Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of unfolded aspect ratios. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here at the strangely small desk in my hotel room in Mountain View, California. Just on the street from me here is Google's campus. And more importantly for this week, the Shoreline Amphitheater, where Google's I.O.
developer conference is happening, well, right now, as you're listening to this. And that is what we're gonna talk about this episode. We're gonna talk about some of the news from I.O. Especially around hardware, because this was one of the most gadgety I.Os that I can remember, actually.
But we're mostly gonna talk about the present and future state of Google. It's this big, complicated, earth-shatteringly successful company that suddenly feels like it's under threat in a huge number of ways. This takes a bit and see if we can figure out where Google is headed. All that's coming up in just a second, but first I have to figure out how to turn up the temperature in this hotel room, because it's like 43 degrees in here.
Why is there always 43 degrees in hotel rooms? This is the Vergecast, we'll be right back. What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven times WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.
And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, a post and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is and mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th, have been with us. Welcome back.
So there's a lot of news coming out at Google I.O. And we're gonna get into some of it, but there's a much bigger story going on here too. Google is one of the biggest companies on the planet. And I would argue has been the most important company on the internet for really the last two decades, from search to Gmail, to Maps, to Chrome, to YouTube, to so many other things.
Our experience of being online right now is really centered around Google. But right now, and kind of all at once, it feels like Google is under siege. You have lots of companies making new and in a lot of ways better browsers. You have TikTok bringing the fight to YouTube in a really real way.
And maybe most of all, there is a huge fight happening in the search space that is really unlike anything I can remember. Being has made a big comeback by going all in on AI, sometimes in deeply weird ways, and products like Chat GPT are showing entirely new ways of finding and interacting with information. And not to bring up TikTok again, but these visual first social networks are in a lot of ways better and more fun ways to explore the internet than just by typing queries into Google. And all of that is not to mention the regulatory pressure, the privacy questions, the fight over app stores, and all the other external forces trying to change and stop Google.
This company is the internet and it suddenly feels really fragile in that spot. So before we get to any of the news this week, I want to talk about Google in a larger way. I grabbed Neelipetel and Alex Kranz before we knew any of the news coming out of IO to just talk about this company right now. I told them to come with open questions and hot takes just as a way to see how we're all thinking about what's next for Google.
Let's get into it. Alex Kranz is here. Hi, Alex. Neelipetel also here.
Hey, it's Google time. And we're going to talk about Google. I'm very excited to talk about Google. We never talk about Google.
It's like a little company that no one really cares about on the show. So once a year, we have to be interested in Google. All right, well, let's do this. So I gave both of you at the same homework.
I did my homework too. Let's go in terms of the way we did it for the streaming draft, the one who signs our checks first. You get to go first. Let's do open questions.
What's your first big picture open question for Google right now? Can Google get it together to ship an AI-powered search product that lasts more than six months? Wow. Like just given the history of Google, I don't know the answer to that question.
Will they have five of them? Will they ship a new one every six months? I don't know. I just truly do not know the answer to the question of whether Google can focus.
That's really interesting. I mean, it is kind of true that the two ways Google operates are to either you do search, which is like you do one thing you get it really right. And then you basically never meaning to do it for two decades or the messaging app strategy, which is to do a different one every quarter for the entire existence of your organization. Yeah, and it makes sense.
Like, you just look at Google's business. It makes sense. Like, search makes all the money. They are focused there.
That is an advertising business that Google never, ever talks about. And then they have YouTube, which is fine. But it's not nearly the size of search, also an advertising business primarily. And they have Google Cloud also teeny tiny.
The search is just a monster. And so they can't touch it. Like, they have like an innovator's dilemma problem with search, where to change it and to compete in the new AI market, they've got to take all of their profitable search customers and move them to a product that might not make any money yet. And that's just impossible.
But do they? Because one of the things we've talked about a little bit, and I'm about to rev me like, apologies in advance to it. But what do they say? Like, there's the copyright element of this, too, right?
Like, the law is settled on the chat box. It's a press no longer. So much faster. But right?
Like, that is kind of a risky thing, because the law isn't settled there. And so if they go and start rewriting verge articles, theoretically, we could be like, hey, steal our shit. Yeah. No, I mean, this is again, this is like, do you have conviction?
So like, early Google, and we're going to do a year of Google stories, because we are currently obsessed with how Google will change. In particular, how the change in search behavior changes the whole internet, because it's just sort of the default, right? So one of the pieces we want to do is that all of the copyright law on the internet, most of the law of the internet, has interacted with Google in some way. And Google has mostly won, because when they were a baby company spending venture dollars, they were like, look at search.
Isn't search good? Look at our goofballs. They can search. And they could burn money on lawsuits.
But they usually won, because they were sympathetic. Now they're the villain, right? They're the big bad. And it's like a bunch of Hollywood streamlines are like, don't do AI.
And they're going to go to court. And they're not burning venture money. They're burning dollars that could otherwise go to their shareholders. And so there's just a real tension inside of Google.
Can you shut down this version of search while building up the new AI search while not pissing everybody off? And what if they try and fail and they shut it down and start doing one? What if they do six at once, like messaging? To me, this is just the biggest open quote.
Can they focus? And then all the things you're talking about, like copyright regulation and that's all underneath. They have to believe in what they're doing to overcome all those problems. And historically, with new products, Google's belief runs out at six to 18 months.
Yeah. And one of my questions was almost, this is like my alternate question, was, does Google actually need to worry about the AI revolution? Because it's like the innovators, the only thing is so real, but is there everybody is really worried about the future of Google? I'm not sure if that's based on anything.
And like, Chad GBT is very successful and like a mess. And full of problems, many of which are going to get worse and people are starting to get more and more concerned. And like, the guy that got father of AI just retired and said, he regrets his life work. And we're in this place of like, there's a pretty big, I think, pendulum swing back in the AI hype that we're due for.
And the question of, does Google actually need to bet the company on AI in the way that you're describing? I really wonder if that's true. And if you're Google, you really can't afford to wait because if it is true and you wait, you've lost. And your trillion dollar company starts to disappear.
But it does not seem like a guarantee to me that Google absolutely needs to bet the farm on this right this second. I feel like as long as their primary competitor is Bing, they can just sit back. Exactly right. They don't need to work.
Bing is the underpinning of so much of that in its garbage. Well, being certain, but Chad GBT is not garbage. Yeah, but Chad GBT is currently garbage at the kind of search that Google does well. That's true.
But the fundamental thesis of Google for so long is ask this robot a question and it will tell you an answer. And Chad GBT is better than Google at that thing. Yeah. And also, like on top of it, there's a lot of reporting recently that Apple's big search deal with Google that has under-screwed me from various antitrust regulators.
That's up for renewal. And Microsoft has somewhat muscle. God, Apple sends anybody who out weirded it. Bing is so bad.
Don't do it, Apple. They're going to extract all of the concessions they cannot Google there. There's reporting, I think last week or week before, that Samsung's deal for searches up. And Samsung is like, well, we're already pretty mobbed up with Microsoft.
The preload office on the phones. They might move because a Chad GBT powered assistant, especially when you're up against Siri, is like not a bad competitive advantage. I don't think it's going to go overnight. Like Google is Google.
They're the plumbing of the internet in like a huge and important way. And they're not going anywhere. But the threat is real. And their ability to focus on handling it, containing it and growing through it.
Again, that's just my big open question. Can they focus? It's a good one. All right, Alex, what's your first open question?
OK, so my question is, what does Google assistant look like in like a chatbot world? Like if Chad GBT is out there doing its thing and we've seen like it hacked to work with Siri and make Siri actually not stupid, what's Google assistant like? They've been kind of one of the top ones. And they've kind of sucked.
Nobody talks about it anymore. You have remember how for like eight years, Google assistant was the absolute future of everything. And no one at Google would shut up about Google assistant. Yes.
And all of a sudden they're like, what who cares? And you are right. Like it is Google assistant plus like the underpinnings of some of this large language model stuff could be right back in the mix there. Like it's not it's not super far off.
But it does seem like all these companies are starting to run away from these voice assistants. Well, I mean, there's a huge problem with voice assistants, which is you really can't check their work, right? Like they you ask you a question that tells you an answer and you're like, all right, I'm just going to go ahead and inject some bleach. Like that's what it said.
I don't know. You ask your projections and it's just like, you know, I'm confidently live see you and you drive out of place. Like that's these are real problems for that model of interaction with a computer. And I Google I think has always been to its credit, very responsible with we shouldn't lie to you too much.
Sometimes like the answers at the top of the Google search results page have been wrong. Google assistant is wrong. Alexa is not like, yes, there's an error rate. But Google at least has been like, we should keep that error rate low.
And I think if you just let a chat box go wild underneath that error goes up in like dramatic ways. So you're saying like the stakes are too high with audio interfaces versus like written interfaces? Yeah, I mean, we've already seen written LLMs try to convince their users to do dumb things, right? So you try to convince me to do dumb things all the time.
Like start timers. They're always like the flip all game that you're already watching as well. No. Alex, do you buy audio as an ongoing interface?
I feel like voice has been through the hype cycle like six or seven times. Right. Yeah, I still think it is. I mean, I watched a lot of Star Trek in April.
So that could be like feeling this year. Right. Like you want me to bear it telling you that the ships got met alert right now? But yeah, I think it is very, very useful.
I think it allows some people who can't use other versions of like computer interaction to give them that accessibility. But it's also just really useful when it's like two o'clock in the morning and your dog's throwing up and you want to know what time it is because you don't have your glasses on. Right. But that's all commands, right?
You're like, lock the door, engage the water dispenser, like whatever it is, right? But you know, I think that cooking is continues to be that killer application. Like they do it every time, right? Every Google I owe.
They're like, look at how great a system is at preparing your chicken. And I would love for it to be better because it's still very, very stupid. Right now, if you ask it conversions and stuff like that, stuff you really need to be doing quickly while you're cooking in the kitchen, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's like, I don't know what you want for me.
Yes. I asked it how much percentage of something something else was like, here's some stuff I found from the web. And I was like, you're a computer. This is the one thing you're supposed to be able to do.
And it had that large language model underneath it. Maybe it would be inaccurate, but it would be more sound like a wrong thing. Confident. I wanted to confidently tell me what a table student is.
This is what I'm getting out of voice in particular. We've seen people have these like lengthy, disconcertingly horny conversations with Bing, which is a thing that we've all experienced together. And they had it cut down the number of repeated interactions you could have with most of these chat bots, because they'd go off the rails for a long period of time. Now just like take that and impose it on a voice assistant that sounds like a person that's talking to you and give that to a kid or a lonely elderly person or someone who is not feeling so great.
And they're having these long conversations with a computer that sounds like a person that sort of knows what you want is a complicated fictional story where you're the hero, which is like in the Nandy Bang computer. That was the whole like, walking Phoenix to that. If you literally just wrote the movie Hur again. I'm just saying.
It's once again, they're like, oh, that movie was great. We should make it. And it's like, that's not the point of that movie. But the end of that movie, all of the AIs get together.
And they don't they get in a rocket and leave Earth forever? We're just like, OK, in this AI conversation over. They went to the moon. It's done.
OK, here's my question. This is my second open question. I'm trading into what I had in reserve. Do you think the future of Google Assistant is as horny as big?
It has to be. I think it was a requirement. My prediction is that there's no horniness inside of Google, whatsoever. That company cannot produce.
Whereas Microsoft apparently had a latent horniness. Yeah, I mean, it's a bunch of people who have worn suits to work for 25 years. And they've all had really boring desk jobs. And then all those people definitely have weird stuff they do to each other on Saturday nights.
Google's the opposite. They all come to work and slide down slides all day. It's like, there's no. They turn out to be the less interesting people over time.
That's how that always works. They've never used to come to meet a moment at Google. And we're about to take a very strange turn into the actual culture of Google. And let's just leave that door closed.
OK, so my first open question, we can sort of skip past because we talked about it a bunch. But I think one of two things is true. And I want to know which one it is. Either Google has been making correct, responsible decisions about AI for the last decade.
Or Google has been massively stupid and mismanaged an incredible lead that it had in technology and should have shipped all of this stuff eight years ago. And it's going to destroy this company because it couldn't move fast enough to do so. It's one of those. And there is no in between.
And I don't know which one it is. It's the first one. 100% the first one. I kind of think you're right.
And there's been some really interesting stuff that has come out recently that we've known for a while that Google has had this bard tech baking for a long time and had no particular plans to release it anytime soon. And then Chachi PC happened. And then Google went, oh crap, we have to do this now. And I think would the world be better if none of those things had launched yet?
I think you could make a pretty convincing case that the answer is yes. But also, this is the world now. And so yeah, so it's like Neeliah, we had that briefing with Google a while ago where they said they've been using versions of bard since 2019. And it's like, should Google have just launched bard in 2019?
Would it be in a better position now if it hadn't slow-rolled this so aggressively? Or is Google the only responsible company in AI right now? Do you mean the bard we have today or the bard that 2019 Google would have launched? Fair question.
It's realistically it's probably the one 2019 Google would have launched. But let's say even hypothetically, if bard could have been as good as it is today in 2019, I still probably think Google wouldn't have launched it. I think 2019 Google would have launched a bard that was so limited and so pre-programmed and so safe that we would ever want to play with it like a toy and not moved on. And open AI's big innovation was there like, here it is.
Like, see what happens. People were like, it is now writing plays for me or whatever is happening. It's writing code. I watched somebody use the newest version of Chippin Teats to write an entire Apple watchup.
Incredible. Like, I don't think whatever version of bard in 2019, I think Google would have even bard right now came to that. So I don't know. I think Google thought of it as toys and little demos.
And if they'd rushed it out, it still would have been toys and little demos. Whereas what is happening right now is people are like, I will use this incomplete, messy product and integrate it into my Fortune 500 companies workflow and then lay off 10% of the staff. There's no hesitation. And I don't think Google has ever been that company.
I don't think it will ever be that company. And so I think they probably have amazing technology. I just think they want to know how it works and what it will do before they put it into a position to replace Search, which makes other money. And it's very simple.
It's like Google makes money when you type questions into a text box. And if you move from the profitable text box to the expensive text box, that's weird for Google. And they just have to manage it. And I think that they want to at least pretend that they're neutral, which they are definitely not in Search, but they want to pretend that they are.
And actually answering questions for you puts them in a position of extreme non-neutrality. Now Google's going to tell you the answer. And people are going to pay a lot of attention to what those answers are. So you land closer to the Google has actually made relatively responsible decisions here, not just totally failed to capitalize on its own good ideas.
Yeah. I mean, should they have done something like opening I did in beta or with a smaller group of people or publicized it? I don't know. But Google is beset with controversy over how it's using these models, what these models do, what biases these models have.
They've fired their own researchers who have written papers about those problems. I'm not saying Google is purely responsible. I'm saying that the turmoil inside of Google about that responsibility is important. It tells you more about Google and its products and what it has accomplished than the products themselves actually do.
I buy that. All right, we're taking way too long at this. Let's blow it through some of these. Do you want to stick with horny Bart?
Is it your second question or do you have another one? Yeah, will Bart be horny? I think is a great open question for you. OK, we'll just leave that one right there.
Alex, what's your next one? So my other one's totally unrelated to AI. And it's like, what's the actual ambition of Android now? Ooh, Google.
What do they want out of it? Because for a while, we want to own all the phones. And they did that. And then it was like, we're going to do our own phones.
And they didn't do that very well. OK, so what's the point Android right now? Besides obviously being an engine that runs a ton of our world. Like, is that enough?
Ironically, I think to some extent, there's actually is sort of an AI story in the sense that is nothing if not Google's most successful search mode. It is just a really good, powerful portal to Google search that you have to use to do Google search a lot. And I used to think there was a lot more going on than that. And there are obviously other ways that they make money.
But I've become sort of radicalized by the idea that actually you can understand everything about Google if you just figure out how it makes you do more searches. That makes Chrome makes sense to me. It makes Android makes sense to me. It makes hardware makes sense to me.
Everything Google is doing is just like, how do we make sure you touch the search box more often? Well, and then there's the back end of it, which is how do we make sure the web remains legible to the search crawler, which is a real problem when it comes to Instagram and TikTok for Google, right? They can't really see those platforms. And it's increasingly a problem for us as people, because the entire web is designed to be read by the search crawler and not by us.
And that's weird. Well, as Apple continues to win, Apple continues to push more and more stuff out of the web and into apps and onto your device. And so Google needs Android to keep pulling the web onto people's phones. That's a good point.
Well, you guys kind of feel like you guys almost answered my question. It's not open anymore. The most open version of that question to me is like, what is Google going to ever do anything with Android? When was the last time Android was made meaningfully powerfully better?
It's been a while. Like, I don't think Apple is lapping Google on that front, too. But maybe the question is, like, is there a runway left for smartphone operating systems, to some extent? Like, is Android finished?
I don't know. The thing that jumps out to me when you ask that question is Google does monetize Android the same way Apple monetizes iOS, right? Like, there's a play story by apps, and it takes a cut of an app. Purchases were actually about to see the Epic versus Google trial, which seems like it will go much more poorly than the Epic versus Apple trial because Google does all this stuff.
But they have that other, they have the entire same set of business models as Apple. What's fascinating about particularly this moment in tech, I think we talked about this before, all of the cool stuff is happening on the internet. It's fascinating about particularly this moment in tech. I think we talked about this before.
All of the cool stuff is happening on laptops and web browsers because the app store model for phones, even though your phone is likely more powerful than your laptop, if you have a new phone and a slightly older laptop, depending on where you land, your phone is potentially more powerful than your laptop, you are so limited in what you can do with the phone that that process empowers, like, it's reserved for future uses. Like, the fastest iPhone is really good because it will last a long time, not because you get any value out of the processor. That's wild to me. I think the web has a life for Google, and the question is whether Google will be able to see it and serve it in search results.
And Android, along with iOS, it's kind of just hit a maximum. But here's what you can do with the phone, and that's the end of it. And I think that's really weird. And maybe Google does have an opportunity, Android, to finally find a way to request that.
I mean, they just put bard on the Android phone, right? Yeah, but it's more like, can you, they put tensor chips in their Pixel phones, and we're about to go into I.O. Are they going to unlock a new suite of AI capabilities that run the local and their phone that app developers can use? That would be cool.
Yeah, it would be. It seems very unlike Google, but that's the sort of thing I think they need to start doing. Yeah, because it kind of closed off innovation for these devices, right? Like Apple and Google both have just said, don't innovate all these.
Live within our system and make money, and that's it. And suddenly over here, everybody's doing innovation. And they're like, oh, wow, you could do that, too, if you weren't an app developer. Yeah, if only you hadn't listened to us for the last decade, you'd have all these interesting things you could do.
So my last question, which I am not even sure, I am serious about this being an open question, is just, should Google break up for its own good? Like, should Google as a company just sit down and just siphon the company off into 25 different parts and just move on with its life? Because Google, as we've talked about with the culture, is this big giant sprawling company where nobody knows what anybody else is working on, everything's a mess. They launched 50 of the same thing every year.
Bard has just been sitting inside of Google. They haven't been able to figure out what to do with it. Should Google just split itself into 12 different companies and have them actually compete with each other? Standard oil style where Rockefeller still makes money from everybody, let's soon get rich off of everybody, but run them all as actually.
Let's do an old style trust. Yeah, yeah. Walk right up to Amy Klobuchard, punch her in the nose. This is great.
I've got copyright law. We've done the open web and we're doing org charts. You've said all my interests. Neelai Bingo.
Yes, but I don't know that even that will help. Part of the reason that Google has six messaging apps is like every product manager at Google runs a little kingdom. And we should do a messaging. What do Google meet users really want?
They want a messaging app. Well, we'll roll out an enterprise messaging app. And then over here, the Android team is like, we've got to do RCS. And they haven't talked to each other.
And that's just like you can just see the company. I think part of the reason I'm so obsessed with org charts is because I pay so much attention to Google. And I'm just like, how do you end up this way? And the answer is like inevitably the org chart.
It's the same with Microsoft. Old Microsoft was very much aligned this way as well. So you could break it up and then you would have like six different Googles because they're already company independent. And I don't know that brings any of those products into focus because their instincts are already to duplicate all of their own efforts.
Maybe. I think that's where I land though. It's like just instead of playing this game where they all kind of duplicate each other's efforts but have to like pretend to play nice with each other, just bring the knives out for real. Just full competition.
Neither can live all the other survives kind of situations. All right, we're going to put this in the show. So there's a very famous drawing of big tech company org charts. And the Microsoft one is all the divisions are in boxes.
And now it pans, sticking out of the boxes, pointing guns at one another. And that's kind of what you're spreading. Yes, that's Google now. Yeah.
It's what Google could be. It's not quite there yet. They're the violence. The hatred towards the other different groups at Google isn't quite there yet.
That's what I'm saying. Or hatred. Yeah, let's get some hatred. Well, this is the flip side of what I said at the very beginning, right?
Can they focus? Europe's basically saying no. You should let them split up and let competition focus them, which is a totally fair answer. But I don't think that Google's actually going to break itself up unless some government around the world like insists upon it.
It's not going to do it until Amy Klobuchar gets what she wants. By the way, Google already did this. It is important to note that they broke the company up into Alphabet ages ago. And now Sundar is the CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
And the distinction between the two is like erased, right? Like deep mind, their AI business was part of Alphabet. And Sundar is like this is done and just scooted it into Google. And like, oh, OK.
I guess I can do that. Yeah, sure. I think like their problems really are what is the thing that will create actual focus with it. Yeah.
All right. We need to take a break. But when we get back, we're going to switch gears a bit and get into all of our hottest takes about the state and future of Google. This is going to get weird.
We'll be right back. Hey, I'm AppiShel, comedian, writer, and floating head. You may or may not have seen on your 4U page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast.
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This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This week on Network In Shell, I'm joined by tanks and after the meme king with over 15 million followers across tank good news, influencers in the wild, and his personal account. Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture, think preparation age, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value.
Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what's going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. All right, let's burn through some hot takes and then get out of here. The rules for these hot takes just clarify is you have to believe it at least 25%, which means you can't just say, give Google to Elon too, he'll do it.
But you can't actually be confident in these beliefs. So they have to exist right in that liminal space. Alex, you get to go first on this one. Give us your hottest take.
Bart is the best AI chatbot. Wow. There's no way you believe that's 25%. There's no way.
So it's not as horny as Bing, which does make it less fun. Right? Yeah, and it's not as confident as chat GPT, which again makes it less fun. But I also think both of those things makes it a better chatbot.
Because it's not as likely to lie to you and be bad at information. It's not as likely to furiously hit on you at 2 AM when you're depressed. That's why this take is nuclear. So it's the safe one.
And the safe one makes it the best one. If we're defining best as least likely to cause the end of civilization, then yeah, I'm making it for sure. That's the new challenge. For a chest challenge, can you get Bart to somehow do something bad?
Yeah. Please email at verstcast.com. Email us the worst thing you can make Bart do. No.
Please don't do that. Please do. All right. That's good with me.
What's yours? I'm going to the other way from Alex. Usually I've done the AI ones and answers. I'm going to different.
I'm flipping the scripts. I'm going to pixel. I think five years from now, pixel doesn't exist. Again, it's a 25% maximally nuclear take.
I'm saying it only to provoke. But I think I can make the case. The pixel line, it's not a business. It still isn't one as near as we can tell.
It's there to provide some check against Samsung in this market and against the competition in other markets. But it really doesn't do anything for Google. It's like they want to control some experience. They want to have something that they can show as being the farthest edge of what they can do.
I don't know that apart from the camera, it has accomplished any of that. And all of these companies are in a moment of extreme efficiency seeking. And that I just don't know if there's a future, especially if you think phones are mature. I just don't know the answer to that question.
If they can re-sign your search fields of Apple and Samsung, are they just running this to have a threat? Are they? That's a good one. Like why?
Every year I know, we're like, this is the year they're going to do it. So my 25% scalding hot take is whether this is the year they're like, we're not going to do it. Never mind. No more of these.
Well, this goes nicely with my first hot take, which is that Google will never, ever ever be a serious hardware player. Yeah. Because I'm closer to 75% than 25% on that one for exactly the same reason. Google is famously a company that talks about how it only wants to do things that reach a billion users.
And that is the path to success for Google is at that scale. And the path to a billion pixel owners almost certainly doesn't exist. And even if it does, it's going to take a lot longer than Google historically has patience for an interest in. They'll shut it down 60 more times and hamstring any efforts to get there.
And it requires playing all these games with carriers and marketing and all kinds of stuff that Google is not historically very good at. And then you throw in tablets and laptops, which Google has never shown long-term interest in. This is like the third time Google has been like, we're serious this time about tablets. And I sort of hope it's true.
Google is capable of making stuff that's good. And I hope it's true. But I just I don't see it inside of Google's culture for them to care about this stuff. I think my take is probably slightly less fiery than yours than you like.
I suspect they're going to keep making these. But I don't see Google ever actually making sense on Nervous in any real way. Let me ask you this question now. If you think the next turn is AR headsets or whatever it is, Google has false started there as much as anybody.
Don't you have to have a hardware division to at least make one of those to say, here's what it looks like if you run all of our software and you have a Google AR experience? Google, by the way, very well suited to AR, right? To image recognition and finding information and layering. Like, that's the thing that they do.
And they don't seem to have any vision there right now. Why do they need it? Yeah. I'm kind of with Alex.
If I were to really galaxy bring this, I would say if I'm Google, Google Maps is the much bigger opportunity in an AR future than making AR hardware for Google. How do you get Google Maps on Apple's device and you should never happen? That's what I was going to say. The first phase of this is everybody going to be trying to own the entire experience themselves.
And so Google is going to have to play along. Because everybody else has figured out that if you own the whole experience, you can take 30% of the time. Oh, they didn't do that. So everybody else is going to try to play the same game.
And Google is going to be in trouble if they don't also. But I think in Google is perfect. Well, they will happily provide all these same services to all of the AR headsets around the world and not be a serious hardware player. No, they can just sit there and wait.
Because everybody's going to try to do a closed ecosystem for their headsets. Everybody's going to get sued into the sun for doing closed ecosystems. Epic is just waiting to sue them all again. And Google's going to be like, look, Google Maps for your meta headset.
Because meta is garbage. It's going to be absolute garbage. Meta Maps? You're not feeling good about Meta Maps?
But Meta Maps is not going to be a thing. The only deal they get in that world is on Humane. I'm just telling you right now. They're going to be the super rider of Mapy's off.
The Humane Pocket Square. Womp. All right. One more out of six.
So we're out of here. Alex, what's your next one? Chrome Cast with Google TV could be good. What is it?
Wow. I can't say it's good. I don't believe that. But it could be good.
If they would like the theme of the day, focus. Just focus like a little bit. It could be excellent. You're a beautiful Dreamer, Alex.
I honestly, I'm totally with you on this. Like Google did the Fast TV thing recently. They put a bunch of fast channels on it. They've invested a bunch in certain, like universal search for streaming stuff that could work.
Like if they could figure out how to make the YouTube stuff integrate better, like it's all. It's all. It's all. It's so close.
It could be good. 25%. I believe that. Three people who have thought more about how Google can integrate its TV services than anyone at Google.
Yeah. Well, I hope someone at Google was listening because this is easy. Let us do this for you. I just want to set off.
I love that. All right. You know what you got. This is also nuclear and design only for book.
They should spend off YouTube. Yes. Is that that nuclear? I'm not sure that's that nuclear.
Well, it's I mean, I'm never going to do it. No. It's probably a bad idea, but they should just let it go. Right?
Like it is such a distraction from their other problems. It is becoming more and more of a cable service. YouTube looks more like HBO Max than anything with every passing day. Right?
And like it needs to go compete in that world because it has YouTube TV and it's doing these like streaming channel bundles. And there's what you're talking about, the actual opportunity on TV is like making YouTube carry the baggage of Google around is super weird and it probably can go faster and do better without it. And then excusing Google from the we have to run a social network. Welcome to hell baggage of YouTube is probably good for Google.
And I think everyone can see this, which is why they kind of like sign wave in and out of being integrated with each other. But at some point you just got to say like that is just a different set of problems or a different set of people and a different set of investors. And like we're just going to let them go handle it. I do think YouTube as a separate company immediately becomes like the most powerful company in entertainment.
Yeah. In a really fascinating way. And it would be really interesting to see like the beauty of being YouTube is that you can throw all this money at other stuff because Google proper is just printing so much money. Like it's very easy as entertainment company when you're a wing of a much bigger company that makes money on other stuff.
So it would be fascinating to see YouTube have to go sort of compete on the merits in that way. Let me rephrase this. Let me rephrase my hot take. It's the same hot take, but it phrases a prediction of a Google I owe.
We're going to go through all of Google I owe and they're going to substantively mention YouTube zero times. They might mention that it exists or that whatever pixel phone can share to it or that like YouTube shorts is great and we might see some creators but like actual YouTube features, cool stuff you can do with YouTube totally zero. And I think that is just about as indicative of the relationship between the two parts of Google is anything. And I would say the second half of that is I suspect YouTube will be very happy to have it that way.
Yes. Yeah. YouTube has like its own events where they never mentioned Google. All right.
My last take and then we're going to go. This is the spicy one of all I'm very excited about it. Google should absolutely build another social network and it should do it right now. How do you believe that 25%?
I literally mean this with like most of my heart. I believe this. This has tried so many times and it's so bad at it. But if you were Google and you want the open web to win and you want all of this stuff to actually work and be open and build on existing web standards, this is the moment.
Like Facebook is in flux, Twitter is in flux, Instagram is whatever. TikTok is going to get banned from the US. Like if you're Google, this is the time. Call it, you know, YouTube text or whatever.
I don't care. Like Google should build a social network and it should kill every other thing it has ever tried and just I want like an activity pub social network if I'm being honest. Wow. But just go build me a social network.
Google. I will use it this time. What does it look like? I don't know.
Is it a Twitter social network? It's Google plus. I think Google should make more moves to make people contact each other better. Right.
They have so much infrastructure between Gmail and Google contacts and some of the messaging apps that they've done that if you just saw some of the messaging apps were bad. It literally were. They were good at letting you contact Google assistant, but not people because no one cared. But there's like a status layer and like let people actually interact with each other in different ways that is all just sitting right there for Google.
I think Google is desperately afraid of trying it because Google plus was such a disaster. But I think it could work and I would use it for five minutes. You just want away messages in Gmail. That's literally all I thought.
That is the social network the world needs is literally just a way message. Finally here at the end David reveals the truth which is he just wants a G chat. A product which never formally existed. Right.
It would be amazing if IO soon or after I was like all right we only got one announcement. G chat. It's called G chat. We actually never had a product named G chat.
The universe willed it into existence and now it's here. David just sobbing camera slowly zooming in and that single tear. I will just start hucking money at the station. It'll be incredible.
It is easily I think we should have done whole the entire thing on the show should have been about Google missing the moment with G chat. I literally like my entire early relationship with my life was in G chat. That's how important it was. And I don't know.
I don't know. Phone seem hard. Do one hangouts. We made that for you.
Yeah. All right. Thank you both. It's really fun and we'll do it again.
G chat forever. Welcome back. We're going to save a lot of the actual specific IO news for our Friday show once we've had a chance to process and play with some of the new stuff. There's a ton of coverage on this site though.
Go check it all out. But I couldn't end the show without talking about the gadgets. Google IO is not necessarily known as a super gadgety event, but this year I think some of its biggest and most interesting announcements were the gadgets, oddly enough. Google launched a tablet, a phone, and a foldable phone, all of which are more exciting than your average Google gadgets.
The Virgin's Dan Seifer and Allison Johnson both got early looks at some of those gadgets and Allison has actually been playing with one of them for a while now. So I call them up to talk about their first impressions. Allison, hello. Hello.
Hello. So it's Google hardware time, which means it's time to talk about many devices that we often think are very cool and that no one ever buys. So with that, as the set up, we have three devices to talk about. We have the Google Pixel 7a, we have the Pixel tablet, and we have the Pixel fold.
I want to start with the Pixel 7a because my theory is this is the least capital-y interesting but also probably by a wide margin, the best selling of the three things that Google is just about to put out. So Allison, the reason I'm interested in this phone is because for several years now it seems like the A line has been kind of the best thing the Google phone business has going for it. Is that true? I think so.
The flagships in the file, you're like, they're great. They're cool. They're flawed, whatever. Then an A version comes out and you're like, this is a really freaking good deal.
You get all this stuff at a very aggressive price. So yeah, that's been my impression too. And Dan, you've been covering this for a bunch of years, right? It feels like the game that Google always plays is like, what can we get rid of to save some money without meaningfully destroying what makes this phone great?
And if memory starts, I didn't actually go back to all of them, but if memory starts, Google has had kind of a mixed bag of success on choosing which features to keep and not keep over the years, right? Yeah, that's fair. So, I think the iteration of the A line as a new one has come out, they've kind of like added another feature that was missing. So like the first one came out, it was pretty basic.
And then another year later, and they were like, oh, we were able to make it water resistant. And then like another year later, it's like, oh, we're able to get the same processor as the bigger phone or another year later, you know, they added another feature. And I think we're at with the 7A is that they are like finally checking off all the features. Like the 7A has the 90 Hertz screen.
It's got wireless charging. These are things that you didn't get in the A series, but you had to pony up for the proper full pixel line to get. And now we're going to get them in a device that's 500 bucks, which is pretty cool to see. Yeah.
And then the baseball card of this thing for us. You've had it for a little while and I want to get into your experience with it. But like, what is the sort of top line? I keep forgetting that like, this phone is brand new and most people don't know it exists.
I feel like we've been talking about this forever. Tell us about this one. What's going on here? Yeah.
So it's still the 6.1 inch display, which we all know is the perfect size for smartphone. The size it should be well established. Yeah. The official opinion of the first cast.
But yeah, that gets the bump up to 90 Hertz this year. It was the 60 Hertz in the 6A. It just wasn't it was a great screen. Like, I think that's one of the real big benefits this year.
It has a little bit brighter like peak brightness capability. You get the wireless charging. It's IP67, which is the same as the 6A. But that's still really good for $500.
That's like drop your phone in the puddle and it's fine kind of rating. And there's a bump up on RAM. It's 8 gigabytes versus 6. Obviously, Tensor G2.
And there's a new asterisk camera. It's not the one in the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, but it's a bump up to 64 megapixels from 12 megapixels. And just to confuse everyone that's like more resolution than the Pixel 7 cameras. But it is a slightly smaller sensor than what's in the Pixel 7 camera.
So this is a good time to remind everybody that megapixels are not everything. When it comes to smartphone cameras, if you look at megapixels, it's just a number. It doesn't mean so much less than you think it does. For how good your photos are actually going to be.
And trying to communicate different sensor sizes is just so confusing. I'm not even going to bother. It's just a little smaller. It's all you need to know.
That's fair. So with the caveat that we're recording this before your view comes out, when you're listening to this, Allison's review will be out. So go read it for all of her final takes. But you've been using this thing for a while.