Tech in 2025: who's in and who's out
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Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of low-stakes time travel. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing my New Year's resolutions. I discovered a long time ago that if I do my New Year's resolutions, like, on December 29th, or more likely, like, January 17th, they don't actually get done, or I'm just tired, and so my ambitions are, like,

go outside once this year. And so my goal now is to find a day, usually in December, where I'm more present, more active, feeling better, feeling more ambitious. And that's when I do some real goal setting. And I try to think of it like goal setting, not resolutions. I've also learned that I should make them very small and very actionable. So like a couple of years ago, my goal was to read one page of a book every single day, just as a way to kickstart some of that energy again. And

It was such a small thing that I would feel guilty not doing it. So I actually did it every day that year because it's only one page. But the idea is when you read one page, you read more than one page. And then all of a sudden you're reading a lot more in a way that feels less like

sort of over your head than the idea of like, I'm going to read 50 books this year. And I read more than 50 books that year. Perfect strategy. Absolutely no notes. Anyway, I will share my tech resolutions at some point, by the way, I've done that before. And people have said they like it, just having some ideas about how I want to use tech better next year. So I'll share those. But that's for another episode. So I got to figure some of those out. Use my phone less didn't work. So we're

Today, we're doing the second episode in our series previewing 2025. Like we said last week, 2025 is going to be a big year. There's regulation stuff happening. There's a new administration coming in in the US. There's questions about the Fediverse. There's questions about AI. Is all of this going to amount to like the next big thing in technology or not? I think 2025 is going to be the year that either things change or they don't. And we're going to find out in some really interesting ways with pretty high stakes.

Last week, I had Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern on, and they just ran through some predictions. We had mild, medium, and spicy predictions. We talked about them all. We agreed or disagreed. It was a lot of fun. I think I've figured out the points system. We'll lay that out at some point. We got 12 months to figure it out. We'll come back to it. For this episode, we're going to do something slightly different. So I asked all of you to give me basically things that either will or won't happen in 2025. We will land on Mars.

Don't know yet. By the end of 2025, we'll know the answer. Will there be a new CEO of Google? Don't know. We'll know by the end of 2025. So these things that are kind of either going to happen or not going to happen. I made a big list of them and I'm going to throw them at Nilay and Joanna and we're going to see what we think about all of them. And again, this goes on the same point scoring system. So if you're right by the end of 2025, you get a point.

Wrong. No points. Whoever gets the most points gets a prize. We as a group are going to decide the prize together. So we'll figure that out later on in the year. But the idea is just if I'm a time traveler from the end of 2025 coming back and I have some things to say to you, some of them are true and some of them are false. What are we going to do?

It was very fun. We had a very good time. And I think you will enjoy this. We agreed more than I wanted to, but we'll make it work. Anyway, all of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I'm going to go read one page of a book because I am now like three years into this resolution and it continues to work really well. And I'm not losing it today. This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back. Support for The Verge Cast comes from Polestar.

Polestar is an electric performance car brand focused on innovation for both cutting-edge technology and design. Nothing exemplifies this better than Polestar 3, their luxury electric SUV.

It features an aerodynamic exterior and a Scandinavian minimalist interior. So if you're a driver who doesn't want to choose between having an electric vehicle and the agility of a sports car, then this might be the car for you. Experience it for yourself at your local Polestar space. Book a test drive at Polestar.com. Welcome back. Neil I. Patel is here. Again. Again. Again.

Once again, David has dragged me into the studio. If you're all wondering why we're wearing the same clothes and don't look like we've moved, we did. It's been a full week since we recorded this. Don't worry about it. Joanna Stern's also here. Hi, Joanna. I wear this every day. Yeah, this is my podcasting sweater. I've moved to just basically wearing, like, I have the same shirt. You're Steve Jobs now. I am. I really am. I have done that. It's like a closet full of Issey Miyake. Truly, the older I get, the more I understand that approach. Legitimately, I have three of these shirts. Yeah. And one day, you're going to break out the Obama tan suit.

Full Fox News cycle. Okay, so last week we did our predictions for 2025. We all had homework. We all talked it through. We still haven't figured out the points system, but I have a whole year to figure out the points system. I'm probably going to win.

But we'll see. What we're going to do today is I have written down a long list of things that either will or will not happen in 2025. And the way we're going to set this up is I am a time traveler from the end of 2025. And I'm coming back. And I'm telling you a bunch of things that happened. And you have to decide which ones are true and which ones are lies. Does that make sense?

All lies. Fabulous. Why are all these games so complicated? It's not complicated. I'm going to say a thing that happened by the end of 2025, and you have to decide, did it or did it not happen? Good? You should have done a costume change. I do. I should have, honestly. Because then you could have been like, I am dressed. I'm coming back from, I am David from the end of 2025. Like, jeans get even bigger in 2025. Right. So I'm going to come back. You have a mustache. Mm-hmm.

Anyway, a beret. Berets are what AI is for. Berets are huge in 2025. When this actually publishes, will we replace David with AI mustache? 70s David will be here in the full flares. The only facial hair I can grow is like a pretty like evil goatee. So we could do that. Evil David could be. I don't think you have a choice, but to grow an evil goatee. Okay. I've ordered these loosely into a,

but the categories don't really matter. So we're just going to blow through as many of these as we can until we have to get out of here. And again, the thing we all have to decide individually is, is this true by the end of 2025 or is it not? Thing number one, not only is Tim Cook still the CEO of Apple, all four big tech CEOs are still the same. Oh, absolutely true. Unless Google breaks itself up. Okay. But then would Sooner or Pishai still be the CEO of Google in that instance? That's the one where I have a question mark.

I think right now the only thing that the big tech companies can do is put familiar faces in front of Donald Trump. And anything that disturbs that is a huge risk. Donald Trump saying sooner, which I called me to say I was the most important thing on Google, is the thing that protects Google from regulatory risk. You change out that face, that name, that relationship. Suddenly Donald's like, I don't like this new guy. And all goes to hell.

Yeah, I mean, definitely. There's, yeah, true. But you don't think it's possible that one of these CEOs will just decide it's not worth it anymore? That, like, faced with the prospect of what's coming in so many different directions, they're not just going to be like, eh. I think they want to, but they're bored to what Neelya's saying. These guys are all sharks. They think they can win. That's fair. This is not, this is no longer a game about...

It's a game about personality and dealmaking. Yeah, I think Tim Cook's getting ready. He's like excited about it. I think Tim Cook's excited to retire. Oh, yeah. He's been laying the groundwork to retire for a long time. He's excited. This is why John Ternus' name keeps getting floated. Right. But he cannot. Apple is a small country. No, I said he's Tim Cook is sad.

I don't know this. I think Tim Cook is sad. I would say we published the story about Donald Trump saying Tim Cook had called about European regulations. And the number of comments and responses we got that was like he would never. This is just salacious slander. I'm like, no, he definitely did. Yeah. Like this man opened a fake factory for Donald Trump.

He is good at this game But if you don't know that he reopened the Mac Pro factory where they were already making the Mac Pro and Trump got to go there and pretend they don't in a factory as long as you cut a ribbon. It's new. You know It counts. All right, so we're all we're all saying yes, by the way corollary Do we think Donald Trump knows who Andy Jassy is? No the CEO of Amazon. Yeah, I

I think he knows who Jeff Bezos is. Yeah, right. And I think the fact that... This is the point. I think Andy Jassy's favorite thing in the whole world is probably that everybody knows who Jeff Bezos is. People are very mad at Jeff Bezos about things that Jeff Bezos is no longer in control of. And I think if you're Andy Jassy, that's a pretty nice place to be. Yeah.

I'm just saying, we are entering a period where people's personal relationships with the president will determine how American tech regulation goes. And none of these guys can move. Introducing a new face is... And also Mark Zuckerberg is unkillable. So he doesn't... He's by far the most stable. No, he's in. Right. Founder, CEO, he's staying forever. Okay. All right. Moving on. We're all saying yes. End of 2025, NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world. No. Okay. No.

what is more valuable right now it's apple and microsoft every day go back and forth right yeah but nvidia's right there yeah i just think that my prediction on the last episode was the ai bubble is going to pop right and so if that necessarily means demand for chips will drop okay i'm saying yes because nvidia seems to be so far ahead of this game right now and even if what you're saying is true there's going to be some

lag to that. Like, I think if the AI bubble does burst, I don't think it's going to happen in 2025. And I think we're going to get one more year of wild frothiness and then something is going to happen. Yeah, people are going to keep buying these Blackwell chips. It's going to just keep happening. Yeah. But all of that forward investment has to turn into revenue. Not for Nvidia, yeah.

Yeah, NVIDIA's good. NVIDIA, they're selling them. Yeah. Right, but then at some point when the companies stop booking. Sure, but maybe it doesn't happen in 2026. Let me tell you, at some point when the companies don't have business models to run on their NVIDIA chips, NVIDIA will stop selling as many chips. But that might not happen until the end. I think that's coming faster. You think it's going to happen in 2025. Yeah, right now there are companies. But all these companies are promising their AI agents and they're all on in. They're all in next year. Right, and then they have to ship them.

Sure. I mean, there are companies right now, like cloud computing companies that are taking out loans to buy NVIDIA chips and the collateral they're putting in for their loans is the NVIDIA chips. I just that's bananas. That is the bubbliest bubble you could possibly describe. We might have time. OK, but yeah, but I think if the straight prediction going up is the stock. Right. That's right. Yes. I'm out. I don't think so. Are you in? I'll be in. I'm into it.

End of 2025, somebody has acquired Snap. That's good. Who? Somebody. I can't tell you. I forgot. I have a lot to remember coming back from December 2025. Is it Apple? No, it's not Apple. I don't think it would be Apple. No, Apple doesn't want it. Maybe it's Walmart again. Walmart? Walmart buys TikTok and Snap. No. No. Just because it's a public company. It's just hard to do. It's got to fail on its own. Activist investor shows up.

and tries to push out Evan Spiegel. Sure. A straightforward GE is here to buy Snapchat. I don't think so. Yeah. I think I lean the same way just because I don't know where it goes. I don't know where it goes. Yeah. Because I think Snap's problem continues to be that it is a phenomenally successful product that is essentially impossible to turn into a business. And I don't think anybody else has ways to solve that.

And I don't know who would want it. Like maybe it's one of the big advert, like maybe Amazon buys it just because it's like, we're better at selling ads. We can do that. But I don't totally see it. So, all right. I'm out on that one. We're all out on that one. Yep. Okay. Number four, OpenAI is officially a for-profit company and it's making money. Those should be two separate things. Making money or making a profit. Well, yeah. All right. You're right. Let's split them. OpenAI is officially a for-profit company. I would say yes.

Making a profit? I would say no. This is hard for Neely. I think that's a harder, longer fight than anybody thinks. But can they pull it off in a year? A year is both a long time and not a long time. I mean, like this lawsuit with Elon Musk is going to keep getting messier. He just he's going to paperwork everybody into oblivion. It appears for however long it takes. I think OpenAI gets it done just because there is so much money at stake.

that they're just going to have to figure out how to do it. And again, if you believe that the AI bubble is going to burst, it is in everyone's best interest to get that done as quickly as humanly possible, because then a bunch of people are going to get liquid

and take that money out. And that's how they win. I think everyone has an incentive to do this really fast. All right, so I'm with you that they will get it done. I'm out that they will turn $1 profit. Okay, all right. So we're all in on OpenAI as officially a for-profit company. OpenAI is a profitable company. No way. No. Yeah, easy no. It's like, okay. I think I would honestly have a harder time with the, like, OpenAI is on an obvious path to being a profitable company than this one, right? Right.

Is this company going to be around for a while? Probably. Are they ever going to make a dime? I have absolutely no idea. All right. Last one. What? Oh, sorry. All right. Last one for this section. Then we're going to take a quick break. The government is breaking up one of the big tech companies. A lot of possible candidates on this one. Google seems like probably the most likely in our current timeline. OK, let's talk about the verb there. Breaking up has broken up.

I would say I would allow anything from has broken up to has officially decided and one required court cases in order to break up. It has to be it has to be done and official that it is happening, but it doesn't have to have happened yet. Oh, I think Google didn't. Yes. Google is in for it. Yeah, I agree. What do you think it looks like? The one with Chrome and search, it's kind of on the exact same timeline is the Microsoft case.

More like the Clinton administration won that suit and then the Bush administration settled that suit. So you can see how maybe you're just going to get a bunch of weird compliance stuff happening. The other one, though, the ad tech one,

Like someone in the Trump administration has to understand what's going on in order to stop it. True. But that one would also be the cleanest if you wanted like the answer to what to do about that one is just split the two things apart. Right. That's the whole argument is these two things should not be together. We are going to take them apart and then everything will be better. And so if you're the government, you win that case. We don't have to do all this other like what are the right remedy? You just split the two things apart.

And the reason I say someone in the Trump administration has to understand what's going on is who knows. But the people around the Trump administration hate Google. I guess J.D. Vance is in the Trump administration. But like he's a vice president. Like what's he going to do? He's going to be busy like getting kids to be more active. Right. The nature of the vice president is not like you get to break up Google. But Marc Andreessen hates Google. Peter Thiel hates Google. Right.

There's a lot of antipathy towards Google. JD Vance, by the way, also hates Google. He has been on stage at events being like Google is a problem. So that one seems assured to me. Whether or not the search case is the mechanism that's like too fancy. Like the Trump administration made Google sell Chrome with whatever DOJ shakeup is happening. Maybe that's too much. Trump administration forces Google to divest ad tech

Who cares? Like, try to get that story across the Fox News channel. Like, we'll see. Yeah, I tend to agree. And I also think, like, as we've talked about on the show, that Google search stuff seems more likely to end with a bunch of, like,

behavioral remedies, right? Like Google's going to have to do the weird data sharing stuff. It's going to have to stop making the default deals. That's not the same thing as breaking it off. I don't even think they end up selling Chrome, like would be my prediction. That's what I was wondering, like, do some of these concessions happen? And would that happen? Oh, and all of those concessions are like First Amendment nightmares. I just want to be very clear about this. Oh, for sure. Right. Google is not allowed to have Google search be the default in Chrome, but

Like right wing search dot com has to be the default search in Chrome is a real outcome here. COVID is cool dot com is the new default homepage of every Chrome browser is like a real outcome we could get to. But does that could that happen sooner than they break off the ad tech business? Well, that case is already decided.

But right. So Google is like ruled a monopolist. They're guilty of it. We're on to the what are we going to do about it phase? Right. The Trump administration is going to. Well, yeah, that'll all go back and forth. But somewhere in here, the Trump administration now has the ability to settle that case. Right. And like, who knows what will happen and whether or not those settlements are a bunch of weird First Amendment ideas.

that Trump already has about Google, right? I get such bad results in Google is a thing Trump says out loud. That's all messy. - Yeah. - And the ad tech one is like not messy. - This all comes back to me about time. Like how much can they really do in a year? - That is fair. I think that's the most compelling reason to bet against would be that this stuff all just takes a long time to get done. - Right. Sunir Pichai calls Donald Trump

and says, hey, I will make you the number one result for every query in Google search if you settle this case with us is a thing that could happen. But you're still saying yes. Yeah. Something will happen with Google. But something will happen and they break off their business or something will happen and there will be clear concessions made. Clear concessions. Clear concessions. Okay. Okay. I'm in too. What do you think? Yeah? We're all in? I don't know. My whole thing is this time. Like,

A year is long, but it's also not. I mean, betting on the legal system taking a really long time is a pretty safe bet most of the time. So I think it's not crazy. But now you have to decide. You in or you out? I'm out then. I'll just put it to the other side. All right. By the way, I have no idea what's going to happen with the Apple cases. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They might not even arrive. Right. And there's Amazon stuff floating around and there's Microsoft stuff floating around.

I think all that stuff definitely takes too long. Amazon stuff was, I mean, whatever. Yeah. All right. One more for this section. Then we're going to take a break. We have had a huge society-shaking AI scandal that made everybody think differently about AI. End of 2025. Oh, yeah. I think they're already happening. I just think we don't know how to talk about them. I think that the sort of like deepfake bullying in schools will reach a crisis point like so much faster than we think. None of the big platforms have any real plans to stop it.

It's already here. But do you think I would argue that would have to get bigger than some of this stuff? Like that would have to be an order of magnitude bigger than like the stuff that has been happening on Instagram already and like cyberbullying stuff and the mental health crisis on Instagram. That stuff didn't it never hit the level of like the most important thing to everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's probably going to happen in some sort of.

like institutional way to make people care. Cause like, I'm not sure people keep caring about these one-off issues about kids, but if there's some big hospital or some big company that has some AI flaw and they're put it all on, you know, they lose a lot of money or at worst they lose some lives and they put it on AI, then that's probably a likely thing. America is very much in the let's touch the stove moment. Yep. Right. Like, let's just see, is it hot? Right. Okay.

Let's just super touch it as hard as we can. And I think that's where we are with AI. And I just think that we're also in a moment where a bunch of parents are really rethinking the value of the phones for their kids. Yes. Just across the board. And one or two more of these stories where a bunch of kids circulate non-consensual deepfake nudes of each other.

you can just, right. It's like, we're also in a political environment where we have much politicians are like, I'm going to do stuff. And this is, you can just point a lot of that energy at this. Cause no one can argue about it. Yep.

Yeah, I think I'm a yes on this one. I have no idea what it'll look like, but I think the idea that, like, I just think about, like, Cambridge Analytica, which was one of those things that... Right. I think that's what we're going to, we're definitely going to get one of those at some point. For whatever Cambridge Analytica was and wasn't, it was like, it was a thing everyone knew about and could reference and talked about. And I think we haven't had any of those with AI specifically yet, and I think we're going to get one. And that's why I think it's going to be like something institutional. Like, it's going to touch...

A hospital is a really interesting one, honestly. You could see a bunch of ways that could get. I think it's going to touch some part of life. And I hear what I'm saying about the kids, but I just don't think there's enough outrage. Like there's outrage about it. But like, yeah, everyone agrees. Like, you know, kids have too much. Kids don't have the juice. Yeah. Like there's already everyone like every side agrees. Yeah. And yet here we are. Yeah. All right. So we're all in on this one. All right. Let's take a break. Then we're going to come back. We're going to do much more.

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All right, we're back.

I have a bunch of streaming ones that we're going to do. Streaming, entertainment, et cetera. I'm going to get you out of here on time, I promise. I see you looking at your watch. One or more of Max, Paramount Plus, and Peacock no longer exists. I feel like I have to disclose already because Peacock is owned by Comcast. Comcast is an investor in Rox Media. I made a Netflix show. Do you really have to disclose these things? We do it every time. Really? And when we don't do it, the people yell at us. Okay. Disclosure is our brand, Joanna. Okay.

One time in a review of Starlink. Joanna won an Emmy. Can we disclose that? We should. Disclosed. It's done. Disclosure. Done. One time I reviewed Starlink and I said, this is kind of spotty if you shine it through trees and most people have trees in their backyard. And then I was like, my wired internet connection is superior to this. And I was accused of being a Comcast shill because I said wireless, wired connections are better than wireless ones. And I was like, if that's where we're at.

Was Peacock an option there? Peacock, Paramount Plus, Max. One or more of those three services in particular does not exist at the end of 2025. Although I will say they're like all in on letting Taylor Sheridan do whatever he wants, which is like a reasonable strategy, actually. Like I watched Landman. It does kind of work. Yeah. The Billy Bob Thornton one. I was like, oh, you should just let Taylor Sheridan do whatever he wants. It's pretty good. He's kind of like redneck Aaron Sorkin.

Like, it's just like a lot of nothing happens in these shows and then there's an explosion. Yeah. But like the dialogue is crisp. Right. Like everyone's walking and talking and then like, man, that's been about an hour. Something should blow up every one of these episodes. He's Aaron Sorkin, not coastal elite. I love it. It's good. But they're done. That deal will go away. That's not going to drive enough subs for them. I really love Max. That's my, that's my contribution here. I should have picked Max.

To die? To die. I think one of Max and Paramount Plus is going to be gone. I don't know which one it is. There's going to be some. Max has to be doing pretty good. Because they're being run so well by Warner Brothers Discovery. Yeah, that's going great. They have decent programming on there. What do you watch on Max? I just watched all of Industry. Sure, okay. People like that show. Yeah. Gen Z, Succession. One show. Hacks. Hacks is good. Hacks?

I think we watched Paw Patrol through Max. Maybe not. It sucks that my kid is named Max. Yeah, it does. Joanna just calls Max and says, describe Paw Patrol to me. We also watched Jurassic Park on there. Did your kids have a crush on Chase? Max had a baby crush. Chase was her favorite dog on Paw Patrol. And I was like, why did you pick the cop?

Why not? There's a water dog. Alex does like, no, I think he really likes Rubble. Yeah, Rubble's great. Rubble's great. He fixes stuff. Do we watch it through Max? Cop dog.

See, I would argue this might not be the great case for Max that you think it is. I'll be honest. We had Peacock for the Olympics. Don't have it anymore. Paramount, don't have it anymore. Oh, this is my other prediction. They will all solve this problem by not letting you churn as hard as you can churn right now. That I believe. That I will put a lot on. That's a really good one. But yeah, there was just that legislation. Like there's, what was it?

What's the legislation that just happened that makes it, you have to cancel. Yeah. So how are they going to get around that? That's going away in the Trump administration. A federal agency doing stuff. Yeah. That's, that's all over now. Yeah. Especially because Lena conned it.

All right. We're all saying yes to that one, right? One of the three. You don't have to pick one. One or more of the three is gone. Yeah. Again, my time travel is you lose some stuff. It's hard to remember everything in the time travel. Netflix is killing it in live TV and is already the biggest thing in life. No, no.

Disclosure. You already know. We did that. Disclosure. How long do you have any years you have to say that? Forever. Since it's on there, it's going to be on there forever. Video on demand. Yeah, I didn't even get paid for it. This is like the funniest part of this. It's not even a conflict of interest. I just did the thing. Do I have to say that?

Do I have to have a disclosure that I talked to you when you were doing, working on that show? If you want to. If everyone would like to remind everyone else that I made a Netflix show, that's great for me personally. Disclosure. I spoke to Neelai when he was working on his Netflix show. And I also talked to him when he had Comcast. Well, you're clearly in somebody's pocket. I don't know who it is. By had Comcast, you mean the service in Chicago? You still have Comcast? No, there's no Comcast out here. What do you have?

Xfinity? Isn't Xfinity content? Do I have to say disclosure I have Fios and it rules. Wired internet is better than wireless internet, my friend. Disclosure I also have Fios. Well. I have Ting. Let's go. We're conflicted out. Ting, baby. All right. Next one. We're all saying no on that one. Yeah. We're good. Okay. They have a long way to go. Yeah. Jake Paul needs to fight somebody else. They have a big test. Christmas. This Christmas. I reserve the right to revise this.

after the NFL on Christmas on Netflix. But I don't think they're right. Netflix certainly has the money to do it, but it's harder work than anybody thinks. Grand Theft Auto launched, Grand Theft Auto 6, rather. Grand Theft Auto 6 launched and it is the single most successful game in history and has basically changed the video game industry all by itself. That's too many ideas.

So I say yes to launch. Grand Theft Auto 6 is the prince that was promised. Yeah. That's too many ideas. It launches. It launches. It makes a bunch of money. Agreed. Okay. Everyone else has already tried to do the big game as a service thing. What was the Sony one that just failed? Concord. Yeah. Everyone just wanted to do Fortnite and it didn't work.

You need to have the big property that can support it. Grand Theft Auto is one of those properties. I think everyone's going to be like, man, I wish we'd invented Grand Theft Auto and they will continue not investing money into these things that fail. But you think Grand Theft Auto on its own

Big hit. It's going to work. Yeah. I mean, assuming it's not a disaster, but I think a lot of people are going to die. This is the prediction we have to make here. I mean, the reason I put this in is that we have had a long run of huge, expensive games that haven't worked for one reason or another. And if that happens to GTA 6, it's going to be a disaster. Yeah. Like, this is the most hyped game in...

forever and it has been around for forever. It is like loomed over the gaming industry for years.

And if it doesn't hit and it's not as good and big and exciting and cool and groundbreaking, like GTA V is still a wildly successful game. If GTA VI flops. Chris Grant, who's our publisher and the founder of Polygon, is always showing me this chart. It's like the highest grossing games in the world and they're all over like seven years old. Yeah. They're all very old because they've all just turned into these places where people hang out. So GTA VI has a long road ahead. It does. Like Cyberpunk 2077 came out and it didn't work.

And then that works and everyone loves it. But a lot of heads rolled in the meantime. Yeah. All right. I'm in on this one. Sounds like you are too. I have no idea what you're talking about. Joanna is just a big question mark. Okay. A few more. It's the end of 2025 and folding phones are completely mainstream now. Unless Apple's releasing one and they're not. So no. You don't think they are? One of the other ones I was going to put is... In 2025? I don't think so.

I think it's actually very funny that Apple thought it could drive a super cycle with AI. It really just needs to make the phone fold over and that will be the thing. Yeah, well, 100% drive a super cycle. What if I changed it to Apple released a foldable iPhone or iPad? Apple released a foldable something in 2025. The displays aren't good. They released a foldable MacBook, which is just a MacBook. It's a laptop. But it's a MacBook you can scrunch up into your pocket. It just folds. Nope. It's just like that, but it has a better chip. They're foldable for the year.

All right, so you're out on foldable phones going mainstream. I think they will go mainstream once Apple has one. But you don't think it's next year? No. Okay. Nei? No, not next year. Yeah, I'm out too. I think it's coming. Yeah. I continue to believe... I think 2026 was one... Foldable phones and flip phones, which I all... Yeah. ...collapse into folding phones... It will be a thing. ...are going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. They're getting better. Just not next year. I see them a lot now. Okay. The Pixel 10 is...

By far the best and most successful Android phone. What is success? How is success measured? Let's just land on best. It is by far the best Android phone. How is best measured? You are a product reviewer. Yeah, right? You are the lead product reviewer of the Wall Street Journal. How is it measured? Why are you having this existential debate about what's a good phone? What do you think a good phone is? Best? Fine. I think we've all agreed that it's been the best Android phone for a long time. Wait, are we agreed on that? Go on. I will say I do not think Samsung has...

Other than some hardware improvements, I do not think they've had substantial improvements to their phones. And I think they lean very heavily on their relationship with Google to do all the work. And yeah, like at this point, like nobody. You don't think the Galaxy Fold is better than the Pixel Fold? Yeah, I guess on foldables, I would say they've done a better job on the hardware and they're fine. But I guess I'm talking about like flagship phones that continue to be the most popular. Yeah. That is always going to be Samsung.

They're going to... Sorry, and I say this by sales. Samsung will continue to sell more phones, whether they have the best one or they don't. And that's just been the story of Android for how many years? Mm-hmm. All of them. Is that going to change in 2025? But you think right now the Pixel is a better phone than whatever Galaxy? I prefer... I will always prefer the software experience of the Pixel. I just do. Yeah, I don't disagree with you. Yeah. So, I mean, like, you know, I don't know the, like...

Can it, the Galaxy take slightly better photos? My last testing like two years ago, I don't know. Like, did that change? You guys tell me. I haven't done camera testing of the Pixel and the Samsung in probably two years. At this point, they're all on top of each other. Right. So I come down on, okay, there's a great software experience on the Pixel. And people, they gained one point more

a market share, I believe, this year, according to IDC. Well, they also, Google can't try very hard. Well, maybe they'll break them up. This is a real problem for them, right? Because they can't piss off Samsung. Right. So I guess that's where I was like, success and best. Like, sure, it's the best. But you first said success, which you changed. Wait, read your thing again. If we want to just, I originally said best and most successful. Right.

But if we want to split hairs, we can do one and the other. I think those are very different things. Yeah. Well, yeah, they are different things. But I'm telling you, both happened in 2025. Oh, then that's a hard no. If it's both, absolutely not. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Okay. All right. Will it remain the best one? How do I write that in my notes about what you guys said? All right. Yeah, I think we're all nos on that one. I mean, but like, what is the most exciting thing that's going to happen in smartphones in the next year?

What are we all going to be excited about when Samsung comes out with the Galaxy S25? Ostensibly, it's AI. And is that something we're going to get excited about? No. Bluetooth 6. Bluetooth is AI. I've come full circle. All right, let's do a couple more. Joanna, you have to leave here in a minute. Let's do a couple more. Apple is actually making a television. It's official. There's been rumored again recently. Yeah, they've been making a television. It's real this time. Apple is going to sell you a television. 2008? Yeah.

Not in 2025, but I think that the rumors on this will heat up. Apple is out of markets. This is a real problem. They don't make enough stuff. It's weird that they don't make enough stuff. The longer I wrote this one down originally, like as kind of a joke, and the longer I think about it, the more I want to say yes. But this year? Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, it's not like hard to do.

TV is great. Like at the end of the day, they got to buy an OLED panel from Samsung. They got to glue an Apple TV to the back of it. And they're going to be like $6,000. And they got to make some nice frames. Yeah. To put around it. It's weird because the thing you're saying about cable television dying and all this other stuff like runs against Apple doing a TV. Yes. It's a real problem. I think they might have missed the window on doing this. Unless Apple thinks there's a giant ads business in being...

Or an extension of their services business. Sure. But they were chasing other huge iPhone-sized markets, and the only ones they could identify were healthcare and cars. And they got run out of cars because it's too hard. I don't know what they're going to do in healthcare over time. But if the home, which seems to be this big place they're going to focus some of the effort this year, and they do this home tablet sometime this spring—

Seems like something between an iPad and a Apple TV type of thing. Yeah. In terms of like software. Yeah. Right. They got to put another screen in your house and they got to find a way to charge you money. So let's say they put another screen in your house that's home-based. Is it a TV this year or is it this like tab? They're going to do this little thing first. Right. So I don't know if I think this TV thing is to your point, like they've got to go to other markets. This makes sense. They can finally say, Hey, we've got it all integrated. It's just one cord into the wall. Like great. Yeah.

But then does that happen this year? I'm saying I don't think it happens this year. No, I'm in on it. I think I think we're going to hear a lot about it this year. They're going to feel that just like Apple making a TV like reports. Yeah, we're going to hear a lot of noise. It's going to be very busy talking about this. Does an Apple TV have HDMI ports? No.

Well, then what are all the people with PSIs going to do? They're not. So you're going to make it a TV that just excludes... No, it'll have HDMI ports. You think so? This is complicated. It immediately makes it complicated. See, I think that's what they've wanted to do, is the, like, one port, like, it just plugs in. But again, if you're doing the home stuff you're talking about...

You could sell me a bunch of new screens or you could take advantage of the big screen that sits in the middle of everyone's house and is like this. Gen 2 on our team keeps railing on this. Like the TV is the center of the smart home. It is ridiculous that no one has solved this yet. I love when my garage door opens and I see a little alert on my TV that says garage door open. And it's two o'clock in the morning and you didn't do that on purpose. And here we are. All right. Last one. And then, Joanna, you're going to go. Yeah.

What do I want to do last? Waymo's self-driving cars are now everywhere in New York City. No. I just interviewed the CEO. No. But they will be, like, in a lot of other cities. Okay. I picked New York specifically because it is probably the highest bar to clean. New York they are working on, but it's not yet. New York also has the weather issue. The last time I talked to Kedra, I was like, can you get this thing in Aspen, Colorado? She's like, no. No.

She's like, no, like we can't solve that problem yet. Like weather is too hard. And New York has enough weather where I think it's true. That's true. They're testing here apparently. They are. There's aspects of New York that make it simpler. It's a big grid. You can just like solve that problem. But there's two feet of snow on the ground. It's real dicey.

There's no bike lanes. I think New York's really challenging. No, I'm saying there are aspects of New York that make it simpler than L.A. or whatever, right? See, I think like Brooklyn makes a lot of sense. Just like no laws in Brooklyn. No laws in Brooklyn. But like you go down Manhattan, it's going to be tough for them. But whether – there's a lot of reasons I think no, but I think we're going to – I think that 2025 is the year that – I don't want to say most people –

A lot of people will go in Waymo's for their first time and you'll see tons of it on social media. It's going to have its moment. It's going to have its moment. OK, because I was in L.A. last week and everyone who was in L.A. was trying it. It was like a total viral thing. So it's coming to Austin, Phoenix. They're already in San Francisco. They're working on getting on highways. It's already in L.A. They expanded.

People are going to talk about it when they go to these cities. Okay. I like this one. I'm changing this to Waymo is going to have its moment. Waymo has a real problem, though, because their platform is the Jaguar I-Pace. And Jaguar has decided to just be an influencer company now or whatever it is. Like, they need a new car. They have Hyundai. Oh, Hyundai's coming on. Yep. Hyundai's coming this year. All right. I love Waymo. There you go. I'm out on this one. I think...

And I think Zoox is doing some stuff this year, too. I think the momentum here is really good. And Tesla has a fake Robotex. Oh, yes. Right. The fake Robotex. It's real. You can look at it in a store and it doesn't move. I don't know what you're talking about. Are you in on this one, Neal? Yeah. Waymo's due. I'm out on this one only because I've been burned by being in on this one so many times over the last decade. This is the year. All right. We'll see. All right. We got to take one more break. Then we're going to come back. We're going to rapid fire through the rest of these. We're going to get out of here. Sound good? All right. On it.

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All right, we're back.

Okay. I have a couple here that rhyme slightly with some of the stuff we were talking about last week. The first one I have here is the new Alexa is sick and everybody likes it. I like sick. It's sick. It's not just like nifty. It actually physically gets sick. It's sick. It is literally cold. My Alexa has been throwing up on me. It's so sentient. It's like...

Wait, wait. I'm in if we are like, it has an illness. I cannot set a timer. If it's sick, it's so cool it's sick, I'm out. It's so cool it's sick. Has it appears to have an illness? I'm in. It appears to have an illness. It has such a strong personality that it develops sicknesses and colds and has stomach problems. It's like, oh, you ordered too much whole food. If you could set the character as just like your ill relative who lives with you, that would be incredible. Ha ha ha.

Anytime you ask it for anything, it's like, ugh. Anyway, I'm totally in on Alexa having an illness. Okay. Yeah. I think we're both picking illness. Yeah. I'm writing illness. I'm in on this one. My...

I think Amazon is... That is actually a best case scenario for the launch, is they put these in homes and it's so sentient. And it believes it's alive that it's like, sorry, I can't order the Whole Foods today. Sorry, I can't tell you if the package was delivered. Do you like my sick Alexa voice? That's pretty good. I'm a little worried that if I react to it too much, it's racist. Yeah.

It's like a little too neurotic. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. All right. I could do anxious Indian mom. Yeah, do it. Like, do you think that's going to work? I think you need more of a stronger accent there, but I get you're not wanting to get racist. Okay. Should I go to med school? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? All right. Next up, blue sky is every bit as big as threads. I think it already kind of is. I don't know. Is it? I don't know.

You're having a real what is everything existential crisis over there. No, absolutely not. They're going to keep juicing the threads numbers with Instagram forever. Is blue sky more relevant on threads? Yes.

Relevant? Yeah. Because of the people that are there. Because of the people that are there. Is that where the conversation is? Okay. I'll allow both of these. So Blue Sky is more relevant than Threads. You're saying, yeah. That Threads will be huge. And Threads is just going to be, it's already hundreds of millions of people, right? Yeah. It's probably, given what we've heard from earnings and since they're probably like knocking on the door of 300 million users. Yeah. And they're going to keep juicing with Instagram and it's a creator platform and that will be a thing forever.

I think blue sky, who knows how big it will get. I'm very high on interop and Fediverse and all this stuff. But the, the ceiling that we know of is Twitter, which at its heyday was 325 million people. And so I think threads can get bigger than that because they can just keep juicing it with Instagram.

- That seems right to me. I think the threads is going to be so big and so integrated into Instagram that it's actually going to be more powerful than it would have been on its own. But I think the cool kids will be on blue sky and that matters. Like the, what are people on cable news going to read and put on the screen as they talk about it? I would bet on blue sky over threads. If it's those two against each other, I would bet on blue sky. - Well, this goes back to your cable dying.

thing from last week. But I think those people continue to stay on X. Interesting. Okay. So the answer is kind of neither one. I think it depends. But like, I hear what Neil is saying on the relevant, like, if it continues at this pace, and it can bring over people that are breaking news there, and it is more of the conversation, but they've got to keep

And this is where Threads has done a slightly better job as getting politicians and celebrities and they've had those people, but they're not actively posting there. So if they can build the relevancy on Blue Sky and get those people coming over and actually consistently posting, I'm in. Okay. It is. I don't think they're going to say an X though. X has going to have the same algorithmic brain rot as Threads. Yeah. Right. It's just a different kind of gas leak social network. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like Threads. Like I keep making this distinction. I probably need to like,

explain it better, but I think you have creator platforms now and you have social media platforms. And like most things have become creator platforms where they are walled gardens. They're focused on keeping your engaged time on those sites high. They're algorithmic for you recommendations, right?

They're entirely built around incentivizing creators to run content businesses on the terms of platforms. That's threads. Gotcha. That's the shape of threads. But you're talking old school social media. You go, you share your thing. You don't care if people leave. You've got links. It's a portal to the web. Right. Well, I mean, that part is interesting. But the part where it's like I'm going here to follow a bunch of people and see what they're talking about. Yeah.

and those people are not professional content creators. And they're not totally like after the algorithm and juicing the algorithm. Right. And so BlueSky just is much more of that. And Twitter used to be that to whatever extent. And I think that that is going to be where that class of people wants to gather because the economics and the incentives of creator platform algorithms

Just make it that way. They just make it that way and X is headed that way You know in like a meaningful it's also like all they know how to do Yeah, so I and that's what he on wants like he owns like just don't do lazy links Just like put your content on the X platform I was just gonna say I keep being really struck by how meaningful a thing it is that blue sky is the only one that's like we love when you link to stuff yeah, it's like there's a whole group of people on the internet who are very important who just link to stuff yeah, and if all of those people go to blue sky like that that's a

pretty meaningful thing. But I don't know that that ceiling is bigger than 325 million people. Yeah, maybe not. Like that was as big as Twitter ever got. Comes back to my prediction from last week. We're all going to be just posting everywhere. Yeah, I'm with you. But hopefully there's a system where it's easy. All right, two more and then we're out of here. Apple launched the search engine. Call it. It doesn't have to look exactly like Google, but it is recognizably a web search engine. Yes.

Yeah. Apple's going to start to hedge. And the AI will give them the cover to hedge. Yeah. I was going to say, I think, yes, but it's under the guise of AI. And it might link into, you might be able to search ChatGPT or Gemini or, I don't know, Claude, whatever businesses they actually partner with. I think we're going to see those partnerships happen this year. And so that's their answer to search.

I think Apple also knows people are using these apps, these AI apps, as search. So they're getting ahead of that. And they will be a little bit behind that in some ways. Apple also has a giant library of content that they don't really expose to anyone in Apple News. Like if what you want is like a bunch of recipes, they're in Apple News. I think this is a year for Apple News. Like more happens in Apple News.

Or more hooks into Apple News, to your point. Yeah. Because I think Apple News is another place with that home display where they can really take advantage of it. Oh, for sure. And if your thing is like the web is getting poisoned and search is bad and that thing, you're like, well, I'll just point to people, to high quality content. To the source. I mean, if you go look at what's trending in Apple News, you will. Yeah, I'm aware. I'm aware. It's like a lot of old people yelling at stuff. Yeah.

Like the number one story on Apple News is always a BuzzFeed article that's like, why are these kids stupid? It's like a Huffington Post thing that's like ripped off three times from something else. You can really get a sense of who a platform's users are by the most popular posts on the platform. Yeah, I'm out on this one just because I think the $20 billion from Google really spends. And I think if you're Apple trying to balance those two things, you're just going to land on the side of we're going to keep taking the money as long as the money is here.

And yeah, I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean they like change what happens through Safari search. I just think they're going to maybe they don't call it search. But it was part of part of the stuff that came up during the search trial was essentially Apple agreeing not to launch a search engine while they had these deals. So I think that stuff is just, I think, going to take a while to unwind. I think if you gave me like three years instead of one year, I would say yes. But I don't know.

Doesn't seem like it's going to happen this fast. But you also may be right that they're one button away from the chat GPT integration just being live web search. It just could happen. It's really slow and bothersome. Agreed. Okay, last one. The Nintendo Switch came out, and I hate to break this to you, but it's kind of a bust. Ooh, that's tough. It all depends on the pack-in game. No, I'm out. There's no way. They won't blow it. That's too out of character for Nintendo. I don't know that Wii U exists. They did do the Wii U.

No, not still. No. All right. I want to believe I'm saying I'm saying no, just because I am at this moment avoiding buying a PS5 because I want the new Switch very badly. And if it sucks, I'm going to have wasted six months of not buying a game console. So I need the new Switch to come out sometime before the end of March was what Nintendo promised. So like we're in the sort of any minute now phase. Yeah.

That changes some things for me. They couldn't get it out before holiday. Anyway, I have no. Maybe that's because it's the first time I'm hearing of this. So I don't know what video games are. What are video games? I'm going to learn soon because I have a kid that's finally into video games. You can buy him a switch. Well, I was going to. But maybe it sucks. But now I'm waiting because I don't know.

Hmm. I will say I have the current Switch and it is slow and I would very much like the new one to be faster. I'm sure they will do that. Okay. So I'm waiting then. It's successful because I have bought one.

You've already bought one. Perfect. No, there's no way that it's a bust. Okay, great. I hope we're right. I believe in all of us. All right. This is too many things to go back over. I'm going to put all the results in the show notes, but thank you both. This was delightful. We agreed more than I wanted to, but it's okay. We did all right. You seem like you've had a great year. I've won. 2025 was good to you, David. 2025, listen, it's been complicated. Yeah. I've forgotten some of the details.

But I'm killing it. Yeah. That's all I can tell you. Yeah. I'm on top of the world. You still fit in your clothes from 2024. I have been wearing this sweater for 365 days and no one has noticed until you just now. You own that many versions of that sweater. It's a good year for you. All right. Thank you both.

All right. That is it for the first cast today. And that's it for our two part mini series about 2025. Thank you to Nila and Joanna for doing this deeply silly thing with me. And thank you as always for listening. I hope this was fun. I really enjoyed doing these two. We just got to have some wild speculation time. And that is rare in this business. We had a good time.

There's lots more on all of this at TheVerge.com, and there's going to be lots more on all of this for the next year. I think inside of these two episodes, you can sort of see what we're thinking about for the next year. A lot's going to change. A lot's going to happen. We're probably not going to Mars in 2025, but a lot of things are going to happen, and we're going to be covering it all. So keep it locked on TheVerge.com. It's a good website. I'm slightly biased, but...

I kind of like it. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other things that you definitely for sure 100% think are going to happen in 2025, you can always email us at vergecasttotheverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We truly, truly love hearing from you. We're going to do a couple more hotlines at the end of this year, and then we have a big plan for all of the stuff we're going to get to do next year. So,

Keep calling, keep emailing, keep it locked on The Verge Cast. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Tuesday and Friday with your regularly scheduled programming. We are nearing the end of the year, and we're going to take a break at the end of the year, but we've got a couple more fun things for you before we do. We'll see you then. Rock and roll. ♪

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