Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need.
It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, Accounting, Inventory, Ecommerce, and more. And the best part? Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.
That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's ODOO.com Support for the show comes from Odo.
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, Accounting, Inventory, Ecommerce, and more. And the best part? Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's ODOO.com. How's the weather?
It's spectacular here. I mean, it's just beautiful. Do you want to know what I've done the last couple of days? No, tell me.
Yesterday I was in Atlanta speaking to the good people at Chick-fil-A. By the way, the most successful restaurant in the world right now, in terms of dollars per square foot, it's literally just... And also, I was thinking about you. They're actually quite progressive.
I think they got a pretty better app. Do they? I don't know. I don't know.
I don't like take out places. But go ahead. My sons love it. My sons go there all the time and eat up the whole place.
No, I'm at the management team. It's very diverse. Because anyways, they're literally the most... Because they're not private and they don't announce earnings and that CNBC doesn't go abeshit about just...
This thing is just a phenomenon. I was there, then I got on a plane from Atlanta to London, and then went and spoke to the folks at IMG, which is at Monster Sports Management Company Division of William Morrison-Dever. And listened to a bunch of guys in the Central hallucination talk about how cable and ESPN was coming back. But that was lovely.
It was lovely. People that are really friendly and really nice and... Good. Okay.
Not a lot about Premier League. Anyways, that's what I've been up to. What even up to him? Scott's on a world tour.
Oh, I've been reading the Isaac's in book for my interview today, which is going to happen later. It's just been doing stuff. With Walter? Yeah.
Well, Cal, I don't agree with your assessment of my... We're not having a selection. We're not accountable. That guy literally looks like Ronald Reagan and James Carvel made it.
If James Carvel and Ronald Reagan had a baby, it would look like... Yeah. It would look and sound like Walther Isaacson. No, all right.
Okay. Just to see the Chick-fil-A controversy was that its CEO directed a lot of money going to the Terrell Donations anti-LGBT organizations. And then in 2019, a couple of years ago, they made major changes to its Terrell Foundation, and they ended the donations. The CEO, Dan Cathy...
The founder made some homophobic comments that he justifiably got real strong pushback. But what's interesting is that it's been like a poltergeist haunting them for the better part 11 or 12 years. And if you go down there, granted really nice and robust. But if you go down there and you meet the management team and you just kind of get a feel for them, they're more progressive than a lot of companies.
Yeah, it's complicated. But that CEO definitely had some issues, as they say. And that said, my sons knew about this many years ago and they kept going, Mom, I'm all for gay and lesbian rights, but the chicken is delicious. Sorry, Mom.
They said, we have tried them all and they would eat it. And I said, OK, you make your choices, sons. They also love In-N-Out, who had a little bit of a controversy around biblical things. And anyway, that's the Psalms, whatever it is.
Yeah, everybody should do how deal with these things the way they want to, instead of getting all exercise. I don't happen to like fast food that much. I like a McDonald's hamburger every now and then to cheeseburger, but that's about it. They're not very often.
Anyway, we have a lot to talk about. What have I been doing? I don't know. I'm headed to a wedding this weekend.
My friends from sixth grade are getting married, second marriages. And I'm very excited to go to their wedding. It's very nice. It's very nice.
And I'm going to another wedding, the next weekend with two lovely young lesbians who are going to run the world someday and their amazing. So we're doing that. It's a lot of weddings. Well, you know what they say about second marriages?
It's a triumph of hope over experience. No, they're great people. They're going to be very happy. They know each other whole lives.
And so I'm very excited for that. It's going to be fun. And I wish them all well, all both couples very well. You know the difference between a first wife and a second wife.
Oh, my God. The second wife has real orgasms and fake jewelry. Oh, sorry. Sorry.
Anyway, I knew you couldn't get it. Couldn't pull out. Good. I'm not even touched that one.
I'm not even going to touch that one. Don't try not to touch anything, Scott. That's my philosophy for you in general. We want to keep the show going.
We have a lot to talk about. Big text, big gathering on Capitol Hill, obviously, speaking of not touching. Google's landmark antitrust file and a new job in journalism that Scott would be perfect for, which we will get to first. Scott, I predict this may be your last episode of Pivot USA Today.
And apparently the Tennessee end is looking to fill positions for a Taylor Swift reporter and one for a Beyonce reporter. The two roles will be focused on capturing the musical cultural and economic impact of the two icons. Wow. I mean, Scott, this is your opportunity.
How far you along in the interview process be honest with me? Well, I got through the interview process, but somewhat of my first wife, they claimed I had revenge issues to which I responded. We'll see about that. That's good.
What if it's not good? That was good at all. What? No, that was good.
But what do you think about this? I mean, that's interesting. They are economic powerhouse. The dark house.
The dark house. The dark house. I would add Barbie in there too. But what do you think about?
I'm a Taylor Swift reporter. You know, I mean, I forget more about journalism than I'm going to know what you're saying. It's a little specific. I mean, I think you should.
I think probably if you're a natural, I guess, but she's sort of such a two one, everything of the VMAs and was totally elegant in doing so. She really is one of these central figures right now. That's not going to last presumably. There'll be other artists and everything like that.
I think to have a major artists reporter, sure. Right. And who are yes, I see that. And of course, right now you would focus on her and Beyonce.
But I don't know. It seems, I mean, you know, it's not a fan one. It's not to say what she's dating or things like that. It's about, well, yeah, kind of its cultural and economic impact.
Yeah. So when I first read this, to be honest, I thought it was a head fake is trying to get a press release for USA Today. Although I did get a scoop about supposedly her 45 ex-boyfriends are collaborating on an album. Do you know the title of the album?
No, what is it? Look what you maybe do? Maybe it's about you. Oh, wow.
OK, oh, God, you know, you're pushing against the tide with hating on Taylor. I can see a reporter about it's like a cultural or I don't know. We call it lifestyle reporter, but devoting reporter to one artist. I don't know.
It doesn't kind of signal the downfall. That's like, isn't that ringing the bell at the top of the room? I think they'll do well with it. People love to tell us to have been Beyonce content and they have huge fan bases.
I think fan economy is more and interesting. I think that would be like, how does the fan economy work and how the marketing, that could yield a million stories about really interesting and go everywhere. You know, not just influencers, but all kinds of places. Because I think the fan economy deserves it.
In any case, the Apple event sort of came and went. What did she think of that, Cara? I just watched their, did you watch their mother nature video they did? Oh, about how they're going to try and solve climate?
Yes. Yeah, they had what's her name? She's a great actress. It's Octavia Spencer.
She was playing mother nature and Apple offices are already carbon neutral. This building is carbon neutral. Yeah, we do it with a mix of clean energy and eliminating greenhouse emissions. It's kind of like if you want to seriously explaining carbon neutrality to mother nature.
Right. No, sorry. You want to tell me how photosynthesis works too? Don't.
Tim Cook was in it super awkward. A lot of the executives actually were in it. And it was all about how they come up to speed on their on their sustainability stuff. And and mother nature came to check on them.
It was no, no, I, no, I wish it did. I don't, you know what I mean? I see the like it was a good idea on paper. So, but I don't know.
It just was it wasn't a lot of the new phones. I think the biggest news, of course, is better cameras, of course, is always. And the cameras are spectacular. This USB charging and the action button, I guess this is USB C.
Everything is changing to USB C. Some people think they were forced by Europe, but you know, it's the direction everything's going. Everyone should be having the same chargers instead of the lightning ones. USB C.
Adapters will now be available on Apple's website for $29. This is a little dongle you're going to put on. Following the event, Apple stock drop 2% of time, taping remains down. It's been getting pummeled.
I think people are wondering whether you're going to buy one. I haven't rushed to buy one. I don't quite see the point. My phone is in good shape.
There's only so many times people go to the well here with this thing. Although I always upgrade, but not necessarily as quickly. I don't know. What do you think?
This felt to me like the least exciting or buzzy new iPhone, which is I couldn't, you know, a different charging port. It felt sort of I'll get it. I'll get it because I want the newest one and I like to, you know, it's something I just do when they come out with a new one. But what's remarkable here?
I mean, so he said a couple things and there's been a lot of headlines around the stock, not crashing. Although it's been up for the year. Let's be clear. It's from 125 year to 175 and over one year.
It's like tripled in the last five. I mean, people would pray for the stock performance. Last month is down last six months. It's slightly down.
I would argue for the last 10 years. It's arguably the best managed company. They have they have massively increased service services revenue, which is high margin. Despite the fact that they don't sell as many phones or this year, they may pass Samsung, an iPhone user is worth something like seven to 10 times more than an Android user.
At the IMG thing, I said, well, you know, Apple could buy Disney for a 5% dilution. I mean, one company's trading at $3 trillion, and Disney's at $150 billion. And the guy correctly said, this is really interesting guy starting the British basketball league. They're starting a basketball league here.
He said, why would Apple want to buy Disney and take on that headache? Why wouldn't they just continue to charge 30% if they want to download, you know, the Hulu or the Disney Plus app? But yeah, it's Apple, you know, they've done whenever anything looks like it's flattening, they do a great job of taking capital and finding other, other means of growth. I just don't.
It's just how many times can you pull a rabbit out of a hat? That's all. That's the, you know, they really are quite, you know, they have kept going for a long time and this action button on the side is interesting. You know, it's always interesting.
It's, you know, I just, I think I have not rushed to buy it yet, which is interesting. And I don't know why I just, you know, moving myself over as a pain. I think that's one of the reasons I probably will. You can customize what this action button does.
It's just making it easier and easier to use. It replaces that ring vibrate thing. So yeah, okay. Good.
What I would be really interested to know is that, I mean, for the first time, Apple's now getting in the crossfire of this non-shooting war, the straight war, I'd be really curious to know, because I think Tim Cook is just an enormous brain. To what extent, what percentage of their supply chain have they diversified away from China? Because I remember waking up three years ago, I was on the board of urban officers, because, you know, I'm quite important care. And we were talking, we woke up one day and realized that a scary percentage of our tops were made in a small radius outside of Shenzhen or whatever, whether it was closed because of COVID and supply chain diversification or trying to create a more heterogeneous supply chain for diversity has been just the call sign of supply chain officers.
And now even, I think just recently, Mexico surpassed China for the first time or renewed or recaptured their crown as the leading exporter into the United States. But almost every board I've been on or talked to, they're all trying to figure out how to diversify their China exposure. They definitely are exposed more than almost, except for Tesla, Tesla and Apple are the two companies that are most exposed in that country. You know, I do think they have to, they have to, they absolutely have to.
I think that's what I would focus in on rather than these sort of upgradeable products. I mean, the same thing with the Apple Watch Series 9. I don't think I'm going to, you know, it looks the same. It has a brighter screen.
The Series 8 is still pretty good. Like same, it's a lot of same. Actually, the data, I just found the data. So 80% of Apple products are manufactured in China, but it's 19% of the revenues.
What would really hurt Apple is that they started clamping down on their operations in China. I think actually they're more Apple employees in China than they are in the US. So while on the demand side, it's obviously important. It's one fifth of the revenue.
It's four fifths on the supply chain side of their products. So that's what's made them so strong. China did say that it doesn't issue any ban on Apple's iPhone, by the way, but they had security issues. It's super confusing just for people to understand is that the Chinese government said that we've always been open to foreign companies and welcome to seize opportunities and share their fruits of China's economic development.
So many media reports on security incidents of the Apple's iPhone attaches great importance for information and cybersecurity. So they're raising these security issues after this journal story about banning the iPhone. They dropped the shares. I mean, it's obviously they're in the middle.
We're in the middle of an issue with China. So and it's not one that's going away any time soon. It's actually the next century. And this is what it's going to be about.
We will not be around for the last part of that century. But in any case, something you see here now is Drew Barrymore is facing backlash after returning to work on her show during the ongoing strikes. She posted an explanation on Instagram saying the show return is in compliance with not discussing or promoting any struck work. She's technically correct.
Talk shows a lot of different contracts than those expired when it deals not reached. But the WGIE's responded on social media saying the show was indeed a WGA covered structure itself in his returning and violation of strike rules. Picketers are assembling outside the broadcast center. We're taping new episodes as begun.
Barrymore is a member of SAG After and initially stood in solidarity, stepping down from hosting the MTV Movie Awards in May. Of course, she's not the only one. Your friend Bill Maher announced a real time while also be returning without writers or writing. Maher has already caused controversy surrounding the strike calling the demands cookie.
He was relatively calm in his explanation. He said there's more people involved. He won't stay calm, of course, but but he, you know, he's like more people involved. We're not going to do the, I guess, the beginning monologue and some of the stuff he does from the desk and some of the essay stuff.
So he's not going to do writing. So it'll be more panels. Stephen King immediately wrote, this is how strikes are broken. I don't know.
What do you think? What do you, I was supposed to go on right before the strike. I would not appear on the show. I would have to say I would have real issues with appearing on the show.
Just, it just seems, I get, you know, just for people's context, in the last strike, I think they went back six weeks after in the middle of the strike. A lot of the, the, the hosts did return without writing. So it's happened before. So I'm not sure people don't like Bill Maher too.
That's an issue with it. So what do you think? I think this is the beginning of the end. If you look at the strike, I think it was the UAW and UPS that got solved because both had incentives to end the strike and UPS is making money.
And if you look at, I believe the strike that the UAW is threatening, I think it's the UAW, X, I think it's the teamsters and UPS, excuse me, but the strike that the UAW is threatening against the automobile companies, I think that'll get solved. Cause I think they're demands. While they're asking for a lot, their demands are fairly easy to understand. We want to make more money and also the automobile industry, including the domestic automobile industry, is fairly healthy.
So they have incentive, both sides have incentive to solve the problem. And there's, there's juice to squeeze to be squeezed here. Whereas if you look at the riders, they chose to strike in a period of absolute disruption and falling revenues from the people they were striking against. Not all of them, but yes.
But go ahead. Yeah. Because Netflix was doing rather well in tech companies. Netflix is doing well.
Tech companies separately because it doesn't, economics don't matter. Yeah. But show me the companies are picking in front of it. I'll show you a company whose stock is at a 10 year low and who's operating margins have been crushed.
Viacom's off to 75%. This needs at a 10 year low time Warner, Warner Brothers discovery is, if you look at the debt, it's basically off 50%. I mean, anyway, they just, that's an example of a strike that was totally, was miscalculated, mishandled. And taking too long, I would agree.
I think this, the length of this, they had to expect these people, because they hadn't previous strikes. These, these talk shows especially had, and you can't just watch the anti union shops like Greg Guffield grab everything. I, the interesting to see if this group of people that's doing this podcast of talk show hosts are going to, which one's going to fall first? Strike Force five.
I was meeting with several producers, writers and you can, they were, they were talking amongst themselves that they're thinking about going back to work and then agreeing to comply retroactively with whatever the conditions are of a negotiated strike. Yeah. You can just see the atmosphere. It's here.
The most powerful on the writing side are the ones that don't need new conditions from the strike. Well, they're also getting showrunners are starting to get together. I have no numbers, showrunners and they're cracking. That's the bottom line.
That's it is. I mean, one wrote me it's a mass that funny as tweet though, was Katie Delaney for every surprising group, Harry Moore is an equal, but opposite unsurprising Bill Maher. You know, it is interesting that she went first to give him cover because everyone's like, Oh, it's Bill Maher being Bill Maher, but it is. You're right.
It's a break and it'll, these showrunners are where the rubber is going to meet the road because they are starting to really feel the pressure. The fact that they haven't, I mean, here's the tell why I came to dog. If you didn't know there was a rider strike, would you know? Yeah, no.
Would you know? And if consumers don't miss you, then you have no leverage. And these guys have no leverage. Well, their whole point is eventually you'll know you'll feel it.
Eventually we're over 130 days into the strike and look at what happened with the team's steamsters and UPS before they went on strike. It was settled. And I believe I think you're going to see a strike with the UW. I don't think it's going to go very long because guess what?
Their demands are pretty clean and rational and the people striking have leverage. Well, we'll see. That said, I'll be interesting who goes on the show. Would you?
I don't think I would. No, I wouldn't. Yeah, I was thinking about that. Not the true parent or whatever, call me.
But if Bill Maher, I don't think I would. And you know why? Because I'm in a position of privilege. And that is I don't need the show.
But there are a lot of people who need the money. And I'll give you an example. My first time was this is high character person with these Midwestern values. And she got it from her parents and specifically her mother.
And her mother was a school teacher. And her mother, I remember the LAUSD teachers union had struck two or three times in her career. She'd been teaching, I don't know, the seventh or the eighth grade commission, hard at the stage 12 and third generals. She'd been teaching for 40 years and she never would.
She like missed one day. And when they would strike, she wouldn't go on strike. She was like, I'm here to teach kids. And she just refused to ever engage in not showing up to work and teaching kids.
And I think that I think you're going to see, she did it for the right reasons, but I think you're going to see a lot of these people in the union decide for a bunch of reasons that they're going back to work. Yeah. I don't know why I brought up Barbara Spencer. Anyways, hope she's well.
Nice one. Let me say, I think Drew Barrymore is the more important figure here because she's well liked. And she, you know, she gave people a calling her scab all over Twitter and social media. But I think Bill Maher, everyone's like, Oh, yeah, of course, but he's such pain in the ass.
I think it's entirely flipped. No, but I mean, I'm talking about when people go, Oh, she's doing it. Oh, I see what you're saying. I mean, they expect it from Bill.
They don't expect it from Drew. Right. Yes, they're like, of course he's going to do it. He does go on to her.
She'll punch her in things, you know, with her. It's a little different from a perceptible people will be like, well, she's a nice person. I don't, she's not really a scab. You know what I mean?
It just, I think it has more damage than no more. I do. It's just so funny. The difference between perception and reality.
And that is I've been on Mar three times and I've gotten to know a little bit the staff or a little bit about them. I have never seen so many people who have been with one person for 10, 20, 30 years. Yeah, they have. I mean, he is very loyal to his staff and his staff is very loyal to him.
He is. I would say that some of them are worried about his sort of right shift. I've heard that from people there. But they think he's got Red Pill?
A little bit and you know, a little bit, but it doesn't really matter if you like him. You like him. You don't. Well, he's worried about your leftward shift.
I'm such a capitalist anyway. I don't, but I wouldn't go on it either show. I just was like, let's just let this thing settle. I wish, I hope they settle.
People I know it not on Joe's that show, but a lot of them are really suffering. They 100% are. What does it mean for a large lot of people who've been out of work for 100 days, three and a quarter months, and they weren't expecting it? Yeah, this is how strikes this is how strikes are broken, as Stephen King said.
Anyway, let's get to our first big story. Well, there wasn't a cage match, but Elon Musk marks Zuckerberg in the biggest name to tech, the Senate on the Capitol Wednesday for a special AI forum organized by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. They all of course had to sleep over at my house. No, they didn't.
No, they didn't. The 60 senators attended the closed door meeting with topics including open source models, security privacy, Musk and Zuckerberg were seated at opposite of the table. I mean, honestly, who cares? Here's what Musk told reporters after the summit.
I think it was very civilised discussion, actually, among some of the smartest people in the world. So I thought Senator Schumer did a great service here in humanity here. I think we'll come up with this. I think this meeting may go on in history as being very important for the future of civilisation.
Jadi, such a drama queen. OK, fine. Whatever. It's a meeting.
I thought I want this meeting to be more than a press release. I suppose the reusable conversation. I think I'm in the same camp as of all things, Josh Hawley and Senator Warner all in the same camp. I don't know why it had to be private.
These Warren said these tech billionaires want a lobby congress to be on closed doors with no questions asked. That's just plain wrong. Senator Marshall Blackburn, not exactly a friend of Elizabeth Warren, said a statement, Congress has always conducted business and the Sunshine Today's Forum should have been no different. Senator Josh Hawley called it a cocktail party for big tech.
They all raise their hands when they said there should be regulation. Elon said apparently it's important for us to have a referee. One of the contentions was open source systems that public and access Zuckerberg is pushing that, but some people think it's dangerous. Zuckerberg said open source democratises access to these tools and helps level the playing fields and foster innovation people and businesses.
He has an argument to make. What do you think? What do you think? I disagree with the statements about Sunshine.
I think it was actually probably likely much more productive behind closed doors because whenever it's on camera, the people looking to raise money off of YouTube clips by doing identity politics and accusing them of being billionaires, Senator Warren, or on the right saying that they're censoring and not actually getting anything done, not actually asking questions to learn, but asking questions for a gotcha moment hoping that it goes on YouTube and TikTok and raise money. These things are circuses. They're entertainment. I think that I would imagine the conversation was just more civil and more productive out of the glare of fundraising and cameras.
I thought Elon Musk sounded about as reasonable as he can sound there, except for the civilization thing, which I agree with you is just more catastrophizing and technonarcism that technology is the key to saving or destroying humanity all the time. But this is where I'm cynical. I think they all understand theoretically that there needs to be regulation here and then they deploy their army of lobbyists to make sure that the regulation doesn't get in the way of their earnings. I'm all for it and I hope that they bring in incredibly...
I've always thought government officials are underpaid and the fact that they're underpaid leads them to be total horrors so they can feather their bad post-their government service. Also, we need more compensation to attract the best and brightest of the young age, especially staffers who understand AI. This is... I'm hopeful.
I don't know. I sort of... There's just so many people there, 60 senators and all these people. I don't know how public it is.
And so there's still peacocking going on in these things, right? So I don't know. I just feel like... And they also initially did not have a very diverse...
I don't mean by people, but in terms of people who have different opinions at this thing and they brought more academics in who are more worried. I think it's fine to have an airing of the grievances or whatever you want to call it. But action is really what I'm more interested in. Of course, others, Sam Altman and Alphabet CEO, Sudar Pichai talked to a report about AI creating positive changes in labor market with far more great new jobs than before.
Sudar's proposals, including encouraging high-use of AI and government and advancing a workforce transition to the benefits of everyone. But action is what I want to hear about. Shumar, who blocked a lot of legislation around privacy, et cetera, talked about a timeline for getting laws on the books telling reporters it can't be days or weeks. Nor should it be years.
It will be a general category of months. But Senator Blumenthal said you need to do legislation and learn at the same time. Senator Cruz said Congress is rushing to regulate the technology they don't understand. Shumar, I'm not on board with him.
He did block a lot of the Klobuchar stuff. Everyone blames him. Real smart people do. So I don't know.
I don't know. Yeah, let's be helpful. But I feel like we keep getting our heart broken. I just fly in and fly in.
I don't know. I just feel like I do care if they do it behind. I do care if they do it behind. I paid for this mic, as Ronald Reagan said.
So I would like the mic to be open. But I get the peacocking problem. I would like, before there's legislation, if they're really honest about the need for regulation, I'd like them all to raise their hands and come to a gentle persons agreement, that they're going to find a way to watermark AI and they're not going to use AI-generated imagery pre the presidential election leading up the election. There's some legislation.
But the legislation likely won't happen. And I think we're about to see the mother of all AI-generated misinformation, Lollapalooza and Q1 or Q2 next year as Putin realizes the fastest blue line path of victory in Ukraine is to get Trump reelected and they'll start generating enormously damaging images and deep fakes and videos and content that's been AI tested, the deep positions by NINHARIS. I think it's going to come in and then all the big tech firms will cash their check and come November the 5th. They'll decide that they should have taken more action and wring their hands and say, we're sorry, we need to do better in 2028.
Agreed. I just like to see one piece of legislation. Remove it from 230 of protections. If it's AI-generated and you elevate it, if you algorithmically elevate AI-generated content, it no longer has the shield to 230.
Let's start there. You don't think there should be a tech department that regulates tech just like the FCC? Yeah, but that's not going to happen in the next six months. That might happen.
And I do think there might be at some point ahead of AI and NATO and an AI person. But by the time they inform the president, by the time they go on their listening tour, you're talking about legislation maybe in two years, we need Q1 and Q2 when the GRU, when Putin realizes it's easier to spend $70 billion to try and swing the American election and they have a lot of scientists. They're very smart. They're very strategic.
You're going to see just, you want to see AI, what AI does? We're going to know what it did after the election when all of a sudden it comes out. By the way, it works just fine with the shitty technology. You know, propaganda works.
Anyway, we'll see. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Google going on trial and take a listener mail question about networking successfully. Support for the show comes from Odo.
Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo.
It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, Accounting, Inventory, Ecommerce and more. And the best part?
Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. And why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.
That's O-D-O-O.com. I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called PrettyTough. Every week I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.
Follow PrettyTough wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back with our second big story. The first Monopoly trial of the modern interior is now underway, USV Google. The center of the case did Google abuse its power and kill the competition by paying companies to be the default search engine on devices and platforms.
The government says yes with more than 90% of the market share. Google says it dominates because their product is just better. The trial is expected to last three months with Google CEO, Sundar Pichai and other executives expected to testify. Sundar will be back.
I wouldn't mind Sundar coming over to sleep over. He can come to my house. He's a nice guy. He's a nice guy.
Who would I have over? I'd have Sundar, Sam, Reidoff, and I guess. Who's your favorite type? That's the question.
Who's Karas? Who's your favorite tech icon? That is a good question. Who would you not have a beer with because you don't drink?
Mark Cuban. I think he speaks his mind. We disagree often. He's not really a tech guy.
I like Sundar such a... I have a whole chapter in my upcoming book. There are people I like. There's a number of them.
I would argue Karas that a lot of people's journalists feel that way, and that's part of the reason they're CEO's. So it's Susan Majicki, Cheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai. I think they make tens of millions because they're outstanding managers. They make billions because they're heat shields for the mendacious foxes.
Yes. You got it right. I'm just talking about people on personal basis. It's okay to like her dislike them.
It's fine. I think I'm with a Christiane Amantur who just of course did 40 years at CNN. She's been at CNN 40 years. 40 years.
Truthful, not neutral. I love that. She's fantastic. I do.
She's amazing. She's a goat. Anyway, the trial is back to the last three months. So what do you think about this?
What do you make of these arguments by the government also Google? Another part of Google's argument is that their competition is not just other search engines, but companies like Amazon, DoorDash, Expedia. This is an argument Amazon uses actually. There's so much retail.
It's not just us. What do you think? What do you think? And a lot of people don't like all these payment numbers coming out.
Apple certainly doesn't. You know, this $10 billion or $20 billion, whatever they'd spend. I would argue one of two things happen. Either they find that the law, that in a court of law, that the DOJ does not have the right to break them up, which to me says, they're either broken up, which I think will be the correct interpretation of the law.
But if they decide they should not be broken up, I would argue we need laws. Well, it's a narrower case about these deals, but go ahead. Okay. No one else can afford to pay Apple $20 billion to be the default search engine, and then no one else gets that level of data and can pull ahead of everybody and then spend $30 billion to lock up this key channels.
And let's try and bring it down to what impact does this have on the world regardless of the laws or antitrust or monopoly abuse. Let's go stakeholder by stakeholder first. Let's talk about shareholders because at the end of the day, shareholders usually decide these things. Anytime there's a breakup of companies like this, within a few years, much less 10 years, the shareholders benefit.
The baby bells are the baby bells were all worth more than the original AT&T within a decade. When eBay, Spun, PayPal, PayPal ended up being worth exponentially more. Shareholders win and breakups. Let's talk about the employees.
Employees compensation goes up because now there's more firms that have to compete to rent their human capital. Let's talk about the Commonwealth. I believe if YouTube and meta were not monopolies, they would not be radicalizing young men or sending suicidal ideation images of pills, bottles and razors. Because PNG would have the opportunity to advertise on platforms that aren't hurting young people.
Let's talk about the founders. Here's the only stakeholder to lose. The one that controls the company because once you're worth $40 or $60 billion, you don't care about being worth $7 or $8 or $8 or $7.00. So shareholders, the country, employees, the tax base, the number of startups, the venture capital ecosystem, innovation, every stakeholder wins in a breakup with the exception of the person who controls the company through dual-class shareholders.
The breakup, distinct to the morality of the stakeholder monopoly abuse, the fastest way to oxygen your economy on the tech side would be to break up these companies. If you want to talk about what ails are, it's the fact that young people are making less money and everything has got more expensive and one of the things that has gotten more expensive is the monopoly rents these firms are charging on corporations. Thank you for my thoughts. This is true.
I agree with you. I saw a lot of people yesterday from both sides of this case and I'm just going to be John Cantor and others. The Google side, of course, is like, well, we're doing good things. This is the la la la.
I keep saying 91%. I'm sorry. You can have 91% and not be hurtful. I'm like, can you?
I just can't get past that number across the globe. They can make their arguments. There's other search companies. There aren't.
They never will happen. They just won't happen. There's no reason for them. These things do tend towards a network.
The government's argument that these deals couldn't be made by anyone, I think it's a pretty good one. I don't know what they're going to do unwind them. Make an iPhone. I think probably what might happen is you get the iPhone and you're like, which of these do you want to use?
And then Google will be on there like a voting thing, but it doesn't matter at this point. It's too late. If you look at the history of antitrust, breakups work really well. But almost, almost as effective, is just the scrutiny you're under once the antitrust case is underway.
Why? So initially, the Microsoft judgment to break up the company was overturned. Very different case. But go ahead.
I'm talking about the effects of antitrust when there's an order or remedy is to break up the company. And in the instance of Microsoft, it was overturned. However, however, the consent decree they ultimately ended up signing stopped them from bundling and putting small search companies out of business. Google was born of antitrust enforcement.
If we didn't have a proud legacy in our nation of understanding the power corrupts and going in and breaking up companies and they become too powerful, we'd all be saying, I don't know. Bing it. Google, it is cynical from the outset for Google not to recognize that antitrust is why they are as powerful as they are. And we need to frame it from.
No, Scott, they did it because they're better. They are better too. That's by the way, they did create a great search engine. That's the problem.
Right. That's exactly right. But what? But antitrust and breakup needs to be perceived not as punishment, but as recognition.
Right. But let me say, I don't think that's what's going to happen here. I don't think this is what this has been made into a much smaller trial. You're comparing it to Microsoft trial.
One similarity is that it's a bench trial, which is not a jury trial. It's up to one person. Just the Microsoft was Judge Penfield Jackson Thomas Penfield Jackson. This is Judge Amit Mehta to make a ruling very well regarded just by the way I talked to both sides this last couple of days.
They both think a lot of him. He was appointed by Barack Obama in 2014. He's been very careful. He's been very quiet, very thoughtful.
I think they both think he's quite a good judge. There's no yelling about that. But this one person who's going to decide this. The question is, what can he actually do that really matters?
That's the thing most people were talking about. Since it's so limited to distribution and not, there's another advertising case being investigated. It's not a mega case. It's not a mega case.
The Justice Department of the Kennet Dinsar said this case about the future of the Internet. I think the future of the Internet was before when they had a chance to really do something. I'm not so sure they can do anything now. Yeah, look, I think so many wonderful things would happen.
I think if you forced, and I don't think this case directly, it might be a remedy, but say they forced Alphabet to spend YouTube. I think within 90 days at the first corporate offsite, the folks at Independent YouTube say, how do we go to Revenience? Let's create a text-based search company. We're really good at this.
And then I think Google is an independent company. It goes, let's start another video-based search platform. And overnight, you have two credible players in video search and text-based search, which lowers the rents on corporations and creates more jobs. Sure, but that's not an issue here.
But it's a remedy. Is it of this one? No, it's not actually. But I don't think he can force this on them.
Anyway, we'll see what happens here. It's going to go on. There's going to be a lot of these cases, whether it's Apple or Amazon and others. It's just the wheels of justice move very slowly, and it's too late.
Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got to keep believe. I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail.
This question comes from Daniel. Hi, Karen Scott. Thank you for all your great work. Your podcast are always insightful, inspiring, and entertaining.
I'm so lucky to get to attend code this year, which is taking place in another week or so in California. Working as a head of a technical department at a large public media company in Scandinavia has been a dream. This has been a dream mind for several years. I expect to be outgun at the event with my current position.
I cannot wait to get to know people from the international tech world. Have you any advice for a 36-year-old European attending event like this? Keep up the great work. I'm going to give an important inspiration to me, both personally and professionally.
Kindly, Daniel. Well, thank you for coming. Daniel should have come last year, my last year. The big show.
Everybody was there. Yeah, they were. The business has definitely changed since I frankly innovated it many, many decades ago. You don't say so myself.
I do say so myself. I think I did. I think everyone copied everything we did. But I got out of it, which is interesting.
But talk about networking advice because there is, you know, there was a weird lot of people who don't want to socialize after work, which I think is one of those trends stories always make. I'm like, really, everybody. I just think people aren't with each other. Talk about networking advice, especially.
You can do it in a conference or at work. It is important. There is something important to gatherings. I do 30 minutes on this in my class and brand strategy under the brand as you session I do.
And for somebody to talk about on a very meta level, we're mammals. And one of the things that is really ailing our society is a total decline in third places. And while these third places are sequestered for most people who can't afford to come to these things, I think anything that gets people together and has random encounters. And you see that person who works, I met someone who works at meta yesterday and I spent some time with her.
And you just realized, you know, for the most part, these are good people. And you meet people. I think I told you, I met the guy starting this UK basketball league. It's just inspiring.
And we're going to go football game with our kids. It's important that we bump off with each other and smell and touch each other on a specific level as it relates to networking. If you think about brands and how brands are built, you could largely try for cated into pre-purchase branding, think of broadcast advertising before you engage with a customer, then distribution, when you go into a store and you actually want to buy the product and then post-purchase what happens after you're part of the community. Generally speaking, the first part, pre-purchase is over-invested because people like to think if I just find the right cool people wearing black and I have a great new ad campaign by a guy named Don Draper, I can take my marginal product and increase share.
That dog won't hunt. It is over-invested. The ROI in pre-purchase has declined dramatically. And Apple moved to get $6.5 billion to pre-purchase branding, stuck it into distribution, created 550 temples to the brands.
And then the gangster evolved into the tobacco industry once they got, it was illegal to do pre-purchase or in-store branding, move to database marketing and raw-bro points, and then could sense whether you were trying to get up smoking and started sending you points and coupons to keep you getting emphysema. Anyways, in terms of your own brand, in your own personal networking, what is over-invested is how much emphasis you place on in-person where all obsessed with personal interactions. And that's important. But in terms of where you invest are networking, one, the really smart networkers before the conference will get a list of everyone they want to meet and they'll ping them with a note.
And they'll say, I'm going to be at this conference, I'd really love to meet. And they do some pre-purchase investing. And then they're there and they work hard and they try to be charming. And then the other place people don't invest is post-purchase.
You meet somebody and you follow up. Hey, it was great to meet you. I just got a message today. It was great to meet you.
You want to catch an Arsenal game. I'm like, that's an easy yes and I'm probably going to get to know this person. So networking, people tend to focus too much on the in-person interaction, but the real ROI is in the pre-purchase. Quick email, I'm going to be at this conference, you want to grab coffee, and then the post-purchase, the follow up.
I'm going to be going with the pre-purchase, the emphasis, the emphysema situation. But thank you for bringing emphysema into the conversation. I don't know what to say. I'm not a good networker, I guess.