saying this one that's currently up, which means the smooth one with the bold colors. Lauren, do you feel the same? Do you prefer this one? I think the crisper one is better, but it's a little bit too perfect. So this is the AI one. And this is, I think, the best case for it, right? It is these sort of big, simple objects, big, bold colors, and it's able to clean them up really neatly, and there aren't too many weird artifacts or messy imperfections or fake things.

1:17:51But I went through all of Allison's photos, and this is like the single one that I think actually shows off this feature being good. But the one that really broke it for me, there's this photo of the moon that allison took with the the pixel and i looked at it and i thought you know that's a pretty darn good picture of the moon and it like it looks sharp it has this incredible texture on it and i'm like it has moon texture it looks like the moon this is so cool and the the moment that i turned against this feature was when i looked at the actual photo of the moon and it is completely different all the texture is made up it got it's it's not there at all it was just like oh yeah some texture here so i i i don't know i oh man i i was in pretty messy feelings about this because like a different color yeah it's certainly a different color um i don't know i feel very very torn because again i do think like this one photo of the planes like yeah that's that's pretty good for for 100x like that cleans it up nicely but this moon photo i'm like it just made up a bunch of stuff about the moon like that's not that's not what i want from a camera um and allison just talked to mark lavoy um who used to work on the pixel cameras and now works on cameras uh at adobe um and talked to him about putting generative ai in camera apps and And I don't know, the impression I got was that he was kind of uncertain if it was a good idea.

1:19:22Yeah. This is how I feel. I'm curious. You guys, I think, look through some of the other photos. Like, do you have thoughts here? Like, is this good? Is this evil? It's just why. I feel like I have mixed feelings. Yeah, I think it kind of just depends what you're going for with the photo. Like if you're trying to like capture the moment that you're in or like or get like real information from a photo that you're going to remember, like I don't know that I'd want to rely on AI for that because it's like you could just like download a photo of a really good photo of the moon if you want to know what the moon really looks like.

1:20:00Or, you know, I feel like some of just like taking photos with your phone is just like capturing the moment. But yeah, this feels like something else. Why are you zooming in a hundred times? Just because you can? For what reason are we going a hundred times Zoom sometimes? It is because I can, to be clear. I'm excited by that. It just doesn't make any sense. Okay, we could do another 20 hours on a hundred X Zoom, but we must move on. V, what have you got? In the year of our Lord, 2025, you can finally have Instagram on the iPad. I saw this headline. They did it. They did it. They did it. This is the most impressive piece of...

1:20:47Oh my gosh. Incredible. Oh, oh. This is the single most impressive piece of engineering that we've seen out of Meta in years. Can you believe they managed to do this? It's groundbreaking. We've only been asking for this since the inception of Instagram over 10 years ago. And it's just like, oh, cool. Instagram and the iPad are the same age. They're the same age. They could have done it at any point. At any point. We could have had a native iPad app that just, you know, instead of an iPhone app that just blows up. But then at the same time, so I was reading me a story on it, and it's like it'll prominently feature reels.

1:21:31I was like, that's not what I want. That's not what I want from the iPad Instagram app. This is mind blowing. You open it up and it defaults to reels. And if you want to find photos on Instagram, you have to go to a new tab that like it looks like you're going to find your friends or something. Like it's not a clear photo. You need to find it's buried in a new tab. The photos, the Instagram part of Instagram is now hidden. within Instagram. This just screams to me that they just wanted to find another way to distribute reels and they didn't really have interest in an actual Instagram app for iPad.

1:22:12That's exactly it. And it's just like, listen, I'm pitching a new segment called give the people what they freaking want. And don't edit like, you know, there's just so many things where it's just give the people what they want. We are asking nicely. Please don't put your nefarious agenda into the thing that we're asking for. Give us our chronological freaking feeds back. I was just like, yeah. Listen, I will use the Chinese state-sponsored NSA deeply concerned app TikTok for my short form video. And Instagram, I would like to stick to photos. That's how I feel. I'm not messing with Reels. I'm not messing with Reels until the day that TikTok gets banned.

1:23:04And then I'll open up my iPad. Photos and stories. That's, you know, honestly, just give me the stories. I want to snoop on what my friends are doing and go like, oh, good for her. Or like, ooh, that's shady. You know, that's what Instagram on the iPad should be for, just as it is on the phone. I don't want Reels there. leave me alone so yeah i it was just like so wonderful and then so cruel and i say this as someone who hasn't had a fully charged ipad in months so i'm just saying i'm just saying this is meta's approach to the ipad has been bewildering and i realized like i don't know i realize it takes some engineering resources i realized like maybe it's it's probably never going to be the most popular platform for them but it is so embarrassing and weird and ridiculous that today like you or at least as of yesterday you opened up instagram and it was still that tiny little square that that you just like a version of what you'd see on the phone and the same is true for threads right it i believe it was true for whatsapp until pretty recently as well too so hopefully hopefully this means threads is next what do they have against the ipad like i'm not a big iPad girly, but like all of our grandparents and all of the children are on iPads.

1:24:22Those are great segments to target. I don't get it. I do think they have beef with Apple. Meta and Apple definitely have beef, but like taking it out on the iPad is like, Apple does not notice that. They're like, they're not like, oh no, but WhatsApp for iPad doesn't go full screen. Like, that's not your leverage to getting a better deal in the app store. You're just hurting all the old people with bad eyes, which will be me in a few, like, not even a few years. It's me now, an old person with bad eyes. I saw your glasses earlier. They are, you're already there. I'm already there. My eyes are garbage eyeballs.

1:25:05And I was, you know, I was like, oh, I don't have to do the thingy and maybe I'll use my iPad more because I don't have to have all these iPhone apps that just blow up. No, I'm very upset. I know it's finally here and I'm still upset about it because they're using it to push reels. RIP to her Instagram. It was already not Instagram anymore, but now it's clear where their interest lies. All right, Lauren, last one. Take us home. Last one. So yeah, this is just basically shout out to Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who pretty much every day for the past several months has said to check a court docket to figure out if she's going back to work.

1:25:47You might recall that Trump tried to fire her and her colleague at the time, Alvaro Bedoya, from the Federal Trade Commission, which he technically isn't allowed to do based on Supreme Court precedent that basically they're trying to challenge. challenge. This whole case had to play out. And, you know, the district court judge said, you can go back. So she went back. And then the appeals court said, wait a minute, we're going to pause all this while we figure it out. Then she went home. And just this week, the circuit court said, okay, you know what, she can go back to work. We're still figuring out the case.

1:26:28But, But, you know, for now, like she's allowed to go back. So, yeah, I just can't imagine your life being run by a court docket in this way. But that's been the situation. She's like finding out in the New York Times if she goes to work in the morning. Pretty much. It's like the weirdest snow day imaginable. That's hell. That's real hell. I don't think I could do it. She's a strong woman. So has obviously it is, I'm going to say, bad for the FTC not to have a full set of commissioners and very problematic for Trump to fire the Democrats. These are intentionally designed to be a bipartisan commission.

1:27:08Has it allowed them to, you know, go running now that there hasn't been two Democrats in there? Or is the FTC commissioners who are left like not even care? Well, I think the thing it changes is not so much like what the commission is actually doing, but just like what sort of insight the public could possibly get into what they're doing. So, you know, there's three Republicans on the commission now, so they were always going to have the majority. It's a five-person panel when it's full. and the chair gets to set the agenda. So it's not that the Democrats would be able to kind of change the outcomes of any votes or anything, but they'd have access to the same documents that the rest of the commissioners do.

1:27:55They'd be able to say in their dissenting statements, like, hey, you know, this is why I think this was really wrong. And without that, you know, we'll never really know. This also just like stymies the commission. I think one thing that's overlooked, and this is true at the FCC as well, like, a lot of what the commission does is boring bipartisan stuff and that day-to-day work now just grinds to a halt in in some respects when you're down two major leaders um and so it's like the the commission is just going to do a worse job of being the federal trade commission they're going to do a worse job of enforcing the rules that that universally they agree they want to enforce.

1:28:39And, you know, it would be nice if this person was allowed to have her job back as she is legally allowed to be there. Yeah, I mean, I think it also just arguably makes it so any company that's trying to sue because they didn't like what the FTC told them they have to do gives them another thing to say in court, like, hey, look at this is this is not like the normal course of things that's fascinating um i'm sure that like any court case we've got like 900 appeals to go for sure i'm r.i.p lauren i'm excited to see how it plays out all right that's it for the thunder round again if you love the thunder round send an email vergecast at the verge.com hashtag save the thunder round hashtag David loves the Thunder Round send in your emails support us I've seen every iteration of the Thunder Round I've enjoyed it immensely so you got my vote you have including listen the Thunder Round is always new it is always improving and it will stay that way until the day that it clashes with David Pierce which will be next week alright that's the Verge cast I am off to California next week, along with V to cover the Apple announcement.

1:30:00Our Tuesday episode of the Vergecast will be pushed to Wednesday as a result, so we can give you some of our impressions from the event. And stay tuned because David Pierce will be back for that episode to chat with us. It's been a blast being your Friday host. I will still be around the show. Whether the Thunder Round survives is another question. Send in your emails. If you like what we do here, the best way to support us is to get a subscription to The Verge at TheVerge.com. And be sure to sign up for V's newsletter, Optimizer, while you're there. It's going to be good. We're all going to have an existential crisis and feel good about it.

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