This Week in Google 721, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next. It's this week in Google. I'm Jason Howell filling in for Leo, who's at Disneyland. We've got Mike Elgan joining me as well as, of course, Jeff Jarvis. We talk all about Reddit and kind of the collapse of social media. It feels like nothing is safe right now. The Reddit, c e o, we've got words for him. We talk about Google domains, getting the ax not necessarily getting killed, but being sold to Squarespace and how you just really can't trust Google anymore these days. And Chromebook X. What is that? Is that a new Chromebook? Buy Google? No, it is not. But it's interesting nonetheless. That's up next on this week in Google

Narrator (00:00:41):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This, this is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:00:52):
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 721, recorded Wednesday, June 21st, 2023. Why would Google do that? This episode of this week in Google is brought to you by Bit Warden. Get the password manager that offers a robust and cost effective solution that drastically increases your chances of staying safe online. Get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bit warden.com/twit.

(00:01:25):
And by ACI learning. Cios and CISOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is critical with an average completion rate of over 80%. Your team deserves the entertaining and cutting edge training that they want. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twit for more information on a free two week training trial for your team and by ZipRecruiter. Did you know that hiring can take up to 11 weeks on average? Do you have that time to wait? Of course not. Stop waiting and start using ZipRecruiter. Ziprecruiter helps you find qualified candidates for all your roles Fast right now. You can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/twig.

(00:02:13):
It's time for this week in Google. I'm Jason Howell, filling in for Leo LaPorte, who literally just kind of stepped out of the office yesterday morning and said, I'm going to Disneyland <laugh>. You just finished Mac Break Weekly. What are you gonna do next? I'm going to Disneyland that, that was basically Leo. So Leo, I think is at Disneyland. Maybe he's on a rollercoaster right now. I don't know. Maybe he's on a small world after all. Only Leo knows, but I'm happy to be here. Joined this week by, of course, Jeff Jarvis. Good to see you, Jeff.

Jeff jarvis (00:02:46):
Good

Jason Howell (00:02:46):
To see you, boss. How you doing? I'm doing all right. Doing all right. It's great to to see you and get some chance, get a chance to, always good to have you here to hang out with you today. And then Stacy has a, mi has a migraine, so she had to unfortunately miss today's episode as well as aunt who already has the week off. So, but, but in advance, we had already booked Mike Elgin to join and I think this was even before I knew that Leo was not gonna be here. So when I found out that I was gonna be hosting with you, Mike, I was trying to think, have I podcasted with you since I produced your show, when you worked at Twit? <Laugh>? Wow.

Mike Elgan (00:03:27):
Hmm.

Jason Howell (00:03:28):
Like I can't, I can't remember.

Mike Elgan (00:03:29):
I dunno,

Jason Howell (00:03:31):
I can't remember if we've actually

Mike Elgan (00:03:32):
Done a show show maybe at twit once upon a time, or, yeah, maybe,

Jason Howell (00:03:35):
Maybe on a, at some point.

Mike Elgan (00:03:37):
Yeah. I'm not sure, actually.

Jason Howell (00:03:40):
Yeah. Yeah. This was, this was a while ago. Of course, I'm, I'm guessing probably. When, when were you done at twit? When did you leave twit? Was that 2017 ish time, is my guess? That

Mike Elgan (00:03:51):
Sounds around about right. 20 16, 20 17. It was, it was a while ago. Yeah. yeah, that sounds about right.

Jason Howell (00:03:58):
Okay. And

Mike Elgan (00:03:59):
I know that, well, I know it must have been 2016 because in 2017 we started doing experiences and stuff like that. So Yeah. Must have been 2016. I think I worked there for 2015 and 2016. Sounds about right. All year. Both years.

Jason Howell (00:04:14):
Sounds about right. And you were doing t n t of course, tech News today. I was producing at the, the TD Desk helping you with that show. And here we are again. Yes. So <laugh> kinda can't

Mike Elgan (00:04:26):
Believe that was a lot of fun. But that was a different era.

Jason Howell (00:04:28):
Different era.

Mike Elgan (00:04:29):
We were much more innocent then.

Jason Howell (00:04:30):
Yes. In a number of ways. Yes. Life was very different back then. But it's great to see you, Mike, and it sounds like you are you're, you're doing what you do so well, you're in the midst of traveling. You're in Pance, is that right?

Mike Elgan (00:04:45):
That's right. We're in a little town in Pance. We've been in France, I guess for about a week and a half. We'll be here another week and a half or so. And yeah, provos for a, a a bit and then Paris for a week. And then we're back to California for, for a little while. So, oh, it's a lot of fun.

Jason Howell (00:05:02):
What a fun life. We were talking about how many miles,

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:05):
How many air miles do you do a year? How many, how many frequent flyer miles?

Mike Elgan (00:05:10):
Amira handles all of that and the details of that, but I know that, that she is we're always executive platinum, so just the miles boost us to the stratosphere. And lately we've been upgrading a lot, getting a lot of, of those kind of perks. But it's a lot. And it's gonna be a lot more, because we are starting to plan trips that are much further away. We're gonna be going Australia Tasmania, et cetera. We're gonna be going to Asia, so we're gonna be actually increasing the miles that we put in south America. So that's that's something to look forward to. This is pretty great actually, to, to get upgraded.

Jason Howell (00:05:44):
And this is all my first

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:46):
Trip. Oh, note next week. I haven't traveled three, I mean, except for going to Florida to rescue my father. I haven't traveled and I'm going to St. Andrews Edinburgh and London next week. And for, that's nothing for me. It's, I haven't done this in three years.

Mike Elgan (00:06:00):
It's fantastic. And, and actually that would be a really something for me, because we've been to the UK a bunch of times, but never outside of London. So going to Edinburgh is something we'd always wanted to do. Oh, I'd

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:11):
Love to. Unfortunately, I, I'm going to a conference which I've been dying to go to, very wonky book history conference.

Mike Elgan (00:06:17):
Nice.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:17):
Beautiful. But then I have to go right down to London and do a book event for me, my book. And so I won't see Edinburgh, which is just awful, but what the hell?

Mike Elgan (00:06:24):
Yeah. I hate those kind of business trips. The place you want to check out is right there.

Jason Howell (00:06:29):
Like, you're literally right there, but you're not See it

Mike Elgan (00:06:32):
<Laugh>. Yes, exactly. I saw them by that way. And that was very frustrating. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:38):
Oh, I should, I should mention number one, if you're in London July 3rd, I'll be speaking with Alan Ru of Prospect Magazine. Sorry, my, get my plugin now. And then July 8th, I'm gonna be at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, mass with our friends Glenn Fleischman. Oh, nice. And marching Wicky and Doug Wilson, who created the Linotype film. And we're gonna be geeking out there on the eighth in Haverhill. And, and if you haven't been to the Museum of Printing and you're anywhere nearby, oh, it's great. You know, you come to see Linotypes and Mud Lows and all kinds of great stuff.

Jason Howell (00:07:16):
That is a very particular type of geeking out <laugh>. It's,

Jeff Jarvis (00:07:19):
I donated my Osbourne one to the museum, so it is on display along, along with my moral pivot. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:07:26):
Wow. Wow. Wonderful. So, Mike, I, I'm I'm assuming that these new places that you're getting ready to go to are all part of the gastro nomad experience, or is this like an expansion of that? Or is this different?

Mike Elgan (00:07:39):
It potentially, eventually, we basically do experiences in five countries and or six countries now, and seven locations where we have a lot of friends. And so it's like we, we don't, we wouldn't do an experience in a place unless we've spent months and months and months and months there and have made a lot of friends and Right. Gotten to know it very well. So it, it could, it could open the door. I mean, if, if, if my wife is inspired, but we just, right now we're, we're in France, Spain, and Italy Mexico, Morocco, and we just added El Salvador. So that's a place where she knows everybody cuz she was born there. And and we've traveled there, you know, 30, 40 times. I

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:20):
Think the Tasmanian experience is, is is it has to happen.

Mike Elgan (00:08:24):
Has to. It has to happen, right? The roasted Tasmanian devil. I mean, it's just, the food there is fantastic. No, but, you know, Australia is incredible food country. Melbourne is incredible food country city. And so, and we also, you know, we're also gonna be traveling to South America. The, the new, the new top 50 restaurants came out last week. And two of the top 10 restaurants are in Lima, Peru.

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:50):
Yeah, it was amazing. A friend of mine yes Dr. Gru on Twitter has a picture of herself in front of it, and she went there. It's vegetarian. Is it a it's a vegetarian restaurant. One of them. Right.

Mike Elgan (00:09:00):
I think, I dunno the details about it, but I just think it's, you, you can feel them rising in the global ranks as a, as a food city. Yes. by looking at this this thing. So, lot of good ceviche know, I've never been so

Jason Howell (00:09:13):
Well, I've never been to Europe. Really? I've never been Oh, yeah. Anywhere in Europe. I've been overseas to places like Thailand and the Philippines and places like that, but I've never been to Europe. And we've decided that next summer, probably about this time next summer, we're going to Rome definitely to Rome. We're gonna visit Padre, he's gonna stoke us out, and we're already in contact with him to explore the catacombs and do all of the fun stuff. It's kind of a perfect opportunity to take our girls and go educate them on what it's like. You know, we've taken them traveling. We've just went to Costa Rica, but I think this is like next level where we go to someplace with just this insanely rich history and show them, you know, something that they're, you know, <laugh> that we, that none of us have ever experienced all of us together. Right. And I know that while we're over there, we're probably gonna want to go at least one other place. We don't want to jam pack it with like, five different places. We wanna do like maybe two places really deeply. So do Rome, Italy. Yes. Maybe go to a different country right around there and, you know, pick something and spend a couple of weeks over there. I think that's our plan, so.

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:18):
Oh, that, that'd be great. Switzerland would be nice.

Jason Howell (00:10:21):
Mm, that would be nice. Yeah. So many, the problem is there's so much, there's so many options, right? It's like, how could I even pick just only one more? I, I want to see them all. I want to go, you know, so many more places than just one other place. But really looking forward to it now that we've decided we're

Mike Elgan (00:10:38):
Doing it. I mean, you know, the thing is that, that that Rome's a gigantic city and, and it would be also nice to go to another Italian place that is not urban. And you know for example, the Sicilian countryside would be nice. Northern Italy is super nice. Milan Venice, et cetera. So Yeah. But the options are, are, you have so many options. I know. And it's gonna be fun hanging out with Padre. I we'd spent the day with him once in Rome and that was super fun. Yeah. Super fun. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:11:10):
He, he's been saying it for a number of years, like, Hey man, if you ever get out to Rome, like, I'm your man. I, I got you covered. And you know, I, I told him authentically like, yes, someday we'll make it happen. And finally, just probably like a month ago, I was like, you know, if we're gonna do it, it's gotta be like soon, cuz we don't know how much longer he's gonna be there. And also, you know, our girls, like, my oldest is 13 now, it's a couple of years before she's really doesn't want to hang out with us. So <laugh>. So it's like, we gotta get this in now. Like, our time's ready out, you know?

Mike Elgan (00:11:41):
Does your 13 year old like fashion?

Jason Howell (00:11:44):
Yeah. She's pretty fashionable. Yes. She,

Mike Elgan (00:11:47):
She likes to mil, you should go to Milan. Oh, really? And she'll freak out. It's like, they, they, Milan is a, a city of fashion. Yeah. Like Palo Alto is a city of technology.

Jason Howell (00:11:56):
Oh, no kidding. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. What I, what I passively know of Milan over the years, you know, but yeah. That's, that's great advice. Cool. Yeah, I'm super excited. We got a lot to plan, but it'll be a lot of fun if you're out there. Of course we will swing by and say hi. But I don't know if you, that'd be great. Would randomly be in Rome at the same time, but We'll, certainly, I'll, I'll be in touch and let you know when we're gonna be out there. Cool stuff. And by the way, mean we

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:22):
Have Google News and Reddit news.

Jason Howell (00:12:23):
We do. Just real quick, we were talking about news

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:25):
And all.

Jason Howell (00:12:26):
We're talking about gastro nomad, just to get it in there. Gastro nomad net net. Right? That's where people can go to. Yes. Thank you. Find out all the stuff that you're doing there. Plug,

Mike Elgan (00:12:35):
Plug. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:35):
If, if remember that, then Gutenberg parenthesis.com.

Jason Howell (00:12:40):
There you go. See, we like to get our plugs in at the beginning. Gutenberg presses.com gastra nomad.net. And that's the show. Thank you everybody. <Laugh>. actually we do have some news there. There is a good amount of Google news in here. Do we start though, with Reddit? Reddit is just, man, this, this whole saga is just crazy right now. I like, I'm a I'm, and I'm gotta admit, like, I'm a little sad because, and, and I'm sure you know, Leo and you Jeff and, and others have already kind of had the opportunity to talk about this a little bit. But you know, it, it was not very long ago that I stopped my interaction with Twitter. Like, I really don't do much of anything with Twitter anymore. The, the sour taste of my mouth. And the further I, I got away from it, the more I realized, eh, not really missing it that much.

(00:13:28):
So I'll just keep doing this thing. Reddit though has been a constant for a very long time, and it's not a constant in my life that I'm, like, I'm sharing a million different posts on a million different subreddits all the time. It's been more of just like something I go to to learn and, and to, to get the, the get, get a really nice take on, on what's happening right now and how people feel about it. Which is, I guess largely what social media is about. But I can't explain why it's different In my mind, in my experience, to something like a Twitter or a Facebook, Reddit has just been a really enjoyable thing for

Jeff Jarvis (00:14:03):
Me. Is every community, do you, cause I don't use Reddit enough. Does what's the structure of Reddit that fascinates me that I hope is a model for the future <laugh> until now. Yeah. is the idea that the moderators and the communities have control over the culture of each community independently? Yeah. Do you sense that difference as you go from one subreddit to another?

Jason Howell (00:14:24):
Sure. I mean, I, I definitely, you know, I, I probably follow 30 or 40 different subreddits. Wow. And they all have their own different, you know, rules and everything. I think that's one of the things that I actually do. Like I think you've kind of put your, put your finger on it is to a certain degree subreddits feel like bulletin board systems to me. And that hearkens to a day, you know, when I was much younger and this like magical idea of like, oh wait a minute. There's people over there talking about this thing that I also about, I'm gonna call up that b b s and connect to it. Right. And be part of the conversation. And, you know, even if there's only like 10 people there, like, we're 10 people that love the same thing. And so we talk about it, it brings it back to the

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:02):
Scale of humanity. It's really nice.

Jason Howell (00:15:04):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I kind of get a little bit of that vibe when I go into subreddits. Like, there's a community there that's really excited about talking about Google Pixel phones, or there's a community that's really excited about, oh, this is, this is a great one about power washing. Like, I, no, I subscribe to a subreddit No. Where all it is is people sharing like really satisfying power washing videos and <laugh>, like, that sounds ridiculous, but yet every time I see one of those videos pop up in my feed, I stop and I watch it cuz it's just really satisfying. And here's a bunch of other people, TV shows feel the same way popping zit. So why not? Yeah, totally. I mean, I can't do that, but I also understand, I suppose. Yes. So so it's, so it's sad to me to see that Reddit is undergoing kind of a similar moment to what Twitter kind of, what do you think is gonna happen Did last year?

(00:15:51):
That's, that's what it feels like to me. I mean, and certainly it's, it's shaken the foundational kind of feeling that I've had about Reddit of being like, oh yeah, you know what? This is one of the good places. And now I'm seeing the CEO just being very man, I, I don't know. It's just like the way he's talking about the people who have, have donated their time to manage, right? These, these subreddits. It just feels very, I don't know what the word is, but he's just very angry and well, the, I guess is his job. And

Mike Elgan (00:16:20):
So the CEOs the ceo, Steve Huffman, he's one of the co-founders and his perspective is roughly as follows. Reddit is not profitable, and it's also because of the structure and other things. It's an excellent source of data to train ai. So all of these companies are just hoovering up all this very well, well organized data and using it and making a lot of money off of it. So they're making money off of something that we are providing for free and we're not profitable ourselves. So we need to make sure we charge money for people who are making a lot of money off of it this entire, so that's his perspective. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, here's the other perspective I guess you might call it my perspective, <laugh>. Here's, here's a guy, here's a guy who is a content site. And, and it's also a social networking site, right? So the content is all provided to the company for free by volunteers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the social networking part, the moderation, and the organization is all provided for free. And he's not profitable. Like, how is it, like, whose, whose fault is it? The Reddit is not profitable? Well, because,

Jason Howell (00:17:35):
Because the

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:36):
Advertising model around interaction has always been

Mike Elgan (00:17:40):
Crappy. Well, yes, but I mean, look at the cost advantages. So here, another component of this is that there are all these third party apps. So his perspective is, oh, these third party apps are just accessing a site receipt for free. My perspective is people are also donating and voluntarily donating application programming expertise. Yes. To

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:04):
Apps. Don's your ettes,

Mike Elgan (00:18:07):
Like, why couldn't Reddit make a good app? Their apps are terrible and that's why people do third party apps. And so, to me, e every part of this story points to Steve Huffman as a failure as a c e O. They should be highly profitable. What they're running a website, right? Where moderation and content creation is all for free. And so it's like, how do you, you know, you gotta be able to make that profitable even in the wonky ad market there, there's gotta be ways to do it. I bet there are a lot of CEOs and potential CEOs in Silicon Valley who could make it profitable. I agree with that statement.

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:44):
Yeah. I'm sure someone could. Well, Mike, the Yeah. And again, I'm not a big Reddit user, so I, I I don't know. But having, I mean, and, and, and, and I don't think it's best full disclosure, but Reddit was bought by my old boss, Steve Newhouse in advance. I didn't get any piece of it. But I know from my days working for Advance, which believes Stephen Newhouse believes strongly in interaction in, in forums and comments and, and, and conversation. A moderation does bring a cost. In addition, cuz you got lawyers and all kinds of stuff. B there's never been much of an ad market around that because advertisers are scared of public voice. They're scared of a lack of control. They're convinced by media companies that you've gotta be in a controlled environment of, of media content. And so that's really pretty crappy now.

(00:19:39):
Yes, ads have been on Twitter, but Twitter didn't make it either. Ads are on Facebook, but Facebook controls it more as a mass structure with more use of personal data. So yeah, there are probably ways to do it. I'm not sure how many of those ways you'd like. So I don't, I I don't, I don't know how well to judge the failure. I think, I think huffman's failure in this case is more about bedside manner. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, I'd agree with that. You know, it's one matter if we said, listen folks, we all love this thing. We've gotta align our interests. We've gotta get ads onto apps so that, and we can share revenue and we gotta do this and we gotta do that, but we gotta pull together, not unlike what's happening at this company, even at difficult times around ads around Twin mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and, and, and, and, you know, start a club and, and, and start other mechanisms. So yes. Instead he attacks the people who provide this tremendous value for free. Not smart.

Mike Elgan (00:20:36):
Well, there, there's the PR aspect of it, which he's failing at. But there's also the, you know, he, he's basically saying, okay these big companies are making money using our p i for free and, and taking all this data. Okay, where's the proposal to have a tiered payment and free payment for a p i access? Why, why isn't he charging open ai, you know, a hundred million dollars a year charging an app developer? Nothing. Because that benefits the community. And having maybe a couple of, of tiers for advertisers, people, you know, cuz a lot of the advertising on Reddit is kind of like quasi advertorial. They, they look like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> legit submissions. It's, you know Twitter's like that a little bit with their advertising. I mean, why is nobody holding his feet to the fire about this? The ridiculous notion that because big companies are using the data for free, that committed users and moderators and app developers also have to pay the prices that they would charge Google, for example, or Microsoft.

Jason Howell (00:21:38):
Right? Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

Mike Elgan (00:21:39):
Open ai. Ai, yeah. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, feels like a logical fallacy of some kind. I totally agree. Because these companies are making money. The people are not making money. Also have to pay. Doesn't make

Jason Howell (00:21:52):
Sense that, that was a big part of my confusion early on in this little saga, little, this major Reddit saga where the API switch, you know, was, was looming. And third party app developers were basically led to believe like Reddits saying, Hey, look, we're not gonna hold your, you know, hold you out to the, or put your, what is, what is the metaphor I'm looking for? <Laugh>. Oh, you think fire, we're not gonna, whatever it is, we're not gonna throw you out. We're gonna pay attention to you. We respect you and don't worry about it. And then when the, when the announcement comes that, oh, okay, so here's, here's the actual details. The details are so far outside of any sort of realm Yeah. Of belief of like reality that no third party, like Yeah, technically, yes, you're right. If a third party app wants to pay you millions of dollars, they can continue doing the thing. So I guess you got that right. But no third party app is gonna actually do that. And so that felt very very much like a fallacy. Kinda like what you're saying, Mike. Right? I also, yeah, Jason, I think Yeah, go

Mike Elgan (00:22:52):
Ahead. You go.

Jason Howell (00:22:53):
Well, I was just gonna say that one thing that I don't understand, you know, when we're talking about like, red needs to make money and they make money off of ads, and how can they make more money off of ads? Why was it never considered, or maybe it was and I missed it, but what, why can't third party apps have the ads in them too? Like sure. Continue doing it, but we need you to respect our ad platform Right. And serve our ads to your users. I, I mean, that makes sense to me. I'm sure any of the third party apps probably would've been open to that if it meant they could continue to exist.

Mike Elgan (00:23:24):
You could pull an Apple to the api, you could, Bret could have made it a condition

Jason Howell (00:23:28):
Of the use of the APIs. You have to carry ours. Right? Totally. Totally.

Mike Elgan (00:23:31):
Or, or you could pull an apple and say, okay, you can have a third party Reddit app. You can sell ads on that, but we'll take one third of that. That would still be a good business for app developers, right? Oh heck yes. And would have an additional source of ad revenue. They're just, I don't, I don't, I see creativity about the problem of not being profitable. Just like, okay, let's just not, let's just go out there and just fundamentally understand that the product is the volunteer moderation and the volunteer content creation that is Reddit. That's why people go to Reddit and to, to, to, to sort of like pick a fight with, with that, with those, those people, those communities is just, it's, it's really ridiculous. It feels so much like Twitter. It does.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:12):
Where,

Mike Elgan (00:24:13):
You know, the people who

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:14):
Really don't Twitter, well, it's not quite as venal an an owner now. That's

Mike Elgan (00:24:17):
True. That's absolutely true. But it's, it's that, that, you know, that that war is still happening. And, and you know, for, for the, for some, for somebody at the top running the place to fundamentally misunderstand what it is he's running, it feels very similar in that sense even though it's a, a, a completely different scale. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:39):
The other thing I think Jason, to your point before is I'm, I'm, and I don't know anything about this, but I'm just guessing that they had a sense of what they were charged for the api and then along comes op open ai. Mm-Hmm. And, and copyright, I was just writing about this for something else. Copyright holders are, see, you know, the little dollar signs in the cartoon eyes going around thinking, oh, they're using my content to train their systems. They're gonna make a fortune. They're not yet. And, and, and I've owed all this money cuz it's copyright. Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller are screaming about this already. You owe us money, you can't use our content. Well, couple things about that. One is, I think it's fair use to learn from existing content. They don't record it, they don't replicate it. They just learn from it.

(00:25:26):
I also think that what comes out of LLMs is transformative. So that fits the law in terms of fair use. So I'm not sure there's a bag of money to be had there. I did an event this last week with Mann's investment fund, and I moderated two sessions on ai and then one of them, it's Chatham House. So I guess I can't quote, I always hate, one thing I hate about chat house is I wanna give credit to someone and I can't unless I ask them permission. So a person I was talking to, they are sad <laugh> that he would advise, yeah, the legal battle is gonna go on forever, but go ahead and negotiate now because you wanna just get on with your work and come up with some stuff and just act like you got to and do it.

(00:26:08):
But I think what happened with Reddit in part was that huge dollar amount of their api they knew that that LLMs were using them to train on because it's really valuable. There's tons of content. They've got an api it's kind of great. Your Twitter doesn't anymore. Facebook never had in this way. So they do stand alone in the values to those open access to those models, but to, to charge the same value to Sam Altman and a volunteer who made an app that expands your value in the marketplace is wrongheaded.

Mike Elgan (00:26:42):
Yeah, totally. Absolutely. The other thing that bothers me is that when you notice, when you run a company and you notice that companies are using the data for generative AI purposes, and your response is, we're gonna charge everybody a ton of money just so we can get those. That is the first thing I would think of if I was running it would be, why don't we use it for generative ai? Imagine, imagine a search engine based on Reddit data. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it'd be killer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's so much good information on Reddit. Again,

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:16):
There's bad information there too,

Mike Elgan (00:27:18):
But Yeah, exactly. But that's the beauty of Reddit. The bad information gets, gets dumped to the bottom and the good information on the whole gets raised to the top. You could wait the, the, the, the, this the cred of the data, of the information based on the community. So the, the, the thumbs up data would rank higher in how the generative AI worked. And you'd have a really great, would not be like what we're seeing out there with other generative AI attempts at search engines where it's, you know, everything's kind of treated equally to a certain extent. No, you could use the, the fundamental nature of Reddit, which is the user moderation and the, the crowdsourcing of the value up or down to weight, the value of the content that's used to construct the one true answer you get from the, from, from a generative AI based search engine. It could be the greatest search engine ever built. I don't, I don't hear those proposals coming outta Reddit and th this could be even a separate site that would compete directly with Google search, et cetera. Where's that proposal? That could be huge. Mm-Hmm. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, that could be a huge business. And it wouldn't presumably bother the Reddit community. So, I don't know. I just, I I'm just, I, the the lack of creativity. So I'm curious,

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:36):
Where do you both think this is gonna end up mm-hmm. <Laugh>? Is there gonna be peace found and the mod will come back and we'll be okay? Or is this a permanent damaged

Jason Howell (00:28:45):
Reddit? I don't get, I don't get this feeling. I think

Mike Elgan (00:28:46):
It's the latter. I'm afraid. I I just like every other search every other social network, it's just, and certification as, as Leo says where it's gonna be wounded and will remain wounded and a lesser sight than it used to be. It's

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:00):
Why we can't stand centralized social,

Jason Howell (00:29:03):
Right? Yep. Yeah. I, I I agree. It's against

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:06):
The

Jason Howell (00:29:06):
Internet. I agree. Unfortunately, I that I'd be really surprised if suddenly the CEO is like, you know, I, I realized I was trash talking to everybody. I'm really sorry <laugh>, and which I think is at least the beginning of what would need to happen to kind of start kind doing the ill feelings that a lot of these moderators have. I think it's, it just kind of permanently changes changes it, and some of those people are gonna get out and new people will come in and they'll adhere to the new rules, whatever the new rules are. Cuz you know, the CEO has definitely talked about instituting new rules to make, to give moderators less influence, less control, and Yeah. Like, it's just a moment.

Mike Elgan (00:29:46):
Well, he's, he's also trying to change the rules a bit so that it's easier to vote out mods that are not playing ball with the company, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, so that they're, they're changes afoot where he's trying to, to, to make that happen. The, the, the, it's a real problem that Reddit isn't a public company because there's no board of directors that can fire him. Right. And well, that's

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:11):
What they

Mike Elgan (00:30:11):
Trying

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:11):
To, that's they're trying to get to Mike cuz he's trying to go to an ipo.

Mike Elgan (00:30:15):
Yes, I know, but this, this is gonna delay it by who knows how long. Well,

Jason Howell (00:30:19):
That's, that's a really great

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:20):
Question. Let, let me disagree with you, Mike, being a public company is in the end what borked Twitter. But because because there was no decent stocks and Night Ritter and other companies, right? Because there wasn't a stock structure to enable a beneficent leader, which is I think Steve Newhouse in the end in the case of Reddit to do things. Steve bought Reddit wholesale, Ben put it back out there so that there was equity so that the people who were doing it could raise up. And now they're trying to get to an I P O to do that. But public market is no panacea.

Mike Elgan (00:31:00):
Well, but if you look at Twitter, for example you know, obviously Elon Musk made it private and now he can't be fired. With his record of bumbling and failure and the billions of dollars, the tens of billions of dollars of valuation lost at least 20 billion of valuation lost. He would've been fired in a public company. I mean, he ju the, it, the, the degree to which he is failing from a financial point of view, from the point of view of a board of directors he would've been fired and they'd put somebody else in there. Of course, he did hire another c e O, but he still owns, owns a place and makes all the decisions. But I, you know, I agree that it's not a panacea, but Steve Huffman should be fired, and I don't see how that's gonna happen. Given that they don't have a a a board of directors who accountable to shareholders.

Jason Howell (00:31:52):
What is, what is the impact that we see of this on this kind of looming I P O I mean, I would imagine a situation like this isn't great for, for the, the possibility of, of an I P O in the, in the near term. Or, or does it, or will this convince certain sh potential shareholders that like, oh, hey, you know, and someone's really running the company that, that has our best interest in mind. So maybe this, maybe this elevates the I P O possibility.

Mike Elgan (00:32:24):
I mean, I, I think that one of the pro ways that mods are, are protesting is they're making subreddits that are in fact safe for work. Yes. They're designating them as not safe for work, which means advertising won't, won't be displayed, which means direct, it's on scale. The company loses a lot of advertising dollars. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they're taking a hit financially, you know, of course it's not a public company, so we don't get all the details, but surely they're taking a big hit in advertising dollars. And so that's gonna give potential investors pause. It's also a source of trouble and controversy that's gonna give them pause. So yes, he, he seems to be acting in a way that is he's being assertive toward the cause of revenue and all that kind of stuff, but it's a bumbling kind of assertion. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's a, it's a wrong-headed kind of assertion. And ultimately it's just creating controversy and problems for Reddit, which is not appealing to, to potential investors. So I, I don't think there's gonna be any serious talk of an I P O anytime in the next year at least. And probably more than that. I mean, I just don't see how they're gonna get to the point where, oh yeah, this looks like a great moneymaking business that is gonna just soar and grow and become this gigantic thing.

Jason Howell (00:33:52):
Which is just, seems to go counter to probably the, you know, the driving force of this change to begin with. The word I was trying to look for earlier when describing Steve Huffman and his actions around this was contemptuous. I feel contempt <laugh> coming from him when it comes to talking about the moderators of this platform that had been doing all this free work for him. And I think that's what really poisons me about this whole situation. Like, oh, you know, kinda like with with Elon Musk and Twitter, there were things that, that Elon was doing that made me not wanna touch Twitter, cuz it felt dirty. And now I'm like, got this contemptuous thing happening over here with Reddit and I just, I don't want all my social networks that I care about to just go away. Like, where am what am I gonna do?

(00:34:33):
You know, I guess I, I just don't use them as much. I, I actually fired up my <laugh> my very untouched TikTok account earlier today. Cause I was like, you know, there's a lot of stuff happening right now that I care about a lot of stuff in my life and here at Twit, and I'll talk about it later and everything, but like, I have no place outside of shows on this network where I can really kind of talk about this stuff on a passing day-to-day level. I used to do that on Twitter. I don't really anymore, cuz I don't really want to do it in that way. And I was like, well, what if I use TikTok the way I use Twitter? So I'll just try that and see how that goes. You know, I don't know where it's gonna go. But anyways, that's, that's my plan, but then something's gonna happen to TikTok. This just seems to be the way of the world with social media right now.

Mike Elgan (00:35:17):
<Laugh>, you know, my, my dream has always been to have one social place. That's why I loved Google Plus so much back in, in the first four years of Google Plus. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And now I find myself once again spread out across all these things. I am on Twitter still. I'm on Blue sky, I'm on CK notes, I'm on t2, I'm on something else. I mean, it's just, it's, it's really a

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:42):
Bummer. Mastodon.

Jason Howell (00:35:43):
It is a bummer.

Mike Elgan (00:35:43):
Mastodon. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Mastodon. It's really a bummer and it's, I it's just a lot of work to go from one to the other and

Jason Howell (00:35:51):
Switch so much work

Mike Elgan (00:35:52):
Contextual gears to engage in these conversations and they all have their own

Jason Howell (00:35:56):
Impacts and

Mike Elgan (00:35:58):
One great place. Yes.

Jason Howell (00:35:59):
Yeah. Well, you know, and I guess the flip side of that, you know, I can, I can kind of hear, you know, I, I don't know how, if he really would feel this way, but I can kind of hear Leo's voice in my ears right now being like, well, that's, that's good because then you're not putting all your eggs in one basket and you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you're not giving one company or one entity, everything that you're doing and you spread it out. But I mean, it's exhausting is what it is from my perspective. It's hard enough to just update one place, let alone have the, you know, just have it locked in my mind that I gotta go to all these, all these places, one, to even check them and then two, to to do content or posting or whatever it is, and all the different syntaxes that they require. Like, it's, it's exhausting. I just don't have that space in my life. So

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:44):
Exactly when I post, I post I I'll, when I, in the morning, when I go through the news, I will post stuff in Twitter, in Blue Sky and in Masterton and occasionally on LinkedIn if it's appropriate.

Jason Howell (00:36:56):
Same stuff on

Jeff Jarvis (00:36:57):
Each place. Not because I'm trying to spam anything, but I just wanna, I'm, I'm still trying to learn what the inter interaction is gonna be in each place. And there's so unpredictable. Mm-Hmm.

Mike Elgan (00:37:09):
<Affirmative> exactly. Something.

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:10):
It's really weird. Something that I think, oh, you know, MAs Don's quiet. The MAs Don's the one where I get a lot of interesting conversation. Right. And blue Sky's still pretty light. Twitter is still surprises. And I think Mike, for your businesses, I think you have to be on Twitter. For

Mike Elgan (00:37:25):
Sure. Yeah. It's worse than that. We have to be on Instagram. You know, my wife runs a Instagram there because outside of the US there, there's a huge number of people who only use meta products. They only use Instagram. Whatsapp. WhatsApp. Yep. and Facebook. And so they've never, ever go to Twitter or any of these other things. So my, my wife takes one for the team. She, she, she holds her nose and goes on Instagram. But but yeah, it's exactly what you're saying, Jeff. I do the same thing and I, I'll often post, you know, if it's super techy, I'll only post it on Macedon and, and, and mm-hmm. Maybe T2 or something like that. If it's, if it's super political, maybe only Twitter and Blue Sky. But sometimes I'll post the same exact content on all five, and then I'm surprised it just completely blows up on one of them and goes nowhere on the others. Yeah. So I don't, I'm not really sure what's going there. I'm, I'm hoping eventually that one of these social networks will demonstrate to me that that's the place where I wanna spend all my time, and I'd be happy to cancel my accounts on all the rest. But so far they're all kind of, they're all kind of out there. And each one is, is unsatisfying by itself.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:38):
Yeah. So for, for our comfort blue Sky, which, you know, hasn't been federated yet, just just said yesterday that they put up a sandbox environment for Federation is now ready. So I think, I think proof of the pudding there will be how federated it becomes and how independent people can be. That gives me some hope. Also, the other thing I like about Blue Sky is that they they don't really have customizable algorithms so much yet as customizable feeds, but I like the idea of being able to, for someone to come in and make money doing it, less lessons from reading from Reddit, and give me an algorithm that recommends the kind of stuff that I would want and goes to that effort. I, I think there's opportunities for customizable federated worlds around both Mastodon and I hope Blue Sky and we'll see. I I, I hope they do it right.

Mike Elgan (00:39:31):
The frustrating thing is that Blue Sky's using the at Protocol and instead of so they're not, you know, currently going to be federated along with Macedon and all the rest. So that would be killer if they were, you know, if I could interact with twit do social and all the people on Macedon and, and, and that fed averse, I'd probably just use Blue Sky.

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:55):
Right? I think that once they, they get their federation act together, it's more possible to imagine how that might happen. And I don't know anything. Yeah. But the same count when we had rabble on you know, who works in federation at and, and early Twitter and so on. He, as I remember argued that there was some benefit for competing protocols that, that they can improve each other and learn from each other. And so it may be too soon for everybody to get behind just a activity pub. Maybe there's a benefit to having another protocol that has some of the, the functionality we don't have. I don't know. I don't know enough to judge that, but I, I still have some hope here. And again, what we said before, you said earlier, Jason, about, about the feeling you had of Reddit mm-hmm. <Affirmative> being like a bulletin board.

(00:40:40):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think we got, everybody got too much greed for attention in their eyes of wanting a mass audience. I want Twitter, even though, even though nobody has the hole of Twitter mm-hmm. Nobody has the hole of Facebook. No two people see the same place for either place, but we get the sense that mass had to matter and scale had to matter. So true. If we can get back down to right size to human size and recognize that if, if you're suddenly talking to 500 people somewhere, that's amazing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's like having your own auditorium. That's just great. And you can meet all kinds of interesting people and you can have interesting conversations, and that's wonderful. And you don't need 50,000, you don't need a hundred thousand, you don't need 5 million. In fact, that's absurd. So to rescale our social expectations of the internet, I think is a, is is important, is part of how we're gonna make this right. Again. And also the asset involved isn't as attractive to nihilistic narcissists like Elon Musk, or to your point, Mike, I don't really know enough, but let's just say incompetent executives like Huffman, it, it, you know, I think that potential is to keep modest mm-hmm.

Mike Elgan (00:41:52):
<Affirmative>. Yeah, exactly. And you know, one of the, one of the draws for a place like Twitter is, you know, JLo can go there and have a a hundred bazillion followers. And so you, you want to reward the people who will bring a big audience and bring a lot of fans, bring a lot of readers, bring a lot of viewers, whatever it is for the people who really do need, need, those big, big audiences. I mean, you know, Anderson Cooper is not gonna be happy with five, talking to 500 people he talks to to a million every night or whatever his numbers are. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so you want to be able to track those people, but at the same time, you don't want it to be this winner takes all system. I mean, I think that's what brought down Dig, which I think is more comparable to, to Reddit, for example.

(00:42:35):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a user there named Mr. Baby Man, remember Mr. Baby Man, and every single thing he posted was on the top of Dig every single time, and he just determined what the content was of dig almost single-handedly. And nobody else, everybody wanted that kind of reach, but it was the, the, the whole thing was kind of weighted against you. This is kind of the, one of the things that Steve Huffman called, you know, ca called, called longtime Mods Landed Gentry, because they're holding onto their spots for lots of time. They have, they have more authority over the other mods of their, of their, of their subreddit and so on. So this is one of the things like moderation that social networks really have to figure. It's about power figure out a good system for. And, you know, you don't want a winner takes all system. You want people who to who consistently post engaging content to extend their reach, and people who almost never go or who are looky lose or whatever, kind of to sync to the bottom or whatever. There's gotta be a better way to do it. And, and so hopefully, hopefully some of these social networks will figure that out,

Jason Howell (00:43:45):
Hopefully. So all right. That was fan. That was fantastic. We've got a whole lot more coming up here. Do wanna take a break though, and thank the sponsor of this episode, and then we will get into some Google News. We've got a whole Google block, so we might as well tackle that. Amazing, huh. I love it. Fun. I love it when show called This week, Google talks about Google <laugh>. We'll do that in a second. Why not? But first, this episode of this week in Google is brought to you by Bit Warden, bit Warden's my password manager. Bit Warden's awesome. It's the only open source cross platform password manager. It can be used at home. It can be used at work on the go. It's trusted by millions of people, even our very own, Steve Gibson has switched over. So have you switched over?

(00:44:30):
Well, you should with Bit Warden, all of the data in your vault is end-to-end encrypted, and that's not, we're not just talking about passwords. You can protect your data and privacy with Bit Warden by Secure by adding security to your passwords. Yes. With strong randomly generated passwords for each account. But you can go further. You can use their username generator, you can create unique usernames for each account. You can even use any of the five integrated email alias services. It's almost like a, a secure, like a a, a secure password tool kit, not just a password manager. Bit Warden is open source. All the code is available on GitHub. Keep things open. Anyone can view it. This means that you don't have to trust their word. You can actually see that it's completely secure yourself on top of being public to the world. Bit Warden has professional third party audits that's performed every single year.

(00:45:22):
And the results are also published on their websites. They're not hiding anything. This is open source security that you could trust at the end of the day. Bit Warden also launched a new bit, warden se secrets Manager. This is currently a beta right now. It's an end-to-end encrypted solution that allows teams of developers to centrally secure manage and deploy sensitive Secrets. Things like API keys and machine credentials. Secrets Manager keeps those sensitive developer secrets out of Source Code and eliminates the risk of them being exposed to the public in the process. Bit Warden needs developers to test out the new Secrets Manager and provide feedback. That's why it's in beta. So you can learn more at bit warden.com/secrets beta. That's Secrets Beta one word. And then you can share your private data securely with your coworkers. You can do that across departments.

(00:46:15):
The entire company, even with fully customizable and adaptive plans. They've got the Bit Warden Teams organization option that's only $3 a month per user. We're talking really inexpensive here. Their enterprise organization plan is just $5 a month per user. And then if you're an individual user, like many of you are, you can always use the basic free account for an unlimited number of passwords, no limits upgrade any time, then to a premium account that's less than a buck a month. Or you can bring the whole family with their family organization options. That's what I have to give up to six users premium features, that's only $3 and 33 cents a month. Pretty awesome stuff here at twit. We think Bit Warden is awesome. We're fans of password managers, of course. Bit Warden is the only open source cross-platform password manager that can be used at home on the go or at work.

(00:47:10):
And it's also trusted by millions of individuals, teams, and or organizations worldwide. So you should check out a free trial, get started with that by, you know, checking out that free trial of a teams or an enterprise plan, or you can get started for free across all devices as individual user and really just kind of check it out for yourself. Do that. What have you got to lose? Bit warden.com/twit. That's bit warden.com/twit. We thank Bit Warden for their support of this week in Google. Okay, so let me scroll up here and see what kind of googley stuff we have. Oh, yeah, the Google domains thing. This, this is gonna be fun going along the, the, the road of you know, can we trust the big, the big technology companies that we've, that we've grown so close to over the years. And Google time and time again, man, they just keep reminding us, you can't trust us to hold onto something that you love.

(00:48:12):
That's, that even might be a success, but maybe not to Google's metric of success, whatever the heck that is. But Google domains getting the ax and <laugh> according to ours, Technica selling its domain hosting business to Squarespace. This is gonna close, or it's expected to close anyways, in the third quarter of 20, 23, 8 years since it was launched. And I mean, a lot of a lot of people, a lot of companies relying on this now suddenly gonna go and you know, go in the hands of, of Squarespace. So Google's getting out of it. And what do we think of

Mike Elgan (00:48:51):
Squarespace?

Jason Howell (00:48:52):
I mean, I, well,

Mike Elgan (00:48:54):
I,

Jason Howell (00:48:54):
Yeah, Mike, I mean, I have a site on Squarespace. That's, that's my main thing. I have a site, I like the site, but beyond that, I don't know. <Laugh>,

Mike Elgan (00:49:02):
I have several. And it's a mixed bag. I mean, they, they they're very good in certain things. In fact gastro nomad.net is a Squarespace site, and one of the reasons we use it is because we use their e-commerce for people to sign up for experience. Wow. So it's all very integrated into Stripe and so on. And, and it works really well. They have some nicely designed templates, and so it's a, but, but they're, they're, and they have pretty good tech support I I should say better than pretty good. They have good tech support. They're a little slow to evolve. I think it's fine for them to have this the, the this, this service. What's, once again, disappointing is that they're, Google has this thing that people are using, they're happy with it. It's associated with workspace. People who bought into Google's stuff are once again being kind of shafted mm-hmm.

(00:49:59):
<Affirmative> by Google in this case. Not closing it, but essentially selling it off. Right. And it's just, once again, it's just so confusing about why Google does these kinds of things. Why sell it? They strap for cash. It was profitable. So that doesn't make any sense. It just, it just doesn't make any sense to keep pulling the rug out from your most passionate users who follow your lead, do what you say. You know, they roll this kind of stuff out to big, everybody gets excited, users go rushing in to use the service, and then later Google just says, nah, we're, we're, we're not gonna be associated with it anymore. Yeah. And

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:36):
One of the reasons that, I mean, obviously I've been a Google fanboy going back years. I wrote a book called, what will Google Do? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I'm on a podcast called This Week at Google. There you go. One of the reasons that I, that I liked Google and trusted them in the past was that these were things that just made you feel good about Google. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they were worth doing to that purpose. In, in, in another world, we call it branding. Right. It, it just had a, it, it, it, it was a, in a world that was filled with sleazy promoters, the, the URL world. The domain world. Thank you. I'm thinking myself with the word. I couldn't come up with, oh, daddy. The domain world was filled with, with Yicky Yeah. Places. Yeah. Google said, okay, okay, we're gonna come in, we're gonna clean it up. We're gonna do something decent, decent price, boom, boom, boom. We're gonna run a profitably, as you said, Mike, and it was great. And now just to drop it, there's just no trusting them for anything. You know, at some point, are they gonna get rid of Gmail?

Jason Howell (00:51:29):
Oh my goodness. I mean, how many times have we had this

Mike Elgan (00:51:31):
Conversation find Google Photos, right? Yeah. How, how terrifying would it be if they, if they said, okay, we're, we're closing Google photos in one month.

Jason Howell (00:51:39):
And that sounds ridiculous to me, but yet at the same time, I would never be surprised at this point. I just would never be surprised if they killed anything. I guess Gmail would surprise me, cuz Yes. But I mean, even then, like, you know, maybe Google decides, oh, we're not killing it, but we're selling it to Squarespace. You know, like, so at least Squarespace has Gmail. I don't know. Like, I'm not, I think that's there. Someone I think Jeff, you had put an article in here written by David Meyer Hansen.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:07):
Yeah. I don't, I don't know him, but, but the headline grabbed me.

Jason Howell (00:52:09):
Yeah. Which you

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:10):
Can't trust Google.

Jason Howell (00:52:11):
You can't trust Google. And I love the, the way he ends this article, he says, all I'm saying is you better have a backup plan. Be that for your collaboration, your email, your home security system, anything that reads made by Google implicitly has the subscript until we don't give an F anymore, printed below. And that just feels more and more true. I don't know how many times really is, we have this exact story in insert new Google thing into it. And each time, more and more, I, I believe more and more people who were once very passionate about Google's approach to these things and feeling exactly like you were talking about Jeff, let you know Google does something in a nicer way versus the competitors that kind of feel slimy and everything like that. Like, that's great. But if we never have any sort of confidence that Google's gonna stick the landing and keep supporting something that seems successful and good for the company, good for users and everything like that, why are we gonna continue trusting Google? Why, why would we do that? At a certain point? We're we're just kind of crazy if we do that because we know it's gonna go away eventually.

Mike Elgan (00:53:15):
They've already, they've already scraped off their shoe, millions of super passionate Google fanboys by closing Google, by closing Google Plus, by doing all the things that they've done over the years. And and, and, and, and so there, there really aren't a whole lot of loyal customers left of Google. They're people who are locked in and apparently that's good enough for Google as long as they can keep selling ads and making the money that they do in the ways that they do. But how is it possible to be within 10 miles of the Apple campus and not think, huh, wow. Apple's users are super loyal, devoted to the Apple cause. And one of the reasons for that is people know for sure they're not gonna suddenly kill the iPhone. They're not gonna suddenly say, oh, you know what? We, we made a mistake getting into the Apple TV business. We're just gonna close all that stuff down. They,

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:14):
So Mike, lemme try this out on you. Let me try this out on you. Hearing you say that just that Leo moment, devil's advocate moment, or actually not just a crazy idea moment is goo Apple is a consumer company. Apple requires people to buy their stuff. Mm-Hmm. Is Google turning into an enterprise B2B company?

Mike Elgan (00:54:36):
Is it? Well, you know,

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:37):
Even behind it's, yeah, sure, they make Android phones, but then again, they really license Android out to everybody else. Yeah. They've got Gmail, but it's really about, you know enterprise stuff. They have enterprise SaaS services, advertising is all b2b. And now the, they own the marketplace both ways. It's really about advertisers and media back and forth. Is it no longer a consumer company and brand?

Mike Elgan (00:55:05):
Well, that, the reason you're asking that question is because it's unknowable. It's confusing, it's a confusing point. If you look at a company like Microsoft, and Microsoft has clearly nearly completed their pivot to becoming an enterprise company, and they are so successful. If you look at the valuation of technology companies, of course you would expect Apple to be at the very top of valuation. But if you look at Microsoft, Microsoft is number two right behind Apple. Microsoft is almost as valuable as Apple. That's

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:36):
Impressive.

Mike Elgan (00:55:37):
Which is stunning to me. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But they've done it by being pretty clear that they're about business and the enterprise. Then you have Google, Google has, you know, they sell a smartphone, then they don't, now they're selling a smartphone again. Then they buy Motorola, then they spin off Motorola. Then they have the so confusing, they have the, they, they have the laptops and they want to do laptops anymore. And, and then they buy nests, right? And then they get rid of net. You know, they don't get rid of Nest, but they, they sort of don't do much with it. You know, th this, if they wanted to be an enterprise company, okay, like once and for all, get rid of Nest, stop making consumer play. I mean, they are, they dominate education, for example with, with Chromebooks to a very large extent.

(00:56:23):
They, they're just so confusing. And if they wanted to, if they, if they really wanted to do the kinds of things Apple does, they would have one messaging app instead of 13 or 12 or nine or 15 or whatever it is. They have, nobody knows it's unknowable what their messaging products are. They would have one that would be Google messages or something like that. And that could be the catalyst that would bring people into all these other things. But no, they, they just, they can't seem to get control of themselves. They're like, so what do you think teenager,

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:59):
Since you will always be my top expert on Android what do you think about Google and its fate?

Jason Howell (00:57:05):
I mean, it just seems like time and time again, Google can't coordinate between itself to get everybody on the same page to know, like, like all that I could think of when I was, when I was listening to you, Mike, and, and thinking about the question is like, I don't even know that Google could answer that question. I don't know that Google, I understands exactly which direction it's going for. I think Google to a certain degree, which is all of these different departments you know, doing many different things. They wanna be everything, and they wanna be everything for as long as they're tasked to do that, until suddenly they get recognized for the work they did over there. I'm talking about like a, an individual like product manager or something like that. And suddenly he or she gets transferred over to this other thing, and then that thing dies on the vine because there's no more person there to vie for it.

(00:57:56):
It, as a company, it seems like a lot of their efforts are not executed with the company in mind. It's more like, eh, I've got this really great idea. Okay, you do that and they do that and it gets successful. But it's not like, it's not considered this big major success for Google. It's a major success for it. And then once the person that champions that thing is gone, then that it falls apart. And as a consumer, as a user of Google, it's just kind of exhausting at a certain point. It's like, I, there's only so many times I can put my faith into this product and then have it disappear on me again. And I think, yeah, I mean, it's a

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:33):
Fascinating period because, because right, Facebook realized that everything it stood for was shrinking. So it decides to go full metaverse, and then that doesn't really work. So now it decides to go ai. Microsoft is kind of, I think, ruining its consumer products by throwing AI inappropriately. Google is screwing all these properties that we cared about. It's really interesting to figure that out. Apple, and I'm not a, as, you know, I'm not Apple fanboy cause I think that they got outta the advertising business just cause they failed and privacy became a bug, became a feature. But they have to stick close to the consumer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you know, and if you look at media companies, media companies, except for little ones like this, aren't close to consumers. They're just selling. They, they're the ones who for whom you are a product cuz they're selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Always have been. There's not a lot of truly consumer, customer based companies on the internet out there. Now that we think about it now that we're discussing this, I hadn't thought of this before mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Mike Elgan (00:59:40):
And then people will assume Apple is, but really Apple is very successful in the enterprise as well and in business markets. And they don't, they don't draw this huge distinction between those. They basically say, okay, well iPhone is just the best phone. That's what they would say it does good. Both and both sides. It's the best phone if you're an enterprise user or if you're a consumer, right? And so that's that kind of idea has worked well for Apple. But yeah, you're right, they are small consumer companies. But, but many of the big companies have have realized that, that the business market is the, is the better business. And of course it is a better business. It's, it's easier. It's much easier. It's a hell

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:14):
Of a lot easier.

Mike Elgan (01:00:16):
It's, it's great to have a government contract rather than trying to sell individual units at Best Buy. Cuz that's, that's, that's really problematic. But the thing, the thing about Google, I think that just to reiterate and kind of reframe a little bit what you were saying, Jeff, is that, I mean Jason is, is that Google, nobody's in charge. Mm-Hmm. nobody's in charge. The, the, the individual departments are just doing their own thing. And again, contrasting against, against apple. Steve Jobs created a company where he was the fascist dictator. He personally was in charge all the way down. And he decided what Color Blue, the translucent Lucent Desktop PCs would be personally. And he kind of handed it out over to Tim Cook. And Tim Cook is a kind of dictator where Sundar Phai, who's both the CEO of Google and, and also Alphabet, he's just kind of a, I don't know, I don't know what he does, but he, but, but he just lets the kids run away.

(01:01:23):
He lets the in inmates run, the asylum does feel that way. And, and we get the result that we get. Plus the incentives at Google are all messed up. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you, you get bonuses and, and incentivized for launching products, but you get very little benefit within the company politically or salary wise by really improving, constantly improving being dedicated to the users of the product and seeing it to evolve to be better and better and better. They don't incentivize that. So it doesn't happen. And then these, these products just sort of languish in obscurity until they're finally killed. And they do it year after year after year. Nobody ever says, you know, Sundo Hai never stops and says, you know, maybe there's a better way. They just keep fumbling along with this conspicuous reputation as a company just kills this and kills that and kills everything. And they keep it as if they're, I don't know. It it, it feels like they're almost trolling us

Jason Howell (01:02:24):
<Laugh>. It does.

Mike Elgan (01:02:25):
If you do you think they try to do something about their bad reputation? They don't seem to even be aware of it somehow. I mean,

Jason Howell (01:02:31):
The reader thing, I only, I only realized this last night when I was kind of going through old, old doc, you know, all about Android document sheets to get ready for last night's episode. The reader thing. That was 20, was it 2013? Somewhere around there. I mean, it was a long time ago at this point.

Mike Elgan (01:02:47):
Yeah, that sounds right.

Jason Howell (01:02:48):
It was a decade ago. And that was one of the earlier times that I remember going, whoa, if reader's on the chopping block, like nothing is safe. You know what I mean? Like, if you're getting rid of reader, there's probably not a whole lot that Google wouldn't be willing to get rid of. Like, that was just very surprising to me. Here we are a decade later, and I mean, go to Killed by google.com, you'll see, you'll see a number of names in there that that'll you'll be, be scratching your head

Mike Elgan (01:03:14):
Hundreds of, of products and services, many of which, you know, they're, they're a little bit like Yahoo, where when they announce its closure, you're like, wow, that sounds great. I totally would've used that if I'd known about it <laugh> if I knew about it. So the most recent, the most recent thing is they're killing off album archive. This is on the rundown. Yeah. this is this is part of the insure notification of Google Photos. The first big betrayal was that when they, when when Vic and Dora rolled out Google photos and all that stuff, it was unlimited photo storage. And so everybody said, wow, unlimited free photo storage. That's amazing. And everybody poured, you know, gazillions of photos into Google Photos. And then some time went by and they said, you know what? We changed our mind. We're gonna start charging if you're over a certain amount, a total betrayal. And I personally felt betrayed because I recommended to so many people of so many readers that they use Google Photos because they had had this unlimited free photo storage, and now they're killing out album archive. They make these promises explain,

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:13):
Explain album ar archive again. Cause I couldn't, I couldn't remember what it was.

Mike Elgan (01:04:18):
Yeah. So you, you can basically, you can basically take albums and put it into an archive status. And they would just sit there forever. And so, and so now they're basically saying that, you know, no, we're, if if it's in an archive condition, well, no,

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:34):
I still don't understand. I still, Mike, hold on. Slow down for me.

Mike Elgan (01:04:37):
Yeah. What's the difference

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:38):
Between album archive and Google Photos?

Mike Elgan (01:04:42):
You know, I don't, I don't really use it that much, but I think it has to do with it's a place that they put other kinds of imagery, like from Hangouts and other services. It could be you know, I, I really don't understand it that well, frankly, I don't either. I use albums a lot, but, but I, but it's, it's a, it's a feature in there that I believe that some people really use. And so I, I think that it's you know, I, from what I understand, you can put an album into, into archive status. So and then, and then it's not deleted. It's just archived. It's sort of like filed away.

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:18):
Well, I, or I, what I, I think it is, is it's, it's photos that ended up coming from other places. So I go to album archive. Yeah. And it first says Don't exist. It says photos from post photos from Hangouts. Right. So it's kinda like media that was from the side.

Jason Howell (01:05:31):
Yeah. I, I honestly had never heard of this before. I got that email. And when I go there, same as you, Jeff, I have photos from Blogger, which is <laugh>. Okay. Whoa, Jason. It's a single photo. Jason being from like 2001 DJing, that's probably the only photo that I know of, of me being a dj back then. And then I have photos from Hangouts, which are just an, I mean, it is exactly what it says, right? The number of really old hang like photos that I obviously shared with different, in different Hangouts chats. And that's like, I didn't even know this existed until I got that email.

Mike Elgan (01:06:06):
So, so yeah, it is for, from these third party things, but it's also for directly usable within Google Photos where you can put, you can take, I

Jason Howell (01:06:13):
See,

Mike Elgan (01:06:14):
Okay. Active albums, I guess you could call it. And you can put it in there with your other stuff into, into the archive. See, anyway, which I never

Jason Howell (01:06:20):
Archived anything Holding, holding Tank Google Photos. But

Mike Elgan (01:06:22):
Yeah, it's a holding tank for, for, for photos that that is separate from the, like the active albums and also from the non-A photos.

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:34):
Yeah, it's Right. It says, a C says it's a repository for photo. If we believe c that if it didn't come from chat G B T repository for photos and videos that you've shared on older Google services, like Hangouts now Google Chat or Google Plus.

Jason Howell (01:06:47):
Okay. Alright. Well, yeah, I mean, there's some old stuff in here. I'm looking through it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't even know if I have that photo in my <laugh> my photo library. I might actually have to do, do some takeout work on this, which oh my God, shoot me. Like takeout working with Google takeout is just such a, and then you, you

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:04):
Take it out and you put it somewhere and, and you're never gonna look at it again either.

Mike Elgan (01:07:10):
But it, but it's a major feature in the sense that when you go into the, the, the Google Photos app, there are four things that it dangles in front of you, favorites, utilities, archive, and trash. I mean, it's like right up there at the top of the interface. And so it's, I I assume there are lots of people who said, oh, wow, look at that. I'm gonna use that for whatever reason. And it's just it's just incredible. I that they, that, that they, what, what is the benefit to Google of, of doing this? How many of their users are not really getting, you know, who don't listen to twit. Yeah. Watch Twit Twig. Right. Or, and don't get, you know, the Verge or whatever, and won't know about this. They think their photos are safe and sound in, in June or July, whatever it is. It's going to be just Uncer unceremoniously July 19th. Discontinued,

Jason Howell (01:08:05):
Discontinued, I guess

Mike Elgan (01:08:06):
What, you know what, and you're gonna piss off some people and why. Yeah. Why, why piss off everybody.

Jason Howell (01:08:10):
What, what is the benefit? I guess what comes to my mind right now is, is, is Google just too spread out? Like, do they just have their hands in too many different things? When I compare Google and Apple, obviously they're very different companies. They have very different strategies. But when I think of Apple, the mental image I get is a very kind of hone, honed track of, of devices and services. They all work together, they all fit together. They're, they're, they're in the same, they're going in the same direction. They're traveling on the same road together. And then when I think of Google, I just think of a million different things shooting into a million different directions. It's a sky full of, of, of fireworks with, you know, different colors shooting in all different directions. And that's, that's Google's strategy. And like, apparently that doesn't work because they kill so many things. I appreciate and have appreciated that Google likes to throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. And, you know, that's, that's created some really interesting and fun and enjoyable products and services that we've used over the years, but it's also created a lot of grief. And I'm just like, God, maybe, maybe Google just needs to, like, narrow your focus, do do less things, but do them better instead of doing everything and failing at them all.

Mike Elgan (01:09:24):
Well, the thing is that, that it's, it's actually just feels like Apple does only a few things. Apple does all the things that Google does for the most part. For example, they have incredible ai, but instead of just having this AI sort of out there in the wind, or having, you know, 25 different AI products that you can use, I'm gonna go use an AI product. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they build AI into their ear,

Jason Howell (01:09:46):
Into the product where you already are.

Mike Elgan (01:09:48):
Right. And in subtle little ways, right? They, they have a photos app, right? They have all, they have all those things, except they, they're all in the service of these hardware, software platforms, the iPhone, iPad, et cetera. And so there's a focus, a clarity there's a hierarchy of of, of importance. And what they're ultimately trying to, what Apple's ultimately trying to do is thrill the user and keep them locked in. Right? I mean, the only reason I never use Android phones anymore is because I love this watch so much. It only works with an iPhone, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they, they sort of hooked me with this watch, right? But the, the watch works with the phone, the apps work together. They all work with the iPad, the I that works with the, with, with the MacBook Pro that I use, and it all kind of works together. There's a, there's a intention to make me the user very happy with, with what I'm doing, and I give them way too much money as a result. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Whereas Google is just, they don't even think about the user. It seems like. They're like, oh, well, we can do this. We have the technology to make this product, let's make it. And then they throw this product out there, and then there's a, you know, after the fact there's a, an attempt to integrate them. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:10:57):
But right after the fact. Exactly. <laugh>. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (01:11:02):
I mean, and it's just, they, they just, it's a badly run company. It's, they, they are the Sund, I said it before in the show, and I'll say it again. Sundo Pcha is the Steve Ballmer of Google. So is there any company

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:12):
You like today, Mike

Mike Elgan (01:11:15):
<Laugh>? Well, I think, I think well, I don't know. You know, I, I, I think Apple is doing well. Apple is certainly get doing well financially. They certainly get a lot of money from me and my family. But yeah, that's there, there are a lot of good companies. The thing, the frustrating thing is all of us have wanted so badly to love Google for so long. Yeah. Right? And, and I really, really, really want to want to be on Google's side. I u I loved what they used to be. And I love the, their whole attitude. And I know that the sort of the scrappy entrepreneurial try everything kind of attitude is, is a little bit passe these days. It's not a good way to run a company. But I would've hoped that they would've evolved and, and used their, their advantages to, to evolve into the new era and, and, and sort of notice that it's it's a good idea to have, you know, one or two messaging platforms instead of 11 or 12.

(01:12:16):
And it's a good idea to have one or two AI chat bots and not a whole bunch of them and or whatever, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I, I, I, I was really counting on them to, to do some amazing stuff. You know, I, I was a Pixel book owner. I thought, okay, this is, this is a platform that's gonna keep getting better and better and better. But, but no <laugh>. And so it's, you know, I I, I have to call it like, it is, they just, they just disappoint. They disappoint their users. That's what they're, that's what they're good at.

Jason Howell (01:12:43):
That's, that's what they're good at right now. Wasn't always that way, but it certainly feels that way and has for a while, in my opinion. I find myself wondering, what would Google be like if Sundar Pacha was replaced by a, a different ceo? If, if a new c, and I don't even know who that CEO would be, but if a CEO was to come in and say, all right, fresh eyes, it's, it's Tim Cook, it's SYA Nadella, you know, level of like transf transformative fresh look at Google. If some new CEO was to step into that role, nars out that CEO's in, what would, what would Google do that would turn?

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:19):
So, so I think, I think part of, part of what I think is really interesting, and in fact I'm about to write a piece of a chapter of the next book about that kind of goes into that. And it occurs to me, the heading for this part that I'm gonna enjoy writing is it's time to demote the technologists. Right? We needed them to kind of build stuff. What you think about it, if you were gonna, well, you know, go back to, I'm sorry, Gutenberg moment Gutenberg was in charge cuz he knew how to set type at first, right? But before long, he was replaced by publishers and editors and others who, who got to the core value of what printing delivered. If you were gonna start a Facebook today, we're gonna, we're gonna start a service. We're gonna connect lots of people in the world.

(01:14:02):
What would you, who would you put in charge of it? You, not a technologist. You put a charge of, I don't know, a sociologist Hmm. Or an anthropologist. Right? Right. Or a psychologist or else for Google, from a consumer perspective who should be in charge? I know this is what I'm about to say is absurd, but I'll say it anyway, a librarian, maybe even a journalist, an educator, right? What's the value of a consumer perspective there now as a corporate perspective? Of course, it's an advertising company, number one. So maybe you put an advocate sales, maybe Philip who's the Chief Revenue Officer of Google. Philip Schneider? No, Philip, sorry, I forget his name. You know, I am frantically Googling somebody. <Laugh>. Yeah. I can't find his name right now. You know, or haha, Twitter, it should be a talk show host. I, I, I know I'm getting a third, but the point is that when you decide what the essence of the company is, that's what, what determines what the leadership should be. John Hoffman looks, no, that's somebody else I'm thinking of Philip. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (01:15:13):
The, the, so that's a, so again, I'm, I'm, I apologize for talking so much about Apple, but that's why Tim Cook Shidler is, sorry. That's why Steve Jobs put Tim Cook and as his successor, because Tim Cook is an expert. Mm-Hmm. Probably the world's leading ex expert at complex manufacturing of electronics at a massive scale. His job before he took over as CEO was organizing the manufacturing of tens of millions of iPhones in a short period of time, right. The first time using, you know, a, a Taiwanese company based in, in China. And he's really good at that. And they, they recognize that that's really the core thing Apple does. That's the hardest part of what Apple does, is manufacturing very complex electronics products at a massive scale. And, and I, I agree with you entirely, and I, and, and Sundo is the wrong person for that. But again, I wouldn't even know what that is at Google. I, I don't know what their, I mean, maybe of Google, I dunno. No. Yeah. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:25):
Jeff, just so you know,

Mike Elgan (01:16:26):
I, I will say one thing. I've been, I've been crapping all over Google a lot, but I think one example of a success story is Google Maps. So Google Maps is, is a heck yes. Is a, is an app that competes directly with multiple products, including with Apple. Apple has worked so hard to, to make Apple Maps as good as Google Maps, and they have been unable to do it. And, you know, Google Maps isn't perfect, but it's pretty amazing. Yeah. Actually,

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:55):
It continues to be amazing. And they

Mike Elgan (01:16:56):
Haven't Yeah. And they haven't on it. Oh, thank you. You know, again, they're, they're, I can think of several ways that I'd like to see it improved, but I also can't think of a single other application that's anywhere near as useful or as, or as high quality as Google Maps

Jason Howell (01:17:11):
Is. Yeah. It always feels like a downgrade. Anytime I'm not using Google Maps, I'm using something else. Mashed potato in our Discord has your next book, Jeff. We know you already wrote what would Google do now? It's what should Google do? <Laugh>? Yeah. Or what would Google kill? Yeah. Oh boy. Why would Google do that? Why <laugh> that, that's awesome. I love it. That's gotta be the title. Why would Google do that? Man, what a great conversation. I love this. This show is so much fun. Thank you so much for diving into that. We've got more coming up. We're gonna get into other facets of Google. Cause that was one story from our Google block that just took us 30. And there's more, and there's so much more coming up. Mike Elgin, of course, here. It's great to do a podcast with you, sir.

(01:18:03):
It's, it's been a very long time, and I'm just happy to likewise get the chance to talk with you. And then always Jeff Jarvis, I just always feel so, so happy when I get to do this show with you. Same here. So it's really great to be here with you both. But let's take a moment and thank the sponsor of this episode of this week. Google brought to you by a c i Learning. We've got ACI learning all over the studio. We love ACI Learning Love, having them on board. Thanks to ACI Learning. The days of boring, archaic training methods are finally over. Lack of meaningful impact shows up as low engagement that translates to suboptimal performance. And you and your team deserve to be entertained while you train and be empowered to keep your organization safe and secure. It's simple. If your IT training isn't raising your team to the level that you aspire to be, well, you need to check out ACI Learning.

(01:18:55):
While the training industry's completion rate is barely 30%, ACI learning blows its competitors out of the water with an over 80% completion rate, 80% eight zero. This is the format that IT professionals want and love in today's IT talent shortage. Whether you operate as your own department or you're part of a larger team, your skills must be at least up to date, right at the bare minimum. 94% of CIOs and and CISOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is increasingly critical to their roles. Well, ACI Learning helps you retain your team and trusts them to thrive while investing in this security of your business. ACI Learning helps keep your skills up to date. With more than 7,000 hours of content available, new episodes added every single day in your enterprise, IT needs cohesive cutting edge training to keep your team compliant and ahead of the pack.

(01:19:52):
So you can choose an existing course lead ACI learning combined modules for a tailored solution, or you can let them custom design a course to address your specific needs. How about that? ACI Learning's Private Bootcamp will train your team alongside the most passionate and best subject matter experts certified in the latest version of each certification. So, full access to advanced reporting is just one example via ACI Learnings Pro Portal. You can actually track and manage your team's results. You can manage seats of course assign and unassigned team members for customized courses that are relevant to their specific position access, monthly progress and usage reports. There's these visual reports that provide immediate insight into your team's viewing patterns and progress over any period. In other words, you're gonna know exactly how your team is doing when it comes to learning. Through ACI learning, ACI learning trains thousands of aspiring tech and cyber professionals annually, including providing scholarships to individuals from diverse backgrounds and those transitioning out of military service into civilian careers.

(01:20:58):
You can join the Always on Tech training solution in a rapidly changing world of technology. ACI Learning is in the studio every single day to record and share relevant content that impacts your business. So you can be bold and you can train smart. Learn more about ACI learning's, premium training options across Audit IT and cybersecurity readiness. All you gotta do is go to go dot aci learning.com/twit for teams of two to thousand. That's 1002 to 1000 volume discounts. Start at five seats, fill out the form when you go to go dot aci learning.com/twit, and you'll get more information on our free two week training trial for your team. That's ACI learning. We appreciate their support of this week in Google. It's great to have their support at the TWIT Network as well. Yeah, it's, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing right now without you guys, so thank you for your support. Oh, all right. What other Googley stuff? Do we have to put the Google back in this week? In Google here? Well,

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:05):
We could be, we could be nice to Google for a minute.

Jason Howell (01:22:07):
Okay, let's do that. I think it, I think, yeah, we, we need to change, change a little bit. Let's be nice. For sure. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:12):
Even though we're gonna talk about Google getting sued, but Gannet sued Google this week, and editor and publisher called me for response. And the more I thought about, the more I thought ridiculous. So Cadet is, is charging along with various ags along with other companies that Google is in antitrust and advertising. And there are legitimate issues to look at. We talked about this in the show last week, that what Google controls both the buy and sell side of advertising, then that has an impact. But as I thought about it, Gannett, I don't, I don't know where you guys have near you. I have a, I have a Gannett paper right near me. It's crap. It has been for years. GT is a monopolist. Gannett bought up nine news brands in New Jersey. Basically everything they get their hands upon except advance my old employer and cut the newsrooms and cut 'em to crap and act like a monopoly.

(01:23:05):
And they're accusing Google to be a monopoly. To blame Google for their problems is disingenuous as hell. Cuz Gannett just didn't advance. They've been the, one of the least innovative companies out there, and least quality companies out there. And so, part of the problem with attacking Google, which I kind of get, I I I don't, we weren't, we weren't attacking Google before. We were disappointed in Google. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But the problem is that as long as Google is one of the proprietors of the internet and people attack them, then that affects our internet. And it just pisses me off. So full disclosure is that Google has contributed into activities at the school. I don't get anything personally from Google, but Geez, gt really? You crap.

Mike Elgan (01:23:48):
Yeah. That was it. And there are other publishers who are kind of cheerleading on the side. Everybody wants something from someone. But yeah, it's, I I don't think, you know, you, you could imagine remedies. I mean, they're not after a remedy. I don't believe the amount of the lawsuit has been published. But, but you know, imagine if, let's say Google only had 50% share or 30% share, the status of Gannett would be exactly the same. They, yeah. Google disappeared tomorrow. Right. They'd be, they'd

Jeff Jarvis (01:24:23):
Be just screwed up meanwhile. Exactly.

(01:24:26):
You also have other, other protectionist legislation. So next week a bill called the C J P A in California, the California Journalism Protection Act, which is like the J C P A, which is the federal version, which these, the, these, these, as you say, Mike, these other big companies and these lobbyists keep trying to push through, is trying to blackmail Google and Facebook to pay for the privilege of linking to their news and acting as if news is so valuable to them. When the truth is Facebook, which doesn't walk away from news, Google might walk away from news in Canada. It's the old protectionist bad media industry, and I've kind of had it with them. Yeah. I signed a letter last week to Congress about the J C P A joining in a protest about it. Cuz I've just, I've just had it with my old industry. I've just just had it.

Mike Elgan (01:25:13):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's trying to get the automobile industry to prop up the buggy whip industry when that industry is kind of going away owe us changing where those, where the companies that make buggy whips are not adapting to a new world and which people drive cars. And so the fact is, the only difference is, of course, that people find good publishing companies through Google search. That's a, you know, the main Yeah. Role that they have is that they, they're driving tr people can go in and just search for things and it's like, oh, here's a link to this article. And you're like, wow. You know, I keep linking to the Washington Post or the Atlantic Monthly. I think I should subscribe. You know, because I'm always like linking to these places and so on. We know these, and we've seen this play out in other countries in Spain and elsewhere where there have been, there have been these these sort of misguided attempts to make Google Pay to drive traffic to media sites. And it just, it just seems kind of obviously bogus that is not going to help media organizations evolve to, to, to, to meet the challenges that that they face right now. And it's, it's just going to, it's, you know, they're just looking for money and I'm sure they'll get cheerleading from their, their, their shareholders, but it's just not anything that I, I that makes sense to me at all.

Jason Howell (01:26:48):
And I suppose, now, did

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:49):
You watch these silly pixel videos? Or can we play video or we're gonna get in trouble?

Jason Howell (01:26:56):
Yeah, I, you know, I was watching, I did watch one of them, and it's a little cringy, but I don't know. Do you think we, we probably could. I never know these days. I just never know if we can play even in advertising.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:10):
So basically it's just, we can, we can probably act it out. So it's a Google phone, it's a pixel phone and an iPhone talking to each other. And of course, the pixel phone is going to end up better off, there's like six of them, and they're dorky. So in one, the iPhone runs outta battery and in another one the iPhone runs outta battery

Jason Howell (01:27:29):
And Google

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:30):
Yeah. Phone lays down on top of it to charge the iPhone because it's one of its neat features. And the iPhone says, what are you doing on top of me? And he says, well, I'm, I'm bringing you back to life. Oh, okay. Thanks, <laugh>. They're very weird. I

Jason Howell (01:27:42):
Mean, they're, they're weird. They're, they're silly. The the one that I saw was the one where the iPhone runs out of battery and you know, they're, they're each talking in their, in their AI voice. So, you know the iPhone has a Siri, like, I don't think it's actually Siri, a Siri voice talking, but it's, you know, very stilted and robotic and the assistant voice and everything. And it's kinda like they're puppets, right? They're kinda like shaking and talking to each other and, and everything. So it, you know, it's, it is cute on one hand, but I don't know. There was something about it that was like, all right, all right, cool. That was it. Actually, the one that I saw was a little bit longer than it really needed to be. It was like, seriously?

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:21):
Yes, that's

Jason Howell (01:28:22):
For true. Cut this down to like a 32nd gag, and maybe you've got something, but this thing's like a minute and a half. No, no one's gonna watch, watch this thing. So, I don't know. Hey, I, I did, I did find it interesting though that that Google is obviously firmly in the point fingers at Apple in public, you know, ways. Yes. to prove it's, you know, it's good and Apple is not, and whether you agree with that or not, like we're seeing that more and more from Google. It seems to be kind of their playbook. We saw it a lot with the rcs thing that continues to go on where Google keeps calling out Apple in different different public places to say, Hey, apple. Almost like they're waiting for the throngs of, of people behind them. You know, it's like, Hey, everybody, let's pile on Apple, right? <Laugh> everybody, come on <laugh>. Everybody, like, exactly. Like, help me here. You know, I just don't know that it's helping. I don't know that Apple will be swayed by the by the public

Mike Elgan (01:29:21):
Pressure. It's, it's like, when Will Ferrell decided to go streaking and back to school, and he thought he'd get everybody streaking down the street, but he was just,

Jason Howell (01:29:28):
It was just him

Mike Elgan (01:29:28):
By himself.

Jason Howell (01:29:29):
That's exactly it.

Mike Elgan (01:29:31):
You know, the, the, that that whole campaign of, of Google of pointing fingers at Apple about, about the second class status of non-Apple, you know, trying to get them to, to support rcs in messages, right? Apple messages was so misguided. Apple has been for the last 10, 15 years in the perfect place to have the messaging platform. They could have the perfect cross-platform messaging platform. They could put it on into Android, they could have put it but no, instead they totally fled that ball again and again with having all these different platforms. And then they would kill this one. But they still have a different version with the same name. And I don't know what, how these work together. And then they have rcs, but these phones have an RCS based messaging platform, but these don't, and nobody knew what was going on.

(01:30:23):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, you know, I said it earlier in the show. Imagine if 10 years ago Google said, we're gonna have one messaging platform. It supports rcs, it supports Apple users. There's an, there's an really great Apple app that connects directly if you are, if, if you're an Apple user and you are tired of, of seeing people who are not Apple users show up in some sort of second class place then you use our app instead of messages. They could have totally owned that market and they screwed up. It was only their failure that led to the situation. They were complaining to Apple about, about rcs. And so that, that was, that, that's a perfect example of, you know, it reminds me of the Reddit thing where you have the c e of Reddit blaming the mods when in fact he's failing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to make the company profitable, to be innovative to, to, to monetize artificial intelligence data collection. So, you know, we, I I think the theme here so far is that and the thing that Reddit and Google have in common is where's the leadership? Where's the vision?

Jason Howell (01:31:29):
Yeah.

Mike Elgan (01:31:30):
Yeah. You just don't have it.

Jason Howell (01:31:32):
Yeah. Cause I don't know that the finger pointing is necessarily gonna work <laugh>.

Mike Elgan (01:31:37):
No, it's not. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:31:39):
Yeah. I mean, I guess the Mac versus PC thing was, was iconic for Yeah. For Apple back in the day. So it's not like that hasn't worked before, but I just, I I don't know. I don't know. It I would love, I would love though, I was reminded of this even just a couple of days ago. My my daughter was at a, a swim camp and one of our, her friend's mom was there to pick both of them up and, you know, saw my, saw my daughter swim swim race at the end of this four day long, really, you know, intensive swim camp. And she recorded it with her iPhone, which I realized when she sent me the video via text message. And the video that I got was like a, the size of a, a stamp. And when I blew it up, like you, you could vaguely tell that there was a swimming pool in the image, but that was about the level of detail that you got. I'm just like, I can't just, I can't believe we're still here. Where, you know, how many years later I'm getting a video from an iPhone and it looks like it looks less than garbage. It doesn't even look potato. Like I could hardly, you know, it was blue. It was like, it was like five large blue pixels was the, was the entire content of the video. And Jason,

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:55):
Can I ask, ask you a too soon question?

Jason Howell (01:32:58):
Yeah, you can ask me anything.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:02):
Are you gonna stick with Android phones,

Jason Howell (01:33:04):
<Laugh>? So I haven't, I haven't even mentioned on this show yet that all about Android is done. Last night's episode was the last episode of the show. Am I gonna stick with Android? Yeah, I'm gonna stick with Android. I have no reason to, to bounce off of Android. Do like, am I making an end, you know, to the end of life allegiance to Google on Android phones? No. Like, I'm, I'm open to whatever I need to use at, at whatever point. But I'm not, I'm not in a position right now where I'm like, okay, great. Android shows, d lets, so you're not,

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:35):
You're not saying, oh, I'm free at last to use an iPhone.

Jason Howell (01:33:38):
No, I actually really love my Android, Android iPhone. I knew I love, and I have continued to love my Android phones, and sure, there are things that, you know, that annoy me about them from time to time. But there would be things that annoy me about iOS from time to time, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And not to mention, like, my family mostly is on Android. I guess. My, my older daughter she got her phone, you know, she's 13 now. She, we gave her the ability to have a phone, and I basically said, I've got a drawer full of phones, babe, you can just pick one <laugh> and it's yours, <laugh>. And she's like, well, I want an iPhone. I was like, okay, well I've got a free phone here. It's yours. If you want it, if you want an iPhone, you gotta buy it. And she bought it. She saved up her money. She bought one, and she hasn't, she's very happy. So I can't say we're an entirely Android household. She has an iPhone, but I give her full that props, that was like a

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:27):
Shiv to the heart. Ooh, my own daughter,

Jason Howell (01:34:31):
I don't care. I don't take any of this personally. You know what I mean? Like, it's a phone. No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:36):
My daughter got a Windows

Jason Howell (01:34:37):
Machine. The thing on my phone is she, you know, as anyone on iPhone does, it's just, they don't talk very well to each other. And that's what really pisses me off.

Mike Elgan (01:34:45):
When, when you're, when you're, when when she's, when she's texting with her friends and family, you're green, not blue on the iPhone. Right. In, in, in messages. The, the, the, the, the, the, the people are blue and the, and everybody else is green. So you're one of the second class citizens in her, in her, in her messages.

Jason Howell (01:35:04):
Well, yes. So that's entertaining. But I will say, Mike, we actually had a big conversation about this when she was wanting an iPhone. Like we had that car. I remember having the conversation with her, we were driving somewhere and you know, I mentioned like, are you familiar with the green bubble red bubble thing? Or sorry, green bubble, blue bubble thing. And she's like yeah, I think I've heard a little bit about it. We, you know, we had a talk about like, you know, she's, she's also very emotionally mature and very, very dialed into just being a kind person. She's a very kind person. And so we talked through these things and, and really kind of, I tried to imprint on her that like, you know, it's silly to see someone's bubble come through as green and to think that they are anything less than you. And she's like, oh God, why are you even telling me this? I know this. Like, it's totally ridiculous. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, you know, maybe she was telling me what I wanted to hear, but I truly believe that, you know, that if she was gonna go down that road, hopefully I've given her the tools to not suddenly, you know, be that kind of user. Because I think that I

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:07):
Also, I like, I like that other fathers and daughters in the car have a talk about boys. You have a talk with your daughter about Android phones and iPhones. It's kind of

Jason Howell (01:36:17):
Perfect.

Mike Elgan (01:36:17):
Yeah. Not, not the, not the birds above the be, but the Blues and the Greens

Jason Howell (01:36:21):
<Laugh> Yes. <Laugh>, all of the above. It all gets in there somehow. It's part of having a kid, I suppose, you know? But yeah. So that's that. All right, well moving on from the Blues and the Greens. I love that. Dang. We have a, a couple of really great title ideas now. What else do we wanna talk about here? Chromebook X is this, is this notable? This is, so this

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:48):
Is just that there, evidently, this is a report going out that they're going to mark high level Chromebooks officially. So Chromebooks that can do the gaming Chromebooks that can do Oh, other things. And so it's gonna be, Brad, I wish it were a new Chromebook that were producing. No such luck.

Jason Howell (01:37:07):
Yeah, I know, right? But

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:08):
They're just gonna separate out the quality here.

Jason Howell (01:37:11):
Who knows? Maybe Google will have its own Chromebook X, the, the Pixel X it's own

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:17):
Chromebook. That's cruel. That's cruel.

Mike Elgan (01:37:19):
Give something cruel, give them something to kill in a couple years. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:37:22):
Yes, exactly.

Mike Elgan (01:37:23):
Chromebooks, Chromebook X will, it's probably a good thing. They're gonna have a bunch of specs to, to to, to aspire to for manufacturers. So a certain amount of ram, certain quality of camera it's gonna be optimized. You know, they, they, they're kind of guaranteeing that it'll be good for video calls, zoom calls, et cetera. And minimum processor configurations. So it, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a new standard that hardware manufacturers have to get to if they wanna charge the higher price to the Chromebook deck. I think it's, in general, it's a, it's a good idea. Right now, it's more nebulous, you know, there are high end Chromebooks, low end Chromebooks, and now there's an actual material tier that that consumers can, can rely on to provide a certain degree of quality and that manufacturers can aspire to, to, to sell in the higher echelon. So I think it's probably a good thing.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:24):
My Chromebook, my pixel book is, is one by one. It's fallen apart. The microphone doesn't work anymore. The touch screen doesn't just suddenly stop working. So I'm gonna have to make the decision right now. It's that expensive hp, but I, you know, it's gonna be my luck that I'll go ahead and buy it, and then one month later, there'll be some amazing machine from Book X and I won't be able to get

Jason Howell (01:38:43):
It. That's how the world works. Right? So this is the, the original Pixel book 2017. Right? So you've got six years outta that. Do you feel like, I mean, if it's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:52):
It's the Pixelbook Go Gone. Oh,

Jason Howell (01:38:54):
The Pixelbook gone. So, so a little bit later.

Jeff Jarvis (01:38:57):
Little later. Yeah, no, no. Couple years later. Right? I don't, things don't last that long with me. I mean, I'm not cruel.

Jason Howell (01:39:01):
2019

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:02):
Keyboards like Stacy. Yeah. But

Jason Howell (01:39:04):
Dang. So it's, it's disintegrating after four, not even four

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:08):
Years. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:39:10):
That's disappointing.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:12):
That is disappointing. Yeah. So that's

Jason Howell (01:39:14):
Not long enough for God. That's not even long enough for a phone, let alone a, a laptop.

Jeff Jarvis (01:39:20):
No. So maybe just as well, I leave Google Hardware, but

Jason Howell (01:39:24):
I mean, the, the original Pixel book, I have to say, that was a, it was a fantastic machine. I always loved, loved working on that, that computer. And, and I think my experience with that opened me up to the understanding that a higher end Chromebook deserves to exist, because that was a really wonderful, long lasting performant Chromebook. Yes, yes. It's, it's a browser computer, but still, like, it felt premium and it was enjoyable to use for that reason. And sure, it's not for everybody, but if you wanna buy a high, you know, a high a high spect probably more expensive Chromebook x computer, you should be able to dang it. And so, and

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:08):
Suffer the abuse of people who say you're spending that much for a Chromebook

Jason Howell (01:40:11):
On a browser. I've got

Jeff Jarvis (01:40:13):
A browser on my phone.

Mike Elgan (01:40:15):
I, I gotta say that, I don't know if you guys have talked about the company's Siteful and it's space top device on this show or, or, or other shows on the TWIT network, siteful Face top, but this is a, this is a direction I'd love to see Google go in with Chromebook. So Siteful is an Israeli startup that used to be called multier. And they recently released, you know, I don't know, a thousand units. It's kind of like a beta program type thing of a device called a Space Top, what they call an AR laptop. So basically what this thing is, it's a device about the size of a laptop, but instead of a screen, it has augmented reality glasses that I believe are tethered. And so it's a, it's unlike Apple's AR product. This doesn't do all the things, it just gives you a virtual screen and a big one, like a hundred inch screen floating in space in front of you.

(01:41:14):
Okay. And then you run the apps. It has a kind of a, a, a, a customized operating system, but the operating system works like a Chromebook. So it's all, they're all cloud apps, right? It's not, it's not, it doesn't run Windows or, or any sort of desktop operating system. It has, it's, it's its own operating system runs cloud app, so you can run Gmail, all those kinds of things. I would love to see Google get into this, cuz it's a really great idea. Now, the, the way that they've done this space top is, is very clever. It actually has a port for plugging in a physical display, but it doesn't come with a physical display, just the glasses. So you can use it as a regular device in your home office or in your workplace. And then you can pick it up and you can go to Starbucks and you can use the goggles and you have a hundred inch screen in this tiny cable device.

(01:42:09):
What's, what's the input device? Is is, is there a keyboard on it's device, keyboard, a keyboard, keyboard, mouse, all that stuff? Yeah, so it's, it's the bottom, the bottom half is like a regular laptop. It has ports like a regular laptop for, for peripheral devices. It uses Bluetooth like a regular laptop. It connects the wifi, like a regular laptop. The, the difference is that the default mode is you put on ar goggles and you have this giant screen in front of you. And so this would be a great direction for Google. Google should have launched this product and they launched this before apple launched the Vision Pro. And of course, the Vision Pro has the feature of showing you your, your Mac os applications floating in space. But it also does all these other things as well that are more high end, more 3D kind of you know, magic leap type stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I love the idea of a cloud-based device like a Chromebook that has it is like a virtual laptop with a virtual screen. It's just very efficient. I think in terms of processor power, in terms of the low cost you could have in terms of the educational capabilities of having this virtual screen. We're entering into an era of augmented reality, and I would love to see Chromebook go in that direction. Wouldn't that be amazing? Hmm.

Jason Howell (01:43:33):
I wonder how high, like, I think as technology like this is dependent on the screens that you're looking at, being high res enough that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> thing that, that text that you're probably looking a lot at is Yes. Isn't going to fall apart. Do, do you happen to know, like the, the demos seem to make it seem like, like it's not a big deal, but you know that, that it's sufficient as far as that's concerned, but I wonder how that actually works, you know? Well,

Mike Elgan (01:44:01):
None of the, none of the AR units are as high def as the Vision Pro that Apple announced, but they're also not $3,500. Right. And and so, so these, they're selling these at two for $2,000 each. Yeah. And they're probably low much, you know, much lower re than the Vision Pro, but people who have tried it in person say that it's good enough and you can read text on it, and you can do all those kinds of things. And that, you know, the, the, the, the reviews of the hands-on reviews have been fairly positive. The biggest problem with the, with, with this is this kind of a low power device. It doesn't ha, you know, it, it is battery operated, but the battery life is very low. Like, I don't know, just a few of hours that kind of thing. But I, I really believe in this, this idea of, of, of having a virtual screen within an optional physical screen. And I, I think it's, it's ideal for Google, but again, they're often the weeds on this stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and this was done by this tiny Israeli startup as the, as the first mover. And it should have been Google, I think.

Jason Howell (01:45:06):
Hmm. Yeah. If only, if only they had you know, whatever capitalized on their early, early to market with a Google Glass and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> taken that somewhere. I mean, they were obviously too early. But, but they were there first, I would say they were, they were the major player that was there first. So that definitely accounts for something. And now we're starting to kind of see the fruit, the fruits of that happen now. I think it's still kind of though, you know, at least in my mind, it still needs to prove itself. Like even once the Apple Vision Pro comes out. Amen. You know, I still am not entirely convinced that that's how I want to compute all the time. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know that I want to be an, an advisor, but maybe that's just because I haven't done it. Like maybe it would be great. Yeah. Certainly find out $2,000 for that early access. That's interesting.

Mike Elgan (01:46:04):
Yeah. It, it very well could be great. But the, the, the, the big difference is that, you know, the problem with Google Glass to a certain extent was that it wasn't augment, it was augmented reality, but it wasn't. Yeah. it, it was a head heads up display. If you move your head, the screen moves. Right. Right. Whereas with the, with, with both Apple's product and the Siteful product, I've been talking about the screen stay put, and you move your head, you look at different parts of the screen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's the kind of ar for general computing that is, makes a lot of sense. And the beauty of this concept is that, you know HoloLens and Microsoft HoloLens and magic Leap spent so much time figuring out how to anchor virtual objects in 3d real, real space. Right. You, they, they demonstrated characters stand not only standing on the table, but hiding behind the table. Right? Right. You have to map a 3D environment of Apple's Vision Pro Maps, the 3D environment. This product dispenses with all that, the need for all that technology. And it has its anchoring point as exclusively being the laptop itself. So they have built in hardware that enable, enables

Jason Howell (01:47:14):
Neat. The

Mike Elgan (01:47:15):
That's neat. I like that. Enable the screen to, to anchor there. And they don't have to map your 3D space. There's no mapping it, it's just something that floats in space over the, the laptop. You can move it forward back and stuff like that. But it's all, it's all based on where the laptop physically is because they have some technology that, that, that tells the virtual space to, to, to sort of center itself over the laptop. Hmm. And so, you know, I, I love the efficiency of that. It's a, it's a, it's a new idea and it's not gonna go anywhere unfortunately, because it's a tiny little Israeli company. But I think you know, I think Google should buy them immediately if they're not with a year at least a, you know, within a year of launching a product like that of their own, based on the Chromebook operating system. So I, I, I just, I would love to see the Vision Pro have a lower cost browser based competitor.

Jason Howell (01:48:02):
Who knows. Jeff, your next Pixel book could be a pixel blast. No, no. I've been there. Uhuh Uhuh fooled me once. <Laugh> never, never. No, I don't say never. Well, okay, so I mean, only, only because we're talking sort of ar vr, but there's the news that Meta lowered the age requirement for its Quest VR headsets. So now kids age 10 to 12 will be able to use this use the device if, because they were already, they were just using it through an account that their parents set up. I can speak from experience as

Mike Elgan (01:48:42):
A parent. Jason, how do you feel about that? Do you feel that's too young?

Jason Howell (01:48:47):
I mean, if, if I said yes, then I'd be a total hypocrite because my youngest daughter is 10, and she loves playing in vr. I don't let her, you know, she doesn't get a ton of time in vr, but Yeah, absolutely. And she started when she was nine. I mean, it's a screen. It's another screen. It's a screen. Yeah. Totally. You know, but it's, but it's been really interesting to watch her interaction with VR and how naturally, I guess, VR, in a sense, is supposed to come, you know, if they're doing it right. It comes naturally regardless. But, you know, there's a, what is it? Vacation Simulator and Job Simulator. And one of the joys of my life has been watching her in the living room in like job simulator in the in the convenience store. And because she's like, she's there, you know, and so you're just, we're wa I'm watching her in the middle of my living room, and to her, she's like, oh, I'm just gonna go, oh, oh, hot dog's done.

(01:49:45):
Pull that. Oh, okay. Yes. Second, sir. You know, it's like, it's like she's playing with, so, I don't know. I can't explain it. It's just, it's so fun to watch her go into vr. So, do I think that it's, it's too low? No, I don't, I mean, at the end of the day, how do the parents feel? You know, the parent, the age requirement does stipulate that that the kids will need permission from their parents to use the headset. I'm, I'm not entirely sure how that's done. Does that tie into my meta account? And then I grant access probably. So something along those lines. But that, that makes sense to me. Unless there's some sort of like health reason, you know, the reason that a kid that's 11 or 10 years old should not use it because their eyes are developing. And I, I feel like I've heard mixed reports as far as that's concerned. I don't really know exactly what the, what the actual answer is there.

Mike Elgan (01:50:39):
And also it's a, it's a benefit that the platform that Meta has, has developed is not very compelling. It to, which I mean, is not particularly addictive yet. If they were really successful, they would have worlds that you just have to live in all the time. In which case, very, very unhealthy for 10 year olds. Yeah. To to be hours and hours and hours inside a world. And, and in fact, you know, social networks itself, Facebook itself, I believe the, the age limit is still 13. Yep. I'm a little creeped out by the idea of, you know, here's a company that's desperate for users. And so, like, I know we'll go after younger kids, and I hope that's not a trend where all these things are for teenagers and, and, and older. They're like, well, let's go below the teenage year. Cause then we'll just add a million people to the roster. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:51:25):
Well, yeah. I don't, I don't know their, their reason for doing it. What I do know is that I'm not alone. I have friends who also have kids who are definitely in this age bracket, and they're using vr, so the kids are already using vr. So then it's like, okay, so then is meta, you know, I don't know what their intention is necessarily. I would agree with you if that's their intention, the hook 'em early, and then, you know, they're, they're addicted for life sort of thing. Like, I don't like that. That gives me an icky feeling. But again,

Mike Elgan (01:51:54):
So Ronald McDonald's model, <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:51:57):
You know, it, my kid was already doing vr, so if there's maybe a more official way, but I mean, at the same time as I say this, and I think about it, like it might just be easier for me to still do what I'm doing because like, I don't care if she logs in under my account. She's not, she's not managing an account that has any sort of longevity of her data or anything. She's just literally putting on the headset and going, I wanna play that game. And she plays it for half an hour, and then she's done. And that's what, that seems to me way easier than creating an account, worrying about the, the data transfer and what are, you know, what are they logging and what are they not logging and everything. Yep. Yep. Just plays me, you know,

Mike Elgan (01:52:33):
And it's also, she's, she's working in the quickie march. Yeah. She's not, she's not play acting being like a Barbie doll in, in some kind of glamor world or superficial, like, you know, Hollywood, like, you know, culture, whatever. So that's that, that, you know, the content is everything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> there, I think. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:52:51):
Yeah. Well, there is the what is the game rec room that's like Roblox, but in vr. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't know if either of you has had a chance to play that, but that's, that's a super interesting kind of social thing. That's where I think being too young, you know, in air quotes, becomes kind of a sticky situation. Because this is like a full on social network in the sense that, you know, I am standing in a room filled with 10 to 15 other kids who are on their headsets. And some of them, you know, are saying stuff they probably should not be saying. And you, they're like, what are the controls around that? And of course, you can go into rec room and you can set these controls that I, as a parent can, can set it and say, no mic access. No. You know, you're not gonna hear anyone else. You're just gonna be able to gesture to them and everything. But there is a whole other dynamic there of like, yeah, yeah. This, this perception of personal safety and protecting them from Yes. From those things that can be challenging. This is

Mike Elgan (01:53:51):
The, this is the issue with any avatar based thing. Yeah. Which, of course, any VR or AR social thing, whether it's a conference call or, or a virtual world or you know, a, a virtual version of second Life or whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And that's why, you know, I'd, I'd been predicting at Computer World since 2017 based on patents. It wasn't that hard to predict that Apple's goggles would have biometric security either face scans or Irish scans. They went with Irish Irish scans. But it's very, very important to know who, like, you know, to, to, to buy, to biometrically, identify the person. Because what you don't want is a hangout place for 10, 11, 12, 13 year olds where one of the teenagers is a, you know,

Jason Howell (01:54:42):
Actually

Mike Elgan (01:54:42):
Not 45 year old man.

Jason Howell (01:54:43):
Yeah. Actually not 10, 11, 12, 13. Yeah, totally. Totally.

Mike Elgan (01:54:47):
So we, we have to, when when we're, we have to figure out, and Apple is, is gonna control that cuz they're a very controlling company. But I worry about a future when everyone is an avatar and you don't know who that is. And you know, you have these compelling and addictive worlds where people are not who they say they are. And I don't know, it's, it's, it, it's one of the things we're gonna have to solve

Jason Howell (01:55:09):
For sure. Yeah. And it's one thing to be playing a game and have to think about that. Like, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of there's a lot of kids that have a, have a PlayStation, have an Xbox, and are connected to other, other players and can talk to them and everything like that. So it's a similar, similar challenge there. It's an entirely different story though. When you are locked in a virtual environment and you're facing those things, it feels a lot more Yes. Immediate. It feels more personal. It's, it has, it has the potential to have an actual kind of impact on, on you. On a, on a, i, I believe a deeper level because it's like

Mike Elgan (01:55:48):
Experiential. I mean, anybody. Right. Even even console video games, you play Call of Duty and Paul Throt can, can tell us about this. Those really, your brain is certain that those are real places. Mm. But you, you remember being in a place and that place was a, was was a simulated world, and VR is way stronger than that. Mm-Hmm. So these are, these are psychologically, these, these are real places that have a big impact on you. So we are, we're gonna be really dependent on the, the content creators for, for augmented reality to, to provide us spaces that are, you know, healthy places for us, for our minds to be

Jason Howell (01:56:28):
Indeed controllable safe. Yep. All that. 100%. how about the EU making the user replaceable batteries mandatory in 2027, when I read this, I had to pull out my Motorola droid. Let's see if I can pop the back off of here, because if you remember back in the day, you know, swapping out your battery used to be pretty darn used

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:53):
To carry, carry three of them with me.

Jason Howell (01:56:54):
Yes, exactly. Did you have the droid, Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:57):
No, I didn't have that one. Oh, okay. I had different ones that had batteries out. No, by, by, by trio for God's

Jason Howell (01:57:03):
Sakes. Yeah. Well, I mean, so many phones. It used to be the case where you could swap out the battery and Yes, I had like two or three of these that you know, out in necessity. I'm not sure why would get a couple hours, you know,

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:15):
Why are they concentrating on this now? Number one, batteries last longer in a day, they last longer period. They're smaller and designed into smaller units in ways that make them smaller. It just seems like it's a five year old battle that they've suddenly woken up to.

Jason Howell (01:57:30):
Yeah, that is a good question. I have no idea why they're suddenly gluing into it now, other than it seems like the EU recognizes chum in the water when it comes to Yes. Big tech and and pushing through a heck of a lot of, of requirements and stuff. And this is just yet another one, which

Mike Elgan (01:57:50):
Now I can't, I can't speak to the specific reason for this, but I can speak to the general idea that the EU is almost as prone to lobbying and so on as US government. So whenever there's this big push against Google or big push against whom, whomever, usually the competitors of the target that are pushing the EU to go after that target. So in this case, you know, this would be a disaster for Apple especially. They would be less willing big time to to, to have replaceable batteries. And so could be Google behind this could be any number of of, of companies, but it's usually lobbying the, the, the EU is a, is a great place for, for kind of lobbying because they don't have a kind of computer science mindset when it comes to government action. They just think, well, it's the government's job in society to set all the rules.

(01:58:53):
That, and, and they, they diminish the role of norms. They diminish the role of private organizations. They diminish the, the, the role of consumer action and consumer choice. And they just say, well, cell phones should have batteries, so we're just gonna create a law around that. You know, that that's how they think. It's a, it's a, it's a political culture that is very extreme in Europe and doesn't really exist in, in a lot of places to the extent that it exists in Europe. It's unfortunate because the EU is such a huge market, and they have some, you know, they're deciding, oh, you have to have a U S B C cable and you have to have replaceable batteries. You have to have this. And they're designing products that that's true. Are evolving quickly. And they, they're taking choice outta the hands of consumers. Like, if I don't want a phone that doesn't have a replaceable battery, then I won't buy one. Right. That that's, you know, my sensibility as an American is that that's how it should work. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. And but you know, that's how they are. But they have so much power and so much weight, and they are so unaccountable to, to e European citizens that there we are. They just, they, they, they decide that they're gonna, they're gonna be designing consumer electronics products.

Jason Howell (02:00:11):
Man, imagine what, what that requirement would do for a company like Apple. I mean, that, that is a, that's not just a, a small change. That's not even a large change that is like, oh, it's huge. A change of epic proportions when it comes to Apple and its hardware. That would change everything. Yep. yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Is there anything in here I'll kind of leave it to, to the two of you to decide? There's so many stories in here. We're never gonna get to all of them. We obviously have the change log at some point here pretty soon, but is there anything in here that, that is like, that you're burning to talk about that I haven't brought up yet?

Mike Elgan (02:00:49):
Hmm.

Jason Howell (02:00:50):
<Laugh> doesn't have to be. I think you've

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:52):
Been doing a good job, boss.

Jason Howell (02:00:53):
Doesn't have to be. Is that,

Mike Elgan (02:00:55):
I like the way you subtly told your engineer there to queue up the, the Google change log music, but <laugh>.

Jason Howell (02:01:02):
So that was

Mike Elgan (02:01:02):
Good. I like that.

Jason Howell (02:01:04):
I didn't miss, miss that I read I'm ever, I'm always producing, even when I'm hosting, I'm producing it like, all right, so I got five minutes until the Google changed log. I got 20 minutes until, you know.

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:14):
Oh, I got one. Yep, I got one. Yep. Yeah. What's up? That's a quiz for your staff here. One member of the staff has already said that that he does not follow this rule line 81, do software engineers wash their underwear?

Jason Howell (02:01:28):
Oh

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:30):
The Guardian did a trend story, one of those ridiculous trend stories of people who are deciding not to wash their underwear for a week. And of who is the lead of the story? Of course, it's a software engineer.

Jason Howell (02:01:43):
What, wait a minute. Who doesn't wash their underpants for a week?

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:48):
Well, I, I know who, Mike, you haven't, you haven't weigh in here yet, Mike.

Mike Elgan (02:01:53):
Well, I, I, I can answer the question you asked. The people who don't wash their underwear are single people

Jason Howell (02:02:00):
Who, Nope. This,

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:00):
This guy, this guy has a wife and kids. He doesn't wash his

Mike Elgan (02:02:04):
Underwear. No. We'll see, we'll see how long that lasts. Oh my

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:08):
Goodness.

Mike Elgan (02:02:09):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. There's, see, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of, there are a lot of trends around these things. There was a, a, a trend a few years ago about people not using soap. Yeah. Yep, yep. And just rinsing off and all that kind of stuff. I don't know. There, there's all, there are also all these products out there from, from workout clothes and especially underwear that have like, I dunno, silver threads or something like that. They're designed to be worn over and over again. People, there's a whole movement of people, I'm sure there's a subreddit about it, of people who don't wash their, their, their, their blue jeans for weeks or month.

Jason Howell (02:02:43):
Yeah, that's right. I've heard that forever.

Mike Elgan (02:02:46):
Right.

Jason Howell (02:02:46):
You don't need to wash blue jeans. They get better with age when they're not washed. Yeah. Never. But

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:51):
I,

Mike Elgan (02:02:51):
But I don't think that a reputation for not washing underwear is gonna help the reputation of engineers. That's all I'm gonna say. No, I don't think

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:57):
So.

Jason Howell (02:02:57):
Yeah. I just wanted

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:58):
To, so this is a cha for Geeks, which guys, guys wash your, your undies. Okay.

Jason Howell (02:03:03):
Yes. Guys and gals, just we're telling whoever you are that you're not washing, whoever you,

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:07):
I got women are too sensible to do

Jason Howell (02:03:10):
This's. Let's, let's be real here. Yeah. it's, we're probably talking mostly to the guys. Well, that's not the story I thought you were gonna throw out there. <Laugh> <laugh>. What about, let's see here. The well, the, yes,

Mike Elgan (02:03:30):
There's a story about the flight of scientists from Twitter, which again, this is, this is the ongoing and certification of social that that we've talked about on this show on Twitter, et cetera. But yeah, there, they're, you know, there there's less. And a lot of, a lot of scientists are actually going to the Fedi verse. That's one contingent that is is really doing that. But it's really unfortunate it's gonna damage Twitter in some subtle, oh, it already is non-fatal way. Right. And

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:01):
Peter Hotez is a brilliant, brilliant scientist who designs vaccines for people who are poor. He doesn't go through Big Pharma and Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and their boys went after Hotez, and it's just shameless. Mm. It's a shameful. Yeah. It's awful. I stand with Peter Hotez. He's brilliant. He's one of the most helpful in the whole pandemic. When I started my pandemic Twitter list Hotez was just one of the most generous with, with advice, with information and education and, and Schmuck Musk and Schmuck Rogan. Gonna go below.

Mike Elgan (02:04:37):
Yeah. It's, it's really a shame. And one of the things that, and since we're talking about what a schmuck Elon Musk is, one of the things that's really disappointing, I, I follow a subreddit called enough Musk Spam, I think it's called. But it's basically just, it, it, it's finding these little things that Elon Musk does related to Twitter and it kind of exposes them, cuz we, you know, it's, it's all, much of what he does is kind of lost in the suit. But he, he does this thing that is just so awful where he'll comment on a blatantly racist, homophobic, transphobic or anti-Semitic tweet and he won't, he won't support it. So, so much as, as go, huh. Somebody will say, makes this outrageous claim right. About, you know, oh, Fauci is conspiring with with, I don't know, martians, the martians to, to, to like, you know, sort of set up these prison camps or, you know, whatever it is. And he just, he's like, huh. Like, as if he's saying, that's interesting. That's an interesting,

Jason Howell (02:05:46):
Or even using that emoji, you know, that emoji where they're like, yeah, you know, that that's the entirety of it. Not not coming out with a statement in support or against, or whatever, but just like, Hmm, we should all think about this at least.

Mike Elgan (02:06:00):
Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, and it's, I don't need to think about that. And then when people get apoplectic about it, he says, well, there's, you know, it's free speech. I can do what I want. It's like, I didn't say, you know, I didn't, I didn't support it. I didn't do this, do that. Why do it? He's changed Twitter's algorithms so that he gets all the attention that everything he tweets is is is the highest ranking highest you know, most algorithmically boosted stuff that's on Twitter. And then he uses it for that just to troll people with this non-committal highlighting of, of, of, of really oftentimes really ugly and objectionable tweets that other people that normally most of us Twitter users would never encounter. It just, it's just awful. And I think he he deserves a big a big thumbs down for, for that impulse that he has. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:06:59):
He knows what he's doing. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know how impulsive it is on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Big wag of the finger going to, and I'm not telling you which finger. Yes. But a big wag of a finger going to Elon. Should we do the change log? Might, well, we've got things that Google has changed

Mike Elgan (02:07:21):
The Google change

Speaker 5 (02:07:23):
Log.

Jason Howell (02:07:27):
Excellent. Thank you very much for the horns. So little grab bag of googly things that have happened in the last week or so. Ios Chrome. So if you have if you have iOS, you've got the Chrome app, they're gonna be integrating little Google Maps and calendar and translate, basically integrating some of some of Google's other services into Chrome on iOS. I suppose that is a big deal for those of you on iOS to, to have that. I, but I, you know what, I always see these stories and I, I put them in there just because I don't want it to always seem like the only Google that I put of the change log has to do with Android. So there you go. There you go. Ios, is this a big deal? Only you would know, cuz I don't use iOS, but there it is. What is Projects Tailwind? This is an AI product Project

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:21):
Tailwind is very interesting. We saw it. You saw it. You were there for God's sakes at and I'm so jealous that you were an io. It is a wonderful but basically the way to think about it is that you have a whole folder of stuff and you can say Tailwind makes sense of this.

Jason Howell (02:08:35):
Oh, that's

Jeff Jarvis (02:08:36):
Right. Right. And release been back. And here's what's interesting. Stephen Johnson, who is a really well known author who's written all kinds of amazing books I gotta remember what they are is actually working on Tailwind. He wrote about this, I put it in the rundown a couple weeks ago. We didn't, we didn't get to it. But he's written extra Life and enemy of All Mankind and Farsighted and Wonderland, and how we got to now and Future. Perfect. Stephen's a brilliant author and he's been working with him on this. So it's the, it's the perspective of an author saying, I have all this research, I have all these files, I have this stuff. And it's whether you're an author or a company or whoever, and being able to use Tailwind to help you organize it is a really interesting use of AI because it's not making crap up. It's trying to make sense of the crap you have.

Jason Howell (02:09:28):
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (02:09:28):
And so I can't wait to get in, in on it. And they haven't yet. Cause I, I was saying to Steven when he, when I saw this, I said, oh, hey Steven nice guy here, let me in. They haven't let anybody in yet. Cause I signed up for it immediately as soon as we saw io. But I'm really excited about Tail One.

Mike Elgan (02:09:45):
Well, this is gonna be a real boon for people on Twig hosts and guests on Twig, where you can have a rundown. And sometimes some of the stories on the rundown are very simple, straightforward. Some of them are incredibly complex. And this would be an opportunity to put in five or six articles into a folder from the rundown and just basically have tailwind, you know, gimme a summary on this and, and what's the consensus on this and who are the players or who would you, that sort of thing. You know, it, it's very nice on a podcast to be able to call up information f you know, and, you know, chati BT is Worth was because for, for this sort of thing, because it's it's most recent content is from what, 20 20, 20 21, something like that. Whereas some project Tailwind can be some, you know, news that broke an hour ago. You can drop a new into a folder and get cheche bt like answers from it or get some sort of high level clarity about it, which is great when you're running your mouth on a podcast. Mm-Hmm. So this is, this is gonna be a great feature of that.

Jason Howell (02:10:49):
See, these are, these are the things like that right there. I'm, I'm dropping a note cuz I'll talk about it in a little bit. But I've got, I've got ideas for a new show post all about Android and it has to do with ai and these are things that tie right into it in my mind. So, exactly. I'm gonna put a bookmark on that, talk about that in a little bit. But what this reminded me of, you mentioned Google io, I realized I haven't been on this show since I was at Google io. Right. And thought that you might appreciate at least while I was there, I got to check out the project star Starlight Starline Starlight, what is it? The, with the booth where you sit down and you Oh, the booth. Yeah, yeah. Sitting in front of someone on the other side.

(02:11:30):
Mondo Zoom and Yes, exactly the three dimensional kind of in the box zoom conference thing. And it was awesome. I have to say it was one of the highlights of my time there. Cause I was really curious about it when they announced it, I think the year or two before. You know, it just kind of like, it checked the boxes for me. I was like, oh wow. You know, virtual, but, but in person. Like, it feels like you're there. So it made a difference. Oh yeah, it was super cool. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but I mean there, there was a part like, well I think what was weird for me was that there is no camera that is facing you directly. Right. The cameras are all around and they're kind of stitching together this 3d image of you for the person on the other side.

(02:12:15):
But when you're sitting there, I mean, you're making full eye contact with the person on the other side of the screen and they're the right size. There's dimensionality to them. The way that the booth was set up had this kind of like the bottom of the TV screen, cuz obviously it is a tv. Instead of it looking like a tv, they put in your peripheral view, this like curved I don't know, this curved platform that blocked the bottom of the tv, but it was curved because it helped to kind of tie in with the three dimensional view of the, the person that you're looking at. Almost like they were like right on the other side of that little, that little platform thing. And just the whole experience was just really compelling and really convincing to my eyes. He, he, at one point, he held out an apple to me, and like, I really felt like I could grab that apple. I was like, whoa. You know? And then we did a fist bump and I didn't feel the fist, but I felt like I should, you know, it was just, it was really cool. So, all right. Jason, one of the amazing, speaking of grabbing things, did I gotta,

Mike Elgan (02:13:11):
I gotta ask, did you get anything

Jason Howell (02:13:12):
Free? They had like a bag for for press that had like a couple of shirts, which was kind of interesting. Like, one of the shirts was xl. It was a long sleeve white shirt. Okay, great. And then there was a sweatshirt that was like a, I think it was like a double or a triple XL <laugh>. It was just, it was almost just like they grabbed shirts off the shelf. They're like, I don't know, that one and that one go like, neither of them sydnee, here's your

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:38):
Google. Oo <laugh>.

Jason Howell (02:13:40):
Yeah, exactly. But yeah, just, well that, that and a water bottle or something that

Mike Elgan (02:13:44):
Sure has changed. Back, back in the day, they'd give you a laptop and a watch and, and like you know, Google Cardboard and, you know a TV device like all at once.

Jason Howell (02:13:54):
Yes. I know.

Mike Elgan (02:13:55):
It was amazing. Now you have a t-shirt

Jason Howell (02:13:57):
Times have changed <laugh>. Yeah, they have. Anyways, so that's that.

Mike Elgan (02:14:04):
But the, the, the, the killer thing about starline, by the way Yeah. Is that it's, it's something akin to apple's vision pro concept. When you're doing sort of 3D FaceTime where they map the other person's face is mapped, that becomes an avatar. But this is without glasses. And in both cases, very crucial. You make eye contact with the person you're talking to. Yeah. So this is one of the problems with Zoom right now, in addition to the fact that you're looking at a wall of people, if you have 12 people on the call, there's 12 people looking at you. Yeah. And then when you are talking to people, you're looking down or you're looking somewhere else besides in eye contact. Very important psychologically for people. So these, these virtualizing avatar based technologies that enable you to look somebody in the virtual eyes is going to be much more comfortable. Mm-Hmm. And this whole zoom fatigue thing is gonna someday be a thing of the past. Mm-Hmm.

Jason Howell (02:15:01):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. It really did help. It was almost uncom, like, it was comfortable and familiar. Like, I don't have problems looking people directly in the eye when I talk to them in person. I know some people, it makes 'em feel uncomfortable to do that for extended period of time. I don't really have that problem. But when I was in there, I noticed I wanted to look away at times. And I think part of the reason was Yeah. Yep. Because it was a screen and it wasn't a true, like, in-person representation. It just felt so different from what I'm used to when I look at a screen that suddenly my,

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:35):
I'm think about the guy who was hired to do this job mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to talk to all these strangers and engage them and, and show them apples and things. That's just, that's a, that's a, that's somebody who does not have social anxiety.

Jason Howell (02:15:47):
<Laugh>. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

(02:15:50):
No kidding God. What was his name? I actually talked with the founder of the project. Oh. Started with a j I can't, I'm suddenly blanking on, on his name. But anyways, yeah, it'll come to me later. But cool. Apologies guy who created it. But yeah, it was a, it was a cool experience. I'm so happy that and they, they were able to fit me in. Like, I, I was I was by no means a priority booking, and they only had a limited number of, of entries and they were all filled. And then I, I just pestered them enough and they were like, you know what? I think we've got five minutes. Let's get you in there. So, cool. It was cool. Continuing on with the changed log, Google Wallet, getting new features becoming more and more usable. Health insurance cards. Photo card let's see here. I'm, I'm looking through this. Oh, the id, so in certain areas, I feel like this is kind of old information. Is this, I don't know that I put this in here. The ID they talked

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:50):
About some time ago.

Jason Howell (02:16:51):
Yeah. Digital car keys. I'm trying to see. I didn't put this Fox News link in. It's

Jeff Jarvis (02:16:57):
Another, another, yeah, it's Fox. That's my fault. I put that in there. It's another rebranding too. Oh,

Jason Howell (02:17:02):
Is that, wait a minute. They're rebranding it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:05):
Well, what was, oh, I guess no, I guess it already is rebranded. Google Pay. Nevermind. I, this is my fault. It's not Fox News. I should have known better <laugh>.

Jason Howell (02:17:11):
It's <laugh>. It's okay. I was like, maybe I missed the news. Google's Google. Google. Oh, I see. Oh, well wait a minute. Google paid a Google Wallet. See, this is the problem. They've changed the damn name of this thing so many times. Yes. I don't even know what new news is. <Laugh>. Has it always been Google Wallet? I don't know. But it was at some point. So it is again, there we go. So confusing. Oh, I mean, I don't know if this is a change log worthy or if this is even where it went, but pixel tablet reviews have that the embargo lifted a couple of days ago. And I, I just thought people were loving it. I, it sounds like the majority of people are, are kinda like mixed bag with this thing. Like, well, really The

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:53):
Guardian gave it a rave.

Jason Howell (02:17:55):
Some, some excellent reviews as far as it being a pretty solid tablet device. I think some of the criticism comes in the fact that Google is see, appears to be marketing this as yes. A tablet, but also a smart home controls device. Right. And I think some people who are reviewing this device see it as a smart home, a replacement for their current smart home controls device or their smart display, like a Nest hub display. And they're not the same. Like they do some of the same things, but it's not a, a apples to apples comparison as far as what they can do and how they do it. And so I think they're let down by the fact that, hey, this should be a better smart hub than it is if this is how Google is positioning it. So that seems to be what people are disappointed about.

(02:18:42):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> if they are. But I mean, I, I had some hands on time with it at Google io. It's a nice feeling like I don't have it in my hands now. I didn't buy one, but the device feels really nice. Like, it, like it's got a nice kind of soft touch to it. It's very curvy. So it's comfortable to hold the way it snaps into the magnet base is super satisfying. It just like snaps right into place. That magnet catches it and the pogo pins attached. So it's interesting. I would, it

Mike Elgan (02:19:11):
Feels to me like it's, it's like a smart display that can, you can just pick it up and use it as a tablet. Right. And and that's kinda a nice idea. It's also got a really good price. It's like 500 bucks,

Jason Howell (02:19:22):
500 bucks with the base. So, which I think is really important. Yes. I think if I heard 500 and then the base is only $129, I'd be like, no way. But yeah, it's included. Thankfully that's kind of part of the kit. So yeah. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (02:19:37):
Built in Chromecast.

Jason Howell (02:19:39):
Yeah. I, I think maybe, maybe the confusion or, or the dissatisfaction is like, what is this meant to do first? Is it a tablet first? Is it a smart display first? Yes. And depending on how you buy into it, or

Mike Elgan (02:19:51):
Is it candy meant

Jason Howell (02:19:52):
That you could either be happy or disappointed based on how you enter into that? Cuz if you're entering into it as a smart display replacement, you might be disappointed by what you get. And then we've got the pixel fold shipping date, apparently slipping a little bit. I don't know that this is, is this a official word from Google that these things are, are slipping? June 27th was the same day that Verizon provided not starting until June 20th, so, oh, okay. So then does that mean that it's shipping out? Oh no, I see. That's what it was originally supposed to be, and now it's slipped to June 28th and July through July 7th. Yeah. So

Mike Elgan (02:20:34):
Now the thing about the pixel fold is very expensive, but it comes to the free watch, you get a free pixel. No, that's true. Watch with it. So that's, that's kind of cool. Are

Jason Howell (02:20:41):
You, like, are you, well, I guess you're iOS now, so you're probably not gonna get the Yeah. The pixel fold

Mike Elgan (02:20:46):
Trigger. Yes. I love, I love smart watches. Yeah. But but yeah, that's, so that's an, that's a, that's an okay feature. I, I personally am not crazy about the environmental impact of, of these folding screen phones. But time will tell, we'll see how it goes and we'll see when the EO bans them.

Jason Howell (02:21:06):
Ooh, okay. So I'm, I'm intrigued now. I don't know that I've heard about this. Explain like, what, what, what about the environmental impactable?

Mike Elgan (02:21:13):
So, so different, different types of phone form factors that have come out. There have been multiple screens where like there'll be a folding phone with a screen on the outside, so you have a big flexible screen, then you have another screen mm-hmm. <Affirmative> these screens by themselves and also the electronics that support them contain all kinds of toxic metals. All all the things that, you know, make smartphones an environmental problem. But far more of them. And what we don't know is how long do they last? Mm. we we're, we, you know, we don't know, for example, do these foldings screen phones last for five, six years? They're always being folded and bent and stuff like that. Or, or do they have like half the shelf life of a, of a standard phone? We don't know. My guess is that they have a much shorter life.

(02:22:03):
They're much more likely to be damaged, to wear out all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot more screen real estate. And in some cases there's an yet another screen. There's, there's a giant screening and a smaller screen. And all of this adds up to the idea that, you know, smartphones are already problematic, but these folding screen phones and extra screen phones are like twice as bad for the environment. Or more, even even worse than that, because they may not last nearly as long. They might not be as repurposable and they have a lot more of the toxic metals inside of them that, that, that all smartphones have. So interesting. I dunno. Time will tell.

Jason Howell (02:22:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's

Mike Elgan (02:22:46):
But

Jason Howell (02:22:46):
The, the original Z fold was introduced February, 2019, but that didn't release until September of 2019. So we're coming up on four years at least for the Z fold. Um-Huh. <affirmative> as far as, as far as that's concerned. So I, I am, I'm

Mike Elgan (02:23:02):
Just, but how many of those are out there? Like, you know what I mean? Totally. It's like Totally. Yeah. How many do they sell? It's not like a major Android phone or an iPhone where they, you know, it's like a hundred million units are sold and then Yeah. You know, the, the scale of it can be a problem. I don't know. We'll see. Sure. It's, it's a, it's something I worry about.

Jason Howell (02:23:20):
Interesting. that is super interesting. I hadn't heard that. Let's see here. Google Maps immersive view. This is rolling out in some new cities, including 500 landmarks. This was shown off at Google io as a way to get a kind of like a virtual tour of your route in certain supported areas, which looked, I don't know, looked kind of cool. Like, I'm going over there. What is my route, actually, like, what is the experience of going through this route? And you take like, a little virtual tour through the navigation, so that's rolling out to a few more cities. What, what cities is that coming to? I didn't open it up. Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, Venice. Already in New York City, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Las Angeles. So, you know, they're focusing on, oh, and plans to support 15 cities in total. That's Berlin.

(02:24:16):
Las Vegas, Miami, Paris, Seattle, San Jose. So they're expanding this, but that's neat. I, I will look forward to using that. We were talking about maps as being one of those apps and services that is, is usually just a, you know, Google knocking it out of the park and doing really cool, innovative things. It's one of my absolute all time favorite apps for, for Android. So I'm always curious to see what they do there. And then finally trying on clothes with Google's ai. It's a new shopping feature, so that, I'm assuming you can upload the photo. I tried to

Mike Elgan (02:24:58):
Figure this out. I couldn't get it. I couldn't understand it. Basically how it works is, is that this is a, I believe that they're gonna roll this out to retailers, so Nordstrom. Oh, okay. Other retailers will have it. And basically what you do is you pick from a menu of body types. So you basically find, have all these, you know, dozens and dozens of models that have, you know, short, tall, big, small, all that kind of stuff. And you pick the body that most closely resembles yours. And then it's a platform for the retailers to essentially capture the image of the actual clothing inventory that they have in their inventory. And then the technology takes that and makes the fabric hang on the body. It clings in the way clothes would it, it, it moves and folds and wrinkles and all the stuff that the way clothes actually do, rather than being this papered all kind of thing that just kind of holds, holds a two dimensional image of the clothes in front of the, in front of the body. So it sounds like they're doing all the right things to reach the kind of nirvana we've been talking about for many, many years of being able to virtually try and close in a compelling way. And so they have they're rolling out with a number of partners that are gonna be doing this. And it's, this could actually be a really interesting application of technology that helps people shop online. And it'll be a real boon for online sales of clothes, I think.

Jason Howell (02:26:22):
No kidding. Interesting. At some point we'll be wearing, wearing our glasses, looking in a virtual mirror, looking at ourselves, standing in front of the mirror, actually wearing the clothes going, okay. Yeah. Order, and then we will receive it. Like, you know, that's gonna happen at some point.

Mike Elgan (02:26:41):
Yep.

Jason Howell (02:26:41):
And this is this is kind of, you know, how we get there. I would imagine that's really cool and surprising that it hasn't happened before, but here we are in the future, living in the future. And that is the Google change log.

(02:26:55):
Google change log is always about the future. How about we take a break, thank the sponsor, then come back and do our picks for the week. Yay. Then we round things out. But before we get there, this episode of this week in Google is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Did you know it can now take up to 11 weeks. That's on average to hire for an open position. That's a long time. That's almost two and a half months. So if you're hiring for a growing business, you probably do not have the kind of time that we're talking about here to just wait for the right person. You need that person fast, or those people fast. Well, if you're listening today, I've got some advice for you. Stop waiting. You don't have to wait anymore. Start using ZipRecruiter because ZipRecruiter can help you find qualified candidates for all of your roles, and they do it fast.

(02:27:51):
And right now you can try it for free. All you have to do is go to ziprecruiter.com/twigg and you know, what can I say? It's effective. We've used ZipRecruiter here at twit a number of times to fill the roles that we have, and it just keeps on working and it works fast. How is ZipRecruiter so efficient in helping you hire? What's it gonna do for you? While ZipRecruiter uses powerful matching technology to quickly find and send you the most qualified people for your roles, you can check out the people that ZipRecruiter sends you. And if you really like one or two, you can personally invite them to apply with one click that may make them apply even sooner. Right? Even faster. Plus, here's how quickly ZipRecruiter can help you. Hire four outta five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day.

(02:28:45):
I know that's happened here. I know that I've heard Lisa talk about that. So you know, if you're in that position as well, you know the value of getting the right hire fast. That's why you need ZipRecruiter. Speed up your hiring process with ZipRecruiter. See why 3.8 million businesses have come to ZipRecruiter for their hiring needs. Just go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. That's ziprecruiter.com/twig. There's one more time. Ziprecruiter.Com/Twi g And check it out for yourself. Ziprecruiter is the smartest way to hire, and we thank them for their continued support of this week in Google. All. All right, well, we are at the picks and tips and tricks and all those things section of this week in Google. Mike, why don't we start with you what you got?

Mike Elgan (02:29:43):
Fantastic. I have a very, very simple one that ties into the first story we talked about, which is Reddit. A lot of a lot of mods on Reddit are protesting by various means. One of them is they're duplicating the subreddit on other platforms. And this is happening at a fairly large scale. And so somebody has created a website called sub.rehab. Sub.Rehab. Now, this is a place that tells you where your favorite subreddits have gone. So they may be Discord servers or some other kind of site, but it takes you through all of the the subreddits that have moved somewhere in I guess alphabetical order. And you can find the ones that you like, you know, are anti work, are Apple, et cetera. And in some cases, these these subreddits have gone to multiple places, and in many cases they're duplicating kind of the look and feel of the subreddit. So they're, they're trying to, to, to retain in, in some cases, as much of the functionality of Reddit on these other platforms as they had on Reddit itself. So this is a great place. If you're a a a a Reddit fan, this is a great place to go and, and find out where else besides Reddit you can find your favorite subreddits.

Jason Howell (02:31:07):
Hmm. And so these are, so these are the, this is the same content being ported over, or like, is it a Yes, it's an alternate location for new discussions Yes. To happen that are outside of Reddit around the same time. Exactly.

Mike Elgan (02:31:21):
And I think there's been a lot of porting as well. But e in either case you may find your favorite subreddit is closed or Right. Not safe for work or, or affected in some way, but you might be able to find it via this site and, and engage with it and, and be a, continue to use it as you did before, but not on Reddit.

Jason Howell (02:31:41):
That's super cool. And yeah, I'm looking, looking through some of these subreddits alternatives anyways, and seeing a lot of a lot of, a lot of activity in them. So Yes. Yeah, that's pretty impressive.

Mike Elgan (02:31:54):
Cool. Many of 'em Discord, so that's, that's cool.

Jason Howell (02:31:56):
There you go. Yeah, discords, that's another thing. I mean, I realize we have a discord. You know, we have the, the Club Twit Discord here, and I use that, but I, I have heard many people say, oh, we'll just find it on Discord. Now that's like a whole realm, like a whole world that I have not ventured down. Like, you

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:13):
Know, where

Jason Howell (02:32:14):
Do you even begin on that

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:15):
Discord, but I'm not sure how to deal with discord

Jason Howell (02:32:19):
Recharge. Yeah. Do you, do you search and do you use the Discord search to find the discord that you, you know, communities that you wanna join? Or are you Patreon, you know, someone and as a result you get access to the discord around that topic and just, yeah. Anyways, it's a whole, I

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:36):
Also get confused. It's like Slack where I have like six or eight different slacks I'm a part of. Yeah. Trying to switch between them drives me nuts.

Jason Howell (02:32:42):
Yeah, totally. Discord is definitely that way. I'm, I'm on a handful, you know, of Discord channels and yeah, there's, there's always unread badges on every one of 'em. There's read all across the board. I'm just like, it almost seems like work for me to like wipe them out. So I've given up on that <laugh>. There's just so much activity happening between those six that I belong to. So Subha. Love it. Thank you, Mike. That's awesome. What about you, Jeff? What you got?

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:13):
This is kind of fun. Logo lounge.com is a guy named Bill Gardner. I guess there's an annual report on logo trends. This is a visual, sorry for you folks who are on audio, but you can go to it at your leisure. And so some, he, he, you know, comes up with logos that look like wild flowers. It's just design trends, well, they call blow blend. What's the another one is spirals. This doesn't work so well for audio, I realize. Wire forms, ball caps, what was the name? Fills, which is just names filling the space in different ways. And so the guy goes through, he's obviously a logo designer and consultant but he goes through all kinds of logos in a year. And it is fun to see the trends that exist. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that was all nice and simple.

Jason Howell (02:34:01):
Yeah. A little nice little carousel, pretty that kind of, yeah. Swap through them and it quickly flashes through the different examples of each, each type to give you a sense of what falls into that category. Yeah, there you go. And, oh, and, and it dates back. So you, if you want,

Jeff Jarvis (02:34:19):
Well, I didn't see

Jason Howell (02:34:20):
That. Oh my. You go to 2009, check out the trend report, or even 2000, I think it goes as far back as 2003. Boy, those logos, those are dated, actually a TiVo in there. It did. It is dated <laugh>. That was probably a cutting edge logo back in 2003, was the TiVo logo, the little TV with the eyes and the, and the arms and everything. Cool stuff. Logo, trend report. So my pick, I think I just wanted to make mention of the fact that last night's episode of all about Android was the last episode of all about Android, which was definitely bittersweet. But we had a wonderful wonderful episode. We actually, for, for a number of years now on this show, this recurring theme of a hall of fame for Android kept coming up. And we had joked around time and time again about someday in the future we're gonna do an episode that is, you know, the Android Hall of Fame.

(02:35:22):
We're gonna do it right, and blah, blah, blah. Well, it only took ending the show for us to finally do that. So it's a very long, <laugh> long episode. But we ha I had a ton of, of devices out on the table, and we, you know, compiled a list of some of the devices that we thought would deserve to be in the Android Hall of Fame. And we kind of debated all of them and, and anointed our Hall of Fame winners as far as that's concerned. And then, you know, said farewell to the show and got a little teary, got a little emotional primarily because we've just been, we've been doing that show for 13 years. And it's a, I mean, I can speak for myself. It's a show that's been near and dear to my heart for that entire time. It's been a total fun hang session with some really great friends.

(02:36:07):
All of us talking about something that we care passionately enough about to talk about it for 13 years, week after week, every Tuesday night. And you know, it's, it's worth watching if you haven't, if you haven't checked all about Android in a while. I think it was, I think we did the show Justice with our episode last night. I'm really proud of, of the way it turned out. Cuz I think it was just a really fun look back at Android. Not necessarily the show as much, although we had a little bit of that at the end. But I don't know, you know, worth saying goodbye to a show that's been on this network almost as long as I've been here. So

Jeff Jarvis (02:36:44):
Jason, it was really, really well done. And, and touching the relationships you've built with

Jason Howell (02:36:49):
It. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:36:50):
Over this time, the credibility you've built with it watching all these trends through the years, it, it really expresses it. And, and so it was lovely to watch and, and you, you didn't cry through the whole thing as far so far as I could tell. I,

Jason Howell (02:37:03):
I started to, at the very end. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. when did, did her share of crying, which I loved to see. She wears her heart on her sleeve and she definitely did that last night. And I had one moment where yes, I was going and I had to kinda like reel myself back cuz I didn't wanna do the ugly cry. And I knew that it was about to happen. And also I could, I could kind of faintly hear Leo's voice over my shoulder, even though he was at Disneyland going, ah, I hate, you know, he's not a huge fan of the, the big sendoff for a show. Well, I'm

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:33):
Really glad, I'm glad they let you do it cuz it was, it was a really well done sendoff.

Jason Howell (02:37:37):
Honestly. I didn didn't ask make

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:38):
Clear,

Jason Howell (02:37:38):
Just did it make

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:39):
Clear to everybody? Well good. Yeah. Just screw it. Yeah. What you gonna do to

Jason Howell (02:37:44):
Michelle? Yeah, totally. The show's done. I mean, what are we gonna do? But,

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:47):
But your stay here. Yes. It's important to make clear to everybody.

Jason Howell (02:37:50):
Yes. Very, very important. Thank you. It's the end of the show. Cause I got

Jeff Jarvis (02:37:55):
Nervous and I was looking around

Jason Howell (02:37:56):
Saying, what happened to Jason? What's going on? What's going on? Oh my God. No. it's just all about Android. All about Android. You know, the numbers had been lagging. Actually, I think this is an interesting topic for this show is, I think just in general, smartphone as an innovation, smartphone as a thing to be passionate about. Oh yeah. Interesting. You know, 10 years ago, like we were looking, when I was looking through past episodes and like my favorite years and everything like that, 2013 was actually a really great year. There was tons of innovation happening in phones. Google was Yep. Yep. Was firing on all cylinders with Android. There was a lot to get excited about. Cause there was a lot that we hadn't already seen. And there was plenty of innovation still to be had. And I'm not saying that it's completely tapped out when it comes to smartphones, but I am saying that it's pretty ubiquitous at this point. Everybody has a smartphone, everybody has a side. There's not a whole lot that companies are doing now with smartphones that are very surprising. Save from maybe the foldables and, you know, other things. Some of it feels kind of gimmicky. Like, we've gotta,

Jeff Jarvis (02:38:55):
We've gotta

Jason Howell (02:38:55):
Innovate, so let's do this thing. I don't know, you know, it, I don't know it, I, I just feel like the passion around smartphones has kind of dissipated a little bit. There are other things that people are getting that excited about in different directions, and I don't know that it's necessarily smartphones the way it used to be. And I think that showed in our numbers over the last handful of years. So not a whole lot you can do about it. I'm, I'm convinced that we, that we were creating as strong of a show there at the end of its run than we ever had. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know what I mean? Like, I know we had very smart people. We had as much fun if not more fun than we've, than we've had. And that's always been a really big marker of that show is we're together to hang out and be friends and make jokes and also talk about this thing that we all kind of unite on, which is, which is the Android platform. And I think we did that till the very last episode. So

Mike Elgan (02:39:50):
Yeah. And, and in fact it was the number one clear, best Android podcast that ever was. And that's all you can do. And so congratulations on just a fantastically great show. Thank you Jason. So very

Jason Howell (02:40:05):
Well done. Done. Thank you. I I really do appreciate that. Just to reiterate, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here at twit, at Twit. My plan now because Leo and Lisa, you know, they didn't want to to kill the show, but it just seemed like it was time. And they also wanted to kinda like, challenge me, like, okay, well what do you do if you're not doing all about Android anymore? What do you want to do? And I immediate, like I, without even thinking I knew exactly what I wanted to do, it was like, I wanna do an AI show. I wanna do a show that's focused on ai. Hey, I don't know how that's gonna materialize. I know the thing that I'm not as interested in is like Plat like a panel discussion show about the news and a events happening in the world of ai.

(02:40:48):
What Sam been doing now, we don't care. Totally. Like, like I think we cover that on the network. What I talked about earlier and I made mention of this just a little bit ago, was in Tailwind when you were talking Mike, about kind of using that technology for producing shows. That's the kind of stuff that really intrigues me. How can we as people, as just everyday people, not people who know how to, you know, the open source community, know how to hack together these AI generating systems or whatever. Maybe some of that of course. But how can we use what is available to us in the world of AI to improve our life or to make this part of our job easier or to create images? You know, I'm, I'm a horrible graphic designer, but I can create things if I know the right words and the right prompts to do it.

(02:41:36):
Like it's opening these doors that I don't think we have to be scared necessarily about a, the, the potential of AI to take our, you know, take over our jobs and ruin the world and everything like that. I think we're gonna be okay. How can we use these things to do some really cool things in our lives? To, to, I don't know, to, to find more satisfaction in, in what we do and how we do and, and all these things. So that, that's what excites me and that's what I think I'm gonna kind of focus my, my efforts on. And I hope, I hope to find some small way to help you on that clinic. It's a great idea. I know, I know. I would love to do that. And I will definitely be in touch with you, Jeff, cuz I know you've, you've mentioned wanting to kind of be involved in something around ai with Twit and, you know, the opportunity is here now.

(02:42:19):
It wasn't before. I don't know that Leo and Lisa were Yeah. Were as willing to start a new show about AI prior. But with all about Android no longer, now I have the time and the you know, the ability to focus on starting something like that up. So I will be in touch. Absolutely. We'll see if anyone has any ideas of what you would love to see out of an AI show, I would love to hear from you, Jason at twit tv. Let me know because I'm, I'm all ears. I'm, I'm in development stage right now and I'm starting from the beginning, which is a little intimidating cuz there's a lot, I don't know about ai, but I think that's the fun is to do a show where I learn about it with you, you know, and we can learn about it together.

(02:42:59):
So anyways, that's my good work, sir. Thank you. And thanks for all the support all around. I've just had so much support from people today, so it's been really wonderful to hear that. Bob, we have reached the end of this show and it's not going anywhere. This is this week in Google. Such a fun show and I'm so always so honored to be able to fill in for Leo when he's gone and talk with you guys about Google and to sit on the panel with you, Mike Elgin, after a very, very long time. It's been just absolutely wonderful. Thank you for being here today with us.

Mike Elgan (02:43:32):
Thank, thank you. And, and can I do a couple of quick plugs? Please

Jason Howell (02:43:36):
Do. This is your opportunity to do that. Yes, absolutely. I was gonna ask.

Mike Elgan (02:43:40):
Okay, so, so as, as you mentioned earlier, we do gastro experiences. These are exquisite food and wine and gastro adventures of which you cannot even describe. They're, they're really fantastic. They're all sold out this year for the rest of the year except for we have a room for Mexico City. So I would like to invite everybody to do that. Mexico City, which is happening November 13th through the 18th, just one week. And then we have a brand new one we've never done before in January in El Salvador. El Salvador is an amazing, beautiful, delicious tropical country. And that experience is happening January 20th through the 26th. It's gonna be relaxing, there's gonna be a lot of beach time, there's gonna be a lot of tropical rainforest exploration. There's gonna be a lot of eating and drinking and having fun of course. So I hadn't invite everybody to, to join us on that.

(02:44:36):
The other quick thing I wanted to mention, simply because we've been talking a lot about both ai, the future of ai, and also how advanced technologies affect children. Anyone who's listening to the show before knows that my son Kevin, has a company called Chatterbox. It's a, it's a smart speaker that kids put together themselves, then they teach it what to say, and in the process they learn what AI is and how it works. And he's been preaching the gospel of preparing kids for the future of AI for many years long before chat BT or any of this stuff. But now that, now that the sort of the AI world has crashed into mainstream culture, people should know that Chatterbox now supports Chatt VT in a child-friendly way. And also the, the, the image version of that via stable diffusion. So kids as, as you know, stable diffusion is done all with voice, with text prompts, with chat with chatterbox.

(02:45:39):
They can, children can create a scale and then generate images with voice. So they tap the button on the top and they, they give the prompt and they get back the pictures. And again, the purpose is not to create pictures. The purpose is for them to prepare to leave in the future that they'll actually live in, which is a future where AI is utterly ubiquitous. And so I'd anybody who's an educator in the school system or a parent, I would, I would encourage to go to hello chatterbox.com and check this out because this is really this is how we prepare kids for the future of ai, not by banning it, not by mm-hmm <affirmative> pretending it doesn't exist, but by getting kids hands on ai, the hardware, the software, all of it, and letting 'em know what it is so they're ready for the future.

Jason Howell (02:46:31):
That's super cool. I love it. I, I love the chatterbox and, and watching the evolution of chatterbox over the years Yeah. Has been really, yeah. Thank you. Really awesome to see you guys have, have a really great thing going. So thank you Mike. Fantastic stuff and really great to have you here. And I hope we get to do this again soon.

Mike Elgan (02:46:49):
Thank you for inviting me.

Jason Howell (02:46:50):
Absolutely. Anytime. And thank you, Mr. Jeff Jarvis over here on my left, at least here in the studio. Anyways you, what do you wanna leave people with? I mean, you got, you, you got your book right? Where, where can people find your book? What are the

Jeff Jarvis (02:47:04):
Details? Gutenberg parenthesis.com. It's out on the 29th and you can order it now.

Jason Howell (02:47:08):
That's so

Jeff Jarvis (02:47:09):
Exciting. Somebody, a friend of mine ordered it from Barnes and Noble. They said they were sold out, which is ridiculous. It hasn't arrived yet. So <laugh> Blackwells is a great place to do it. Amazon has full price now, but they'll do the lower price when they decide that Bloomsbury directly has a discount as well. So I'd be grateful to hear what you think of it folks.

Jason Howell (02:47:28):
Right on. You know, you're gonna get a lot of readers of that book who are watching and listening to this very show as well. So that's like days away. I can, I don't know what it's like to write a book, but I can only imagine that this part, like, there's so much anticipation, it's gonna feel really nice to get on the other side of the release and be like, yep, it's out <laugh>. So it's such a buildup to that moment. So, so much to be proud of and really cool stuff. Thank you again, Jeff. Always appreciate it. As for me, like I said earlier, I'm not really doing Twitter much, but if you wanna find me there, I'm at Jason Howell, Mastodon a little bit, twit social slash at Jason Howell trying the TikTok thing. I don't really know how I'm gonna use TikTok, but I figured, like I'll just say a few things into it every, you know, every day and, and see what, see what happens, where's my mind at, where's my heart at?

(02:48:23):
And I'll just kinda share it and see what happens. I don't know. Instead of, instead of pulling up a, a, a desktop, you know, browser and going to Twitter and thinking for 20 minutes, like the, the perfectly phrased thing that I'm gonna send out to everybody, I'm just gonna pick up my phone and record a thing and see what that does for me. So that is that Jason Howell, I think is my my handle over there. If you wanna see what that's all about. <Laugh> still not even certain. It's a great idea, but I'm gonna try it anyways cuz why the heck not. As for this show, you can go to twit tv slash twigg TWI g There you will find all the details you need to know as far as subscribing for this show. By the way, subscribing is the most important thing for us.

(02:49:06):
If you, you know, a fan of the show, you gotta, you gotta subscribe. So twit TV slash twigg, you'll find all the details to do that. If not that, then we hope that you'll join the club because that would support us directly. That's twit tv slash club twit. You go there, you pay $7 a month. You have the option to pay more if you like. We only say that because some people have actually asked for that feature, and so we added that feature. But if you do that, you get every single episode of every single show we do with no ads included. So all the ads removed, you get access to bonus content that you don't get outside of the club. Not only pre and post show content put into a feed. So you don't have to catch us live in order to get that stuff.

(02:49:50):
But you also get extra shows like Hands on Windows, hands on Mac Home Theater Geeks, the Untitled Linux show. I mean the Stacy's book club when that happens all sorts of extra stuff that Aunt Pruitt has cooking. And then you get access to our discord, which is always a ton of fun. And you find a lot of like-minded technology enthusiasts just like you hanging out in the discord. So Twit TV slash club twit big thanks to Leo for letting me fill in for him while he's gone next week. I'm sure he'll have tons of stories to share with you from Disneyland. But until then, thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next time on this week in Google. Bye everybody. It's midweek and you really wanna know even more about the world of technology. So you should check out Tech News Weekly, the show where we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. That's the biggest news. We talk with the people writing the stories that you're probably reading. We also talk between ourselves about the stories that are getting us even more excited about tech News this week. So if you are excited, well then join us. Head to twit tv slash tnw to subscribe.