Google: Breaking Laws and Killing Chromecasts

28:19Good. You will have more thoughts than me because I only use one. I'll tell you how they make me feel. I like that. What the vibes are. Emotional. So the TV Streamer 4K looks like a little set top box it looks nice it's kind of got that plush look that Google is kind of now going for most of their hardware looks very similar to like the Nest Wi-Fi Pro all that kind of stuff $99 unfortunately I have to say that it is replacing the first product that Google ever sold you talking about the Nexus Q? I'm bringing that back no the Chromebook CR41 it's replacing the chromecast the chromecast is end of life yeah end of life and this is replacing it replacing it you know what's weird what the chromecast is only like a dollar and this streamer is 99 yeah i have a hard time believing it's gonna replace the chrome so so a couple of years ago i think it was 2021 the 2020 or 21 21 they came out with the Chromecast with Google TV.

29:31Right. And that was sort of like a reimagination of the Chromecast because it gave you the smart TV interface of Google TV, which had been totally redone. It was the new Android TV, but it had a remote control. This is what I have now. Yes. It basically felt like what you would get with an Apple TV, but it was still the dongle instead of being a set-top box. Yeah. So now they've got rid of... I know, I agree. Now they got rid of the dongle. like one of the best products like Chromecast was amazing and then they were like hey you don't have to just you can still use your phone if you want but now get a remote and like also they just have a great UI and bringing all of your different like shows and stuff through all your different subscriptions together on one screen it's generally better than most smart TV like you yeah Google TV is awesome yeah Google TV is awesome but yeah I don't know I guess they wanted to add more like brawn to it so as a 22 % faster CPU twice the RAM, 32 gigs of storage.

30:29This is also obviously not something you generally think about when you think about your streamer player, but apparently they said in the future they want to allow for like four streams of sports at once. And apparently doing that they need more bandwidth. Okay, I'll give them that. That would be cool. How would I do that? Yeah, I guess the streams would have to be coming from different platforms? No, because in YouTube you can technically do multi-view. Oh, so you can watch multiple videos at the same time. YouTube TV? YouTube TV, regular YouTube, that kind of stuff. They also might let you, I'm not sure about this, they might let you watch different platforms at the same time, which would be part of my brain.

31:11I would like to know from the audience how many people actually watch multiple things at the same time. Well, I'm immediately thinking when Lane's old enough to watch TV, can I put on Bluey and an F1 race in the bottom corner and just like pay attention to that. Well, that's just picture in picture. Does it have that already with two totally separate services? That's a good question. I bet they have that. I'm just saying. Why would you want to watch anything other than Bluey though? I've also, true. Focus on Bluey. I put hockey and F1 on at the same time and I would do two streams. That's fair.

31:43I'm sure people. Olympics right now? Yeah, that's true. Multiple sports. So yeah, so it has Ethernet. It has HDMI 2.1. Also, it now has a button on the back that you can press and it will ring the remote, which is cool. That's nice. So the remote has a little mic. The remote is also redesigned. It is now longer. They have gotten rid of the volume buttons on the side and added them to the top. And they also, it has like a ribbed bottom so that it's like easier to hold and also stays stable more easily. There's also a remappable button on it that you can use to basically bring up whatever you want on Google TV.

32:21An action button? It's sort of an action button. I also noticed that I was comparing the Chromecast with Google TV to the new TV streamer remote they replaced the button the assistant button because there was a Google assistant button on the last one they replaced it with just a microphone and my conspiracy theory just a microphone button right? and my like you know we've talked about this a lot like what are they going to do with the assistant because they brought up the Google assistant multiple times during this briefing yeah they said they were making updates to the assistant uh and i asked them about this and they basically said we made it a microphone because in the context of your tv people don't think about the mic being the google assistant they think i just need to talk to my tv apparently people are just normalized now to talking to their technology with a microphone that's fair most tv remotes now have a microphone logo you kind of have to because like in youtube if you want to search with voice, you have to click the mic button and then hold the mic button on the remote.

33:26So I could see where the confusion between mic button and YouTube or Disney Plus or whatever then doesn't correlate to Google Assistant button. You need to see the exact same icon. Right. You can still do all the Google Assistant stuff that you could do before, but now it's just a mic button. The remappable button, they now have a new section in Google TV that can show all of your Google Home stuff. So you can see your Nest cams. You can see views from your Nest cams. You can see all the lights and you can turn on and off your lights and your Nest thermostat stuff. So it's all basically integrated into one application, which is pretty nice.

34:01I like that. It was already a really nice interface. I think one of the best ones. I really dislike the Apple TV interface. I think the Google one is way better. And yeah, they made it better. What's also nice about it is it has Matter over Thread. So it can be a Thread border router, which we did a whole episode on Matter, which you can go watch if you want to learn more about that. But effectively, if you want to use Matter, you need to have a thread border router somewhere in your house, which generally only more expensive products have. So having one in the living room is really nice because it's like kind of a central space to the rest of your house.

34:36Nice. So that's convenient. They also said that they updated Google TV with Gemini, which I felt confused about. And also I feel like they're just trying to stick Gemini in anything that they can. they say that it uses Gemini to make AI powered recommendations for suggestions which is just suggestions that they already made you but I guess better apparently overviews about shows and movies now that are generated by AI which to me just says we fired all the people that did that which is that overview is just like it's not going to literally tell me what happens it's just a description of the movie, which people used to make.

35:19But if AI is doing that, how can they prove there's no spoilers? That's true. That would be so funny. Yeah, it's like Harry Potter 6. Dumbledore.

35:33Yeah. You won't believe what happens. Okay. And the other thing that they were really excited about that I just wanted to cry is ambient mode can still show your photos that are important to you can also now show generative AI screensavers. Yeah. So that's basically that. A lot of people are very excited about it because they wanted to make it look nice because they didn't want their radio signals to get interfered with. Like at the house I lived at with Michael Fisher a few years ago, we had one of the Chromecasts, but it was plugged into like a set-top box thing under our console. and it would sometimes have networking problems because we had a lot of metal in there.

36:19So their whole thing was like, we want to get it onto the top of your console so that it is not obstructed by anything. And so that's why they made it look nicer. That was my question. They did a bad job at, the quick little announcement of it was like, no more hanging dongles. Now you have this nice, and I was like, the hanging dongle was behind my TV. I didn't see it. I don't care that it was hanging back there. Yeah, same. But yeah, that's kind of it for that. What's your take, Marquez, since you said you have a lot of thoughts? My take is I probably won't be getting one. I'm happy with the Google TV thing I have now.

36:55It's high res. It's pretty quick. I'm sure being faster and maybe being able to do multiple streams will be fun and nice, but I don't really think I'm going to need to do that. So I guess I'm good. Yeah. I think it's for people that want to buy some sort of smart TV player because honestly, when you buy a TV from Samsung or TCL or whatever, they have like a bunch of different apps and the UI sucks and the controller sucks and I would prefer to just use the Google thing. This is like a spec bump of the old one basically. Basically, yeah. And honestly, they said that most of the spec upgrades were not for anything that they need right now but for things that they potentially want to do in the future.

37:33We were talking about this the other day because it basically just means that we have two remotes now. Yeah. With your phone and it, you mean? Well, you can well, because you still have to have the remote for the TV, but you would program that to now control your TV, right? Oh. But that would have to be through. The power button can control your TV over HDMI 2.1. But that's ARC or ERC or whatever? C-E-ARC, something like that. The only problem is my soundbar goes through that. So now do I run into that problem of either needing two remotes or going through that HDMI? And I guess I could plug in through optical.

38:08That's always my problem. I can't figure it out. You might need to get a splitter. I also have an eARC soundbar, and I think it just talks directly to the... Well, what I'm saying... But then I would need to still have a remote that's turning my TV on because it can't get control through HDMI. Yeah. Yeah. So you still have two remotes? Yeah. Bring back Harmony. Honestly. We're getting back to the point where you go to your friend's house and their coffee table had seven remotes on it for the TV. The Apple TV remote and this remote. I just housed that for my parents this past weekend, and I sit down in the living room, and I go to just turn on the TV to watch YouTube, and there's four different remotes, and I'm trying all of them, trying to figure out which one it is.

38:50Dang, this is the world we live in. I think I have three remotes. I have the Apple TV remote, the Chromecast remote, and a TV remote. And they're different enough. That doesn't bother you? No. I like the Chromecast UI better than my Samsung UI. 100%. But I don't want to use two remotes, so I'd rather just suffer through the Samsung UI. Yeah, I think the Chromecast remote turns the TV on and off. And you have your soundbar through? And it controls the soundbar. Is it called eArc? Yeah, I think eArc. And it talks through the TV to the soundbar. So I think if I sit down knowing I'm going to do a Chromecast thing, I can just pick up the Chromecast remote and do everything on that remote.

39:30I'm 99 % sure. Because there's a power button on the remote, there's volume buttons on the remote, they all work, and then obviously the UI and the Chromecast thing. and the volume buttons on that remote controls the soundbar you got it this all confuses me a lot I don't have a TV so I don't know you might have sold me on this the funny thing is they want this to not be hidden and if I ever get this it will be hidden 100 % there's the cool button to find the remote but you can also say hey G into your phone find my remote and it will ring it which is cool so yeah that's nice I think the thing that most people are going to be excited about, though, is the new Nest Learning Thermostat.

40:13And I just fact-checked myself. It has indeed been nine years, not ten. How dare you. I'm sorry. Canceled. Nine years since the last generation, the Gen 3. Now we have the Gen 4. This is the first major design change in the Nest Learning Thermostat, basically since its inception. Even the Gen 1, for the time, looked really nice. If you compare this to a lot of Honeywell or standard thermostats, even the Gen 1 looks advanced. But the Gen 3, they basically said they wanted to make it look like a giant pixel watch. I was just going to say it just looks like a pixel watch. Yeah, they said that. And it kind of does.

40:49And it sort of bevels off. The cool thing about it is it does have bezels. But you can't really notice because they said they used multiple layers of glass and film to sort of diffuse the bezel. So you can't see it really at all. Yeah. which is nice. I have a question. Just like the Pixel. Yes. How far off of the wall does this go? Not like a ton. Is that as far? No. No, no, no. That was just a stand to be able to see it. This looks like significant shadow casting behind it. Maybe. It uses the same mount as the last one. That's really good to know because I have Nest mounts and Nest thermostats already and like a ton of places already do.

41:29And I don't know that there's any real reason. Is there a reason to upgrade if you already have an S-thermoset? Or is this, again, just kind of like a spec upgrade? In my opinion, there are many reasons to upgrade. Like what? Okay, so it has a 60 % bigger screen. To you, you probably don't care about that, but it does look nice. It can, okay. God, there's so many features of this. I wrote down so many things. Marquez not caring about a bigger screen needs to go down in the history of this. Well, okay, I guess in the home, I'm fairly, I don't like the tech to be built into the home. because the tech inside the home gets upgraded all the time.

42:05Like my computer, my iPad, my phone, they get changed that all the time. The tech that people build into their houses, I always find, like you ever seen those like million dollar mansion things where they're like, oh, there's an iPad on the wall and it controls the shades. And in three years, you're like, this is an old iPad. I'm like, this is a$10 million house. Now it's bolted into the wall. I don't want the tech in the home to be a focus. So the smaller and more like out of the way the tech is, the better. bigger screen sure but like yeah i wouldn't buy it just well it does a lot of different things uh that will actually save you a lot of energy costs for you it doesn't matter because you use solar i guess um i'm still down to save energy yeah okay so it actually uses solely which for those that don't remember solely was something in the pixel 4 that they actually had first shown off in like 2012 which is like super fine radar that in all their showing off of it they could it could detect like how many cards were in a deck when you like just put a deck of cards on the table it was that precise then they put it in the pixel 4 and it was really bad it was awful really awful literally the worst part of literal doo-doo water yeah doo-doo water they had already reduced the battery size in the pixel 4 from the pixel 3 and then like the physical battery size and then solely just drained it so bad the only things you could do with it because the u.s government was like oh well you can't really use all the capabilities of radar you can only use like certain parts of it where you would wave your hand over it to change songs on Spotify or whatever and it never even worked there's a video of Adam and I in Central Park trying to film a pixel for review for Android Authority and for 15 minutes I was just doing this on a rock in Central Park and it wasn't working core memory it was bad solely did two things for me it would be like on a wireless charger next to my keyboard at work and I'd type and I would hit escape and it would think I was reaching for it and then it would light the screen up and I'd be like, why is that lighting up?

44:01And then it would face scan me and unlock my phone and then I would just be like, now my phone's unlocked. Or when I'm reaching for the Taco Bell on my driver's seat while I'm driving, it would just skip songs as I'm like reaching over. Every time you reach for a fry, it skips the song. Okay, but it uses, so the previous Nest Thermostat had a motion sensor but this actually has the radar so it has this feature called dynamic like farsight. And because the display is a lot bigger, it shows you different ambient information depending on how close you are to it when you're looking at it. Whoa, okay, all right.

44:35Yeah, it's cool. Interesting, because right now, I have to walk up to the thermostat and like look at it, and like really make it obvious, and then it's like, okay, here's the temperature. Yeah, you can be like across the room, and it'll know that you're looking at it, but it will just show you just the temperature in big, bold numbers. But if you're closer to it, the numbers will be smaller, and it'll show extra information around it because it knows you're close enough to see the detail. That's nice. Which is very cool. That is nice. It also knows what the weather is like outside because of like it's connected to Wi-Fi.

45:04So it'll show animations that, you know, it's going to rain, whatever. But it has all of these different energy saving features. Like if you want your house to always be a certain temperature, it'll account for how hot the weather outside is going to make your house naturally, passively, or how cool the weather outside is going to make your house passively. Right. So it won't use the amount of energy over the course of the day because it knows, oh, at this time of the day, it's going to get this much hotter. So I only have to put this much energy into heating. Damn, that's smart. Fascinating. Very smart.

45:36That is really interesting. Also things like if you like your house to be a certain temperature when you come home, when you leave the house, it was already your ideal temperature. And instead of just completely turning off your cooling system and then it gets really cold while you're gone. And then when you're on your way home, it has to heat it all the way back up. It'll lower the temperature a little bit. But because it uses more energy to heat all the way back up from being completely off than it is to just like leave it on a little bit, it'll leave it on a little bit. It has dynamic. What is it called?

46:11When you basically vent a ventilation. So when you ventilate your house, generally you have air coming in from the outside and it sort of like passes through. but if it knows that the AQI is high it won't ventilate at certain times if you're in certain locations I can see Marquez being sold on this in real time these are all like nice things nice to have I don't know if it's like upgradable I mean I think it'll save you energy which I think is kind of worth it over time I feel like judging on how my Nest Thermostat right now saves me energy is it not good? no Okay, because I've never actually owned a Nest thermostat.

46:50I've really dialed my Nest stuff to the point where I basically manually built all my schedules for every day, where when I leave, it goes up to 78. When I come home, at roughly the same time, it's going back to 73, and it's kind of set already. I don't want to derail this that far, but is changing temperatures in the Nest thermostat the most confusing thing possible? Not just like one thing, but like changing schedules and stuff like that. Oh, I do it in the app. But yes, on the thermostat itself, it's a nightmare. No, no, no. On the app, I think it is. The app's not good either. I just want to show David.

47:25If David hasn't done this, I just really quickly want you to try and change. Can you screen record? Because I've never seen this either. I need to make sure. Yeah, making a schedule, it's like a multi-axis thing where you have to like pick the dot for when it will change temperatures, drag it to the day, then drag it to the time, then drag it to the temperature. It's like. I don't even know what you're talking about. No? The Nest app. I'm talking about the Nest app, not the Google Home app. No, that's the Google Home app. That's the Google Home app. So what's the Nest? The Nest app is where this all started.

47:53Welcome to Google. It's not. I just want you to. It's not better. This was going to be a question, so while we're figuring this out, maybe we can discuss it, is how long till Google ditches the Nest name? Gosh. Probably soon. I'm trying to screen that. I don't know. I mean, they ditched the. I feel like that has really good branding. They changed Google Wi-Fi to Nest Wi-Fi. They changed Google Home to Google Nest. I want you to try and change the schedule of what my house will be like tomorrow. Wait. I don't even know if you're doing it right. This is great radio, guys. What is that? That data point, then I can change temperature or time.

48:35This looks like one of your scheduling apps. Kind of, yeah. It's crazy to talk to people who live in houses. because like I haven't lived in a house in like 15 years and I haven't been able to use any of this stuff literally my temperature is whatever my landlord decides it is okay it's probably easier to change than this whole map this is really bad it's so confusing and like half the time Claire and I just like we go out grocery shopping and the whole house is like well they're never coming back let's just turn everything off and then you get home and it's sweltering inside I did turn off the smartphone tracking feature.

49:14I think we had to turn it on. I thought that that would be such a good idea, and it just never worked well. No, it's just like smartphone tracking. Basically, it knows where your phone is. So if your phone is home, it knows your home. And so if you leave, it goes, ah, you're away. Time to turn things into energy saver mode. And when you come home, it goes, oh, you're back, and let me warm it up for you. I thought intuitively that would make a lot of sense, and it would work well. It doesn't. No, it's like, oh, you're back. Don't worry, your house only takes two hours. to cool down now, so just sweat it out for a little while.

49:43Wait, can we talk about the one little feature that I think was maybe gonna hook me is there's a new temperature sensor. Yeah, okay. I have the temperature sensors because one of my thermostats is on a wall next to a window, so the sun is always shining on it. So it always thinks it's 80 degrees when it's not. Why do you have it there? Well, that's just where the thermostat is. So I got a temperature sensor to put in the middle of the room, which is where it should... think to adjust the temperature and they're the most finicky gadgets i have ever owned are they just like little plastic little plastic puck with like a soft touch top yep you can unscrew it you get a rechargeable battery inside i've gone through like seven or eight of them half of them have broken half of them i couldn't get to connect they would work for like a couple months and then disconnect and never reconnect they're they're some of the finickiest gadgets in my life so if If they fix that, that's enough for me to give that a shot.

50:43But it would still be on the wall near the window. No, I just mean make the temperature. Make the separate temperature sensor. There's a temperature sensor puck that you can have. Got it. Yeah. Kind of like, you know how the. I thought it was built into the thermostat. There is one built into the thermostat. But there's another one. But if your thermostat is in a place where it's not really ideal, and you can buy a separate temperature sensor and pair it to the thermostat. From Google? Yeah. It's just a little puck. And put it wherever you want. And I, you know, in the basement, like it's in the back corner and I want the middle of the basement to be where it has the temperature sensor.

51:18So I put it in on the table in the middle of the basement and that seems to work okay until it disconnects every six months and then explodes. Yeah. So they made a new one and it comes with one of them now. It comes with one and you can buy them separately and also in a three-pack. Is it backwards compatible? I don't know about that. I'm a chick. I'm a chick. Yeah. Okay, something else that's quite interesting is there's a special wire and all the electricians out there are going to murder me over this. And I'm sorry because I don't know anything about wiring. But they said, Google's words, there is a special C wire that basically is needed for most smart home, like smart thermostats and a lot of homes especially older homes don't have this wire but apparently google did some sort of magic with the voltages and the electricity running through the other wires that they're able to do everything without the c wire god i wish ellis so i can't explain exactly what's happening but i can explain that i'm one of the people with the problem that that would be solving so for me and i believe the reason this is is because my ac unit and my thermostat can't control my heat because my AC unit is a condenser with air and my heat is oil through baseboards.

52:41So they're two totally separate systems that just happen to not be connected. So I think because of that, the one singular AC, because I have no zones, I just have a single - One huge zone. One huge zone. It was just super basic wires in it. And because of that, it can't, if you want to do the motion tracking and stuff like that, it takes more energy for the actual unit itself and since i don't want to charge it all the time i have to turn all of those things off and barely just get enough energy through the wires that actually are connected because those wires are pretty much just there to control that condenser and the air controller okay so i'm assuming what that is is it would let me use the super basic wires because like when you set it all up it's like connect this here connect this here and this optional wire for right like energy that's the c wire yeah and like i don't care about motion tracking enough to have an electrician come in and run a new wire for that um yeah so that would let me actually being able to use solely and yeah like that they said most people do not have to use this wire if you do have to use it for some reason they have an adapter that'll make it work that they will send you nice apparently so um yeah it comes in three colors polished silver polished obsidian and polished gold they all look very nice there's no black uh obsidian oh it's black yeah but just the looks of it it looks like the color almost doesn't even matter yeah it's on the side yeah so it doesn't matter as much but the bezel like comes over yeah it's like flowing over the side so you can barely even see anything yeah it also has these cool like weather animations that play I don't know I don't know if I feel about that I don't know if I want it to rain inside and outside at the same time yeah now the cobalt in the battery is 100 % recycled which is good shout out to Dua Lipa yep thanks Dua Lipa for pressuring Google through Tim Cook.

54:31Through Tim. And also zero plastic in the packaging, which is also good. Google's kind of doing that a lot now. So yeah, that's the new Nestle Hermes thermostat Gen 4. It is$279 in the United States and$379 in Canada, which seems awful because I'm pretty sure the US exchange rate in Canada is also really bad right now. Wait, is that, that's not$379 Canadian? Canadian, Canadian. Oh, okay. which I think is even worse, but I'm not sure. Yeah, so it is. And then if you want the temperature sensor, it's$39.99 for one, but it comes with it. Or$99.99 for three. Wait, okay. You're saying it comes, you buy a thermostat, you get one temperature sensor for free.

55:16If you want one more temperature sensor, that's$39.99. Yeah. And if you want a three pack, it's$100. $100, okay. Canadian exchange rate, almost exactly the same. Oh, okay. Nevermind. Yeah, so that was that. And then they also talked to me a bit about the future of Google Home, which apparently people that subscribe to Nest Aware are going to have early access to. Mostly Gemini stuff. Google says they know that you get way too many notifications from your Nest cameras, which you guys probably do. I do. That's why they're all turned off. Yeah. Now Gemini will identify what's actually important, they say, and surface the ones that they say are actually important.

55:59If this works, this would be the greatest achievement of all time. Agreed. Because none of them work right now. They're all just like, here's a leaf blowing, notification. Here's a car driving by, notification. Squirrel shadow, notification. It's just, oh, it's constant. Yeah. If you ever go in and it's just like, motion, motion, motion, motion, motion. It's like, I know the tree is blowing in the wind. You don't need to tell me every five seconds. It's still there. Yeah. Yeah. You can also ask Gemini questions like, did the kids leave the bikes in the driveway? And it will pull the appropriate footage because it's a multimodal model.

56:32Yo, narc. Oh, snap. So it's looking, so it can tell by looking at the footage what's happening. And if you ask a question about the footage, whoa, that, if, okay. I'm gonna be like, Lane, did you leave your bike in the driveway? No. Ask Google if you did. Lane, ask my phone. Are people gonna be creeped out by that? it's their home security footage and you're asking the Google assistant about the things that happen in your home security footage. But it's your home. It is your home, but it's Google looking at the footage in people's brains. In people's brains. That's what's happening. I just want to point out again that if approached, Google will just hand over the footage to the police.

57:13So it doesn't need to be an AI looking at your footage. This is all happening already, isn't it? Yep. interesting yeah now with a high well i already have the cameras so might as well just what i don't understand is like me up what if the kids did put the bikes in the driveway but then they later moved it is it just gonna pull the bikes being in the driveway and then i would assume you'll be wrong it would go by real time no well it goes through the footage you have so i don't know oh it might track like latest to earliest did they or everyone's gonna be there yes on Saturday the 12th. What? Yeah.

57:48Yeah. I don't know. And then you can also now ask Gemini to create automations for you in Google Home. So that, do you guys know about the automations features in Google Home? They added like an editor for it, like for advanced users to like really go hardcore on the animation, on the automations. I just have a morning one. Yeah. So now apparently you can ask Gemini to create certain automations based on fairly complex scenarios, which sounds nice. I think that sounds cool. Yeah. wait but how would it be like watch me over the last week and no you would say like hey make an automation for when i leave the home because of my motion sensor turn on all the lights in the kitchen and turn off the nest thermostat we're like when i wake up in the morning i want to hear the news and the living room lights to be turned on yeah yeah so just come being conversational with your technology.

58:38If that works, we'll see. They also have new Google Assistant updates, which again, I'm like, I'm confused. You're asking Gemini, but also you have new Assistant updates. I don't know. It says, using Gemini models to make Google Assistant experience feel more natural. There will be an updated voice model being pushed out for Google Assistant later this year. All right. Can you guys just figure this out, please? like just I don't I don't understand why they had to rename Google Assistant to Gemini when the model is named Gemini it just confuses people because you don't know if they're talking about the Gemini the model or Gemini the new assistant I don't even know what you're talking about right now the assistant powered by Gemini it's still called assistant though Google Assistant on Google Home stuff is still Google Assistant but then you also have Gemini on your phone they're using Gemini models to power the updated Google Assistant stuff.

59:37Oh okay so you're saying because Gemini models are the models and then there's also Gemini the Assistant which is like competing with the actual Google Assistant. One update I would love to have is to permanently shut off the hey next time try asking this blah blah blah thing. It's like I've been using you for 10 years. Stop giving me tips and tricks. It's like it's 72 degrees. Also if you want a morning report i can talk about the news to you every single day just ask me hey it's like oh my god why why like a needy friend it's why okay and then also speaking of google uh this is pretty big news this week a judge ruled in the google antitrust trial that google is officially uh exercising monopoly powers in search whoops

1:00:25under undersized response to that i've been waiting an hour to do that our bad big whoops bigger than that soundbite um which is pretty a pretty big deal they were found to have violated section two of the sherman act which is a monopoly act from a very long time ago which makes it unlawful for any person to monopolize or attempt to monopolize or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations that's the uh the sherman act can you read it Again, I missed that. Yeah, so basically they're saying there is no other option in the search market and that search has gotten a lot worse, which is very true.

1:01:10Yeah, and I think one of the things they referenced was, which we also found out some more information, we already knew that in 2022, Google paid Apple around$20 billion to be the default search engine for Safari. And that came up in the case as being like, how is any other competitors supposed to have money like that on hand to compete. But apparently somebody accidentally slipped and said gave out the percentage of what Google is paying Apple? No, Apple. Yeah, Google is paying Apple. So Apple is getting 36 % of ad revenue through Google search on Safari. Yes. to be the default to be the default yes okay that's wild that's a lot has a lot of and apple said that was a low number.

1:02:00I saw somewhere that it was like roughly 20 % of Apple's services business. Yeah. No, it is. That's crazy. Which means, yeah, it's like a huge number. It's 30 % of Apple's operating profit. So Google and Apple are like best bros. Yeah. Sounds about right. Yeah, it's the duopoly hanging out with each other. What's really weird about this and doesn't really add up, you know, is that Eddie Q, who is, works for Apple, you may know. He testified, wait let me just double check it was Eddie Q, it was somebody. Yes, okay. What I find really weird and doesn't really add up is that Eddie Q from Apple testified and said there is no price that Microsoft could ever pay that would make Apple make Bing the default search engine.

1:02:50That's the sickest burn in court ever. Which is both the sickest burn ever, but also if that is the case and Google is the only one they would use then why is Google paying them 20 billion dollars they do it for free is what they're basically saying. If Google stopped paying and there's no world where they use Microsoft I have a conspiracy theory go ahead. My conspiracy theory is that Apple's search engine is ready and that's the only reason Apple has decided that it would cost them because apparently they did an analysis of how much it would cost Apple to spin up their own competitive search engine and it was about 20 billion dollars what a coincidence you what a coincidence to be competitive with google and i think that apple just thinks like oh being a search engine comes with a lot of complexity you're turning into a b2c company instead of just strictly being a b2 uh sorry b2b company instead of strictly being a b2c company uh and so let's just let google pay us 20 billion dollars you know it's easier that way so my theory is that Apple's like ready and Google is paying them in order to stay a monopoly because literally overnight if Google pressed if Apple pressed the button and was like we now have a search engine and the default search on every Apple product through Safari is Apple search engine there would be an insane traffic dump for Google Apple search yeah that's fair another interesting tidbit I buy it Yeah.

1:04:19Another interesting tidbit that got discovered through Discovery was that Apple rolled out this feature called suggestions in Spotlight a long time ago, which is basically when you're searching in Spotlight on your iPhone and you search like what's Barack Obama's age or something. it will a lot of the time just automatically give you the answer or like search it for you and when they rolled that out Google saw a 10 to 15 % query loss through Google on iPhones and which was up to 10 % of the Safari revenue profit at the time and so as part of their 2016 deal that they made with Apple Apple had to promise to never make that product better which is like the most antitrust thing you could possibly think of, right?

1:05:08Yeah. They're like, oh, our competitor made this too good. We'll just pay you off to not make it better so that we're still the only game in town. Damn. Yeah. I wish people would pay us off. I was going to say, well, and they still scrape our YouTube videos for nothing. Pay me to make sure that I never get better at my job. Yeah. So, yeah. Very fun. The judge said, maybe AI searches the future, but the future is not here yet. at least not in a way that's relevant to antitrust law. AI may someday fundamentally alter search, but not anytime soon. And like, for me, that's like so much for welcome to the Gemini era.

1:05:47This whole statement, that judge had so many zingers. Dude, I know. It was great. And it makes it seem like the judge was pretty privy to like all the stuff that was going on as well. I would hope so. I can't get over the line of, there's no amount of money you could pay me for paying. Ain't no way. Same. Mom, there's nothing you could do to let me hang out with Nick this weekend. There's no amount of money. There's no amount of candy to make me want to do that. Okay, one last thing that I think was a major thing in this trial. Google did a survey in 2020, this study that they paid a lot of money for, about what would happen and how much money they would lose if they made Google search significantly worse.

1:06:29If they just made the product a lot worse over time, how much traffic they would lose. And the result of the study was that they would basically not lose any money or any revenue or any traffic. That tracks because since 2020, it's become terrible. Yeah. And so that basically says like, oh, hmm, we can just like make the experience way worse for our users while making ourselves way more money. I feel like the only reason that they feel confident enough to roll out AI overviews and just not care that it's terrible is that they know that 95 % of people are still going to use Google every single day.

1:07:06Where are they going to go? Duck, duck, go. What are they going to do? Bing. Not Bing. You can pay me enough to use Bing. Search GPT. Yeah. So pretty insane. There's a really good Verge article that actually points out a lot of the most insane things that happened in Discovery during this trial. So I recommend going and reading that. Very useful. We will link that in the show notes. But yeah, it's a pretty big deal. They are officially a monopoly in search. And there's nothing that's happening yet because they discovered that. But they said within three to four months, they will come to some decision.

1:07:41And it could go as far as Google being forced to sell off parts of its search business, which is crazy. Like sell off AdSense as a separate thing or something like that. There are laws. There are. Good to know. Good to know. All right. Well, we should take a quick break. Before we do that, though, Adam, hit us with the trivia.

1:08:03question number two so after 11 years the chromecast is dead the chromecast as it turns out was not the first product that google ever made google negative one it was however it launched alongside a very popular tablet what os version was that tablet running at launch it's 2012 questions are fun when there's multiple levels i don't know there's really only one question i just wanted to layer it in a bunch of things that would confuse you can i just give you the number i'm gonna try to give you i'm gonna try to give you the dessert as well but i know the number yeah okay how do you know there's a dessert well we're i know there's okay anyway we'll think about that answers at the end we'll be right back

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1:10:58Okay, welcome back. Marquez, have you ever heard of Meat Loaf? The food? No. The what? The person? Yeah. Yes. Oh, no, I've never heard. The singer. The singer. Meat Loaf the singer? Yeah. The singer. No. Have you ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show? No. Have you ever heard I would do anything for love, but I won't do that? No. We're off to a great spot. What's a more popular song? This next segment is really going to confuse you. Cool. Perfect. There's got to be a meatloaf song you know. Bad Out of Hell. No. Bad Out of Hell. Paradise by the Dashboard Light. No. Yeah, I doubt. I probably haven't heard it.

1:11:38Have you seen Fight Club? No. Cool. You don't really need to know any of this but the next segment Adam created is based off of the lyrics of him. Meatloaf song. Inspired by Meatloaf. Yeah. The person, not the food. Do you like Meatloaf? The food? Yeah. Sure. I love Meatloaf. I feel like it's super underrated. It's really good but it's really easy to mess up. You can make it really dry really easy. I haven't had it since I was like four. But it is really good. You remember it? I do. You haven't had it since you were four but you remember it. Because I hated all the other foods my parents made me.

1:12:14Oh, wow. Yeah. That's vivid. Really left an impression. This band, my dad used to say, would tour at some local places by him, and people would go thinking Meatloaf was the special at the bar that night. And then it was just some guy singing rock music, and they were kind of sad. Huh. They were sad to see Meatloaf? Meatloaf is a band. I think if he's touring at a place that might get confused with the food Meatloaf, he wasn't that big yet. That's fair. My dad was a big Meatloaf fan. Anyways. anyway this segment is called two out of three ain't bad okay based on the song so every week when we pick things to talk about there are always a few news stories and fun things that kind of slip through the cracks just because we're trying to hit the big topics uh but i came up with this little segment to give us a chance to cover some of them i'm gonna explain a few quick stories to you and i need you guys to decide if it's a good idea or a bad idea okay the theory behind the name is that because there are three of you there should never be a tie there will always be something that's either a good idea or a bad idea okay all right number one the teenage engineering ep 1320 medieval there's a link there for good idea okay this is a new sampler based on the ep 133 the one that i have and can't shut up about but it is a medieval version for some reason what's different about it it has a new look with old English font, new graphics, a new colorway that's brown or beige, and best of all, it's filled with preloaded samples of instruments like the hurdy-gurdy, harps, trumpets, Gregorian chants, torture chamber reverb, and even sound effects like swords, animals, and a dragon.

1:13:57I think we should let the Swedish do anything they want. Can I ask a sound question? Sure. Why is it not called the medieval? The medieval. Why is it not M-I-D-I-E-V-A-L? Do you guys want to hear some of the sounds that it has? Teenage Engineering. I will take the partnership on that. But it has special sounds? Yeah. It's got sword fighting. Really? This is a beat made with this device.

1:14:29That's one. This is another one.

1:14:37all right honestly i feel like this is like half of indie game music that was just old school runescape yeah true uh good idea all right that's one for good idea andrew marquez just because i love it doesn't mean it's a good idea i think it that's where i want to go no i think it does because i think it's gonna sell a bunch this is basically a special edition thing and everyone always buys the special edition things. I am more compelled to buy this than I was to buy the original version. I can't deny this. I have to say good idea. Yeah. Because it's so out of left field that it's like gonna generate buzz, you know?

1:15:16Bad idea. I love when tech companies take their products and take photos of them like in the grass or on a rock. There's something hilarious. Well, this makes sense to be on a rock. What's funny is that during the interview With David Erickson The co-founder that we had on a special Wayform episode Go back and listen to it I asked him because this is going to be an EP series And I asked him Are there going to be more of these And he said yes with like a smirk This is not what I was expecting I love that the font Is like old English And they renamed some of the things on it But even the digital font inside that changes Is like alarm clock-esque but old English.

1:15:59They're also selling a vinyl for$22.99 that I'm definitely going to buy because that's not even that expensive for a vinyl. All right, so Marquez, why is this a bad idea? Too niche. Fair enough. Too niche. Honestly, fair. You're not into Renaissance fairs? I'm not particularly. Yeah, I'm sure there's, look, with every product, it's a good idea for someone. I just think there's not enough of those people for this one. All right. It has a$100 medieval quilt bag carrier if you want to buy it. The shipping is$16 on a$22 product. It comes by carrier pigeon. All right. All right. Well, the consensus, good idea.

1:16:42I would love to put this on my desk and not know how to use it. How does it? Yeah, that's what I do. $300. It's the same price as the original EP133. I just want to reiterate that we should let the Swedish do anything they want. anything they want all right the second thing is amazon's ai podcast picker bad idea so we always talk about let me let me explain okay we always talk about how podcast discoverability is bad and that's one of the reasons we throw it on youtube because it's a discovery engine that's true amazon music launched an ai feature that will let you help that will help you find new episodes based on topics mentioned in the episode so quote to suggest relevant topic tags podcast transcripts and descriptions are analyzed by AI alongside human review to identify key topics that are discussed in a particular episode.

1:17:33So using AI for podcast discovery. Good idea or bad idea? I can go first. It is a good idea. Specifically. It's a good idea. I have a question. I have an answer. Does it only serve you different episodes of that same podcast? or does it give you different podcasts? Different podcasts and different episodes. It's a good idea. So we got one good idea. So what I'm assuming you're getting at is the idea is great, but the person doing it maybe isn't going to do the best job. Yeah, may or may not be good, may or may not work well, may or may not actually follow through, but that's fine. That's a good idea.

1:18:18This is just for the idea. Yeah. I like the idea. Yeah, it's true. I like any idea that helps podcast discoverability. David? My question is, how is this different from just Googling the word? What? Like in the sample that it shows, it's the Stuff You Should Know podcast subjects, the duality of caffeine. And then the topics that it shows that you can then search for more podcasts about is caffeine, which is obvious. Coffee. dopamine. What if I just searched those terms? Wouldn't it show me podcasts anyway? You might find a list that someone wrote on a website. If it specifically has that name in the title, but a podcast search just sucks so bad.

1:19:07I feel like you would have a hard time finding this. Where if this is actually pulling from the content, and also not just that, but knowing the content of what it is. If you search coffee, it doesn't just mean they said coffee and the transcript once, but like the topic is actually, this is an assumption, by the way. Considering I don't think it diminishes the experience, I think it's a good idea. Oh, so all good ideas. Okay, it's a good idea. And I never thought that I would think Amazon and AI, the same sentence, would be a good idea. Amazon AI idea. Yeah, we need to try it. All right, so good idea.

1:19:43Next is the Ford Bronco and Mustang e-bike thingy. Nice. Yeah. Ford is collabing with N Plus, an e-bike company, to release a Bronco and Mustang e-bike. They have rear hub motors that put out max 750 watts of power and 885 nanometers of torque. I don't even know what that is. Newton meters. Newton meters. Thank you. The Bronco will be rugged for all terrain use and has a dual suspension system that they're calling GOAT, which stands for goes over any type of terrain. Should it just be goes over any terrain? Yeah, I think that should be. That's just what all terrain means, doesn't it? Yeah. But then how will they get the GOAT acronym?

1:20:24Yeah, they need it to be called GOAT somehow. Yeah, it's got to be called GOAT. This thing costs$4 ,500. And the Mustang e-bike will cost$4 ,000. And there will also be a 60th anniversary edition that will be sold exclusively at Ford dealers. But my question. E-bike versions of popular cars. Good idea or bad idea? Not for$4 ,500. e-bike versions of popular cars I'm definitely leaning towards bad idea or just not a good idea you know there's a difference there's nothing wrong with it there's no danger here that's not a good idea that's a great point something that's not a good idea is not necessarily a bad idea I did not see this coming It looks cool The picture looks nice It looks fine Here's my biggest question about this If they're basing it off of Old cars I would assume The majority of people Who are very nostalgic about Those old cars Might not want to be traveling At 30 miles an hour on a bike anymore Because they're a bit older and it doesn't feel the safest.

1:21:48I'm not saying old people can't ride bikes. I see. What are you saying? A lot of old people are riding bikes. I feel like spending$4 ,500 on a bike feels more dangerous. An e-bike. Here's a counterpoint. Porsche's e-bike is$10 ,700. Damn, this is a good deal then. My take is that there are a bunch of white label e-bike brands that go to car manufacturers and say, want to make a ton of money? And then they just put the name on it. And then they don't make a ton of money. And then they don't because nobody buys it. I've literally never seen anyone with one of these. Yeah. I doubt you ever will. I mean, apparently there's the, there's the, uh, gosh, Polestar bikes too, right?

1:22:32There's a Bugatti scooter out there somewhere in the wild. The Bugatti scooter is Chef's Kiss. Oh, so that's a good idea. No, it is terrible. And I love it so much. I'm going to say bad idea because I don't think they're going to sell any. Okay. Yeah. I'm also going to say bad idea. Even though the color matching paint is kind of cool, what they did with the red bike and the red old Ford. That's my favorite part about it. That's pretty cool. But yeah, that's about it. I'll go good idea because it looks nice. It was well designed. And if you're okay with paying a bunch of extra money for nostalgia and looks on an e-bike, I don't see any reason not to get this.

1:23:08Except that I think the company is going to spend more money on making these than they're going to actually sell. I ain't losing any money on it. Good idea. All right. Two out of three ain't bad. Two out of three ain't bad, but it's still a bad idea. If they did like a Pikachu e-bike, I think it would sell way more than this. Don't give them that idea. Wait, does it say how fast this thing goes? It did. I don't know if I wrote it down. The speed of an original Mustang. I want to say 28 miles per hour. Yeah, I was going to say 30. But lacks a throttle. Oh, so it's only pedal assisted. Pedal assisted.

1:23:40Interesting. I feel bad that I said old people can't ride bikes. You can. You can do anything. I probably shouldn't ride a bike. Do it. Robert Downey Jr. was on. You can do it a lot, kids. You can do anything. I don't even know when that one's from. Robert Downey Jr. was spotted on a Harley Davidson e-bike. See, it's cool. He's like 40. Is that Porsche? They didn't make e-bikes. Oh, no, it's a Porsche one. he was on a Porsche bike. Porsche bikes now? Porsche bike. $10 ,700 for a Porsche e-bike. All right. Well, look, as you said, two out of three ain't bad. Two out of three ain't bad. We have some good products there.

1:24:21Are you going to go listen to the song when you get home? No. No, I'm not. It's fine. I'll play it as soon as we leave. We eventually got you to watch Her. It only took two years. I don't feel as... Paradise by the Dashboard might be longer than Her. That's true. That's true. Her had a shocking amount of relevance. Yeah. I'm not as incentivized to get you to listen to me. Totally fine. Totally fine. Well, we should, let's hit trivia one last time. Yeah. It's a good way to end. I gotta cover my second answer because I remember that. Trivia. But not the first thing. Trivia dude. All right. Quick update on the score.

1:24:58David, 15. Andrew, 16. What? I thought we were all tied. No. You said the same thing last week when I read the score. And Marquez with 15. Really? I'm winning? Yeah, by one point. He's carrying the one. I thought we were tied. That's what I said. You know what, Andrew? I'm taking your point away. You're all tied. I honestly thought I was losing. You were, but then you got ahead. Question one. I'm going to read you three hints. You tell me what company I'm talking about. So this company was started by three men in a Denny's. Number two, before starting the company, the CEO actually worked at AMD.

1:25:39And fun fact, the same person actually used to bus tables at Denny's. Really likes Denny's. Number three, the original Xbox used a graphics chip from this company, which had a floating point performance of 7.3 GFOPs. The original Xbox. what's a company that's older than the original xbox i feel like i might be right i'll give you guys another hint it is worth over a trillion dollars right now this company oh that really knows wait what really wait a trillion significantly narrows it down wait he previously worked at amd oh shoot this is so i'm so between two and if it's the other one I'm gonna be so mad I just hope someone else guesses what I wrote okay all right flipping and reading what you guys got I hope it's not Intel all together now Nvidia okay we got it here we go yeah okay I changed it after you said the trillion dollar yeah I know I figured I thought it was gonna be Texas Instruments I almost said Intel then I said trillion dollar company yeah and I was like oh never mind well Intel yeah okay anyway Robert Moore question two after 11 years the Chromecast is dead, but it was launched alongside a popular tablet.

1:26:56What OS version was that tablet running? Do we get an extra point if we need a tablet? No. No. You'll get my love and respect, but not an extra point. Andrew with a thousand yard stare. I'm going for the love and respect right now.

1:27:18Did I review this product? You did. Hell yeah I did Hell yeah brother Oh wait did we have to write the number Or we can write the letter The number I mean I'll take both whatever Alright David what do you got Android 4 ice cream sandwich No Nope I just wrote N Newgate was recent I also wrote Android 4.0 ice cream sandwich Motorola Zoom hollow It was a Nexus 7 bro It was a Nexus 7 2013, which was running. Was it Android 5? No. Nexus 7 what year? It was a Honeycomb, was it? No. Oh. 4.3. 4.3. Oh, 4.3. That's specific, bro. Jellybean. Jellybean was 4.3? 4.3. Why did they do that? Oh, I remember the Jellybean animation on my Nexus 7.

1:28:12Dang. Wait, what was the question again? Is this wrong? It was what OS version was the Nexus 2013 tablet running, basically, when it launched. Is that how you phrased it, though? No, no. So the way I phrased it was, the Chromecast was launched alongside a popular tablet. What OS version was that tablet running? So it was like a two-parter kind of. Okay. Yeah. Should have remembered it was Jelly Bean. I remember the Jelly Bean animation on my Nexus 7. Same. We have a couple of Jelly Beans here in our top-down set. Do you know what the Jelly Bean's? The little colorful? Oh, yeah. I thought we had jelly beans in the kitchen for a second.

1:28:48I got really excited. I do like jelly beans. It's a little red jelly bean with a smiley face and Android ears. Do you know what we pulled out for a video the other day? That's going to be on Studio Channel soon. The Peppermint Android. Remember? We painted it because we were trying to troll everyone to thinking that we knew that. We thought it was going to be. Well, because the year before was Oreo. It was so much Oreo that people started believing it wasn't Oreo. Then they trolled it at I.O. so then we built a peppermint one to try and make people think we knew ahead of time. And I think Hiroshi retweeted it to really troll everyone.

1:29:23Isn't that the first year that they stopped using desserts? No, it was pie, wasn't it? Oh yeah, pie and then it was Q. I think that's when they stopped. That's when they stopped using desserts. If only Google had Gemini back then to decide. Quiche would have been cool. Yeah, but that's not a dessert though. I could talk, you know me, I could talk about quiche for a while. So we have to end the podcast there before I go down that rabbit hole. But yeah, that's been it. Thanks for watching and listening to this episode of Waveform. And we'll catch you guys very soon in the next one. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Malina and Ellis Rovin.

1:30:01We're partnered with the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro music was created by VaneSill. Bingo! Let's go!

1:30:42We'll see you next time. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.