This Week in Google 744, 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.

00:00 - Jason Howell (Host)
Hello everybody, welcome to this Week in Google. Coming up next, I'm Jason Howell filling in for Leo Laporte, we've got Ant Pruitt, we've got Paris Martino and we have Jeff Jarvis. On this episode, we had a lot to talk about. A resolution, a, finally a resolution in Canada's online news act regarding news and Google, amazon unveils its AI chatbot that they called Q. For some reason, openai tries hard to not unveil its AI product called yeah Q Star. I don't know what it is about the letter Q. And Black Friday perfect for dish trays. All that and more coming up next.

00:38 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is. Twig.

00:49 - Jason Howell (Host)
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 744, recorded Wednesday, november 29th 2023. Giant red ties. This episode of this Week in Google is brought to you by our friends at ITProTV, now called ACI Learning. Aci's new cyber skills is training that's for everyone, not just the pros. Visit goacilearningcom. Slash twit Twit listeners can receive up to 65% off an ITPro enterprise solution plan after completing their form. Based on your team's size, you'll receive a properly quoted discount tailored to your needs and by Milio. Milio Photos is a smart and powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit and manage years of important documents, photos and videos in an offline library hosted on any device. Check out their limited time holiday gift bundle for a 25% discount on Milio Photos plus at miliocom. Slash twit 25. Here in the studio Ann Pruitt. What's up, ann?

02:17 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Hello everybody. Nice to see you right next to me, nice, to see you.

02:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
What is it?

02:23 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
What is it?

02:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You look a little older today. Yeah we're here.

02:29 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Look here, man.

02:30 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I had glasses. I lost my glasses, I had to order new glasses, but I need to be able to see this dadgum rundown in front of me. So I went around the corner and grabbed some readers and this is an interesting experiment and, I think, the only way to wear them is to put them down on my nose. So when I look over the top, everything looks normal-ish, but I can actually read now with them down like this. So yeah, I own the old man-ish card today.

02:58 - Jason Howell (Host)
Okay, all right, oldish man, oldish readers. I have, I have parent readers too, but I hate wearing glasses. So even though I need to wear them, I refuse to dammit. Also joining us Jeff Jarvis. Hello sir, hello, hello, hello. Those are not readers, though. What you are wearing, those are everyday readers. Those are just old man eyes. Those are permanent glassesers, old man eyes. Well, it's good to see you, sir. And, of course, paris Smart. Now, what's up, paris?

03:29 - Paris Martineau (Host)
If I wasn't, if I wasn't wearing these glasses, I would be unable to see the screen two feet in front of me. Okay, I guess they're everything.

03:36 - Jason Howell (Host)
They're everything, so that means so. So are you far-sighted then? Is that what that means, or are you just so near-sighted?

03:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm so near-sighted and I spend so much time looking at screens that it is just transitioned into a. I'm generally sight-challenged.

03:52 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, you're unsighted at this point, I'm unsighted.

03:54 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I've always said that, if you know, like a zombie apocalypse happened, I'd probably die quickly, not because of a lack of survival skills or gumption, but because, if you just like, crack my glasses, I'm done.

04:05 - Jason Howell (Host)
And that's it. No, that's so true, that's it Right. All it takes is like one battle and sure you won, but your glasses are broken. You spend the rest of your life wandering the earth, blind, basically.

04:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It's. I mean, it would not be a long rest of my life, honestly. There are times where I've lost my glasses in my home and I'm like I'm done. This is it.

04:24 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I'm pretty blind without, without glasses. I've opt for contacts. But I can probably see about I don't know about that far in front of me with pure sharpness. And then any any further than that I mean Jammer B, where you're sitting right now you'd be a blurry mess, you'd be a smear to me, so so I guess we're all sight challenged on this panel. We are, we've figured that one out Good to be here. And you know, I tried my best, I promise you. I tried to put together like a nice bulky Google block to start the show with, and it's really kind of sad looking at it. There's just not a whole lot here, but I'm going to commit to the bit. Let's start, we'll get it out of the way and then we'll get to the other stuff.

05:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
On this, show Wow Bold of you.

05:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's the bit we've been doing for 744 shows.

05:17 - Jason Howell (Host)
I always try when I'm sitting in place of Leo, I'm like you know what it's like. Google's in the name. Let's talk a little bit about Google, and sometimes Google rewards us. This is true Sometimes.

05:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Google does hey, Google's in the name for now.

05:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, what was the name that you came up with this week in general, was that?

05:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I think that's the name someone came up with. Someone yelled that name.

05:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
This week in everything.

05:38 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Jammer.

05:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
B, this week in general and this week in everything I would have to did I remember Well this week, in everything that doesn't work, because everything doesn't.

05:46 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Then we got to change the feeds and stuff.

05:47 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, so I'm fine with this week in general myself.

05:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Honestly, this week in general isn't bad.

05:53 - Jason Howell (Host)
No, it's not, Although I kind of it kind of has could be have like a war time quality to it, like this week in general.

06:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We could kind of have a war time quality.

06:02 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I'm fine with that, I'm down to battle.

06:05 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Okay, well, for this moment To stealing valor, sorry.

06:09 - Jason Howell (Host)
For this moment in time it's still this week in Google and to that end we've got one, two, three, four, five pretty quick stories to talk about. We'll get to the rest of the show Actually the top story, I think, is very, very immediate.

06:26
This, did you know, just happened Not too long ago. Google has reached a deal with Canada involving its link, its online news acts, kind of the link tax, and Google was, you know, for quite a while saying it wasn't going to pay. Of course, meta did this and kind of pulled out right as far as news is concerned in the EU. Google is threatening to do so as well In Canada. Sorry, Sorry In Canada. My apologies.

06:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's all the same. You know, they just talked about it all.

06:57 - Jason Howell (Host)
That's true. I lived in Montreal for a while and it really did feel, feel very European, so maybe that's a slip on my end. Anyways, google going to pay $100 million Canadian dollars roughly translated to American dollars about 74 million annually, and I guess that's going to fund news agencies quote based on the number of full time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses.

07:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So it's all kinds of controversy here and I've been on top of this for quite a while. I've watched the testimony of Google before the Senate in Canada. I, you know, I've watched all this thing. The quote of the CBC Canada made a complete mess of this because they wouldn't listen to the tech platforms, they wouldn't allow any. They wanted to demonize them, and so they plowed through with this law and Facebook used as an excuse to say fine, no news, thank you very much. We want to get rid of this. Pups and parties. That's what we're doing from now on. Bye and they're gone forever. They're not coming back to news, I'm sure of it, and I think they're going to say Canada worked in, canada works anywhere else. They've lost no traffic as a result, it's fine. So 30% of the news sites, traffic is already gone, period, forever. Thanks to the Canadian government. The politicians and the hedge funds lobbied for this.

08:12
So then, Google said they were going to charge. They were going to try to tell Google to pay up to $300 million a year. That's what Google promised to the entire worldwide news industry over a few years. And they were pretty generous.

08:24
And, and Google said no, and there's no ceiling on this and you don't have any structure about who gets the money. And no, but they kept. Google to their credit Richard Jinger is the VP of news at Google kept trying to say why don't we just talk? We can be reasonable, there is something here. You just need to follow some sense of order to this. And finally, after Facebook left they did, but they thought they were going to get like $300 million. They're going to get $75 million. They've lost Facebook. Now there's going to be a huge fight over who gets this money, and one of the big controversies is that a lot of the money is going to go to CBC, which is already government supported, and broadcasters, which isn't going to help local news particularly, and so it's a shambles, it's a mess, but I got to say I credit Google with having done whatever they could to find some middle ground here so that they didn't have to pull out of Canada news.

09:23 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Is this the scenario where there's way more losers and winners?

09:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes, well said, well said. I think the citizens lose, I think the platforms lose, the and certainly the news organizations lose. All right, and and the problem with a lot of the thing is here's the interesting question for y'all. So there's, there's a JCPA, which is the Journalism Competition for Preservation Act, bs from Amy Klobuchar and and company in the US, and then there's a California Preservation Act whatever, I forget what that's called. See, see something Both, basically the Canadian bill brought to California and the US. I think now, if they tried to do this here, facebook would say thank you, that's all we did it for Was that excuse by the news? And then they would have. They would similarly screw the entire news industry in the US. Google would still pay something, but it would be spread extremely thin. You know the New York Times were going to get a huge piece of it because they had the most staff and it wouldn't help anybody. Really, it'll be a little bit of a shot in Freud. So I don't know what happens to the follow on legislation we end up with.

10:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
I would say as a U. What keeps running through my mind is as a user of Facebook, as a recent like re Facebook, or because I had left for a while and then I got sick of not knowing what all my friends were doing. I felt super disconnected. You know, I had all the intention, the ambition to like. Well, I'm just going to stay in touch with them by phone.

10:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'm good, you know, I mean, that works for small subset of people Tell me more grandpa, I still have one and it still works.

11:06 - Jason Howell (Host)
I can stay in touch with the people I care about and not share all that data. Blah, blah, blah. And then at some point it was like okay, but it's just much easier to do this.

11:15
So I came back and I think one of the things that I realized drove me away from Facebook particularly during the kind of the election year of 2016 and the four years that followed was the like hyper sharing of news on that platform, and so there's a part of me that's kind of like I totally, I completely understand, and you know where you're coming from, jeff, and I don't want journalism to suffer at the hand of something like this. But as a user of Facebook, I'm kind of like, yeah, I don't want news there. I'm cool that just being, you know, sharing photos, pics of your pets and you know your family and stuff like that. But you know that's a very close minded, you know me kind of perspective on that. I think it's also very different for Google to make that decision and would have very wide reaching implications. So what do you think about this Paris?

12:12 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I mean yeah.

12:13 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean living your life and working in the reporter journalism world.

12:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, especially I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's complicated right. I mean, I can understand why some publishers would want this originally. You want to be paid for when platforms are profiting off of your work, in this case, the news articles that you're talking about. That annoyed you was something that Facebook was promoting for a while, because it promoted engagement and right people being mad on their platform was profitable for them. But I don't think.

12:45
I think that what we are seeing from what is happening in Canada with the online news act is that it isn't going to work in this way. The after effects with you know platforms like Meta cutting off news means that some of these news outlets in Canada, in exchange for getting what's probably going to end up being a couple thousand dollars or maybe a hundred thousand dollars if they're lucky from Google, they're losing 15% of their overall traffic from Facebook, which is going to impact their bottom line considerably, and I'm sure that the same kind of dynamic will play out in other countries or states in the US if they end up following that. So I think that you need to rethink what you're asking for and approach this from a regulatory perspective in a different manner 74 million US dollars does not sound like a lot we are talking about definitely not.

13:41
Yeah, a year for a year. Yeah, all the news outlets yes.

13:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
Let's go ahead and split that up into tiny little pieces and give it to everybody. And yeah, I think you're right. I don't think that that really does much to undo any of the impacts of this.

13:57 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Obviously, I don't know the media structure in Canada, but, like if we're looking at that 74 million split between US media, it's probably going to be something like Fox News, daily Mail, us CNN, washington Post, new York Times. We'll get most of that and then like smaller outlets that are more digital media focused, like your Buzz feeds or pet news stuff or Vlad Bible US are going to get some chunk of that, and then local news outlets are probably going to get like I don't know, a thousand dollars if they're lucky a year, which is not particularly helpful for anyone.

14:33 - Jason Howell (Host)
No, might be more of an inconvenience to like cash the check than it is anything else. Exactly, I got a check from our insurance company. It was like some refund check and it was like 32 cents. Like. I just like. I think it's more. My time is worth more. They cleared their book.

14:52 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
We cleared our book.

14:53 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean, I could Jeff, I'm curious, as someone who's been following this story for a while. Why do you think that it got to this place? I mean, was the what news outlets and regulators and regulators asking for originally? Was it always going to end up this way, or was there some point in the negotiations that things fell apart? It's a great question.

15:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think it was well. The National Post and Post Media, which now owns the, it's the cadet of Canada. It owns the vast majority of papers there. It's just I don't know if it's the majority, but it owns. It's the biggest by far and it's controlled by a US hedge fund. And then the Toronto Star was taken over by two guys who thought they were white nights coming in.

15:37
I wanted to save journalism, and then they got into a huge fight because they couldn't agree about anything and so one of them took part of the company else, where they killed 600 little papers or something amazing, or laid off. 600 people killed lots of papers and so they lobbied for it hard. And the the press association as here in the US press associations used to be about saying, oh, we're so wonderful, advertisers love us, readers love us, aren't we wonderful? Now press associations are lobbyists pure and simple. So their lobbyists went full court in in Parliament and said we got to go for them. Trudeau's government said oh, this is a good opportunity to show how wonderful we are, how popular we are, by going after big, bad American tech companies. And so they wouldn't brook any discussion with them. And Google and Facebook came and testified.

16:25
I watched one time, as I said, with the Senate, where they said there's problems with this law, we can work this out, we can talk this through. And the politicians just said, no, we are going to show how tough we are and. And so they left. They were left themselves in no position for negotiation. And actually it's interesting because this is not rewriting the law, this is just writing the regulation based on the law, and it may or may not actually fit the law as it's written because it was written so tough. This happened Paris, in Spain too, after Germany started all this with the and I love saying this on the show the Leistung Schutzrecht. There it is, there it is. Haven't said it in a while. Have a folks, the Leistung Schutzrecht, the Anselary copyright, which actually didn't do much of anything because Google said we're not going to pay you and actual springer said you must or we won't let you link. Google said fine, we won't link. The actual springer said about two weeks later okay, please link.

17:23
Yeah, please link and and we get no money. But that became the model, that became the Australian model, the Canadian model, jcpa, all these other things. And there's a European model now too, which is very similar, so EU wide. And so it's the publishers lobbying, caching in their political capital to try to get this, and the politicians who say, oh good, an excuse to go after big, bad tech companies. And I'll have the press on my side. What's not to love?

17:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And they just didn't, didn't listen and that feels like this is a yeah, this feels like this is a reaction, obviously, to these huge headwinds we're seeing in the media industry. It's publishers and these associations looking for anything to blame or focus on, other than the crumbling of ad dollars, which has been a trade, which has been something that's been happening to the media industry in some form or another for most of its existence. You go into this in your book, right, jeff?

18:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I actually do at length the next book. I just had it in the line at it and the more I went through it, I ended up surprising myself tracking this business rivalry as a root of media's moral panic about the internet, because the press blames the internet companies for their failures, whereas you just said no, the internet as a whole just put buyer and seller together and didn't need the middleman who used to control the pricing power. And so welcome to capitalism. It's interesting Paris too. Let's say that there is a law like this in the US. What's the staff at the information?

19:23 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think our editorial staff is like 50.

19:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Right. So let's say that there was some similar pool of money in the US and got divvied up by. Well, you probably get left out entirely because you're not local and everybody's saying local's going to save democracy, Right. So that's one. But if it did get divvied up, yeah, you'd get lattes for all. That's it.

19:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We could maybe up our Monday lunch budget. There you go $25 a person from 20.

19:49 - Jason Howell (Host)
Everybody gets a small milkshake as well.

19:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's a little. It's a little. I think it's a problem when you're saying that you actually get lunch at a news company.

19:59 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Nobody gets lunch at news companies Nobody. Oh yeah, it's true, they kind of kind of rub it in there, aren't you?

20:06 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah kind of A little bit De-information.

20:12 - Jason Howell (Host)
They do things different around there. Everybody gets a small milkshake.

20:20 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

20:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No whipped cream though.

20:22 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah, no extra.

20:24 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, all right. Well, that was just one of this cavalcade of stories. The rest of them are amazing. Jeff could bore you about any of them. Just check this one out Google Deep Mind using AI to I mean, this is actually pretty cool Predict the structure of around 2 million new materials. So there was a research paper. It was published in the Science Journal called Nature and basically it said that 400,000 of its material designs all these hypothetical could actually be created, be actually produced in lab conditions, and I don't know. I thought this was just interesting because when I think of the potential of AI and what it could do in the future and likely will do to some capacity in the future, that's more than just like generating images and videos and correcting our spelling or those kinds of things. These are the kinds of discoveries that I wonder. How does this impact the world when AI is integrating into the medical industry and helping us get far better or far more accurate with what we're able to detect, discovery of new materials that didn't exist before?

21:50 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's just really interesting We'll never know about this stuff, because this is the stuff that doesn't get clicks. You know what? I mean yeah, it's all of the high and mighty. Wow, this AI is so cool. Look at how it generated this picture, or generated that, or what having then? It's oh boy, this is easy to share. It's very shareable. The robots are going to take over. That's never any of the middle ground of coverage, and there's hardly ever any stories like this that's reached out to the masses.

22:22 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's wrong. Yeah, I want to mention Paris. At the information you have people who've been following this stuff for a very, very long time and they turn around and say now you're paying attention to us. Yeah, now we're hot.

22:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We have a daily AI newsletter, which I believe is in front of the paywall as well, written by Stephanie Palazzo. Obviously, I think the last two weeks have been more open AI focused, but normally what she covers four days a week are all of the really interesting new developments in AI, and there are so many like this. I think that it's really a field where, if you are interested in the developments, there are constant updates at a speed that I think is unlike anything else we're seeing in tech.

23:12 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I think again, that's another part of the message that never really gets pushed out is that AI can be used for speed, like quality speed and getting things done, whether it's doing repeatable task or whether it's helping out with research like this, because they're running different models and figuring out okay, this failed, that failed, so let's try this new variable. And it's doing all of that way faster than a team of people can do. Granted, it needs a little bit of human intervention, which is fine by me, but again, none of that stuff gets clicks. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

23:47 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I just went into my newsletters because I wanted to make sure that I subscribed to that newsletters, wanted to look at the latest issue and here I see this invitation from Jessica, now that I'm a paying customer for a 10 year anniversary for the information.

24:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it's been 10 years, it's going to be. It's 10 years as of this month, as of December, nice. Really incredible, it's wild. I was looking back through some of the coverage when you first launched and I think there's this like iconic business insider blog written at the time that says something like wow, look at this Wall Street Journal reporter launched a news site and they're trying to get people to pay hundreds of dollars a year for a subscription. Ha Fat chance that'll ever work. Businesses are incompatible with media, they said. Bless her more.

24:37 - Jason Howell (Host)
Now here we are 10 years later and uh, yeah, totally.

24:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Some things have changed.

24:42 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Wow, outstanding. Yeah, it's a model you're seeing more and more. You going to go to the party, jeff.

24:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I'll be in Vienna freezing my butt off, oh Sorry.

24:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Dang Should have come to the party. I know I'm hoping.

24:55 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

24:58 - Jason Howell (Host)
And if you had a Pixel 8 Pro, you could bring it and then show off all the little bumps in your glass. Apparently, according to 95 Google. See, this is what we have as far as Google news. I promise you we'll get to more interesting stuff.

25:10 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's still good Still good Okay. Alright. Don't apologize, go with it.

25:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Go with it, be strong. We love talking about the bumps in our glass. It's so exciting.

25:18 - Jason Howell (Host)
I have a Pixel 8 Pro. I do not have bumps in my glass. It's not the kind of thing that happens to everybody, but if it does, apparently.

25:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Did you get it out and start inspecting it to make sure there were no?

25:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
bumps? Yeah, a little bit, but then I kind of gave up because I didn't see anything and haven't seen anything. I imagine I would have noticed by now. But yeah, things like this happen. There's a small and by small I mean maybe a little more than 100 people have tacked on to the bug report to report. Oh yeah, that's me too. So it's a small group of people. Apparently this is happening. Apparently, google's going to. What did they say? They said, oh actually no, this is actually pretty funny. Google says there is quote no functional impact to Pixel 8 performance or durability by these bumps.

26:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Which they acknowledge the bumps exist.

26:12 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yes, Like, yeah, bumps may exist, but they're totally fine and don't worry about them.

26:17 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yes, exactly, look, it's not our problem. They don't actually break the device, so it's your problem that you can't just overlook the bumps. That's small.

26:25 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Especially for small mind-beasts. You know, that sort of reminds me of the. Was it the blue glare on the 6? Remember that.

26:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, what was it? Yeah, there's always something.

26:38 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You know that's just quality control, and I get that they're creating a ton of these devices, but you still need to do better with your quality control processes. And yeah, don't tell people look, yeah, we know the bumps are there. It's not breaking anything, don't worry. How about you just say, yeah, we know the bumps are there, let us fix this for you?

26:58 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah Well, I mean, if I bought a device and it's imperfect because of some sort of thing that I had no part in, and that other people are reporting the same thing, I would hope that the company would go to bat for me, that's bull.

27:11 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I can't really see if I'm having any on mind. I'm struggling with my eyes here.

27:15 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, yeah, your readers might not be able to pick that up.

27:19 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, they're readers, they're not bumpers, so you need to get a different pair of glasses for that. I think Many of this next story kind of ties into some of the complaints around the whole pixelate thing. There was an 18-year Googler, so I guess at this point, a Zuggler, is it Xuggler? How do you say that Xuggler?

27:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I can't even say it yeah, no shot.

27:43 - Jason Howell (Host)
It's like pronouncing X Twitter. Yeah yeah, recently left the company it's Ian Hixon, I believe, worked for the Flutter team last handful of years Put an essay really taking Google out as far as its lack of vision, calling it out for its low company-wide morale, the deterioration of its company culture, which at one time was like a really big selling point for the company, and I don't know when.

28:12
I was reading it I was just reminded of Mike Elgin and his at this point his regular kind of admission that he feels that Sundar Pichai is not a good CEO for the company.

28:25 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I agree.

28:26 - Jason Howell (Host)
His priorities placed in exactly the wrong places, based on where Google's at right now.

28:30 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I agree with Mr Elgin's sentiment, but the whole morale thing. I thought that was part of Google's big cache, if you will, with them being one of the most popular places to work in the US. I mean, they were always at the top of the charts.

28:43 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, and I wonder where that stand. Like, what is the chart? I don't know what chart you look at to know that, but where do they stand? Now? How does it feel to be inside Google? I?

28:54 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
think things have changed since 2020. 2020 has changed a lot of perspectives for people, whether we like it or not, and I think a lot of times it changed it for the better too. But prior to that, it was like it was a joy to go to work at Google. Supposedly, according to the different, It'd work at Bud-Off.

29:15 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, but people were happy to do that because of everything that they got out of the experience.

29:21 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, but I still agree.

29:23 - Jason Howell (Host)
But I felt like their input and what they brought to the table was valued, felt like they were valued.

29:29 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
But I still agree that the leadership starts at the top, with Mr Pichai and the whole bit of ADD that Google tends to have over the last several years and bouncing around between products and killing this product and opening a new product, and then a week later it's like no, we're going to rename it to this and then we're going to kill it. It's a mess.

29:49 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

29:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, but the other hand, if every the fact. I saw this thing and I thought, okay, if every company had to get a news story written about them when any employee left.

30:00 - Jason Howell (Host)
That's true, I like it working here anymore. Yeah, that's true, that's very true, that's probably some ex-employee could write this.

30:08 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's why I brought it up, because I was like it seems like every year again prior to 2020, it seemed like Google was always at the top on best places to work, based on the stuff that they offered, and I guess somebody was doing surveys and they kept winning. They never said. Amazon. They never said Microsoft, it was always Google.

30:32 - Jason Howell (Host)
True? Is there any? Do you feel like there's any truth to the idea that maybe Google is entering, if not already, in the 2000s era, microsoft kind of moment in time where Google's been around kind of long enough? They've kind of done that? They're now like maybe having a hard time finding what their identity is in this current technology world, and there are others that are really competing heavily against them. Now they were, once they were it and now they're. Now it's not so cut and dry. Does Google need a sacha to come along and then there's hope?

31:14
Yes, I mean at least we use this write up to go off of anyways.

31:20 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But it's interesting, jason, and I mentioned this briefly in the next book, does Google want to be a consumer company anymore? Is it a B2B company? Because the consumer stuff they do, they kind of there's one over there.

31:33 - Jason Howell (Host)
There's one over there, yeah, yeah.

31:35 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Right.

31:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And there's nothing wrong with B2B right?

31:38 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
No, there's not, it's a hell of a business.

31:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They've got a hell of a business. They mean the hosting business, the ad business. It's all quite amazing, I mean, but I wish they had my Chromebook. I like their phone. I went to the. So when I was out for this World Economic Forum AI thing, when I got in I went down dutiful twigger that I am to the Google Nu big tent and went to their store the Google Experience. It's boring.

32:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That look on your face. What do they have going?

32:13 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
on. Well, they had a nice. I had a very nice cupcake, by the way, very nice pumpkin cupcake.

32:18 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Because that's why you go to. Why do you get to give it to cupcakes? Because that's why you want to go to Google. It's why you go to Google.

32:22 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It's got a pumpkin cupcake, so I had a little cafe.

32:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
They had to get an event space and you go in and people are already. Hello, welcome, glad to have you here. Okay, shosh, you're just Google. I'm standing ovation.

32:36
And then they got their products around so you can do the same thing. It's prettier than Best Buy by a long shot, but you can go play with the phone and, interestingly, if they don't have it on wires, you can actually pick it up. That measure of trust. Or they have really good cops and so they have all the products around and then they have a small, very small swag store. They used to have a much bigger swag store. Very small swag store with few hats, few bags, a little tiny Google bike.

33:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Did you do a podcast about them?

33:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, you can't make yourself. Oh, you're on the Grandpa podcast. Oh, you're on the Google dads, the Grandpa Google podcast. That actually should be. The new name of the podcast is Google dads and Paris.

33:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Hey, you know.

33:31 - Jason Howell (Host)
You were mentioning that you know Google might not want to be a consumer company, and you know, and I think, I think, in order for Google to make that determination, it has to get clear on what its identity actually is. And I think that's. I think that's exactly it, google. I'm not entirely convinced that Google knows what its identity is right now.

33:53 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's a leadership thing. Shouldn't leadership, make that call and say, hey, this is who we are. Yeah, let's work the heck out of it and market the heck out of it and own it. You know, just the way Microsoft did.

34:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean I think you know Google's been around for like 25 years. It is a huge company. It is 170 some thousand employees. I don't think, at that size, at the maturity that it is and at the amount of revenue it generates, that it could even ever be just a purely consumer company. I mean.

34:26
I think that when you are getting to this level of maturity where you stop being an upstart and start being an institutional gatekeeper. Probably the only way to keep shareholders happy and continue to grow your bottom line, grow profits is by having a robust like set of business lines, and that is not particularly sexy, it's not particularly interesting, but it's probably the reality of it that they have to do a lot of stuff like B2B. They have to do government contracts. They've got to, you know, increase their stuff in cloud. You're also going to have some teams that are doing consumer and you know your bread and butter, but that's probably not the moneymaker anymore. I mean, look at a company like Amazon. They're expanding to. You know, advertising Cloud has long been their main profit center. I assume Google would want to do something similar.

35:17 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Microsoft makes a lot of money with licenses over the enterprise and B2B. They're not making a ton of money with their devices and whatnot. So it's. I don't think Google is making a ton of money with their mobile devices.

35:31 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, correlation you know.

35:32 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
So if they need to figure out a way to just capitalize on yes, we are a search giant, put more into that and make more money there and stop bleeding yourself.

35:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But you know they're not even. That's not even the best part of the business. It's, as Paris says, it's hosting and it's advertising. Yeah, I mean, Paris is quite right. When, when, when Google went to advertising for the first couple of years, it was 98% of the revenue? Yeah, and now, I think we talked about this in the show a few weeks ago. Right, it was what? 70 something percent.

36:04 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
So yeah, when I had an earnings call.

36:06 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, they've diversified pretty well.

36:10 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I don't get me wrong, I dig the pixel phones, but it would, it would make sense to me if Google decides, okay, we need to just cut this, just let it go and get back to the Chromebook and put more focus there and put more emphasis there, because we saw at one point in time where the Chromebook was really big for education and lower income people and it it could really make a lot of money off of it and have a real legit impact, more so than this phone that I love, because I still go out in public and people ask me which iPhone is that.

36:43 - Jason Howell (Host)
You know what I'm saying, so it's got the camera, but it's got the signature camera bar you just you don't even pay attention to your iPhone. What iPhone?

36:52 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
is that? What did you do wrong to your camera? That's literally what normal people say but yeah, if they were, if I were to walk out with a Chromebook, people know that's a, that's a Chromebook, you know.

37:04 - Jason Howell (Host)
Dr Dew and Discord says but kids hate Chromebooks, Kids hate Chromebooks, correct and the educational system.

37:12 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
They're all for it. Yeah, yeah, especially from the IT device management standpoint.

37:22 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it's an interesting like. Reading this article really got me thinking about kind of like the moment that the kind of current state of Microsoft and how Microsoft is really being heralded in a lot of ways right now for decisions that it's making and some of the risks that it's taken and kind of the trajectory that it's really shifted things since Sasha and I. I start looking at Google through that lens and thinking, okay, like you said, Paris Google's kind of legacy at this point, Like they used to be the, you know, when the internet was new, so was Google, and so they really kind of rode that wave for probably as long as they could before you kind of get to this point to where things have really just kind of the dust has settled. They are who they are and is who they are. Enough, Like I guess it's enough for shareholders.

38:15 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You say they are who they are, but who are they? Well, right, exactly.

38:21 - Jason Howell (Host)
But will they reach a point to where it's like, okay, we got to make some drastic changes, otherwise we will become a 2000s era, microsoft.

38:33 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
And with all that said, I I still will give credit to Google for at least having the guts to say you know what? This product isn't working, Kill it, and I'm talking about the Chromebook was working, but the Chromebook was working.

38:47 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah, that was where it was.

38:49 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
But you know, when they had that, what was the gaming platform called it? Stadia. Stadia. They, they like no, this ain't cutting it. And they just cut it. You know no sense in trying to hold onto that how many.

39:00 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So here's a Parlor game for you. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm not endorsing this idea because I think it's going to be silly, but just for the sake of a parlor game, if you're going to break up Google, or Google saw the pressure to break up and you were alphabet, how would? And you wanted to beat the beat the feds to it, how would you break up Google?

39:21 - Jason Howell (Host)
Oh, wow, that's a good question. I don't know, honestly, I know. I feel like that's out of my pay grade.

39:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I rest your mics off. I rest your mics off.

39:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was saying I feel like I don't know enough about the revenue breakdown to do this, Did we?

39:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
have that in some facts. Oh, you want facts? I would tell you.

39:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Because that is probably the best way to split it up?

39:45 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, I would split it with, with, with search and and advertising, and what do you mean? Split them apart? No, no, no. Keep that as one conglomerate and the rest of everything else just just cut it loose.

40:02 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But then how does the rest of everything else exist, cause, I mean, isn't everything?

40:06 - Jason Howell (Host)
else financed by search and advertising. Totally totally.

40:10 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
All intertwined man. Yeah, that's a tough one. I don't know I could see.

40:15 - Jason Howell (Host)
Is that coming, jeff?

40:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Do you think that's no? No, not at all. I don't think so at all. What's dependent upon what? Well, I think, I think there will be a breakup of something around the ad business. They can't be the dominant player in both sell side and buy side.

40:28 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah, right.

40:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And I've long said that Google, they went after Google on search, which was ridiculous, because that was a that was 10 years old war. They went around from on shopping in Europe, which was stupid, because who goes after one shopping? Their vulnerability has always been on the control of advertising and so she's. They bought, you know, all the platforms out there and programmatic came along. So the one hand I could see just splitting off the ad services business and Google becomes a client of it. I could see putting off the you know how much. So so, yes, google runs lots of ads, but Google, through its search business, also runs ads in sites around. Yeah, how do you separate that out? How do you separate out AdSense from the ad serving business? It's hard. Yeah, the search itself I don't think is as wealth, wealth making as I think as Paris's point. I don't think search itself is the core of the business, it's the ad business and the ad business is the ad serving business.

41:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, that is intertwined into the search business as well. Right, like it's all so combined.

41:39 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Right, right, I mean the hosting. Yeah, but they're of each other. Yeah, where do they stand? Where does Google stand now in the ranking of hostages? Everybody know, in terms of Amazon one, Microsoft two, google three is that I don't know, Google like pale in comparison, I think yeah.

41:55 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I think it would be a version of that, where one and two are interchangeable, but Google is definitely third fiddle, if you will.

42:05 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Right, so it's interesting. Well, all right, here's what I'm going to keep the parallel game going. How would you break up? I don't think we should. How would you break up Facebook?

42:14 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Meta excuse me.

42:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean. I think that that's a bit easier because there are distinct companies that have been acquired and folded in. Right. And only recently I don't know, was it like 2019 or something Meta decided to make them all kind of connected in the back end.

42:34 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yep.

42:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So I think it would be a Meta product More straightforward.

42:38 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I'm doing some of that, yeah. You said you don't think that this potential breakup for Google could come down the road I just have?

42:49 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
a hunch that something's going to happen especially with election season coming.

42:54 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I just got a hunch that somebody's going to put something on the table and try to scratch that itch Like, hey, we need to do something about quote big tech and say, yeah, we're looking at you, google, that kind of thing.

43:06 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, the Facebook thing is interesting is what I think Ben Evans argues is fine. That's why you split up Facebook from Instagram, from WhatsApp. You end up with three still gigantic companies that have the same business models that the giant did and doesn't really accomplish anything.

43:24 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

43:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
In Google's case. The problem again, I think, is that they got themselves in this position where buy side and sell side and advertising are together, and so you could, I guess, split off one of those, and I guess that they still want to be in the ad sense business because they want to be the place that, because they know about web content, they know what's going on, they want to place ads all across the whole internet. So I guess they would get out of the sell side. I'm guessing, I don't know. Yeah.

43:59 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Mr Scooterettes put a chart in the discord from investopedia, basically seeing how Google slash alphabet makes money and it's advertising. Oh here we go and it's a nice beautiful chart down there. It puts it in black and white. What does? It tell us 90% of revenue, and this was 2022. December 31st yeah 90% revenue was Google services and 9% was Google cloud. Wow, and now it's 2022.

44:33 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, they have a more in depth breakdown. It's also in the discord from statistics says again, for 2022 ads, google search and other properties was about 60% of overall revenue. Google cloud 10%. Google network ads just slightly different about 11%. Youtube ads 10%, and then apps, hardware and content about 10%.

45:01 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, Paris, your mic is a little light.

45:04 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think that's what it's a little light, she sounds fine, she does to you, okay.

45:11 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I can project more. Sorry, grandpa, yeah the glasses.

45:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't hear you.

45:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They just mumble. They're not talking loud enough. They're out here talking about Google ads and I can't hear them.

45:31 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So in this chart, you got all your do attention Paris.

45:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
We'll just take everything that has the word ads in it. We'll put that on one side. That's what I did, and then we're left with Google cloud apps, hardware and content there. That's easy, done that pretty much. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that solves the problem that you're talking about, though, jeff, because it adds as a whole yeah, there's the buy and there's the sell side, and that seems to be one of the big problems or big the other things is getting them into Trump more trouble.

46:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, but I'm not saying that the breaking, I think that the big breaking them up, that talk is just an attempt to shod them for it. I don't think it accomplish anything. Yeah, okay.

46:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I also think that I mean for thinking practically the FTC doesn't really have. It seems like the teeth or manpower to be engaged in multiple big tech breakups right now. I mean, it seems like the agency is struggling to even kind of manage this Amazon case alongside other things, much less try and do all of this at once. I agree.

46:36 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, real quick before I go to the break, just because there's only one more story in the little Google block here, unless something else jumps out at us a little bit later.

46:46 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Google block dude. We've been talking about Google for 45 minutes. That's a dad gum record. Hey, that's hey that's not bad.

46:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Sometimes you got to deliver on the name until it turns into general or geriatric or whatever it's going to be. Yeah, we can geriatric. Good guys, we was going to come back and we'll have rebranded.

47:08 - Jason Howell (Host)
And instead of a Dr Evil chair, it's going to be like a cane Can't over here.

47:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It's going to be one of those chairs that goes up the stairs, right that's it.

47:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It takes him to understand we can give you guys life alerts, just in case.

47:23 - Jason Howell (Host)
Sponsor opportunity.

47:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He's helping the kids. Today, I'm telling you.

47:31 - Jason Howell (Host)
Google getting into the geothermal energy side of things. Apparently, they have a site in Nevada that is powering Google's data centers With clean energy, thanks to geothermal energy.

47:47 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So you think this would be something like really clean and energy. If you look at it, it's like the pictures are there. It's like they're drilling for oil. Yeah, yeah.

47:57 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Going to walk through that cloud.

48:00 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, there we go, but hey, it's an effort. Then they can say, hey, we're doing it, it's an effort. We said we were going to, we're doing something, so at least there's that Good on you, google. All right, so when we come back for the break, we can talk a little bit about Amazon, because Amazon actually has some pretty current news. Most of it, if not all of it, related to AI, and I'd be curious to hear what you have to say about everything Amazon right now, paris. But let's take a break first and thank the sponsor of this episode of this Week in Google, brought to you by our friends at ITProTV, now called ACI Learning.

48:36
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51:44
Okay, so Amazon had a thing, or actually I think they're still having a thing. It's the re-invent conference in Las Vegas this week and had a number of announcements. So far, all pretty much well, at least the things that I threw in here. Anyways, ai related They've got some new AI chips that increase performance, energy efficiency. Everybody's kind of doing this these days, the big tech companies. They're all creating their own AI chips to really tap into their offerings. Amazon actually has two. They've got the Tranium 2, which is intended for running trained models, and then they've got the Graviton. I want to say Gravitron, but that's a ride at the fair, either head or a character in Transformers.

52:32 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Oh yeah, that could be a character in Transformers.

52:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
It's true. It does skew Transformer Graviton 2, based on ARM architecture and consuming less energy than Intel and AMD chips, and that's interesting. I get a little lost in the chip stuff. I'm kind of like, okay, neat, I'm sure somebody can really geek out on that stuff. What I'm really interested in, though, is this chat bot. Now I got a bone to pick with Amazon about this chat bot, and I know at least Jeff I know he's a good guy. I know for certain, you can probably understand this bone.

53:07
They're calling it Q, and I just don't understand this. Oh wait a minute. Wasn't there a Google In this?

53:13 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
day and age 2023, almost 2024,. Why is anyone calling?

53:16 - Jason Howell (Host)
anything Q. I could not agree more. Same with OpenAI. Openai has Q star.

53:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And it's just like come on, guys, We've got to strike this letter from the alphabet.

53:25 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, exactly, I mean, I screamed about that on Twitter. People will know you've been doing this.

53:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I got this whole long lecture about how Q has a basis in early computers. Do you watch the news people? I get it. Do you watch there?

53:38 - Jason Howell (Host)
are other basis for that. Integrate with AI terminology over the years that you could choose other than Q, I would say at this point, has enough baggage that you probably want to avoid it, but Do you think?

53:49
about that. That's me. But anyways, it's an AI chat bot. It's really more designed for business. It's not actually a business. It's more designed for business. It's not actually a consumer AI chat bot at all. But yeah, amazon getting into the chat bot game with its cloud architecture now integrating these chat bots as an option, it actually connects to all these different services, I believe, through what is it called? It's called Bedrock. So Microsoft 365, dropbox, salesforce, enddesk Allows businesses to really create. Again, we're in the same realm. They're all offering it now this customized chat bot experience designed to match just the details that you feed into it through your business. So the idea there being safe, it's secure, it's private. You're not sharing information with us that we're going to use to train our models. It's all kind of like side load for the most part. So, wow, there we go.

54:56 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
The Q chat bot. I didn't think anything about this with Amazon. All I thought about with Amazon was this was quote Black Friday and quote Cyber Monday. And how disappointing I was, disappointed. I was in the Amazon pricing these last couple of days. Did any of you all try to do something with the holiday shop in? Yes, did anything work out? Or was it just a typical? Oh yeah, this is the same old 20% off you had two weeks ago on these products, because it used to be. I remember the whole.

55:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I remember things being like People were biting each other's arms off 50% off 40% off.

55:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
And not granted some of it was junk.

55:38 - Speaker 2
I have to put my glasses down. Some of it was junk.

55:42 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You know, the TVs were junk back then, but you know. But they were 50% off 60% off.

55:47 - Jason Howell (Host)
Did you ever participate in those door buster thingies?

55:50 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
No, but I appreciated that they did have things really marked down. I did go and look, but I never bought any of them. He doesn't like people, don't forget Right.

55:59 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, that's true. That's true. Yeah, if you don't like people, definitely don't do one of those.

56:03 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I've never done one of those and then on Cyber Monday, you go to the office and jump on the company internet and try to shop while your boss isn't watching and you're working. Sometimes you'd find some really good deals, and I haven't seen any Black Friday Cyber Monday deals in a handful of years now, and this year just really stuck in my craw. If you will, I put a picture in our Discord, took some screenshots of just some random things that I would have looked for. Camera wise, let me see. Yeah, one is a Canon camera and it was marked down for 17% off and I've seen it for 20% off just handful of weeks ago, you know. So does this marketing even matter anymore? Black Friday, cyber Monday does that even matter anymore? To anybody.

56:57 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean it must because another story in the rundown 9.8 billion in online sales in the US on Black Friday.

57:06 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Man, what did they buy Record?

57:07 - Jason Howell (Host)
figure according to Adobe analytics.

57:09 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Wow.

57:11 - Jason Howell (Host)
Sales are up 7.5% over last year's numbers.

57:14 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Dude I wonder what they bought.

57:16 - Jason Howell (Host)
So, it's working. I mean, I bought a lot of stuff on Black Friday but like what did you buy, yeah? Well, I mean, it's not like presents for you know, presents for the girls primarily, and my wife and my mom.

57:29 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
So were they legit deals when you looked?

57:32 - Jason Howell (Host)
at it. Well, I mean, some of them were. I mean, really, the way I enter a Black Friday experience, or at least did this year, is I already had lists. You know, I had a list created of the things that I was going to get and so I was like okay, where can I find the best price for this today?

57:47
And so sometimes there were deals, but it was never like like, I guess what I'm saying is I don't approach Black Friday of like. I'm going to open the app and, oh my God, that's a TV 50% off. I must have it because it's like this deep discount. I have an idea of what I want, but that's how they push it.

58:01 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Where can I find the best price? Yeah, because that's how advertising works. They're like okay, it's Black Friday is coming up and it's going to be this, that and the third or what have you. And at one time it was that kind of magnitude of discounts.

58:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But now it's no different. Let me tell you something. As old as the old guy here.

58:21 - Jason Howell (Host)
The old doorbusters I need are attached to my shoulders.

58:25 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
To my shoulders or the bottom of my foot, Joe Esposito.

58:29 - Jason Howell (Host)
Those are also doorbusters too.

58:31 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's doorbuster. How did it get longer.

58:37 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You get older and you just don't need stuff.

58:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, okay, all right, I guess I'm going to get older because I'm tired of needing stuff.

58:46
Yeah, and yeah, Kim M and Discord, yeah, I get it's advertising, but what I'm saying is I remember seeing ads for this is going to be 40% off, 60% off, and you showed up to those stores and it was 40, 60% off. Now people are saying up to 40% off and it never gets to 40% off. You know it never gets there. It's always roughly 10 to 20% off, which is the same deal that they would do for the veterans day sale or the memorial day weekend.

59:22
Or prime day yeah or prime, yeah. Even prime day was being pretty crap tested.

59:28 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Good catch.

59:28 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I don't know it's just sorry for coming out, but I agree.

59:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I've tried to go on prime day and think, well, I'll assume it inspires me. Hey, they recommend things to me that I couldn't possibly care less about. Amazon way back in the day used to have good recommendations and they let you tune the recommendations so that you got better recommendations. I used to love the book recommendations. All that's just gone now. Yeah, I look at it and I see this whole overwhelming pile of stuff I don't need and then walk away.

01:00:02 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, right now I'm in my Amazon, and I'm just because I've been in there for the last couple of days and the family's been in here the last couple of days. It's pulling up stuff for the history, as it should, and they said well, here's some deals based on the things that you've been looking for. Every single one of them is 20% off. Well, no, there's a 34% off, but most of it's like 20% off and I'm thinking that's this is not special, like it used to be, you know this is just another day, I don't know.

01:00:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
First world problems. Fake door buster Right. Do they still do the door buster thing? Because?

01:00:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I'm you know, that was a thing that was totally a.

01:00:42 - Jason Howell (Host)
Thing. That was a regular, it was like be here at 5 am and none of that, you know. Then he got all the videos of people trampling. I mean, I just found those videos depressing.

01:00:50 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I was like, oh my God they were depressed Worth that I went one time camping out for days and, like you know, near near fist fights because they want to get the last TV.

01:01:00
I went one time in Greenville, South Carolina, on Thanksgiving. This is a handful of years back and I remember leaving my mother's house and I said, all right, mom, I'm going to leave a little early because I'm curious to see what this Black Friday stuff is about, even though this is a dag on Thursday and it was. It was crazy traffic to get to the best buy in that whole shopping center because people were in and it was raining and people were camped out long lines People with chairs and stuff, and there was. There were decent prices in there on some things, but not anymore.

01:01:38 - Jason Howell (Host)
Do you ever use a camel, camel, camel.

01:01:41 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I used to wear sort of tracks.

01:01:43 - Jason Howell (Host)
The price I used to that that that, especially on a day like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, I use that site a lot, so I'm like, all right, where does this discount actually? Did you use a disco around? What's that? Did you use a disco around? Yeah, a handful of times, yeah, yeah, if I was pulling something up and it said it was, what do you?

01:02:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
find.

01:02:00 - Jason Howell (Host)
He's like I can't remember. There was one. Oh, it's going to sound so boring, but there was a dish, a dish dinner thing I'm sleep, oh sexy. I'm telling you, we got our list of the things that we need and it might not be sexy. I'm not walking out with you it clearly ain't clicking by on a TV because we have a TV, but we do need a dish trainer, and the dish trainer that we need is so grown up now Little.

01:02:28
Jason, yeah, I flexed Dr Do that's right Dish trainer. But you know, got that thing for 40% of I was happy you know, oh, 40%. I feel like Will Ferrell in that movie 40% off of $5.

01:02:45 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Huh.

01:02:46 - Jason Howell (Host)
No, no, it was more. It was a simple human brand dish trainer.

01:02:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And if you knew your dish trainers.

01:02:54 - Jason Howell (Host)
I clearly don't Jason.

01:02:58 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Do you miss bed, Beth and beyond.

01:03:01 - Jason Howell (Host)
Sometimes you know it just went. I had a day off and I want to take it easy. I just want to take a trip out to the best buy and wander around, you know, and I don't get to do that anymore, yeah.

01:03:10 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I'm missing.

01:03:11 - Jason Howell (Host)
I take my coupon that was mailed.

01:03:14 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
you know the $20 off coupon JMRB nods with the proof of it in the bag.

01:03:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh my gosh, yeah, jmrb nods Best buy is a depressing place now to go in person. I went recently and it was sad.

01:03:26 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, yeah.

01:03:28 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I went in here looking for a keyboard, you just go in.

01:03:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But it's fascinating. It's just K-Bus Paris. How the business model has changed. It's now. It's now a human advertising space.

01:03:38 - Jason Howell (Host)
What Explain? What do you mean? What do you mean? Best buy, yeah, human advertising. What do you mean? Yeah, it's because it's because it's marketing space.

01:03:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So you know, Apple has a space, Microsoft has its space. I see Google has its little counter and they're paying for that presence, I see.

01:03:54 - Jason Howell (Host)
And so that people can actually have a place that they can go in and play with the things that they are. I was once just going to leave and then order online, because that's a lot Right.

01:04:05 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Which they well, I saw. I did some consulting back in the day for Best Buy and one idea one of the executives had was to have a guy at the door saying I know what you just did. You went over, you looked at that laptop. I know what you're going to do. You're going to go home. We're going to buy it online. Let's talk.

01:04:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, seriously Threatening the customers of the dollar.

01:04:24 - Jason Howell (Host)
Wow, yeah, I had that happen. What a great idea.

01:04:26 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I've had that happen to me actually. Yeah, You're going to. I know what you're going to do, because they look at me and they see I don't want to talk to anybody.

01:04:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, first, you don't like people.

01:04:35 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Right, and they see me in there literally just sort of taking notes kind of thing, and okay, and then I'm out the door. I'm literally in there five minutes and I've had someone stop me at the door and it's like, sir, let us help you out, kind of thing.

01:04:50 - Jason Howell (Host)
Now, okay. So what does that mean, though? Does that mean price negotiable, or does that? That's exactly what it was? Oh, okay, that's exactly what it was. Did that work? Did it work?

01:04:58 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
It worked that time. Okay, because I got a good deal Did yeah, I got a good deal, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah.

01:05:06 - Jason Howell (Host)
Some other things I was more into.

01:05:07 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
negotiating is inconvenience slash, uncomfortable though you know like oh, you're going to save me a bug. I'm listening, yeah, I'm listening.

01:05:17 - Jason Howell (Host)
Sometimes I'm in the right mind frame for that, and sometimes I'm like I don't. I'm listening, I just don't want to talk to you.

01:05:21 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Well, I'm listening, but it is a bit of a short, short leash, because I don't want to. I don't want you to spill, I don't want your story, yeah, right. Let me, let me get it in black and white. Okay, so you're going to save me 100 bucks, okay, cool.

01:05:33 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Right.

01:05:34 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, deuces.

01:05:35 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

01:05:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, so I was once involved in a project.

01:05:39
This is weird, because of what would Google do? This guy came to me who used to be the president of one of the biggest malls in the world and he said I have this idea and I've got to talk to you Because somehow Google met something to him and I ended up part of this whole project where his vision was that he was going to take over a gigantic white elephant mall. That wasn't done and the idea was that it's marketing space. The whole thing is marketing space that you don't go into, you don't go into buy, you go in and and you go and you can see the fashion and the gadgets and the cars and everything else and you can look at them and you can answer questions about, ask questions about them and play with them and then, yeah, you can order them right there and maybe they maybe that we know you got to cut, but what? The way you make money is by charging the brands to be there. Mm, hmm, which is really kind of interesting. Did that go anywhere?

01:06:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No, should I say this or not?

01:06:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yes, so long, so long, break your NDA.

01:06:40 - Paris Martineau (Host)
So it was in New Jersey, and for various reasons.

01:06:43 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
No, it didn't. Somebody else got it, but one of the conditions that the then governor wanted to put on us was that we had to work with Donald Trump. And my guys said no, no, wow.

01:07:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I love the alternate reality where you're in the pocket of Donald Trump, yeah, but your advertising mall the the.

01:07:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
the state person said it'd be great there could be an Ivanka boutique.

01:07:14 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
No, oh boy Imagine.

01:07:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah.

01:07:16 - Scott Wilkinson (Announcement)
I can imagine no, in an alternate world Somewhere out of the universe.

01:07:18 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I mean this exists, though, jeff and you know you're right there with it.

01:07:21 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, Somewhere in the world.

01:07:24 - Paris Martineau (Host)
You're cutting a big, big red ribbon in front of a store, that's just giant red ties, yeah, no, the red, the red ribbon is a giant red tie.

01:07:35 - Jason Howell (Host)
I like that. It's very cool yeah.

01:07:38 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That would be a good, good gimmick, anyways, okay.

01:07:41 - Jason Howell (Host)
So any any other like Black?

01:07:42 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Friday shopping, that's more exciting than a dish.

01:07:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, and anything that's more exciting than a dish trainer.

01:07:53 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Sorry for de-raining this Sorry.

01:07:55 - Jason Howell (Host)
That's. That's all I could come up with. But did you buy anything exciting Paris?

01:07:59 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I tried to think. I don't think I did. I think I got. I'm going to a wedding this weekend and I'd been meaning to buy a dress for it online and truly did not mean to buy it on Black Friday, but I just forgot, so I guess that counts. Okay, it was at a discount, all right. I was trying to get a new lens, maybe, for my camera. Got overwhelmed by the options so I didn't buy anything.

01:08:21 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, I can understand that, and it don't matter. They were only 20% off too, so that's the thing they weren't.

01:08:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was like it's not worth it. I'm gonna go into a local camera store and ask them questions, I guess before I make a decision 20% is 20%, especially on a lens.

01:08:34 - Jason Howell (Host)
That's like $1,000 or whatever you know.

01:08:36 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I mean that's things. I'm not gonna get a $1,000 lens, I'm gonna get probably a cheaper one. So it's like nah, it's like $50, probably is gonna be the difference.

01:08:43 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
But what questions do you have? I can answer real quickly. Here's your salesman.

01:08:48 - Jason Howell (Host)
I was thinking about emailing you.

01:08:51 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Should I get a different lens for my Canon camera that I use as a webcam? I'm just using the out of the box kit. It's like no, because right now you look fine.

01:09:01 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Right now you look totally fine. It's a good, beautiful image. If anything, you'd get something that's got a wider aperture, but it's not necessary.

01:09:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's kind of what I figured. Eventually, after doing some research, I was like, ah, they're all so expensive and I don't know if I was gonna get one. I'd probably have to get like a fixed lens or prime lens that I don't know.

01:09:20 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, you're gonna do a prime in this instance, but again, if all you're gonna do is just slap it on your quote webcam, keep that money in your pocket, please, ma'am.

01:09:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
Thank you, wow so instead of saving 20%, you saved 100%.

01:09:35 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Wow, this is my real Black Friday.

01:09:38 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
This is my courtesy event for us 80% because there was 20% off, so it wasn't the full 100%.

01:09:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Thank you. Thank you for keeping us honest.

01:09:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
Okay, all right, fine, not bad. Okay, let's see here. I think actually we do need to take a break, and then I don't know where we're gonna go from there. So how about you all take a look and we'll do. What didn't Leo do this recently? We're like all right, everybody pick a thing.

01:10:06 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, he was just tired. Yeah, he was worn out that day.

01:10:09 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean, I'm a little tired too, so I can use that as my excuse sure I'm trying.

01:10:15
All right, so y'all can take a look at the doc and pick out a story that you want to champion or you just wanna make sure that we talk about. But I'm gonna take a break. Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of this Week in Google brought to you by Milio. This episode of this Week in Google brought to you by Milio. Here at Twit, we are users, we are fans of Milio Photos and right now, for a limited time, milio is offering a holiday gift bundle. So you know, if you missed out on and we were just talking about Cyber Monday and Black Friday and online shopping and everything don't worry about it. Get the holiday gift bundle from Milio. Basically, this means that it's the perfect time to get started, right? The holiday gift bundle includes one full year of Milio Photos, plus easy to use editing software radiant photo. You also get a premium membership to the photographer community platform, view bug, so it's like you get a whole package deal.

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01:13:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I was thinking. The only one that really got my attention was the Adobe and Figma deal. Yeah, according to the Wall Street Journal, adobe's $20 billion purchase of Figma would harm innovation.

01:13:50
UK regular regulators provisionally find I don't get it. I don't get it. I get that we want competition in any of these, these, these spaces, be it software or cars or whatever. I get that. But at the same time, if a merger can bring a better product to the masses, I don't see anything wrong with that. Now, mr Jarvis, I know you have some background for us with dealing with competition and anti-trust and so forth, but where does this fall here for you in your opinion?

01:14:29 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, I didn't know. Bob's going to ask you and again. I think it's fine.

01:14:33 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I think it's totally fine that they would team up. Figma has resources, but they don't have Adobe resources.

01:14:41 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, that was the question that I had when I was reading through this, because I'm very familiar with Adobe. Well, I should say I've interacted with Adobe. I have not used Figma but the way this article is written and the way that they're kind of spelling out, you know, Margo Daley, who's the chair of the independent group that conducted the investigation, basically said Adobe and Figma are two of the world's leading providers of software for app and web designers. Our investigation so far has found that they are close competitors. This has the potential to impact the UK's digital design industry by reducing choice, innovation and development of new competitive products. And I guess when I read that I was like wow, I didn't realize that Figma was that major of a player.

01:15:22 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
They're pretty good. But then, at the same time, adobe has been trying to do a lot of the things that Figma does from a design standpoint and user experience standpoint. And they were getting there, but they still they weren't. Figma. And Adobe knew that and said you know what? If you can't beat them, join them, let's make an offer, which is what most companies do anyway.

01:15:45 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean I don't think you can listen to it.

01:15:48 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Figma was like yeah sure.

01:15:50 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it's like the biggest sale of a private company, I think, ever at the time, and Figma is huge among graphic designers. It is like the product as far as kind of interactive or collaborative website design and interface design. So, I think Adobe was a bit afraid.

01:16:11 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, adobe was getting there, Figma was eating its lunch. Yeah, Adobe was getting there, but they weren't there yet. And again, I think it was one of those lines of well, we can't beat them, let's buy them.

01:16:22 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Well, but that's I think you've just made the answer.

01:16:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Exactly.

01:16:26 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah.

01:16:26 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah.

01:16:28 - Jason Howell (Host)
That's it precisely.

01:16:30 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
But at the same time, figma was like sure. Well, yeah, our, our, our routing number is here. Of course, you know, of course.

01:16:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
So I don't know what does that do to the design industry?

01:16:48 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
you know, as as far as the well, but then also, let's say this deal does go through, who's to say that there's still not a bit of the Figma DNA involved in what Adobe brings forth in 2025 or so you know? Because again Adobe has been trying to I shouldn't say mimic, but mimic what Figma has been doing and get some of those customers. But who's to say that they, they want, they, purchase this, this company, and still use a lot of their developers that are there in the house and and use a lot of their design aesthetic to help make the product even better for everybody, Not just people that are formerly Adobe and not just people that were formerly Figma. For everybody.

01:17:32 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, so okay, so that happens. There is still a Figma to compete against them with that feature set versus there not being that.

01:17:42 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
if, if, adobe is buying Figma, and I think that's at the core of it, and I'm sure there's other open source options out there too, but of course, they don't necessarily compete as well. You know, and, yes, I know, a lot of our Twitter listeners are open source advocates, but I gotta tell you, um, yeah, well, not very good, and and and, well, not quite as good as illustrator. You know it, just, it is what it is.

01:18:13 - Jason Howell (Host)
And low user count by comparison, Definitely so then I think, even more you're, you're, you're making the case, you know you're making it that's just a dover prosecutor. Adobe did it right, though you know what I'm saying.

01:18:24 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Adobe did it right.

01:18:26 - Jason Howell (Host)
Adobe did it right. If Adobe wants to, yeah, swallow up the competitor, and I don't know. I don't know what money is a result, but I think what they're arguing is yeah, but what are we left with if we let you do that? Yeah, we're left with one dominant player and a couple of at least you know what you're saying, you're going to be called as an expert witness.

01:18:44 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
answer yeah again, like I said, I don't see anything wrong right now.

01:18:47 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I don't see anything wrong with the deal, um, but that's just me. I just see this being an in game of a better product out there that's available. So you know, if Adobe decides to turn into jackasses and charge a ridiculous amount for it, yeah, that's a problem, you know.

01:19:08 - Jason Howell (Host)
Mm. Hmm, okay, um Paris, paris, you Paris what did?

01:19:15 - Paris Martineau (Host)
you see, I um, I feel like this week I was particularly interested in Elon Musk going kind of mask off in his sharing of the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory. Why?

01:19:31
Um, I saw, and I admittedly I did not read into it, because I just wanted to realize I had posted a meme that pretty much just kind of goes into the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory, um, earlier this week, and then kind of deleted it either this afternoon or yesterday, um, and it was just kind of stunning to me because it is the sort of thing where, I mean, we talk a lot of crap about Elon Musk on this podcast because he's a funny man and does weird things, but this is, I feel, like a new level. The seat or I guess the owner of a tech company using that platform to spread misinformation is kind of beyond the pale, and this is coming on the heels of his whole anti-Semitic tweet oh boy Period.

01:20:21
Period where a bunch of different advertisers have already pulled out. I believe he had to go. He met, I think, with a member of the Israeli government recently to try and say hey, I'm not anti-Semitic. It really just feels like it's all happening at once here and I just wonder where this leaves us.

01:20:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
If we don't condemn. Part of my argument that I make is that we're still building the internet brick by brick, and if we don't condemn Musk, then we open the Overton window for him. However, I can hear someone saying Well then, why are you still on Twitter, jarvis? And it's the right question, because there's also people there I care about and how do we grapple with this nihilistic, narcissistic a-hole who's in charge of so much of our public discourse? It's yeah. I saw something the other day. Somebody on Twitter, a journalist said that Musk kind of got corrupted by the internet. No, musk is corrupting the internet, corrupting the internet, I mean.

01:21:27 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think it's a vicious cycle you know?

01:21:29 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it's the whirlpool that he's sitting in.

01:21:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I didn't even know anything about this story, but then again I've sort of stepped away from Twitter. Yeah.

01:21:46 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, it was essentially he had posted a meme saying that he then deleted it after it was viewed 15 million times.

01:21:55 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I think that's a big story right there, the fact that he deleted it. Considering he's Mr Free Speech and I'm going to do what I want to do, why would he delete it? You know, did anybody ask that?

01:22:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean, I think he was at deal book while we've been on this podcast, so maybe.

01:22:13 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Possible, possible.

01:22:19 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it is has become one of those words that I just kind of tune out when I see a headline come across. It's never ends well.

01:22:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, they keep reporting, as if they should report what he says in these moments.

01:22:31 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, that's true. That's true. We're kind of yeah, I think largely the industry is amplified is stuck in that kind of rut with Elon Musk. It's like, well, we have to because he's notable. Well, you don't actually, but I also kind of understand where they're coming from because, like what, if you don't, and then that ends up becoming a really, really, really big deal, then you weren't doing your job, you know?

01:22:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, I'm really surprised. I think in this case we kind of had to because, as Taylor, as Paris says, it's really awful.

01:23:04 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it is awful, I know, and ignoring it doesn't change anything.

01:23:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
And just in from about 15 minutes ago, at the New York Times deal book summit where Elon Musk spoke, he apologized for what he called his quote dumbest ever social media post referring to an anti-Semitic comment.

01:23:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah.

01:23:26 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But he told advertisers to go themselves.

01:23:30 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
And I quote actual thing.

01:23:33 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, all right, he said on stage, like at the same thing On stage on stage.

01:23:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
he said, quote I don't want them to advertise. If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money, go yourself. Go yourself. Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you're in the audience, that's how I feel, referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger Wow. Wow Wait wait, wait.

01:23:56 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Paris who reported? Was this the information or was it the times?

01:24:00 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I mean I think everybody reported. I was just quoting from a CNN article because it's the first one.

01:24:04 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Did they use the F word?

01:24:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They asked, risked it out, but I said it for you guys because I believe in free speech.

01:24:13 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
We're old guys. Jammer B is over there twitching.

01:24:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I know I'm sorry for who asked to believe this out, or whatever? I think it's important that we get the get the news. I agree.

01:24:24 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, interesting, though he apologized and deleted it.

01:24:32 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, he did, but he didn't.

01:24:33 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's the point. He didn't. That's not really an apology. Yeah, if you apologize and then tell the advertisers who left because of your comments to go F themselves.

01:24:43 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah.

01:24:44 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's not really.

01:24:46 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
No Speaking of the advertisers.

01:24:48 - Jason Howell (Host)
Wait a second.

01:24:49 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
What's next? Far as Twitter's revenue? They're not going to get that many subscribers to keep it a floating boat, right, I mean?

01:25:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
no, I don't think Before Elon Musk could even purchase them when Twitter had the most advertising revenue it has had in recent years Still, again, not much that wasn't enough for the site to be profitable. Obviously, they've slashed headcount, but Twitter blue subscribers only make up a fraction of a fraction of that revenue and now they're losing. I think the recent totals have said that they've lost the equivalent of like 75 million dollars for this year.

01:25:27 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, you probably don't want to do this, Jason, but I just went. I just I just searched Musk on Twitter and found the video. Yasha, he has the quote, the short one. What's interesting about it is the stunned silence in the room after he says, after he apologizes after the f bombs. Well, you can play it if you want. I mean, maybe you know he's going to kill you, yeah, Pretty sure not good plan. Okay, so there was stunned silence and then he says it again, and then there was kind of like nervous Twitters.

01:26:01 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah.

01:26:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, like, is this real? Is this guy saying this?

01:26:04 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, well it is. I mean, it is kind of crazy Like it's, like it's super unexpected, but then at the same time sort of retrospect, totally expected yeah.

01:26:17 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
And at the same time, it is his platform, as much as we hate to admit that.

01:26:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, yeah, it isn't. And is that guy? I don't believe it's an utility. It is his, you're absolutely right, he owns it. But what responsibility comes with it?

01:26:35 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, we believe there's some responsibility to come with it, but it doesn't necessarily, does he believe. He doesn't necessarily means he believes that it's just.

01:26:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
This is another one of his toys, another one of his and certain things that he owns, and the purchase of Twitter was not predicated upon any sort of assertion that like, ok, if you buy this, then you have to follow these rules. So yeah, I mean, I agree it's, it's his to completely destroy, but I don't agree that he should. Yeah right.

01:27:07 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
And it's also ours to fight for that.

01:27:11 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You say this for us to fight for it, yeah, okay.

01:27:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's what. What kind of came out from the Black Twitter Summit in February was you know, we built something here and you're going to have to rip it out of our hands. Yeah, yeah.

01:27:25 - Jason Howell (Host)
I think that's fair. I'd agree with that.

01:27:29 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Sometimes somebody said not there, but once you gain territory, you don't give it up, mm hmm, yeah.

01:27:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
So is that squatting?

01:27:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Um, no, it's refusing to join in white flight to the suburbs. Mm hmm, right Gotcha.

01:27:55 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, yes, ok, and I think those are the only F bombs in this show, everybody who's?

01:28:03 - Paris Martineau (Host)
so far Don't tempt me, don't tempt me Take them off now.

01:28:07 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I'm sorry children.

01:28:08 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm sorry children who are an hour and 45 minutes into this tech podcast.

01:28:13 - Jason Howell (Host)
This is how they are put to bed at night Sometimes.

01:28:17 - Paris Martineau (Host)
They just go to sleep listening to the Google change log. It works really well.

01:28:21 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
It works really well it puts them to sleep yeah it works.

01:28:26 - Jason Howell (Host)
You're not a peep, Jeff. I've got a fun one. Yeah, I've got a fun one for you.

01:28:32 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I've had a nice, nice kismet here of two stories that come together Right. But first is my favorite. It's new low in manals, manals that a tech conference made up women panelists oh yeah, and had the AI make them up. I miss.

01:28:48 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Adrian shared that with me event.

01:28:51 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, I had already put her in the rundown and she said oh, you're on top of things. I said, no, you're absolutely right, you were, you were right there with me. I couldn't agree more. Dev eternity, a dev conference made up women like Anna Boyko has an impressive profile, says Gary Gaye all routes as he's writing about this, and so he started looking her up and found out that she was not real, and there were others at the conference too. And then the conference organizer got very I guess we could call it now musky and told people to screw off and the kind and everybody's canceled out of the conference. So don't do that fella, wrong and stupid. So then that was the one story. Then the next day is sports illustrated, which is not in its former glory. Has fake authors also made up? Authors writing product reviews?

01:29:52
Sports Illustrated is now owned by a marketing company Come on, lori, yeah, I ate what. I was my friend and so they had AI generated content and they the vendor tried to say it wasn't, that they used fake authors. In any case, it was all fake, it was all ridiculous and the staff is up in arms. But I think somewhere there's a machine that's making up a fake conference for the fake speakers and the fake authors to come together Out of them with legs on. But that's another story from Paris.

01:30:25 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Okay, so if this developer conference, I remember, looking at it just briefly, they do more than one conference, they do a handful of conferences. Yeah, I think he's hurt so it was canceled, by the way. Yeah, I wonder how many you know what was their attendance like prior to this. You know, because this isn't something they just started doing today. Well, they got to be there. They got to be there.

01:30:52 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So they were like, well, let's go to the conference. And they did a lot of conferences wise, this isn't their first time, first rodeo. So what it says is they got pressure, as they will should have, for having manholes. Yeah Right, and then were they not gonna be?

01:31:06 - Jason Howell (Host)
found out like well gee, I saw that Anna was here on. Oh no, anna had to cancel. Yeah, I'm such a jerk Like how how do you do that and not think that at some point someone's going to notice. How is it not difficult, Like how is it difficult to actually get?

01:31:22 - Paris Martineau (Host)
women on the like. I mean, clearly they didn't think that they were going to. They're like well, we don't have a placeholder, actual woman we could put in here, so we'll just keep these fake women here until we find one, and then they're like well we kind of forgot about that.

01:31:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Do you all think this is happening with some of the other conferences Because people do cancel and not able to show up for some of these things?

01:31:45 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, and then I've been. I can't remember the last time I ended up on a mantle and, in fact, three people canceled. That's true, but it's not. It's not a good excuse. Yeah, at some point you cancel the panel rather than having a mantle.

01:31:58 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, okay, good point. I appreciate the rhyming. That's happening, whether you're trying to or not.

01:32:04 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Somebody give Jeff Jarvis a beatbox.

01:32:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh boy.

01:32:12 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it's so weird to me that that things like that happen. I'm like God, seriously, you really thought that Noel was going to figure that out. Like I just don't even understand what's going through people's minds. Yeah, it's craziness, what about? So we mentioned it earlier when we're talking a little bit about Amazon's Q thing and we didn't really touch in a touch base with open AI, because that has been wow. I mean, I realize you guys, you all talked about it last week on the show and it was the really big news. You know the whole the weekend drama and everything. But we're now a week further and I think last week's show we didn't know anything about the Q star thing, right, and now we do. Well, we kind of do.

01:32:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
But well, now we know something about it. Yeah, we know that it's a thing.

01:33:01 - Jason Howell (Host)
Supposedly, supposedly. I'm trying to figure out, like, what does it actually mean about an AI system? And I guess I guess the. What is it? It's Q star. There's people who are close to all the events that went down with open AI, who are at least leaking to the press that that this Q star effort in open AI is a breakthrough. It enables, it brings us one step closer to AGI, to artificial general intelligence, and one thing that is capable of doing. There we go.

01:33:36
I was waiting for that One thing, that it brings us closer to is the ability to solve at least according to these reports simple math equations. And you know what does that even mean about an AI system? If it can do that, it means that it can get that one right answer, the one and only right answer that is possible. It means that it's able to reason in a way that at least well reason in air quotes in a way that we don't throw that word around.

01:34:03
Yeah, Sorry, I'll go ahead and put my fingers in the air in a way that closer resembles humans, at least according to the things I read, not that it is that or reasoning at all, and that you know. The questions around, like what kind of applications are capable, are possible if we have an AI system that is able to do these things, and so I have more questions than answers, I guess.

01:34:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
As far, as I want to hear Paris from the wisdom of the information on this first.

01:34:34 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think I guess some important details about this is that my colleagues had reported, I think, last week, that the interesting thing about Q-STAR is that it was able to solve math problems that it hadn't seen before, which is an important technical milestone and kind of a demo of this model that had circulated within AI. In recent weeks the pace of the development had alarmed. Some researchers focused on AI safety, which kind of speaks to these, I guess, larger brewing tensions within the company that even now, like a week or more later after the whole exodus, the defenestration of altmet in his return, we still really don't have answers to.

01:35:19 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
No.

01:35:19 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We don't know what exactly the board was concerned about safety-wise or relating to his candor, if those concerns are valid or not, and no one, it seems like, within the company, outside of the board members, some of whom were not even on the board, have really spoken about this, which I think leaves us with a lot of important questions about a very important technology.

01:35:43 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, the Reuters story the first kind of broke this. A lot of people in the field got really mad at the Reuters story, saying you're swallowing this idea that it exists, you're quoting no real source and you don't really know what actually it does. Then there were fascinating fights. Jan LeCouw and I'm just loving that is not in charge of AI because he just shoots bullets and everybody's bubbles and delights in doing that, so he got to know a bunch of fights this week with people on different topics, with Jeffrey Hinton and others, but also to further plug the information, there was a very good story on the Hugging Faces CEO by Stephanie Blotzelow.

01:36:29
Did I get?

01:36:30 - Paris Martineau (Host)
that right yeah.

01:36:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
She's the.

01:36:33 - Paris Martineau (Host)
AI newsletter we were just talking about.

01:36:35 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
So they were suddenly teamed up with. Dale right. Is that right With?

01:36:41 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Hugging Faces and Dale Hugging.

01:36:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Faces. Oh, I think they did something like that they're hosting, but he went through. He was speaking at, I guess speaking at a company event. Margaret Mitchell is the head of global policy, I'm sorry, chief Ethics Scientist. Margaret Mitchell is one of the authors of the Stochastic Parents paper, so that gives me a lot of more faith in this organization than others.

01:37:04
But lower down the story it says what comes after Transformers. I think this is a critical part of this. We'll probably talk on the AI show a little bit about tomorrow, jason, just to give a plug in there for that AI inside coming up tomorrow Four club members, is that Transformers are the word prediction machines.

01:37:24
That's not a reasoning machine. And so to lash on to the word prediction machine, very expensively trained on the whole universe of all words, and I say, well, now we can make it add Wow, it can do childlike math. That must be where we're an inch from AGI. I think it's BS. That's not to say that there can't be other models and other directions that are trained differently, with different tasks. I think we might have hit the wall of what transformer based stuff can do and it's not the path to AGI in my view.

01:38:01
I don't know anything, I'm not an expert, but it just strikes me that the gulf between here and there is just too great. And the fact that this allegedly now they've added math ability, rudimentary math ability, doesn't prove reasoning to me, doesn't prove intelligence to me. A little more general task ability, okay, but I still think the limitations are huge. It's not to say that there aren't other things that are coming down the pike. It can be very interesting. That's why this, this piece in the information, really interested me. There's only two paragraphs about that part, but I think that's what you want to look for, is one of the next models that come after transformer.

01:38:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, and how, and it seems like this q-star team and kind of the various developments are working on Getting these companies there. A part of the breakthrough I believe that happened with q-star and these all this work is soot skipper, who Is one of the people who was kind of responsible for or calling the coup, but it's still at open ai and is part of this hit. He had kind of led this like breakthrough at open ai that allowed them to kind of overcome limitations on obtaining enough high quality data to train new models, which has been like a major obstacle for generating these next generation models. And I think as we start to get more and more breakthroughs like that, the questions we have to even answer you know about this technology and what it can do are going to change dramatically.

01:39:30 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Paris was really interesting. At the ai of ni attended in san russisco there was a lot of talk about synthetic data and in the big model world, oh, we don't have enough data, we've got to make up data. We got it. But then that strikes me is really kind of weird, because you're having a machine make up the data you don't know the validity of the made-up data to train the machine on and at the same time you have the coon and company who are saying no, the future is small models, not big models. Do enough to train it that you can do the task and then you have more control over it, which goes back to stochastic parents. Oh, it's fascinating debates, I think um.

01:40:08 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, we're seeing a lot of that right now, with this, the development of the kind of like the, the custom chat bots, like ai and open ai and everything like that, you know that's yeah, at least in some ways that's an example of kind of narrowing the scope but making it, you know, very specific to a Of a certain target or a certain sector.

01:40:29 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I can't remember the meta Uh person you mentioned, but you say he's been having arguments with jeffrey hinton, what was also yonlacoon. Is the meta guy.

01:40:39 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
The gary marcus piece I put in the rundown at line 58 Um, uh. So gary marcus is a really strong voice of caution, not in the crazy religious way, but just in this sanity, and I met him at the at the ai event and I respect him. So jeffrey hinton is out there screaming danger, danger will robber's the world, good to blow up right. And. And yonlacoon is coming in and say um, so hinton says, yonlacoon thinks the risk of ai taking over is miniscule. This means he puts a lot of weight on his own opinion and a miniscule weight on the opinions of many other equally qualified experts.

01:41:16
Lacoon, who takes no crap, comes in and says I just think the assumptions you and those equally qualified experts are making are wrong, and so the vast majority of the no less qualified colleagues. They go back and forth. And then comes in the andrew ning, who was a founder of google, deep mind, and I saw him too at this event and and think he's very smart. And he points out the scientists don't do this by taking a poll. They don't say well, so many scientists on this side and so many scientists on that side. And that's what this you know, yes, you can't know, you can't. Yes, you can kind of debate this has come down to yes, we can destroy the earth, though we can't. Yes, you can no you can't.

01:41:51 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's the beauty of science.

01:41:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's, that's ridiculous exactly so then the other part of this is that, europeans, we're ready to pass an ai, a lg regulation, and some countries said, whoa, we're always in this case where we're regulating, we don't build anything. We don't make any money that way, we're not employing people that way. As politicians, that's not a great thing to do. Let's hold off. And then that got the doom sayers all pissed off at the e you and the regulators who were pulling back, so that became part of this whole fight. That in comes max tagmark, who's at mit. He's a real doom sayer and it's. It's like watching um Performative wrestling now, yeah, but it's performative wrestling among these people who are very smart and know a lot, a lot of which I can't explain. I don't know Um, but it's fascinating to watch.

01:42:44 - Jason Howell (Host)
Let me tell you it's kind of stupid. Yeah, it really does feel like wrestling wrestling on twitter.

01:42:50 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well, if you go down in that post, I put up.

01:42:52 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, I see we're nano the fritis. Uh, yeah, I admire jay fran hinton. Uh, you're cloning in in andrew. But, as andrew says, this is not about opinion. The world is listening. It is now time for more nuanced arguments and solid analysis Drawn on real scientific, economic and international relations knowledge.

01:43:15 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Well said amen, well said. If you go down lower in the post you see that, uh great, marcus is trying to replace joe esposito with his Um work illustration.

01:43:26 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Good try, but you're no, joe esposito.

01:43:32 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah so for those of you on audio there are the, the gods of ai uh, in their boxing shorts.

01:43:39 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
In gloves, gloves, all four of them in gloves.

01:43:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, little boxing, shoes Okay.

01:43:45 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Nice try, that's pretty good, amateurs, amateurs.

01:43:51 - Jason Howell (Host)
Uh, interesting stuff. Should we do a little mini change log before we Get on to the next, or actually before we do change log? Is there anything else in here?

01:44:02 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Then we'll do change log and then we'll is there any other ai stuff that you did this week in ai you did one thing. Yeah, well, I think yeah, you know, okay, do you want?

01:44:10 - Jason Howell (Host)
to talk about Anthony levin dowseke's uh church of of ai, because I don't pay for bloomberg.

01:44:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
So I want to tell me about that one. Because I don't pay for bloomberg, so I don't know, I don't know what it is.

01:44:21 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, I mean essentially like okay, this is all relatively new news to me. Apparently, anthony levin dowseke, former um Google, and he was with Waymo, right, he was. He was the guy that that leaked the secrets.

01:44:37 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, they've got it yeah, famously Famously leaked the secrets of waymo.

01:44:41 - Jason Howell (Host)
Anyways, uh, apparently he's putting together or and it has been since, I think, 2015. He originally founded this in 2015 a church for Worshiping and developing artificial intelligence. It's called the way of the future. And, uh, he says there's no without irony. Yeah, no irony here. I mean, as far as I can tell, this is without irony if he's been working on this since 2015. He says he bragged that it has a couple thousand people among its members, so there's that there's always someone out there, I suppose he says quote for the last four billion years, we've had organic life forms. Now, for the first time, things are changing. We're going to have inorganic life forms. We don't know what these life forms are going to be, but we're going to fuse it with all these magical powers. We want it to give us things. He believes that, thanks to ai, humans will soon. Quote Actually, talk to god, and god can talk back to you.

01:45:38
Oh, that's, that's, that's okay, that's the church of ai Anthony. You okay, you doing, you doing, all right.

01:45:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Anthony. The thing is, jason, this is just like test grill, it's just another one. No, totally, I got that.

01:45:52 - Jason Howell (Host)
And people in discord have been have been wagering when they were going to hear test grill.

01:45:57 - Paris Martineau (Host)
People in discord were saying we should do a drinking game based on what you mentioned I think that's pretty fun.

01:46:03 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, that's true, there we go, we got there, but totally, I totally agreed. When I was reading this I was like, yeah, this really kind of merges into this familiar territory.

01:46:14 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
You know, we do need a twig bingo game.

01:46:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, we do get on that guys.

01:46:18 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, the the at the center gimme chip. That is test grill like we just Actually maybe test grill.

01:46:27 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Maybe instead of bingo, it's test grill you know, G 47.

01:46:38 - Jason Howell (Host)
So that's all it was, jeff. There's really not a whole lot to it.

01:46:41 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I can't, I can hardly even Did note this moment where I said test grails the new Gutenberg.

01:46:50 - Jason Howell (Host)
But, I did move up into here you had put in. I believe this was your, your edition, jeff the david attenborough. Oh, this is great, um ai clone, and so great so developer, yes, created a system and cloned david attenborough, so he's the.

01:47:08
you know the, the narrator that you know does all sorts of really Compelling and engaging a documentary nature yeah, usually it's nature, nature stuff, and so he did a model, he created a system that takes the model of david attenborough's voice and mannerisms and everything and combines that with a camera that looks at you and describes you as if you are a documentary. And I think we can play this because it's not on youtube.

01:47:34 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah, I think you play it's just hilarious what happens when david attenborough narrates your life.

01:47:40 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
On the left.

01:47:40 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I'm gonna start yeah, build my camera which every five seconds uh takes a photo.

01:47:48 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
He's a young geeky guy with curly hair and glasses. I'm going to start.

01:47:52 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
David attenborough.

01:47:56 - Jason Howell (Host)
David is watching.

01:47:58 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
And now, as I move around, he.

01:48:03 - Speaker 2
Here we have a remarkable specimen of homo sapiens, distinguished by the circular spectacles and the mane of curly locks, what appears to be a blue fabric covering, which can only be assumed to be part of his mating display.

01:48:20 - Jason Howell (Host)
The subtle arch of his eyebrow.

01:48:23 - Speaker 2
It's as if he's in the midst of an intricate ritual of curiosity.

01:48:28 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean, I think we all want this right.

01:48:32 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think we need this for the show. Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

01:48:36 - Jason Howell (Host)
But okay, you that, that was, that was, that was a random comment, that you threw out their pairs. But what that did for me is that made me realize, like Holy cow, like that was a convincing replica of david attenborough, and it did a really great job of Recognizing what was on the screen and explaining it a compelling way, like I could actually listen to a book, like an audiobook, like that, yeah, and just makes me wonder, like, okay, so then if, if that's right around the corner, it maybe someday we will have virtual leo sitting here at the set.

01:49:07 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I was gonna say we've got 47 years To plug in the leo gpt. We could get that going by the time he gets back.

01:49:16 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
And he's gonna come back all mellow and quiet after having been, you know, quiet for a week.

01:49:21 - Paris Martineau (Host)
We could just you know, get a leo in there.

01:49:24 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Speaking of speaking of audiobooks. Sorry, speaking of audiobooks. Yes, bird Breadthus's audiobook is out on december 7.

01:49:31 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Oh right.

01:49:33 - Jason Howell (Host)
Excellent.

01:49:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Add that my talk slowly for a long time.

01:49:40 - Jason Howell (Host)
Did they keep telling you to slow down when you were reading?

01:49:42 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.

01:49:46 - Jason Howell (Host)
Really, I can only imagine like that's, that's gotta be an experience that's, I suppose, rewarding when you're done, but pure hell.

01:49:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh it's torture and torture for the poor producer.

01:49:58 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean, yeah, having to having to edit around things, that that wouldn't be an enjoyable audio editing experience.

01:50:07 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I wouldn't imagine. We just heard the convincing adenborough, though, like they can't do that with AI. Yeah, I mean, come on.

01:50:12 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, they are doing that they are doing some audiobooks with AI. Um, I've been pitched on one and there's a guy I know that does audiobooks for different authors and he's lost some gigs because AI has been Popping in and going some books.

01:50:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I've definitely heard stories about that as well. Um.

01:50:34 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think there's gonna be. So there I I saw at a Bertelsman um investment conference About a month or two ago, uh, how hollywood is starting to use this stuff too and they're getting adjustment tools so you can. You can change the voice Based on kind of the dramatic needs or the comedic needs, right, and so I think we're gonna end up with I might have said this in the show before with markup languages like that here's the text and then you add in instructions to the AI voice, uh, so that it can, and if you go I'm sorry, gutenberg moment here if you go back long ago.

01:51:10
Oh, long ago drink, have a good old.

01:51:14 - Paris Martineau (Host)
thank you, you guys are real drunk by now. Yeah, yeah.

01:51:19 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Uh, so back long ago. Uh, punctuation was not about meaning, it was about timing the comma and a period and and so on. At a dash had certain meant some timing, because it was all meant to be read out loud. Uh, I see. Wow, so in a sense punctuation was the first markup language for audio.

01:51:39 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, oh, that's so interesting. Emphasis gives you the emphasis for your syllable of the right syllable.

01:51:46 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, but your father said that too.

01:51:48 - Jason Howell (Host)
I don't know where I got that, somewhere I got my father yeah. Yeah, emphasis syllable yeah, somewhere along the line. I don't think it was my dad, though, but yeah, um, okay, well, with that, let's uh check out the little miniature google changelog. The google changelog.

01:52:10
Because I I I did look. I just found like a couple. There really wasn't a whole lot out there. You know, it's just one of those google weeks Um slides, google slides Getting a recording tool built into the app. So you're gonna find a little record button at the bottom, at the right of the toolbar and you have a 30 minute limit. So when you've got a slide presentation you can actually record the presentation, I guess, and play it back.

01:52:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Aren't there tons of, tons of tools? Let you do this. That probably.

01:52:41 - Paris Martineau (Host)
But not on google until now not integrated into google.

01:52:46 - Jason Howell (Host)
Oh excuse me. So now it's integrated, so you don't have to go with all those other ones out there. It's uh, it's right there, right where you are. Um, oh, this is pretty interesting google is going to begin to delete old accounts. Um, so if you have an old google account that I, I think if you haven't logged into it since 2019, I think this is, I think I read, that's where it kind of starts Um, you'll want to do it, because early december, starting december 1st, google will begin to delete some of those old accounts if you haven't logged in all you have to do to log in.

01:53:22
Is that all you got to do? Yeah, that's my understanding. Is you just want to, and and then set yourself a reminder to log in once, I think it's every two years, but really just log in once a year, if you, if you want to keep that.

01:53:36 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Let go, we all have a little word for your free google account and this isn't a surprise.

01:53:43 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Google has warned us about this for months.

01:53:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, we know that this is going to happen eventually, but it's like right around the corner. So it's it. If you've not logged in on an account since 2021. So it's not 2019. It's 2021. It is at risk of being deleted. Once it's deleted, that email address, you cannot reclaim it and nor can anyone else that email addresses. My understanding is like which is good.

01:54:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I thought it was going to be the case originally, but I think that was. I'm glad.

01:54:11 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I mean that's I don't know how you don't do that. If you don't, if you don't do that, you end up with a A kind of an ongoing stream of nightmares for google and people getting a new gmail account and then getting some sort of you know highly sensitive information emailed to it because it belonged to somebody else before, and the hijinks continue from there. I have a quick question about that.

01:54:33 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Yeah, what's up? My phone pinging the email server. Is that enough?

01:54:37 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's a good question if it is pinging, it should be because you're logged in.

01:54:42 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I suppose so, if you but not everybody you're logged, actually logged in.

01:54:47 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I don't do an actual poll On my gmail. I've. When I go into gmail on my phone, I literally have to tell it all right now, connect. But it's not a it's not a constant refresh kind of thing. But if it's constant refresh, yeah, you're logged in.

01:55:02 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I do. I do this with a, with a google voice number that I have, that we have, and that Incoming calls come sometimes very rarely, but we never make outgoing calls, we never log into it and I get you know the email, like once a year or whatever. Like this Google voice account is going to go away and so I just have it in my calendar and it's not for me. It's not enough to just log in, like I'm I'm unconvinced that that's going to be enough to save it, so I actually like send myself a text message and so maybe you do that with this too, just like if you're, if you're continuously logged in.

01:55:33
I don't know if it were, if it was my account I just go over to it real quick and send myself an email and be like okay now I know I did something.

01:55:39
You know what I mean. Yeah, and maybe it's unnecessary, but it would make me feel like Better than if I hadn't. So so yeah, um, dot meme is a domain that exists, apparently, or will exist. So if you have a meme and you want to put a dot meme at the end of it now, you can yay. Um, sure, yeah, google registry, just release this new tld.

01:56:06 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You can get it. Miss martin knows this is going to be you. You're going to jump all over this one.

01:56:11 - Paris Martineau (Host)
No. Meme yourself labeling something as a meme.

01:56:20 - Jason Howell (Host)
You're so right.

01:56:23 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Oh, this is so unhipped, google, kill it now.

01:56:26 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Parasite now put it, right now Put it right in the graveyard.

01:56:30 - Jason Howell (Host)
This is where memes go to die. Maybe like okay, charlie bit my finger, maybe instead of me having to go to youtube and do a search for charlie bit my finger, I just have charlie bit my finger, dot meme and that's all you ever do.

01:56:42 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Okay but all the people who are searching for a url for charlie. In a year of our lord 2023, will never understand what dot meme is.

01:56:52 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, we're gonna put dot com every time. Yeah, that's so true. Good point, that's the. That's the challenge with all these new tlds. It's like man, everybody's gonna automatically opt for dot com. Charlie bit my finger, dot com. Does that actually exist? Charlie bit my finger, dot com.

01:57:09 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
These are they sold it as a Um in ft at one point right. Thank you nft. But then people got so upset that they brought it back.

01:57:18 - Jason Howell (Host)
Oh, charlie bit my finger. Dot com is is currently squatted. Somebody owns it, but they're just sitting on it. I just in case you wanted to know, um, a little opportunity for you. And finally, uh, google says it is looking into an issue that sees some user report, some users reporting that personal files that they had stored in their google drive account are disappearing from the cloud service. It's a pretty big deal. Yeah, I'd be super upset.

01:57:47 - Paris Martineau (Host)
That's not what you want.

01:57:49 - Jason Howell (Host)
Not, yeah, not, not what you expect. Um, you certainly don't sign up for that as a feature. Apparently, this is related to their desktop app. Oh boy and um, a google drive team member Was warning telling users not to click disconnect account within the google drive for desktop, um, because that might actually make this happen. Uh, they also warned against deleting or moving the app data folder, which I think that makes sense, um, and make a backup copy, but anyways where do you back up?

01:58:25 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
And this almost sounds like okay. Once you install this app, don't touch it, never, ever do anything to it Don't move anything, otherwise poof.

01:58:34 - Jason Howell (Host)
Because I think would would the rationale be if you move that data and then you open and then the app Goes to sync and realizes the data isn't there anymore. It's like, oh, they deleted it. We should remove from the server.

01:58:46 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I'm just guessing. I don't know if that's yeah. I'm just thinking about people that may have, like, multiple Users on their home computers. Yeah, um, and they may come in and just say let me log out of the google drive from dad and login as myself so I could put my stuff. I don't know I don't know.

01:59:03 - Jason Howell (Host)
I don't know either. And um, that is the end of the google changelog. That's it With that. I don't know. We have reached the end of the google changelog. I'm sure there's more. I'm sure scooter x is Is uh, oh yeah, youtube launching more than 30 playables, little mini games for premium us users. There you go. Um, okay, let's, um, let's take a break and thank the sponsor of this episode and then, when we get back, we will talk about some picks. I'm making a last minute pick adjustment. I had a pick and I'm removing it because I forgot. I have a really awesome pick to uh, to share with you all that's coming up. It might actually be kind of controversial, actually, now that I think about it.

01:59:43 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Oh boy, so now you're really gonna wait, right.

01:59:46 - Jason Howell (Host)
Now you're gonna wait through the ad. This episode of this week in google is brought to you by hid global. Leave the stress of tedious pki management behind In 2023 and now you know, I mean we're almost 2024 and stress less with complete certificate life cycle automation from hid globals pki as a service model. With google moving towards 90 day ssl certificates, don't get caught in a tough place. Automation is now it's. You know, it's a must-have, and hid's model of automation does not require any additional hardware or software investment no installs in order to automate the life cycles of your organization's certificates for google and max systems.

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02:01:38 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Run. I on Sunday went to go see the 2000 era cinematic masterpiece Chicken Run in theaters at Nighthawk Cinema in Williamsburg. For those that do not remember, this is the kind of stop motion claymation movie about a flock of chickens on a farm in England trying to escape and honestly it holds up. It is a phenomenal film. It is….

02:02:08 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
With or without drugs.

02:02:10 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Totally sober. It was noon on. Sunday. I mean it would have been better if I was a little high. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to say that's not true, but I was sober and it was fantastic. Honestly it was an allegory for the petite bourgeoisie's inherent suspicion of the working class. You know, you got two farmers who are really suspicious that their chickens are like unionizing kind of the whole time. It's great how do you recommend?

02:02:38
It's also, I guess, topical, I found out recently because a new Chicken Run is coming out on the 15th, chicken Run 2, dawn of the Nugget, so keep your eyes out for that.

02:02:51 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, the team that made Chicken Run there. There, I became aware of them prior to Chicken Run. They were doing Wallace and Gromit shorts.

02:03:01 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, Wallace and Gromit is fantastic.

02:03:03 - Jason Howell (Host)
Wallace and Gromit was great, I think that was before Chicken Run, or was it after Chicken?

02:03:06 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Run. Yeah, it was before.

02:03:08 - Jason Howell (Host)
Chicken Run? Yeah, I thought so. Anyways, I just really appreciate and respect their ability to do stop motion like that. It's just really remarkable and, yeah, chicken Run's fun.

02:03:20 - Paris Martineau (Host)
My other pick of the week is a video game that isn't Baldur's Gate 3, believe it or not. It is called Pentamint, available on Steam, PC, Xbox. It is a really cool game that is set in 16th century Bavaria and you are a yes, Jeff, as you might, it is related to the Dawn of the Printing Press. The animation is all wood. The animation is all wood blocks.

02:03:51
And it is about kind of the Dawn of Early Printing Technology. You are an illustrator, this guy, andreas Mahler, you are there to you know, do your little illustrations, the local monastery, but then a murder happens and you have to kind of like figure it out. But it's beautiful and the recent, you know, dawn of Printing Press Technology plays a big role in the game and all of the dialogue in the game in addition to you know, being voiced and whatnot. They have it in old, like wood block. They have it in various different fonts. It'll either be people you know, characters that are more well read or knowledgeable might have actual printed letters like a printing press. Others might have handwritten, of varying degrees of quality. It rules. It's a beautiful game, so interesting, and it ties into the Gutenberg Press.

02:04:42 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Hey, so here's the question Can I play it on my Chromebook, if you have Steam?

02:04:47 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
downloaded Steam and Android Is there a Steam and Android.

02:04:52 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, can you get Steam on a Chromebook?

02:04:54 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
If you can run Android apps, you probably can.

02:04:57 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Yeah, I can run Android apps.

02:04:58 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, Then do it and play it. You'd love it, Jeff. It's honestly really fun. Oh my gosh.

02:05:05 - Jason Howell (Host)
And you can. You can report back on its historical accuracy.

02:05:09 - Paris Martineau (Host)
It is incredibly historically accurate. They had.

02:05:12 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Oh really researchers.

02:05:13 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah it's actually incredible. They have teams of researchers, they have citations at the end of the game. If you want to go through for any of the historical accuracy of this part of Bavaria at this time, it's really great.

02:05:25 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Wow, I want to get on stage at Gutenberg Musical so I can say exactly how everything in the musical is wrong.

02:05:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think I would go over really well.

02:05:33 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
I think so too.

02:05:37 - Jason Howell (Host)
Kind of like after a presidential speech. Then the opposing party goes on afterwards and gives their statement. That's what I envisioned you doing, jeff. After that. All right, I love it. Great picks, jeff. What do you got?

02:05:55 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Okay, well, I had crap, so I'm going to go up and steal something that I had before. What should we do sometimes, folks? I want to mention real quickly Jezebel got bought by Pace magazine. The fact that it was killed was an awful thing by GeoMedia. They're going to be hiring people. Who knows whether it lives again in its glory of the past, but it should not have done it.

02:06:16 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Notably, Pace also bought Splinter, which is the politics website of GeoMedia. That had been shuttered for years. They're going to restart that before 2024.

02:06:28 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
In other magazine news, popular science is no longer going to be in print, so it means it's good timing for my magazine book. There you go, the analogy to the former of the magazine. And then, finally, I want to give credit because so often I wrote a whole book about the moral panic and stupidity of coverage of the internet. Washington Post between Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harrell and Shira Ovid Ovid, I'm guessing Do good work and Shira had a good story this week saying name drop is safe. The fear wondering about it is not, and so just calming people down when people come out with these fear stories and oh my God, name drop is terrible and it's going to bad things going to happen, and to come in and do the reporting and say, no folks, here's how this actually works, I think is a wonderful thing. I don't know if the Steve agrees or not, but I was just glad to see some sane club reporting Nice.

02:07:29 - Jason Howell (Host)
Excellent. Thank you, Jeff. And what you got.

02:07:34 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I forgot what mine was. Had to go look.

02:07:38 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
That's what happens when you get old. You start wearing your glasses down. You just pull those down at the tip of your nose.

02:07:44 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I tell you my day.

02:07:47
My pick to one of them is, as I've mentioned before, I watch a lot of YouTube as part of my television and this time it recommended something to me totally out of the blue. That was again quite awesome. City Nerd on YouTube channel has a YouTube channel. It's called City Nerd and it's so dad gum fascinating sans the bridge talk, because I know that's not for you, mr Jarvis, but he goes around from town to town, basically just taking a look at how cities are laid out from a pedestrian standpoint as well as just how is the city's infrastructure doing for the climate and ecology and so forth.

02:08:35 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Does he travel to?

02:08:36 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
them Not too often. He now lives in I think he now lives in Vegas, and but he's really about his taste in cities.

02:08:44
Well, he's well, he's well Henderson, but he's he's really big on just walking everywhere, riding his bike everywhere and he looks at public transit options and how good they are in this city versus that city and he does a pretty deep dive into different laws and bills and whatnot that came up based on the states and it can get pretty nerdy but it was interesting and it's just City Nerd and he has a really, really dry delivery but I dig it. It's just matter of fact, to the point, kind of thing you know. And lastly, I want to give a shout out to my nephew.

02:09:21
Some of you may not notice I think some folks here in the studio know, but my nephew, he is back home in Carolina and he was named the region's defensive player of the year at my old high school and just happy for him and it's good to see this because he was this close to moving over here with me. I tried to talk, tried to talk my sister into it, because he had his moments of being a bit of a jerk of a kid and I about drafted him and brought him out here to stay for a year and a half and to try to get him back on up and up, if you will. And right there it sort of proves that he's got the resolve and the will to get on the straight and narrow. And yeah, I'm very very proud of my OJ nephew.

02:10:14
That's what I call him OJ. So shout out to you OJ Right on Nice, that's cool.

02:10:20 - Jason Howell (Host)
And City Nerd on YouTube. I love. I just love how they're literally like there is a person who is passionate about every single thing, that's possible and has figured out how to like create hundreds of hours of videos about that specific thing and find their audience for it.

02:10:41 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I don't know how many videos I've watched, and they're 15, 20 minutes long each, you know, and I've watched a ton of them over this weekend, and it's just various information about public transit and this town has a better walkability score versus pedaluma. Does you know just stuff like that and I'm like, okay, I get it. Considering colleges and whatnot, you know, because if you go to college are you going to be walking everywhere or are you going to be forced to drive everywhere? Totally, looks at all of that stuff is pretty, pretty interesting.

02:11:13 - Jason Howell (Host)
Interesting. Thank you, I'm like, I'm like on the fence on this one.

02:11:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I'm like dude you piced it up so much you gotta go for it. I have to.

02:11:22 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mentioned it. So I came across, like a month or a month and a half ago, a Reddit thread that mentioned something about YouTube ads and Albania and how if you set your VPN to Albania and you go to YouTube and you play anything and you don't have a YouTube premium account, you won't see any ads. So I'm torn on sharing targeting people in Albania. Albania apparently has a restriction on against ads in YouTube, and they're not alone. There's a. It's Albania, moldova, myanmar, ethiopia. If you have a VPN that has a location that you can set in any one of those countries and then you go to YouTube or you go to Twitch and you watch content, you will not be served ads.

02:12:11 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Wow, Hard. However, is going to speak to you in Albanian. Yeah right, yeah, I suppose that might happen.

02:12:17 - Jason Howell (Host)
But anyways, I just thought it was really interesting and I know you know like I feel weird sharing that because like we are ad supported and yet I know we hold on, Hold on Just how we are at supported by outstanding sponsors, not that crazy banner crap that shows up on web.

02:12:36
Yeah it's different, you know, but still it kind of feels a little bit critical to talk about, you know, ways that you can block ads. But but I think it's interesting because I hear, I have heard many people you know, protest and cry about the fact that, like you know, YouTube's blocking ad blockers now and blah, blah and I. But meanwhile, like I learned about this a month and a half ago, I'm like, well, you don't really need an ad blocker.

02:13:02 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It actually works.

02:13:03 - Jason Howell (Host)
But anyways, that's fascinating, it's interesting I want. What I want is to know more about the why. I want to know why in those four places, if you have it or if you're traveling there, you won't see ads and Twitch and YouTube and everything. It's just really interesting kind of factoid. I think it's likely that Google just doesn't do business there, right. Yeah.

02:13:23 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
So they just don't have ads there.

02:13:25 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, and I know that's, that's harm, that's hurtful, for if there's a creator in Albania, they're not going to be able to monetize their videos, you know. So it also has a damaging effect.

02:13:37 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
They can still bacon their ads.

02:13:39 - Jason Howell (Host)
Well, that's true, that's true so anyways, there's a little tip for you. Some people will appreciate it. Some people will be like, why did you just share that? But I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting and that is the end of this episode of this week in Google Always a lot of fun. I'm so happy and feel I don't know, I just I really look forward to the opportunities to sit in this chair when Leo is away. I enjoy joining you all and talking about some Google and all sorts of other things.

02:14:11 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
It is pretty cool that you're sitting in a chair, because it makes this table much more comfortable.

02:14:18 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Wow, we've got a trap. Leo in the mountains more often, put them on a technology reprieve more often.

02:14:27 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I'm super curious to hear what he has to say when he comes. Yeah, me too.

02:14:31 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Do you think he's going to come back a changed man, or do you think he'll be like I was bored the whole time.

02:14:36 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I would be bored. Jammerby says no to being changed and yes to being bored. Yeah.

02:14:43 - Paris Martineau (Host)
I think, a trust jammer be.

02:14:45 - Jason Howell (Host)
I think a little of both. I actually did the thing that he's out right now, and your thoughts.

02:14:49 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Oh, how was it then You're speaking like you don't know what we're talking about. You're an expert.

02:14:54 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, I did it five years ago. It was amazing Like it literally changed my life.

02:14:59 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
I would love to do it. I would love to do it Because I enjoy just doing staycations and kicking everybody out and just being able to have that sensory deprivation. I totally dig that. Yeah, sensory deprivation.

02:15:14 - Jason Howell (Host)
I mean it's not the kind of experience where, like he's in a room, you know a vacuum of a room and his devices aren't there, and that's like the extent of the week you are challenged. It is a very challenging week and the not having technology is like day one, that's just day one and then the entire week that you're there, you're doing a lot of really hard work.

02:15:35
But yeah, it was incredible. I highly recommend it and I also understand the skepticism around it, because not a lot of people choose to do that. Not a lot of people choose to say I'm going to go there and take a look at my life and identify the things that work for me and identify the things that don't, and then changes around it. Not everybody's going to do that, but if you can and you do, it's really wonderful.

02:16:01
So I'm super curious to hear when he comes back to hear what he got out of it, because I got an insane amount out of it.

02:16:08 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
That's right.

02:16:09 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, anyways, I didn't know I was going to go there. Thank you everybody. Paris thank you so much I love doing this podcast and I really had a great time podcasting with you today, thank you. Thank you likewise? Yeah, is there anything you want to share with people? I know the information is where people can follow your work and everything.

02:16:28 - Paris Martineau (Host)
Yeah, I don't know, read my stuff. Follow me on Twitter. Or blue sky at Parisnyc on blue sky and at Paris Mart no on Twitter.

02:16:38 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, there you go. Thank you, paris and Jeff. Of course, always a lot of fun hanging out with you here. We get to hang out again tomorrow on AI. Inside and Club Twit. And what do you want to plug? Looks like the Gutenberg parenthesis and magazine.

02:16:53 - Jeff Jarvis (Host)
Gutenberg parenthesis out in audio next week on the seventh, and magazine with a really cute cover. Much shorter, quick, fun read about magazines just as they die around us. Oh, gutenberg parenthesis dot com and you get discounts to both Right on.

02:17:08 - Jason Howell (Host)
Thank you, jeff, and I'll see you tomorrow. We'll actually have read. Albergati is going to be on AI Inside tomorrow to talk all about open AI, so we got lots of fun stuff to talk about. And, pruitt, thank you for sitting here in person, right next to me. What do you want to point people to?

02:17:25 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Go check out. I normally say antpruitt dot com slash prints. For this time I'll say antpruitt dot com slash puzzles. Oh, so with that, if you go there, you can get puzzle versions of some of my photography. Oh, that's cool. So go check it out. It's a great idea, could be a good gift and you know, something you can put up in the on the wall. Still, some of my one of the far right looks like it would probably be that challenge.

02:17:49
Yeah, that one is going to be challenging to you because it's not a lot of detail there. That's me taking a photo of the Milky Way and, yeah, antpruitt dot com slash puzzles. Love it until everybody else right on Cool.

02:18:05 - Jason Howell (Host)
Thank you, john. Thank you, benito, here in studio you can. I created a site called Reagan dot fun, so go there.

02:18:14
Oh yeah, that's all the different ways that you can find me online it's just easier to say that than all the different social networks and stuff but also doing tech news weekly with Micah Sargent tomorrow and then, shortly after that, ai inside with Jeff Jarvis. So we'll be recording that live, of course, through YouTube. If you are a club twit member and if you aren't a club twit member, well, you really should be seven dollars a month. Twit dot TV slash club twit you get access to the discord, so you do get access to all the live recordings of our shows, which you can get to that through YouTube if you're not a club member. But you also get pre and post show stuff. You get bonus content. You get shows that you don't get outside of the club, like AI inside, hands on windows, hands on Mac, the untitled Linux show. I mean there's, we've just got so many it would be. Yeah, there's, there's just a lot waiting for you there.

02:19:08 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
You get access to the discord book, the book club book club bonus feeds had all kinds of stuff in there and there's a couple of fireside chats and AMAs and lots of fun.

02:19:18 - Jason Howell (Host)
Yeah, it really is great and Ant's been really doing such a great job of wrangling that service and keeping it active and keeping people engaged and yeah, and the and the discord.

02:19:30
So anyway, seven dollars a month twit dot TV slash, club twit, and I think probably more than that because it's all really great. But you are supporting us directly when you go into the club and let me just tell you right now that comes in really handy. That's instrumental to us at this moment in time. So thank you for that. For this show, twit dot TV slash, twig TWIG. That'll take you to our show page on the web where you can subscribe to the show in all different kinds of formats. We actually do record this live every Wednesday, 5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific, 2200 UTC, and so you'll get it in your feed later in the evening when you subscribe and it automatically downloads for you. I hope that's what's happening for you. Hit auto download hit auto download.

02:20:15 - Ant Pruitt (Host)
Yeah, make sure that it's doing that.

02:20:17 - Jason Howell (Host)
Anyways, thank you so much for for hanging out with us for the last couple hours, and Leo will be back next week. We'll see you next time on this Week in Google. Bye, everybody.

02:20:27 - Scott Wilkinson (Announcement)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson here. In case you hadn't heard, Home Theater Geeks is back. Each week I bring you the latest audio video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system, product reviews and more. You can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twit, which costs seven bucks a month, or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only $2.99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of Home Theater Geek-a-tooh.