Can a redesign save Apple's software?
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Hello and welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of the United States party speaker industry. Only the U.S.? I don't know that there is a U.S. party speaker industry. It's a global marketplace. It's happening everywhere. I don't know where they're manufactured. I don't know who designs them. I've been begging one of these companies to let me into the room with their designers where they plan the next year's party speaker lineup. Imagine that meeting.

Someone's like, make it put more lights on it. And another person's like, no, we can't afford it. You've gone too far. I like to think of it as like a, there's like a price to lights to size continuum. And they're just like sort of sliding the thing along the scale. And if you get too many lights, it's too expensive. But if you get too big, you can have more lights. And so it's, they're just, it's there. It's a lot of triangulation, but this is what product work is. That's what I'm saying. There's a spreadsheet. There's a model. Someone's got a slider. Yeah.

McKinsey's in there, you know. Hi, I'm your friend, Nelai. That's David Pierce. Hello. It's just the two of us today. We're doing a concentrated dose of Nelai and David because, you know, eventually we're both going to have children and leave. Right. So you got to get it all while you can. Yeah. This is going to be 19 hours of just us yelling at each other about the internet. It's also a slow week, which actually usually means the show goes longer than ever. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know why that is, but when we have nothing to talk about, it's like a three-hour show. So buckle up. It's going to be wild. A little housekeeping before we start. We've got a survey going on. We just want feedback from the audience. It's voxmedia.com slash survey. Take that. Let us know what you think and how we're doing. And then I should remind you that no one can tell us what to do, which is –

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It's a long story. Some people know, but the reason that we're able to have total editorial independence and we don't talk to our sales team and we don't do the brand sponsorships that everyone else has to do, uh, is because we are, we get support from all of you. So right now, virtual subscriptions are on sale. They're 40% off. We're kind of running them through developer season. So through the end of WWC, basically, uh,

You can go to theverge.com slash subscribe. They're 40% off. It's like $35 for the year. Cheap. And you get to support our whole newsroom. And most importantly, what you are buying is our editorial independence. No one gets to tell us what to do. It's very powerful. It's a very powerful tool in our arsenal. We've relied on it for a long time. And it's because you all have supported us.

There's this thing we always say that anyone can get traffic, but it's really hard to have an audience. You're the audience. That's you. Thank you. We appreciate you. Now give us your money. I'm still learning how to be a salesperson. Step one, editorial independence. Step two, Neelai gets less awkward asking you for money. Step three, everybody gets boats. That's the move here. That's what we're doing. It's not a yachts industry. We're going to come to what's going on on the web, in the media, in the second segment. But I want to start, actually, because it's a slow week.

I want to start with an actual party speaker update. We've been getting a lot of photos of party speakers from all of you. As you probably know, I believe party speakers are undercover. They're a massive market. Many, many, many companies have made giant Bluetooth speakers, like giant speakers.

that have LED lights around the speakers, around the speaker drivers. Some of them have handles. We've covered them that have literal beer can holders. Sony made one with beer can holders. It's the rare industry, I think, that knows exactly what it is. Which I have come to really appreciate. These are a huge success story. Yeah. And they're undercover because everyone wants to talk about Sam Altman riding a pony or whatever he did today.

But like the consumer electronics industry is doing something right because they've been making these and iterating on them for decades and they are everywhere. Once you see them, you realize like, oh, this is as big as the iPhone.

Okay, maybe not as big as the iPhone, but you understand what I'm saying. Like, everyone has them. They're all over the place. Physically much larger than the iPhone. Physically much larger. But it's a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. They're just part of the fabric. They're just everywhere. And no one talks about them. They're so entrenched that I think the great service that you in particular have done for people is you have opened their eyes to

To the party speakers that are everywhere. Because like, this has been my experience is that I have started noticing in places that a party speaker has no business being.

There's almost always a party speaker. Like wherever you are, you are within a hundred yards of a party speaker. I really have come to believe that. That's true. And, and they're just so, they're so ubiquitous that we just don't even notice them anymore. They're so big. You can't see them. Exactly. It's crazy. So people have sent us lots of pictures of party speakers. We had pictures of party speakers literally next to FAA teens being repaired. Maybe the high point of the entire Verge cast to date, but we've got some new ones and it's,

I got to say there's some wild stuff going on in the world. So here's our first one. It's from Alan. It's graduation season out there.

We're getting a lot of photos of party speakers at proms. Yes. Getting ready at proms. Prom. It makes sense. I understand. Teenagers want light up speakers while they're all dressed up. Anywhere there is like a school official and a stage, there is a party speaker somewhere. And tons and tons and tons of commencement addresses being delivered through party speakers and little karaoke mics. But here's this picture from Allen.

You sent it in. This is a graduation procession of some kind. And I replied and said, is that on her head? And the answer is it's on her head. And so she's leading a graduation procession and she's carrying the party speaker on her head. No, no, no. But if you're watching this on video, Neil, I just put both hands up.

This woman does not have both hands up. Yes, it's one huge bazooka party speaker. This woman is in like a light dress and a red hat and is carrying a party speaker on her head with one hand up.

which is so spectacularly physically impressive. There's so much about this I have questions about. The graduation parade is an incredible idea that every school should do. There's a surprisingly large police and ambulance presence for this, which I have questions about. But it's this woman in a flowy dress just sauntering down the street, one-arm party speaker on the head. Huge, bazooka-sized party speaker. So this is incredible.

This is among the best graduation photos we've gotten. Keep them coming because if you notice them at graduations and proms, they're everywhere.

I would go so far as to say our nation's high schools are powered entirely by party speakers at this point. It seems like it. We've got an infinite number of photos of baseball and softball games. It's baseball and softball season for the kids. My daughter's playing softball. There's party speakers there. Yep. Lots and lots of that going on. Very cool market for party speakers. Very curious who gets playlist control.

dying to know how that works in the politics of playlist control for walk-on music at softball games. Do each of the teams have different party speakers or the coaches coordinated? I don't know. Is it like a Spotify jam situation? You see what I'm saying? Does Max have a walk-up song? Max does not yet have a walk-up song. And if she did, it would be one of the songs from Frozen. So I think, or Frozen 2 rather, that would be. Just like medals you want to build a snowman and up comes Max to bat. It's a lot. Or Taylor Swift.

And so, but it would be wildest dreams, which is her favorite Taylor Swift song. And I don't know that that's a great softball walk. I think the 10 minute all too well is, is the one and just stand in the batter's box all 10 minutes. Really? Okay. Lots and lots and lots of party seekers at kids softball. But we sent us a tip that the Yankees put up an Instagram post saying,

You got to see this picture. If you're in your car, just like stop and pull over and we'll put the click on the link in the show notes, the Instagram post or watch the video on YouTube. It's Jason Dominguez. It's Jason with two S's and he is getting on a plane. This is very important. The caption of this carousel is airplane mode because they're obviously traveling to a game and he is carrying a massive white JBL party speaker onto this plane. Like it's the size of a carry on suitcase.

It looks hot as shit, by the way. Like I was like, I should buy the speaker. It's the JBL party stage three 20. It retails for five 99. It's sometimes on sale for five 49. It has not one, but two handles.

There's one hand on the back with Jason in the photo. He's carrying it by the back handle. But he also has the pop up handle that you can wheel it around with extended, which is a total flex. The true flex is that he has that and is still carrying it anyway. And not not just carrying anyway onto a plane. Like other people are rolling their little away bags onto the plane. He's like, I've got a full suitcase size speaker.

And the grin on his face is incredible. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, 100%. It's very good because it's in a carousel of other players carrying their clothes onto the plane. And he's just like, whatever, I'm wearing clothes. I'm remembering my speaker. It's so good. I definitely thought about buying this one immediately. The white looks pretty great. I'm not going to lie. Also, the politics of carrying a speaker of this size onto a plane. Does he give playlist access away?

Can you use it on the plane? Do other Yankees players have their own party speakers? Is there like a hip hop section of the plane, a country music section of the plane? You see what I'm saying? Because we've gotten a lot of notes from people who are like, I am in a workplace where we're not allowed to wear headphones. A lot of machine shops, airplane technicians, all kinds of places where safety requires that you need open ears that you'd be able to hear. And so we've heard a lot of stories about competing party speakers. So are the Yankees in a similar situation on their plane?

But I'm telling you, party speakers have infected the sport of baseball. They're everywhere in baseball. Yes. They're part of the fabric now of baseball. So this picture is incredible. Jason, if you want to come on the show...

and talk about the JBL Stage 320. I don't know if you're sponsored. I was going to say, my great hope for this is that JBL sponsors Jason. And they were like, oh, do you want our sick new over-ear headphones to wear when you get on the plane so people take pictures of you? And he's like, no, no. I got other ideas. Give me the party speaker. What's the biggest one you got? Okay. So then you were talking about how you see him everywhere in places you would not expect. And so speaking of giant JBL party speakers...

Octavian, I think that's how you pronounce it. So the W Octavian sent us a picture of a dentist office with a massive JBL party speaker in what appears to be like a reasonably small waiting room. But it's, it's, it's huge. Like it's for, it's like the PA for a small concert. Yeah. Look at this thing. If you walked in here and I'm just obviously like kick out the jams, brother. Let's go. It's incredible. Love it.

This is what I mean. They're everywhere. People like there's not even etiquette around them anymore. The dentist was like, screw it, light it up. What's weird about this one to me is like there are smaller Bluetooth speakers out there that are very good. Like I tell a lot of people to buy like the UE booms. There's a lot of those. And if all you're doing is pumping music in your waiting room.

99 bucks will get you as much speaker as you need to do the job here. No. And they're like, no, I need a speaker the size of a third grader. We're going to rattle your teeth loose, man. Let's get this done. This one is so big it has feet so it can go horizontally and serve as a bench. It's very good. Everywhere you look, man, they're everywhere. And I'm telling you, the etiquette is out the window, right? Normal people would not have thought to put a speaker of the size in a dentist's office waiting room.

It's true. This is innovation. All right. And then the last one, my favorite one, our old producer, Creighton. He worked on the Verge cast before. He worked on Decoder, part of the Verge story for years and years. Creighton sends in, he texted me actually from Rome. He was in what appears to be like a soccer store, a football store. It's Rome. And he's like, there's a party speaker here. The owner told me he wanted one of the CD player because the audio quality is better. So it has a CD player at the top.

The owner also told him Sony was the best branded party speaker, which is a hot take. I think Sony was a progenitor of this space. But in many cases, JBL is doing better brand integrations. You can see it. And then ION is fast approaching from the rear. I don't know what ION is. ION, the company we still don't understand. If you work at ION, let me know.

I don't, I think you might be like a ghost company. Anyway, this is an ancient Sony party speaker CD player on the top. It's kicking out the jams in a, in a store and in Rome. And I, the only reason I want to bring it up is because if you zoom in on the picture on the top here and you look for the mega base button, you can see that it has been pushed so many times that the letters are starting to wear off. None of the other buttons have this problem, right? The,

W party chain has not been pushed so many times. The word sound field has not been pushed so many times. The letters mega base has been pushed so many times that the letters wearing off, which implies to me that,

That whoever owns this party speaker has determined there is a time for megabase and there is a time when you should not have megabase. Well, right, because you have to turn it both on and off. This is not a permanent state. You're turning it on and off all the time. Yeah. And I would just like to know what times are megabase times and what times are definitively not megabase times. I think it's pretty easy. Because this button is not one you should push. You should push it once and be like, the megabase is on. But if you go megabase all the time,

Is it mega-based anymore? Do you know what I mean? You need to live without in order to appreciate what you have. Right. You can't have loud parts unless you have quiet parts. It's like a core conceit of Verge storytelling. I'm with you. I'm just saying, it's rare that you see a mega-based button that has been pushed this many times.

I'm dying to know. As you know, we're no longer in the megabase era. I think the megabase era really, that was the height of American soft power around the world, the 80s and 90s, the megabase era. We were doing it. I mean, that's when people look back fondly. That's when America was great.

Then Sony moved on to Ultra Bass, and I think things really started falling down a cliff. And now we're in the ULT Power Sound era and fully just off the rails. I couldn't even tell you what's going on. Bring it back, Sony. Executive order 1012, Megabass shall return to American soil. Megabass told you the truth about what it was. We need more of that. ULT Power Sound. Get out of here. All right. That's the Party Speaker Update. Thank you to everyone who sent them in. Let me know what you think the times for Megabass are and are not.

I'm dying to know. Let me know what you think the etiquette of these speakers are. Because they're everywhere, man. And as always, I thank you all for thinking of me when you see a giant speaker in the wild. Like, you have, I don't have, like, massive ambitions to fame, you know? It's not what motivates me.

But when people see a giant stupid speaker, there's a flicker of recognition that these should tell me. That's pretty good. It is good. I'll take it. You've accomplished something. I don't need much more than that. It's pretty good. All right. We should get to some actual tech news. For the people who are mad that we spend so much time on party speakers every so often, I'm sorry, but that's where you pay us the money. Get a party speaker and play it loudly next to whatever you're listening to the Verge cast on and you don't have to hear us talk about it.

It's very good. Hit that mega bass button, man. Let's live this life. All right. There's some actual tech news in the world. It feels like we're in the run-up to the run-up to WWDC.

A lot of weird vibes around Apple in this WWDC, right? Google just came off IO, which we'll talk about in a little bit. There's some reactions to Google's confidence in the products it might be building. Obviously, OpenAI announced its deal with Johnny Ive and Love From there in a moment. And then Apple is...

You know, they're going to have WWDC. They will project confidence. They're good at it. A lot of question marks around what Apple might be doing, what its vibes are. I got a weird open letter from a group of Apple fans today demanding that the company do better at AI. And at the bottom of the open letter, it said this letter was generated by ChatGPT. And I was like, well, I'm throwing this out the window. Don't do this to me. Yeah.

But like that's the level of weirdness. Yeah. Right. Like open letters to Apple to reclaim the mantle of innovation. That's some like late 90s, early 2000s stuff. That's not that's not been how anyone has felt about Apple for years now. And like, here we are. I do think you could argue this. Apple is sort of at its weakest position now.

perception wise in a very very very long time because right there's all the AI stuff there's all of the regulatory stuff which it just continues to lose in increasingly spectacular ways while continuing also to alienate to

Like everything that I'm hearing about Apple and all these changes from developers, they understand that Apple is being like bullied into making these changes that are obviously good for developers and users. And it is not making anybody feel better about Apple. Then there's also this thing that has gone around where Tim Cook has lost his influence with the Trump administration. And so this idea that he was like the all powerful whisperer of the government who could get everything done and save tariffs and everything was going to be fine.

That has waned. Like there's, there's this real sense that the, the sort of overall bloom is off the rose at Apple and whether that's deserved or not, or whether it ultimately matters or not, we'll see. But it is fascinating how much that perception has changed. Like all of the things that Apple could sort of cling to for a long time seem to be degrading all at once, which I think means the stakes for this WWDC. And then the iPhone launched in September, uh,

are maybe as high or higher than any I can remember before. Like right after Steve Jobs died, there was that big transition where it was like, OK, what is Apple now? And what is going to be kind of how is this company going to project itself going forward? That's the last time I can remember coming into something like this being like, oh, it actually really matters what Apple does here and how it talks about itself. I have a slightly different view. I don't disagree about that moment.

Apple needed to change its conception of itself. I think Tim Cook made the company a financial juggernaut on the back of its basically distribution monopoly of applications. In the smartphone era, the only way you could get an app to someone was through Apple Store or Google Store. And people are not going to like that I'm saying this, but-

The iOS store had richer people using it and those people spent more money. Well, and also Google store works the way it does in large part because of the way that Apple architected its store in the first place. Right. But like the Android app store, the play store, uh,

Yes, there are some Android apps, like lots and lots of Android apps. But all the new stuff, I mean, we got complaints about this earlier. All the new apps would start on iOS first. And it was because Apple had the wealthier customer base that spent more money. And they were really good at pushing people to have subscriptions. And so like Apple, I don't think that's diminished right now.

Like if people want to use chat GBT, they're primarily doing it through an app on Apple's app store on their platforms. And if you want to subscribe, the easiest way to do it is to push the button in the app and Apple gets its money. And that might be at risk, but we'll like see what happens. Like Apple has ways to compete there that are within its controls. I think the big risk for Apple is all the stuff that's out of its control.

Can they solve the regulatory problems around the world? In Texas, they just passed an age verification law that says the smartphone makers have to verify the ages of their users and keep kids out of certain apps that are age-gated. Which reportedly Tim Cook personally tried to quash. Yep. And they have been all over this in every state around the country. The top lobbyists in every state, in every state capital, Apple has bought them all to try to crush these bills. And they just lost one in Texas. Yeah.

That's, you know, is a flicker of diminishing. I don't know, but it's out of their control. Right. Now they just have to do it. The big one is whether or not AI is a new user interface that creates a new generation of hardware that ends the smartphone application distribution monopoly. Like that's the thing. That's the thing. Everyone's like staring at saying that's the weakness.

And for years, Apple's strength has been like, well, we have the iPhone. We'll just like add these features. We'll just Sherlock the hell out of open AI and then they'll die. Like that's what they do. And they haven't seemed to be able to do it right. They announced Apple intelligence and it went away and it's delayed from every indication we have. If they talk about it at WWDC, it will not be the point.

We should not expect the big Siri at WWDC or whatever. So they've got some catching up to do there. And then it's can Apple disrupt the iPhone with next generation device that has AI as a user interface if that is indeed the user interface of the future? Right. I don't know the answers to these questions.

Like, and that's weird. I think, I think Apple has traditionally been like, we'll just wait for Apple to do it and be great. And you know, that's been how it's playing out because Apple has announced every feature that Android has had for years, years after Android has gotten credit for it. And I don't think they can do that this time. No, I, and that's, that's, yeah, I think I, I agree with that. And I think there's also Apple has gotten away with so much over the years that

Because it makes the best stuff and appears to be the company that cares the most about making the best stuff. And that's once you lose that, it's really hard to get it back. And I think, again, all of that is so tied up in like, what are they going to show us at WWDC? And is it is it going to look like Apple is, you know, putting new coats of paint on old things while everybody is lapping it, building the next thing?

Or is there a, like, is Apple going to be able to make a compelling case that actually, no, this is still the thing. And I think it's like, no one thinks we're getting rid of smartphones, right? Like Johnny Ive and Sam Altman made their weird video in San Francisco. Even they are like, smartphones are going to continue to exist. But like,

Is it we're on how many years now of the iPhone being basically the exact same thing and everything else getting weirder and stranger? And like, I think you could make a pretty strong case that the device at Apple that has gotten the most improvement over the last several years is the MacBook, which is a weird state of affairs for Apple. So it's just we're at this moment of like, I think people are less impressed with Apple in every facet.

than they have been in a long time. And if you lose that, suddenly all the other like kind of gross shenanigans you used to get away with because you made great stuff becomes a lot harder to get away with. So speaking of new coats of paint, the leaks we've gotten so far, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. Well, Apple's going to announce some software. We know what happens at WDC broadly, right? They rev all their operating systems every year at WDC to get developers ready for the next turn. Sometimes they, you know, surprise announce a Mac Pro or,

So we don't know. Maybe they'll surprise all of us. We don't know what's going to happen. But my sense is that this will be very software focused. And my sense is that they're going to announce a bunch of new coats of paint because we have a bunch of leaks already. One of which is that Apple is going to rename all of its operating systems and that will be part of the big news. Yeah. So the sort of stack of announcements here is that Apple.

a apple is going to rev basically every piece of software that it has in a meaningful way which is not often the case most of the time they're sort of like some get huge changes some get medium changes and then they're just like and tv os exists and then they move on so but this year there is uh and we should say most of this reporting comes from mark german uh at bloomberg who is usually right about this stuff um not always but usually um

And so, yeah, the top line is basically huge changes to every single surface of operating system that Apple makes. Thing number two is the thing that all of those are going to have in common, it appears, is that they're going to be changed to look, A, more like each other, and B, more like the Vision Pro. That there is this, like, layered sort of spacey 3D interface thing that Apple is going deep on

I have feelings about that. But then thing number three is to do that. They're going to rename all of them to have numbering schemes that are the same. I was going to say numbering schemes that make sense, but they don't. They're just the same now. And that's something. Well, they're tied to years, right? Like cars. Sure. Yeah.

So this year they're going to announce iOS 26. This year they're going to announce presumably the iPhone 17 this year, right about as iOS 26 comes out. And if you can explain to me how that makes sense, I really, really, really look forward to hearing it. Well, give me a second. Because the OS is not tied to the phone. No, it's not. You got the old phone running in the US. That's what you want. And it's this year's OS. You know it because it is named after the year to come.

What I don't understand. But that makes sense. Wait, wait. I got it. I got it. Hit me. I'm ready. The wheels are turning over here. It's because everyone gets an iOS in like September and October. So you're already on to the next year. But September and October are this year. But you don't want to get iOS 25 in like September, right? Because it'll come out in like mid to late September usually. That's when the iPhone hits. Do you actually, I've always wondered this. Do you know the car brand?

logic for this? Like, is there an official reason that cars do the next year model year? Oh, it's just a straight arms race.

What do you mean? So the cars did not initially have model years associated with them. This was like a big innovation in the 50s and 60s. And then it was an arms race. You wanted the newest model. So they started releasing the newer models earlier in the year. And then everyone kind of like standardized. And then a bunch of stuff like the insurance industry and car values got tied to model years and perceived age. So everyone kind of landed in the same spot. But even right now, there's an arms race. Like the new...

The new Cadillac SUV, the Vistek, it's out now. You can go buy one, and it is a 2026. That's so stupid. And that usually happens around the fall where they switch the model numbers over. It's May. It's closer to 2024 than 2026. So the arms race persists. But usually cars, they rev the model years towards the end of the year because no one wants to buy last year's model in December.

Right. So you in January and you say about 2024, like nobody wants this. So like they've landed in the sweet spot. But then every now and again, a company like GM will show up. You're like, screw it. 2026. And like, that's we're just going to have to deal with it. And that is just like pure psychology. Like all that is, is just a trick to make you think it's the future when you're buying your car. 100%. And that's what we're doing here, too. But OK, here's what I don't understand. So you for forever, I don't know how long this lasted, but you had a MacBook that ran forever.

Snow Leopard. And you were very proud of the fact that it ran Snow Leopard. It wasn't Snow Leopard. It was... Wasn't it Snow Leopard? No, Snow Leopard was 10.4. I ran Snow Leopard when I was in college. Oh, okay. It was like El Capitan or something. It was like one of those. Okay. Mountain Lion. That's what it was. Okay, fair enough. But you were very proud of this one particular version of OS X, whatever it was. And what I don't understand is Apple has continued this...

sort of delightful sort of weed infused according to Craig Federighi naming scheme for Mac OS where they just named the operating system something and what I don't understand is why they wouldn't just do that just name it all something that's a it's a much more Apple way to do it like tvOS 26 doesn't mean anything to anybody but I don't think tvOS means anything to anyone

No. WatchOS means nothing to anyone. The only ones that mean anything to anyone are macOS and iOS. So then why name it anything at all? Because they need version numbers. I think all they're doing is arriving at version numbers. The fact that we are having this conversation, first of all, I'm confident, is driving some people bananas because it is of no consequence to anyone. And there's probably other tech we used to talk about. But it is also the point. Yeah. Right? Like, they don't.

what they're not announcing is natural language Siri. Right. What they're going to announce is it looks different now, which always gets a ton of attention. And we've revved all these operating system numbers. And then it is,

certain that we will write something about how the operating system numbers work. And I will just write like 10,000 words on why they should have stopped at Snow Leopard. And that was the greatest time the computers ever had in history. That's what I was thinking of. You love Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard was the greatest operating system. You were running Mountain Lion, but you love Snow Leopard. Yeah. And that was my attempt to just like stop it. It didn't work. I got a new computer. But I do wonder, like your point that these are just version numbers, I think

I wonder if that's telling. Like we were talking about this last week with all the Android stuff that Google has sort of hit a point where Android version numbers don't really matter. It used to be sort of an event release that the new version of Android would come out and it would have a dessert name and it would have a bunch of new features and they would do a whole thing about it. And now your phone just kind of periodically updates and you don't think that much about it. And I wonder if this is Apple moving towards the same thing where actually Apple

this, this annual rev of all the operating systems, which you could argue for a long time has not made sense to, you know, hold features six months just to put them in a release every May. Maybe, maybe this is the end of that way of thinking that Apple is like, okay, well actually expecting us to have a wholesale new thing every year is not what we're after. And instead we just call it the year it shipped and it's a version number and that's it.

Yeah. Again, I think this is like of little consequence outside of the one we get to make some news. We get to harmonize all the numbers across all the things. Yeah. But I what people want out of Apple right now is to be able to talk to Siri and have Siri do things right. Like maybe you hate AI. You don't actually want this.

But the broader ecosystem of like the market watchers and regular people who are using chat GPT every day are like, why isn't Siri chat GPT advanced voice mode? Why haven't these things just connected together in a real way? Like I don't want to just use the action button. I think honestly you could level the same criticism of Google. Like Google Assistant is not Gemini.

They're going to get there on some timeline, but it's still weird that hasn't happened. It appears some people, including our friend Parker Erlani, have gotten Alexa Plus. He's the only one I know.

If you have it, let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it because none of us have it yet. But I think like these assistant interfaces, that's what a lot of people believe the next turn to be. And Apple doesn't have a move there. So the version numbers are just like, that's what I mean by it's a coat of paint. Well, and in that world, if that is in fact the interface of the future,

version numbers sort of cease to mean anything altogether. I mean, I think back to like when, when Sam Altman said, and this is, I don't know, a year ago now that he was like, we, we set up the GPT numbers all wrong that now every time we release a new model, people expect it to be like the leap from GPT three to GPT four and like blow their minds. And it's going to be a whole new thing. And actually what it is is all this stuff just sort of consistently incrementally gets better. And, and,

there's no point in having, so they just like made the numbers not make any sense anymore. And like, maybe if you're Apple launching Siri to Siri three and Siri four doesn't make any sense. And so you're just, they're just going to pull back on all of this first. They have to launch Siri. Well, yeah, but, but I mean, it makes me wonder like if all of that comes true, is this one of the last WWDCs that feels this big? I don't know. I think they will always have to rev, uh,

They have so many devices in the world that I don't think they can do the constant phased approach. It would almost be too taxing. Too many things would kind of always be going wrong. Drop all the bugs at once instead of one a week all year. Yeah. I think they can be prepared for something. I think that cadence is really important to them. I think it's part of Apple's DNA to be like,

We have a roadmap. We ship all the things on our roadmap. We move on to the next part of the roadmap.

They've gotten better at some Delta updates. They announced a bunch of features at WWC and things come out months later, almost until the next year. So they have started breaking things apart more, but I think they're organized around one big drop and one big announcement cycle. And importantly, this is what developers are for. You need all your developers to support your new features so that when the operating system arrives in September with the iPhone, the apps are ready for it. And that to me is the other big weakness in Apple's

universe of weaknesses right now that the developers are mad at the company. They're going to put out a new design language. This has been the rumor. It will look more like the vision pro interface, you know, sheets of glass. I keep calling it arrow glass, which is the name of the design language in windows Vista. But like, it's got, it's got a lot of those moves, right? Like transparent glass and layers. And what's fascinating about this is it, that design language is not where the rest of the industry is going right now. And Apple traditionally leads, right?

Right. They take the bolder steps. They push everyone forward. A lot of people just copy whatever Apple does. And I don't think that's happening right now. No, I think there's a generation of designers who came up independently of the iPhone. Like the iPhone was just the thing that existed and they have their own ideas. And you can kind of see it like, you know, the new Airbnb icons are like 3D dimensional. Johnny, I've helped with that.

You see it. Like, OpenAI's design language is different than Apple's. Google just did Material U Extreme or whatever it's called. Yeah.

I think expressive was the word, but it was basically extreme. There are a lot of ideas about software design in this new universe, and it's not a guarantee that Apple's ideas will win. And it's certainly not a guarantee that their developers will exert the effort to redesign their apps to match Apple's design right now. Right. Yeah, I mean, in fact, I think actually Airbnb is an interesting example because if you look at Airbnb's new design, it's not quite...

skeuomorphic but it's very physical right like and that's a huge trend in design right now is making everything feel sort of earthy and tactile and like that's a lot of what is even happening in the new android stuff is it's designed to like move and bounce and morph and it's like everything wants to sort of feel alive and three-dimensional and apple is just like

panes of glass. And it's like, I'm sure it will be lovely. And there are a lot of really smart things about the Vision Pro, right? Like the sort of big idea behind a lot of the design is that it's instead of being a bunch of different screens, like a menu lives inside the button. And when you tap the button, the menu sort of appears out of it over top of what you're doing instead of launching you into a whole new experience. There's a bunch of that that actually like makes sense in terms of like helping people know where they are on their device. Sure. But it is a completely different

way of thinking about what your technology means to you than this idea of like, we want the physical world and the digital world to look and feel more like each other. And as we're like, especially as everybody is doing augmented reality and thinking about smart glasses, like it makes a lot of sense to me to start thinking about like, how do I make the digital world

blend into the physical world a little more. And Apple is like completely the other way. They're like spaceships. It's all spaceships. I, you know, I, the vision pro, who knows if they're going to talk with a vision pro also be very funny if they rev the vision pro operating system to 26. Yeah.

Like two years in. From two to 26. Like Vision OS 26. Like, here we go. A lot of spaces left on the feature chart between here and 26. You know, if you view the Vision Pro as a simulator and you're like, this is how we will overlay digital information on the real world, panes of glass kind of makes sense.

But like we're not – we're nowhere close to this. Right. Like nowhere close. And I think it would be – it's going to be interesting to see how that maps to like an iPad, which is like not anywhere close to an augmented reality device. It's like a big physical device you hold in your hand. Like it is the most screen that can screen in your hand. And like how is that going to play? So there's just like things here about Apple's design language right now where –

I'm curious to see what the Rev looks like. I'm curious to see how it plays with their other ambitions. But all of these other, like the digital world is getting more physical. It's an interesting trend you kind of see everywhere, but it's a reflection of the fact that that is still happening on screens. Yes.

And the Apple's new design language, at least as expressed in the vision pro is like very much like it's happening in reality. And we're not there yet. Sort of, but it's kind of like, it's like, what if there was an iPad floating in the air? Not what if this thing were in the world? Like I kind of, I think Apple has pushed like halfway down that road.

not all the way down that road. And then again, there's to your point, there is the question of like, is that what I want when I'm aware that I'm looking at a screen, right? Like, is that, does that construct make any sense on the screen that I'm holding in my hand? Yeah. You know, what's going to happen is they're going to play a video of like a button and Craig Federer, he's like, what is this button? And everyone, the crowd's going to go wild. Yes. And the developers will make the button. Anyway, that's WWC. Like the leaks are coming. I think what David and I are both pointing out is like,

Apple has stakes here in a way they have not really needed to address the stakes in a long time. And I don't think they can just paper over it and like muscle through it and be like, we're Apple, like take it or leave it. I think a lot of people are aware that there is another kind of application model being developed and you might hate it. I know we have listeners who hate AI, but I'm watching people every day, uh,

build new applications using tools like NAN and cursor. We get the pitches. We see the investment. There's something meaningful happening there. And I, you can't just ignore it. So if Apple participates in that, that's one thing. If they don't, I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure on the company to have an answer as to why.

And right now the answer is because we were late. And I don't think that's great. Right. Well, and I think it is it's Apple's move always to pretend that nothing else exists and just like live in its own universe where it doesn't acknowledge other companies or other products or other ideas.

And I think this time, rather than projecting strength, that's going to look like weakness. We'll see. Because there is this perception that Apple is way behind and it's either going to have to acknowledge it or it's going to look like it's just got its head up its ass. I'm dying to know. I honestly, there's another week of weeks to come. We'll find out. But that it feels like this, that's the framework because they're the last of the developer conferences. And we kind of know what everyone else's moves are going to

All right, we should take a break. We'll come back. I want to actually pick up the thread from Google and its confidence when we come back because it's a really interesting contrast. We'll be right back. Support for The Verge Cast comes from Shopify. Starting your own business requires passion, excitement, and unfortunately, about a million small tasks that you probably overlooked because of all that passion and excitement. Don't worry. Shopify says they can help.

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All right, we're back. So, David, I want to talk about the Sundar interview that was on Decoder this week, and then the web and what's going on with the web. Okay, I'm in. So, first, I just want to address some persistent criticisms we get of Decoder by admitting something that is true. That's good. What is the Vergecast for, if not to talk about Decoder? It's true. That's all I'm going to do. I've tried, and I know this has disappointed a lot of people over the years. I have done my best, and I have consistently failed consistently.

To arrest the CEOs of major tech companies when they appear on Decoder. There's some segment of people that is visibly frustrated with me when every Decoder interview does not end with an arrest and jail time.

I'm doing my best. I have said you're under arrest at the end of many decoders. I do like the idea that every episode ends with like an animation of just bars coming down in front of their face. Decoder jail. You heard it. Some people have come close. Some CEOs have certainly self-immolated on that show in spectacular ways. And I'm saying this because I've interviewed Sundar a lot. He is very calm.

He's very practiced. He is excellent at answering exactly the question he wants to answer exactly when he wants to answer it and not answering the question if he doesn't want to. And so decoder for me is always a dance. It's always a race against the clock. And there's just a part of it where I know I've hit the wall. Like it's just not going to happen. And it's time to try a new wall. Let's see if I can get through a different wall. And in particular in conversations with Sundar, I think you can see me do that faster than ever just because I know him.

And I know when I'm, I'm just wasting time and I need to find a way to make that clearer. I think there's, I don't think it comes through that the way I experience an interview like that is as a clock. Like I'm just running out of time. Like from the second the conversation starts, the thing that's happening in my head is that I'm running out of time.

Yeah. It's a tricky balance. The balance between this is the question I want you to answer. And so I'm going to keep asking it versus at some point we have to make the rest of this podcast is a it's a hard balance to strike. Yeah. And there was there's always a lot of stuff to talk about. So, like, sure. But I think the thing that people are really reacting to in that and I felt it, I feel it this week. And there's a reason I want to talk about this is I asked Sundar, as I've asked for many years about Google's relationship to the Web.

And he keeps saying the same. He's said it now for many years, that Google is sending more traffic out to the web than ever, that they're committed to the web. They want the web to be healthy. They're the only company that cares about the web. You know, he always brings up competitors. Like, you know, Instagram doesn't allow links and captions. Like, I think this still bothers him that Google gets all of this pressure to make sure the web ecosystem is thriving. And, you know, many other platforms send no links out at all.

Okay. Well, Google runs Chrome. Google runs search. Like that is their ecosystem. Their creator base, if you want to think about it that way, is the web. And the same way that Instagram creators or TikTok creators are always mad at Instagram or TikTok or YouTube creators are always mad at YouTube, website owners are always mad at Google. Like that's just the nature of the relationship. But the economics are different because it's an open ecosystem, not a closed one. All right. So TikTok creators are mad at TikTok. There's a natural connection there.

Like TikTok can just make changes and change the lives of TikTok creators. There's an out for Google, which is like, I don't know, do some other stuff. Why are you so addicted to Google search? So you hear Sundar say, we're sending more traffic out to the web. And then within minutes, a site like Business Insider announces layoffs of 21% of its staff. They announced it just before we went on air. And the memo says, we need to get out of businesses that have traffic dependencies we cannot control.

that we need to we need to avoid these steep traffic drops we're seeing and what they are talking about is search traffic right they're getting out of the commerce business where you know that you list the 10 best mattresses and collect affiliate revenue for clicks because that style of running a commerce business is search arbitrage right people search for best mattress they land on the business insider page they buy a mattress and business insider get some pennies and if you can

warm your way up the rankings, you can make more pennies and then you can make pennies at scale and now you've made money. And we know lots of competitors that basically just do search arbitrage in this way. And the bottom has fallen out of all of those businesses. I mean, we do some search arbitrage. Like we can just

Call that what it is. Everybody does some search arbitrage. It's part of being a business on the internet. That is part of the job. Yeah, but we don't do it as ruthlessly as like the slop buying guys. No, much to the chagrin of some of the people at Vox Media. It's true. There are people who'd love for us to do it ruthlessly. Also, we run like a formal reviews program. Like we do, it's true. We make some pages for search and we see the demand and we try to get that audience. But if you're

running one of those verticals that is purely search arbitrage, right? The content farms that do it, their businesses are going away. And some of those content farms are attached to things like Business Insider, which does real journalism, right? And like, you see the bottom falling out there. And I...

There's a real disconnect. And I think I felt it on this interview more than ever. We're saying we're committed to the web. We're going to keep building on the web. We're going to keep sending traffic on the web. And then all of the people building on the web are like, we're dying. And I don't think that disconnect is getting smaller. I think it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger by the day. And it, you know, I'm not going to go all the way out there and say the web is dying. I think the web is a place where apps are developed the best it's ever been.

Every single day there's like a hot new web app basically that is doing something that couldn't be done before or an app like Figma is getting capabilities it never had before. That's an incredible story of application development. Like I keep saying this, like as a giant interlinked, interconnected worldwide application platform, the web is a miracle. Like it's just you would never be able to predict that something like that could exist and it does. It's scale.

And everyone just sort of takes it for granted. As a media platform, it's dying. And one of the reasons it's dying is because there's no way to move traffic around it. And Google is the last way to move it. And I would just say I don't think they care. I really have come to the conclusion that they know this is happening. They can obviously see it happening. And they've just...

They it's just they're over it. Like, I don't think they want the pressure. I don't think they care. There's also a bunch of lawsuits we should talk about. But we're just in a place where I think the web we knew is coming to a close.

And another web that's primarily application based or platform based or whatever it is, is on the rise. And it might be masking the fact that an old web is maybe over. I think that's true. I mean, and I think I put this next to the work Google has been doing on its ranking stuff over the last couple of years, including a couple of pretty big ranking changes that like all at once tanked a bunch of publishers. And this is the thing we've covered a lot, the ranking.

the, you know, small like home goods reviews site that got absolutely destroyed by some sort of unknowable change in the algorithm that just downranked a bunch of new stuff. And Google's line, and I at a very top level, I believe them that this is the goal, is the goal is to stop sending traffic to bad websites, right? And so like,

Google is actively trying to kill bad websites. Let's not be unclear about that. All the stuff you're describing, all the content farming stuff, Google not only doesn't care if that goes away, it would like that to go away. Because again, Google understands as well as anybody that if all of that stuff gets worse on the web, Google search becomes less useful.

And it all just like falls apart. Right. And this is this is a thing we've seen happen. Search results get worse because websites are getting worse because they're trying to game Google. And it's this like horrible death spiral of search arbitrage. Google is very happy to kill all of that stuff. Like I think all of the things where there's no more money in mattress reviews because they don't rank on Google anymore. I think inside of Google, they are going to call that a resounding success.

Feel about that however you want, but I don't think Google's stance on that is at all unclear. I think to me, the question is like,

Google is in an unusually active position right now of trying to decide what a good and bad webpage is. And Google has always, always, always, always, always gone way out of its way to say that it doesn't do that. And to say that actually we are not remotely interested in trying to decide what's good and bad on the internet. We're just sending traffic to where people wanna go. And then there was this big SEO leak a year ago that made very clear that Google puts its thumbs on the scale in like innumerable ways to decide what it likes and what it doesn't.

And now increasingly, it's like, okay, in order to take all the shitty stuff that has been created on the web to game the way the system worked, we're going to build a new system because it's better than that old system. And if all that stuff dies that was trying to game our old system, so be it. And then the question is, and no one will answer this, including Sundar, is what happens when you also kill the good websites? They won't say that. They will not answer that question. And there is this like,

big structural belief and i think it was demis isobis that said this that like we're gonna eventually have a web that is mostly for ai agents and may not even need like a front end for people to look at at all most of the time but what about the good websites it's like it's just a question they won't answer and and we're in such a like baby being thrown out with the bathwater situation where like in a sort of ruthless way like sure let all the bad websites die let them all die whatever and

There are a lot of good websites out there that will die as you kill the bad websites in order to make it easier for people to find what mattress to buy. And like Google, at least publicly, will not reckon with that. So I think one of the ways they are reckoning with it is by saying, well, the audience doesn't want this. And I don't know how to contend with that. Right. Their point is like.

People are getting media from YouTube and TikTok and whatever else and podcasts, and that's all fine. And that's where the audience is going. And if you want to run a website, great, get your own audience. Don't be relying on Google search to get your audience. And I mean, if anyone has listened to Verchast for the past five years, you know that I believe this in my bones. The deepest level that being addicted to Google is bad for the media industry.

But the media industry is addicted to Google. And there's no, like, transition plan. It's like, oh, we're just going to kill you. And they're fine with it. And I don't think the audience understands what's happening to the information environment that they're in. Like, that to me is, like, the hardest part of this. That suddenly Google is full of summaries of things that might be garbage. Or the AI itself is hallucinating. Or the good sources of information are now at war with Google. Right.

And you're not even getting them because they're in a fight. So another piece of, this is all just a swirl of what is going to happen to the web. The New York Times today, this morning, before we started recording, announced they've inked a generative AI deal with Amazon. And it broadly tracks the deals that everyone has made with open AI. Vox Media has a deal with open AI that's like this. Amazon's going to train on New York Times content. New York Times stuff will appear in Alexa and other Amazon services.

It's a licensing deal. And a lot of media companies are setting these deals because they want to set a market for what the license looks like. So again, Disclosure, Vox Media is one of the deals with OpenAI. I have no idea what the terms are. But Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic, was on here – was on Decoder –

And he was like, we need to set a market like some payments need to be made. So there are some numbers for the inevitable court cases to come to some conclusion about. And Amazon is a very useful, rich company to sign one of those deals with in

Right. So the New York Times can't sign a deal with OpenAI because they're suing them in Microsoft for copyright infringement. It's in a fight with Google. The Times executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. Disclosure, our executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. They're furious with Google about all the changes to search and these traffic drops. They're a part of the publisher ad tech lawsuits, all that stuff. So they're in a fight with Google.

Who's left? Who has big pockets that can set you a rate for a fight? It's Amazon. Right. Which also, by the way, would like very much to make it more expensive for all the other companies to do this job too. Yeah. Amazon wins if they just set enormous rates for Google and OpenAI. Yeah. It's fine. But like, oh, this is a weird, because Amazon doesn't give a shit about the web. They want Alexa to summarize Times articles for you every morning proactively or like whatever they think Alexa is going to do. They're not out here. Like, what's their browser called? Yeah.

On fire device. Silk. They're not. Whatever. You know what I mean? Like their thing is like they need the training data for their AI systems. They need to distribute it to their customers in new and interesting ways because they're not going to win as a web browser company. Right. Which brings me to like the last little piece of the puzzle, which is the browser company, which David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length. They stopped making their browser. Like they stopped making ARK.

Because there's no win there for them. Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out what the next bet is. They have this new browser called Dia, which is very much like... So far, I got into the beta. I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got into the beta. And like, holy God, is it just Chrome with a chatbot? And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with a chatbot? It's Chrome and also every other browser that exists. And so I think...

for the browser company, the big bet was like, okay, if we can mix AI with browsing data with a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful. Agreed.

Great call browser company. It turns out everybody else had that idea too. And this is just what's coming. And then the flip side is like that stuff is being eaten up by the ChatGPT app and the Claude app and people using Siri badly and Gemini and all this stuff. And so there is this like, again, it's just what is a webpage for anymore? And if I'm not in the business of showing you webpages, what am I building?

And I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. And I think it's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day, every day. That doesn't appear to be the next thing. But no one knows quite what that thing is yet because it might not be showing you web pages. I don't think it is. That Demis Hassabis comment at I.O. about what kind of web do you build for agents first? It's the whole game.

It's the whole game. Yeah. So whatever you think Google search did to the web as a media platform, and it did a lot of things. First, it created an entire economy for the web as a media platform, right? People search for things. They went to web pages. Just like revolutionized the internet. Like it created the internet as we know it in like meaningful ways. Yeah. Then it created SEO, which is less good. Yeah.

Then it created the SEO industry and SEO slop and all this stuff. And it made a whole ecosystem that worked and didn't work in whatever ways it worked. And then even before AI showed up, Google started displaying more and more of the content natively.

Right. What time is the Super Bowl went from being a thing that people fought for to a thing that Google would just tell you? And zero-click searches, which is what they were called, were an increasing part of Google's product for just a long time. And the only searches that they would definitely send people to websites for were commercial searches, stuff where you bought stuff. And they were every – if you look at Google I.O. over the years, every demo has always ended with a transaction. Right.

Because once you're doing commercial searches, you get to charge for advertising. And so you can buy yourself to the top of a commercial search, the top result. You're the winner. You bought the AdWords auction for shoes. You get the shoes click. You bought some shoes. Everyone's happy in Google's ecosystem. And that has led to other weird outcomes, right? Where you search for the name of a product. You get the competitor first because they bought the ad for the name of the product. Weird outcome made Google really rich. That's the web we knew.

And then you see what AI is doing to that web, right? We're just reading the entire web. Maybe that's copyright infringement. Maybe it's not. And we're just going to summarize it for you and give it to you. And businesses will die. Okay. We're going to run that whole cycle, that 20-year cycle, in two minutes with web apps and agents. Yeah. It's going to run so fast because the first wave of agents were not programmatic.

Right. It was like, we're going to go click around on the website for you. And Google has these projects. What's it, Mariner? Project Mariner is Google runs Chrome for you in its data center and a robot clicks around on a website for you and does the work. And what Demis is saying is, why are we doing this? Like, this is stupid. We should use these new AI first protocols, which are basically just APIs, but made for AI agents like MCP,

A to A there's, there's a whole alphabet soup of these new protocols that are really interesting. And then the agents are going to go to a website, which will just appear like a text prompt database. So you'll collect information out of the database and bring it back to you. And once you have that web, okay, now you really do have the giant worldwide interlinked application platform, but you don't have websites. Yeah.

You just have a bunch of smart databases talking to each other. You're making me think of when I was talking to the Google search team ahead of IO, Liz Reed, who runs the search team, basically made the argument to me that the Google search ecosystem that we know now was just a construct of the technology that we had. That basically all we had the technology to do was look for words in a place. And it was something else had to put them in a place

place in an order that made sense and all Google's technology was able to do was look for it, right? It was somebody else's job to make it something human-parsable. And now we have technology that can make this stuff human-parsable, that maybe we don't need the middleman of somebody building a thing around it that I can look at. And I think that is like...

I don't think she meant it to seem like a, as huge a statement as she did, but to say like the, and I think it reminds me of the thing you always say about Twitter, right? Which is that like, uh, criticism of the current Twitter does not absolve past, uh,

versions of the company from being terrible. Jack Dorsey was also bad. The Nilay Patel story. Right. Like I think the argument I think Google is making but doesn't quite want to say out loud is that the way that we've done it for the last 25 years wasn't the right answer. It was just the one that Google came up with. And now they think they have a better one. And so they're like, well, we sort of reoriented around one thing and now we have a better thing. Why wouldn't we reorient again? And

I think in a vacuum, that's like a reasonable thing to say, right? Like we built a better thing. We're going to do the thing. But then they're doing the thing that every tech company does, which is just utterly fail to think about the downstream effects of their decisions. Oh, I think they've thought about those effects. You think? And I think they've come to the conclusion after getting beat up for three years at IO about AI and the downstream effects on the web and being in lawsuits like that.

They're like, we don't care. Like if we don't get here, someone else will get here first. And it would be better to take the hits and survive than to try to play nice and lose. That's the Mark Zuckerberg Joker story. Like that's what happens. You get beat up enough times that you turn into the Joker. And that's what Mark Zuckerberg did. And I think they're also not for nothing. They're looking at the information environment they operate in. I mean, well, YouTube is bigger than ever.

The information is on YouTube. I mean, it is probably true that if all the websites went away, Google would be fine. And I think Google kind of knows that. I don't know. I think that is more of an open question than not, because all that's going to be left is slop. Like the last domino to fall here, like really the last domino is some scaled media company opting out of being ranked. Right. So the New York Times says to Google, look, we've just had enough.

stop, stop crawling us, stop ranking us, stop serving our news, and that no one has the leverage against Google yet. At some point, they will stop sending enough traffic that someone will make that call.

And I don't think they've thought that through. Like, what happens when the web stops being universally available to Google? Right. And who knows? Who knows the answer to that question? Honestly, like, my immediate reaction to that was to say that'll never happen because the New York Times needs Google a lot more than Google needs the New York Times. But like the pure perception hit that Google would take as a place that no longer sees the whole Internet might change it.

Like there's something would happen there. There's some fine grained controls are like very political here. So like you can opt into Google search, but not Google AI training. But there are documents from the various trials. You can see Google executives working through those options and even creating those options and saying, well, maybe one day we're going to get to if you want to be searched, you want to be crawled for the search engine. You have to opt into AI training.

Again, if things continue the way they're going, some big media company is going to say, we're out. Yeah. Take us out of this. I don't know when that's going to be, but that's the trend line. And that's when I'm like, the web as a media platform is just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's hard to see the through line, but I know when things are changing. I can't see the finish line. I can't see what it looks like at the end. But I know we're at the beginning of a new phase without –

Any question at all. Yes. Something massive is happening here as Google is adding agents to Chrome. Like that's just a thing that they're trying to do. More and more people are talking about using the web as basically a series of database. Like Sundar in that interview is like, what is the web but a series of databases? I also think like you, you said to him a thing you say a lot, which is that if you if we were starting the verge again today, you wouldn't start a website. You'd start a TikTok channel. And he sort of pushed back saying,

But what he said was pretty much in, in as many words, he said, sure, you'd start a TikTok channel, but it's only like 2% more work to have a web presence. So you'd probably do that too. And it's like, even if that's true, that is such a, I don't think he realized the extent to which he was telling on himself by saying that. Yeah.

And I just I've been thinking about that ever since. Yeah. When we started The Verge, 100 percent of our effort was the website. Right. Like, oh, but sure, you'll you'll like, you know, do a WordPress template and put it on the Internet. Just why not? No, I think his answer is much more like it's two percent more work because you will prompt Gemini to read your TikTok channel and stand up a Web site.

Like that's what he meant by 2% more work. And by the way, when I keep saying there's no way we would start a website today, what I mean is that we started The Verge in 2011 when cell phones still had three-inch screens. Like we launched The Verge as basically a desktop app. Those were the days. That's what the venture capital money was for. It was just a very different time. We would just never do that today. Like you would go address an audience in a different way. And that's what every new media company is trying to do essentially. Yeah.

I don't know. I would just say, go listen to that conversation again. You will hear more pushback than you think. And a lot of it is kind of predicated around, well, it's fine if these things die, right? Because other things are growing, which makes sense. Like on the broadest scale, that is true. That's just life. But you see there's no longer a defense of like the things are dying. It's look at all the stuff that's growing.

The one thing that could complicate this, and by the time you're listening to this, it will have probably happened, is that it's closing arguments in the Google search antitrust remedies phase on Friday, tomorrow. As you're listening to this, it already happened. That's the case where the government is asking for Google to be forced to sell Chrome.

And I asked Suter about this. I said, can you do all the stuff you want to do if you have to sell Chrome? And he just didn't answer. And his final version of this, when I knew I'd hit the brick wall, he said, that's not even what we're looking at.

And I was like, well, you should, because it might happen to you. I mean, to be clear, like two things. A, that's clearly a lie. And B, he can't tell you anything because it's like ongoing litigation, right? Like that's a thing a lawyer looks him in the eyes and says, hey, Sunar, you cannot say words about this or everyone goes to jail. But like that's, you're right that that is the question. And I think whether...

This ends up being good for the web, though, is hard to know. It's clearly bad for Google. Whatever is going to happen is going to be bad for Google. But does this just give OpenAI new distribution for ChatGPT to do the same kind of stuff? Or is there a version of this that actually accrues back to the idea that the web as a place full of web pages that people go to is a good and valuable idea? 100% TBD.

like genuinely unknown. And I think it's part of what everyone has tried to reckon with in this trial is like, what happens if we do this? There is a sense that like, we're going to make it possible for a bunch of other companies to build search engines. But if you believe Google, the whole premise of a search engine is going away. And all anyone will do is take that search index and build AI products. And if that's what's happening, then we've solved one kind of Google problem, but we've just sped up the killing of the web.

So believe in Google there. You know, you have to believe them when they say like AI overviews are our most used product ever. And it's like, cause you put them on all the pages. I know. No one's picking. Like they're just doing what's in front of them. I punched you in the face. You've been punched. You loved it. I don't know. We'll see. There's a lot here. The reason I wanted to add all these things up together is you can see the change. Like, you know, a year from now,

the New York Times will run a story about how the web changed. I'm like, yeah, I listened to the virtual house. I got that a year ago because this is the moment, right? Apple's weird weaknesses, Google's apparent strength, all kind of built around like, where do the apps come from? How do you use them? How is the user interface just going to be a bunch of natural language? Are the, you know, Google's vision is that you'll search for something. It will build you an app on the fly and make a new interface to data for you, which is pretty cool. Like Google,

That's a cool way to think about interacting with the search engine. Yeah. Many things have to die for that to happen. Like the dinosaurs were cool. Mammals were cooler. Like, sorry, bro. Like it's over. Like the asteroid is going to hit you. That's where I perceive that as clearly as I can now. Like that's the change that's coming. Yeah. The application models are changing and Apple's weakness is are they ready for it?

And Google's perceived strength is they're ahead of it. But Google has big questions to answer too. And the downstream effects are like pretty huge this time. Yeah. And if you're wondering, by the way, what is the best possible outcome here? The answer is the Fediverse. Like if you walk this back all the way to the beginning of you and I talking about all of this stuff and like, how do we, how do we take the things that are good about this and make it the size of the web and part of the web? That's how you do it. Yeah. That's the stuff. Like big interoperability, which...

we have to demand as consumers this time. Yeah. Like the, I don't think the federal government is going to demand it. Although they are in court. You never know. Some settlement could happen. All right. We got to take a break. We're gonna come back with lightning round, which I have been told. I don't know, but I have been told it's sponsored. We'll be right back.

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Now, as you know, if you've been listening to the show, David and I and the rest of the Verge newsroom, we don't do the ads. We refuse to do the ads. We're precious about it. That's our editorial independence coming through loud and clear. But the lightning round is sponsored this week. So someone has to say it. So Eric, our producer, Eric's going to say it. Eric, go ahead. Hi. This week's lightning round is presented by Google Gemini.

That was great, Eric. Really good job. Well done. I'm really proud of you. There are going to be so many reactions to that based on what we just did. Very good. Don't worry, though. Still full flavor because you can't tell us what to do. I was going to say, what's the flavor rating now? How do you feel? I don't know. I'm going to... I'll drink through this later. All right. It's fine. It's great. You two can sponsor the lightning round. The problem is when you cover for not getting the sponsors by insisting that the sponsors are bad. I did this to myself. But anyway, still full flavor because you can't tell us what to do. The merch subscriptions are on sale.

You see what I'm saying? I'm going to get better at this, David. All right. It's time. Speaking of people who would like to tell us what to do, it's time once again for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. A thing I can just say because you can just say things in America in 2025. Brendan Carr is a dummy. Nilay, according to the links I'm seeing here, kind of a busy week for our man, Brendan.

Like busy in inconsequential ways. Oh, Brendan's favorite. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people had reactions to Brendan this week. Okay. And, you know, Brendan continued to just like break stuff in the way that Brendan breaks stuff. But the chair of our nation's Federal Communications Commission is sort of busy just breaking stuff.

So we ran a big story this week about the BEAD program. It's the Biden administration's broadband rollout. Lots of criticism of the BEAD program, which is supposed to bring broadband to many, many more people, especially in rural areas across the country. We have long talked about how rural internet is like a disaster. And so Biden passes this big bill.

The bead money is supposed to go out. We're supposed to get internet connections. Everyone's like, where's the money? We didn't connect one person. Ezra Klein has sold millions of copies of his book pointing out that he didn't make one internet connection. It's fine. That's a meaningful criticism of this program.

The Trump administration is basically shutting this program down on the cusp of it actually starting to do the things it wants to do. So Wes Davis, his last big piece for us as a reporter here at The Verge, is a deep look at Bede, where it stands and what's happening to it. And what is fundamentally happening to it is that the money was starting to go out to build fiber connections across the country. And everyone showed up, including our boy Brendan and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, looked at this and said, no, no, no, no, no.

We want to give the money to Starlink, to Satellite Internet. Because when they say Satellite Internet, they only mean one thing. They don't mean HughesNet. Yeah, you're not giving it to Kuiper. Like, what are we doing here? They mean Starlink. Yeah. So we have all this reporting, all these quotes. Wes did a great job with this story, basically saying they were very close to rolling out full fiber connections to every single person in West Virginia. Yeah.

Like that's that was the plan for the bead money. They were going to be able to do with one hundred fifty million dollars to spare and ahead of its deadline. And now it's going to shift a bunch of that investment to satellite. And that's fine. Maybe you love Starling. But the reality is and I will disclose Comcast through its NBC universal arm as an investor in a parent company, Vox Media. But they hate me. So that's fine. I'm not a friend of the ISPs here.

But I'm just going to point out that wired connections are generally superior to wireless ones. Especially when they've already been built and exist. Especially when there's already infrastructure. Especially when the wired connections are so much faster than the satellite connections and do not require line of sight, which Starlink still requires line of sight. So we're just in this place where this program, which there are many, many realistic criticisms of it.

is now running into political expediency. And in particular, Brendan loves to talk about Starlink and satellite because he loves Elon Musk and he's captured moron. So that's one for Brendan. $20 billion, by the way, is the number we've seen floating around that this is the beat is a 42.6, I think, billion dollar program. And the reporting is that as much as 20 billion of that could just get thrown directly at Starlink.

to do something. And it's fine. Wes did a great job with this story. I encourage you to read it. It'll be in the show notes. There are lots of people in the story who say, look, fiber is not practical for 100% of the population. Of course we were going to also do Starlink and satellite and other fixed wireless solutions for a lot of people. There's an administrator in the state of Nevada who says this is what we were going to do there. But the ratios are being flipped to favor Starlink. It's just like naked. We're just going to put little ultra-wideband 5G things

everywhere around America that's going to solve all our problems. As 5G does. Speaking of 5G, you will recall, I think it was last week, a couple weeks ago, we had basically a moral dilemma because of Brendan, where we couldn't tell who the villain was in a particular Brendan story. Didn't like that. Brendan sent a letter to Dish Network saying, hey, you were supposed to build a nationwide 5G network.

to compete with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. And you're supposed to do that because we allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and to preserve competition in America. We gave you Boost Mobile and a bunch of Spectrum and a bunch of money, and they're supposed to be a network, and there's no network, and I'm Brendan Carr, and I love being angry about stuff, and now I'm going to yell at you, Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish Network. And it's hard to tell who the villain in that story is. Like, truly hard. Like, you're making the right criticisms for the wrong, totally politically motivated reasons. That's Brendan Carr, right?

on a good day, but that's the best we can hope for him. Yes. So DISH Network has chosen to fight back. A bunch of partners of EchoStar, a bunch of its vendors are saying that DISH is actually building a network. They say that they have 7 million customers

The majority of whom are still basically roaming on AT&T and T-Mobile, but their own network is serving 1.3 million people. I'll remind you that America has somewhere over 300 million people. So as a nationwide competitor to the bigs, not doing great. What's wild is that even that number still seems too high to me. Like that 1.3 million is like-

From Dish Network. Call me. Yeah. I don't believe you exist. Call me from your Echo Star phone. That's like a huge 90s satellite. And they're saying they gained 88,000 wireless subscribers in April. That means 88,000 people in April signed up for Dish Network's 5G service. You tell me who you are. I am guessing they mean Boost Mobile, which is their owned and operated prepaid service, right? Sure. Great.

That's the state of play. Dish is fighting back by claiming it has 1.3 million 5G customers running on its network. And everyone else is effectively buying AT&T and T-Mobile service that Dish is reselling under its own name. All that sucks. Like, that is not what was supposed to happen. By the way, a deal that Ajit Pai made that Brendan is... And Brendan, you know, he was part of that chain. And now he's trying to unwind it by yelling at Charlie. So I don't know what's going on there. I do know that Brendan, what does he want to do with the spectrum that he wants to reclaim from Dish? He wants to give it to Starlink. Yep.

Other satellite companies have also started asking for the spectrum. This is just dumb, naked corruption that started with a dumb, naked, corrupt deal that Ajit Pai made that Brendan is carrying on. That's life. Last two little bits of Brendan. Like I said, he's just carrying on breaking stuff. Ana Gomez, who's the last Democratic commissioner on the FCC—

Uh, they're supposed to, you know, have five and it's supposed to be three, two, depending on who, whose party has the presidency right now. They're three, one. So we're doing great. Um, uh, she's on tour. She's doing this like first amendment tour pointing out that Brendan is a threat to free speech.

So she's like going to college campuses. We've talked about her before. I'm going to try to get her on one of these shows. Do you think she's our competition in the Brendan Carr is a dummy podcast space? Like I hear she's going on tour and I'm like, maybe we need to go on our own tour. We should go on our own tour. We should combine forces. I mean, she's also a politician and I have a number of questions for why the FCC is totally ineffective and weak that I could direct at her as well as I've done to every FCC person that has ever appeared. All right. So we're going to go on a tour that exactly matches her tour. And we're just going to be like,

one building away. Yep. It's going to be like, you know, they all suck. Um, anyhow, she's on tour. The party speaker and microphones just yelling at Anna Gomez. We'll get a bigger party. We'll get that JBL, man. That thing's hot. Uh, Anna is saying that it's an administration wide effort to chill speech and stifle dissenting voices. Uh, and she says it, Brendan is leading a clear effort to quash dissent. She's basically picking the fight. She's like trying to get fired. She's even saying I will probably get fired for doing this.

And so far, Trump hasn't fired her. I don't think that he knows that she exists. But it's coming. This is the next turn. She's going to make enough noise and get fired. And she's...

I mean, you don't do this unless that's the outcome you're assuming is happening. Her quote, she says, I don't know why I'm still in my job. And then she says, if I get fired, it isn't because I didn't do my job. It's because I insisted upon doing it. By which she means protecting free speech. So I feel every time you and I record the Verge cast. That's very good. All of this has ended in maybe the most pretzel-like logic of all in the pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section where they have attacked Brendan this week.

for being an authoritarian censorship machine. And their response, because of the Wall Street Journal, is that the entire FCC should be shut down and turned over to the private market. Give it to Starlink. Just like full horseshoe theory of politics. Like even the most libertarian opinion section that you can get in the Wall Street Journal is like, yeah, that dude sucks. Like he's misusing government power. Shut it all down. Yeah.

I do like the idea of a privatized FCC. What could possibly go wrong?

You know, it's not like the there's not like there's scarce wireless spectrum and you want to protect things like the FAA from people's cell phone emissions. Like whatever. Why would you ever want to do that? Yeah. But it's great. I love it. I do love the fact that Brendan has united left and right in just pure hatred of his moronic censorship machine that he's building. He's a dummy. And it's rare that I'm like, you should read this Wall Street Journal opinion page piece.

As always, I remind you, the only politics we consistently express in the show are that free markets are pretty good, competition makes better products, and you should be a little bit less racist than Brendan Carr. If you think that's wildly leftist, you are free to believe that, but that's what you get from us. And also, now I'm telling you I agree with the Wall Street Journal's opinion pages. I'm telling you, man, strange bedfellows these days. It's weird times here in America. As ever, Brendan, you're welcome to come on the show and defend any of this stuff. You can appear via Starlink if you want.

You too can be sponsored by your buddy Elon. But I don't think you will ever do it because I think you're a coward and a dummy. So if you want to prove me wrong, all of our platforms are available to you. I will say that David and I are both having children soon, so the clock is ticking, my man. You got to get on here. Brendan, if you want to host the VergeCast this summer, get at us. We can talk about it. That door is shockingly open. Dying to know what Brendan thinks. But you do have to do Brendan Carr as a dummy every week. Ha ha ha!

I love it. All right, we need a palate cleanser. What do you got? It's almost Switch time. Did you buy a Switch? I did not. I play one video game, Madden, and I'm at the point now where I've mastered last year's Madden just in time for the new one to come out. Oh, I mean, that's the ideal Madden scenario. Yeah. I'm also waiting for Metal Gear Solid, Snake Eater, Delta Force, or whatever it's called to come out.

pins and needles for that one but that's not switch stuff okay no but the switch 2 is coming next week june 5th uh easily to me the gadget of the year like not knowing everything we know about the rest of the year i can't imagine what would have to happen for the switch 2 to not be the most consequential piece of hardware that's coming out uh

We're learning a bunch of stuff about it already. As far as I can tell, Nintendo seems to have been pretty tight with who's getting... It's not like there's been a Casey Neistat hands-on or a bunch of lifestyle influencers getting to use the thing. Like,

Not that many people seem to have Switch 2s yet, but stuff is starting to trickle out. There was an unboxing video that somebody did that got immediately yanked offline. We've been covering kind of the run-up to it a bunch. Jay Peters wrote a really good story basically being like, the Switch 2 is the Wii U done correctly, which is both like a good point and kind of a sick burn on all of Nintendo's history. But I just think this is like, it's a really interesting gadget moment.

In that I think if the Switch 2 is everything we think it might be, I kind of think it's a big deal just as a piece of hardware. Like if we have this thing that really makes portable gaming that is high-end and long-lasting, and like the fact that the Mario Kart game is like an open-world Mario Kart game that you can play anywhere demands a lot of the hardware, demands a lot of the wireless. Like if this stuff works, I think we get to the point where like

There's just a lot of things that suddenly start to feel possible in gadget design that I'm very excited about, which is a lot to say about a slightly bigger switch. But like, it's really how I feel. Yeah. I mean, you're all the way in on gadget of the year. Oh, hands down. Like I, what else could I, like, I, I have such a hard time imagining something be more important than the switch to like, if this thing sucks, it's going to be devastating, but

But also, again, like, I think if Nintendo just takes all these ideas that it had about the sort of modularity and the portability and this idea that you can have a thing that connects to all of your screens and all of your devices all at once and actually makes that, like, another tick better in every respect, it's just going to be amazing. And there's so many ideas that if you just broaden it out slightly, starts to change, like, oh, how do we think about our other gadgets? And, like...

What if Nintendo is doing all the like handoff stuff that Apple has never successfully done with its devices? Like, why can't I dock my iPhone into my television? Nilay, why? Nintendo figured it out. Yeah, it's funny. Apple, one of the other coats of paint rumors about Apple is they're going to redo Game Center to make it more like Xbox Live. Oh yeah, there's like a, it's a whole app. You can see the convergence here. Yeah. Look, I think it's possible to switch to is the device of the year. I think certainly, yeah,

It will be the gaming device of the year. And it's the one that people are the most excited about. Certainly the games look great from the coverage we've done and that our reporters have gotten to try out. But cash in the air is a big one. I mean, as somebody who covers gadgets, I hope I'm wrong. It's fun if I'm wrong. But I just think, I mean, this one's really interesting because the first Switch when it came out.

was cool and exciting, but it was a Breath of the Wild machine. That's fundamentally what it was. And this one is making much more of a hardware-first play. There are lots of new games, but some of the new games are also going to play on the old Switch. And there's nothing as immediately earth-shattering as there was with Breath of the Wild. And so I think the idea that this thing is going to have to sell itself as hardware...

A, it seems to be a thing Nintendo knows and B, is going to be super fascinating. And they're trying to do all this interesting ecosystem stuff where they're like, what if we, you know, sell you a third party camera that connects to the thing? I'm telling you, like, I have been wanting modular gadgets for as long as I have known you. And this is the closest thing to properly pulling that off if it pulls it off that I think we've ever seen. Yeah. All right, maybe I'll buy one. I,

I, so here's my question for you is, should I go stand in line at a GameStop at midnight to try and buy this thing? Like, am I just for the content? Do it for the gram. Yeah. Obviously I'm dying to know.

Have you read any of this new Apple in China book, by the way? No. There's long, it's really interesting. There's a lot of reporting there, but a lot of it is about how the Apple we know is more shaped by like Chinese resellers standing in line than anyone can possibly see. Oh, interesting. And that's really the story of GadgetLine. It's not like we've all but stopped covering them because it's basically a bunch of resellers standing in line. Yes. It's like, it's not like a joyous community. It's...

This is kind of gross in a lot of ways, but I think you should go and be like, I'm here for joyous community. And then just interview a bunch of resellers. See what happens. See what they're like. I like it. Be like, so you're flipping the switch, huh? How am I? All right. Well, I will report back next week, but I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to GameStop and see what kind of trouble I can get into. Yeah. All right. We should end with breaking news. The tariffs have been paused, David.

While we, while we were talking, the tariffs are back on the pause of the, the pause of the terrace was paused. Do you understand what I'm saying? We've unpaused. Court of appeals has blocked the pausing of the tariffs. I don't care. That's what I'm saying. Elon Musk is out of the white house. By the way, Elon Musk, you know, he, they, it's clear that he got himself. No one likes him anymore. So he's been off boarded officially from Doge. Um,

He's on a toll interview circuit right now. Yeah. He spoke to Ars Technica with CBS News, I think with the Washington Post. He's trying to make a big show of being back at Tesla. Tesla sales are tanking around the world. But like in ways that are like hard to cover, like in Europe, in one quarter they're down. Right. They've cratered in Quebec. It's like you got to – whatever. There's a bunch of data that says a story in like weird independent ways that

And then they're supposed to launch the robo taxis like soon. Yeah. And he's saying they're like out on the road doing stuff, right? Yeah. There's driverless cars in Austin. So if you're in Austin and you see a party speaker or a robo taxi, let me know. If you see a party speaker and a robo taxi in one photo, we will send you verge merch. I can't, I don't know what it'll be, but I will send you something. I will send you a party speaker.

But I think just the one thing I've been thinking a lot about with the Musk stuff is the thing he keeps saying in all these interviews is that he's like back to sleeping on factory floors and in conference rooms at Tesla. And it's like, it's very much a show of I am back paying attention to my company designed especially to like, you know, appease investors who have been worried about Tesla being completely ignored by its CEO for a long time. I'm very curious to see how that

helps Tesla's case versus again, like with, with the sales changes, this ongoing disastrous branding that the company has gone through because of Elon Musk, that is like, he is the, the company's greatest asset and worst problem. And that's been true for a long time, but for a long time, at least financially asset outweighed problem pretty aggressively. And it really feels like that has flipped. And I, I'm just curious to see what,

If he can change that perception just by being back at Tesla more, but I don't, I don't see it. I don't either. There's, there's nothing to be done in the factory for him. No. What's he like? He's not, he can't invent a new car to fix it right now. Like, yeah, I think that's also increasingly clear to a lot of people, uh, is that the, the sleeping at the factory might've been a bit and maybe not part of my man's day to day job. Well, he's gotten more children than father. Um,

Anyhow, the tariffs are paused. You let me know. There's a lot of updates. If you're out in the world, you let me know what the tariffs are doing. It's going to be a weird iPhone season. iPhone prices are going to be crazy because of these things. All right. That's it. We covered, as always, we went long because it was a slow news week. This is what always happens to us.

This was fun. It was a good one. We'll be back next week with much more WWDC preview. Lots of stuff. It's The Verge, everybody. It's going to be great. Pay us the money. You can't tell us what to do. That's it. That's The Verge. That's right. Bye.

And that's it for The Verge Cast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week. ♪

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