- 5 months ago
It's a big week for the smart home. Jake, Vee, and Jen sit down to chat about all the new tech out of IFA, from robots that carry robot vacuums up stairs to upgrades that turn 10-year-old Hue bulbs into motion sensors. Then, Lauren joins the show to talk about the Google antitrust remedies ruling and what Google is going to have to do to allow more competition in the search market. Finally, the Thunder Round is back and better than ever. We're talking $2,000 smart watches, Amazon yanking a major Prime perk, the Pixel 10 Pro's 100x AI zoom, Instagram for iPad, and drama at the FTC.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Hello, and welcome to The VergeCast, the flagship podcast of robots carrying other robots.
00:00:07I'm Jake Kastronakis, executive editor of The Verge.
00:00:10David Neelai, those guys not here today, but got some big news here.
00:00:15David Pierce will be back starting next week.
00:00:18He'll be on the podcast, so tune in, look forward to that.
00:00:21Today, we've got a great crew, though.
00:00:24With me for the whole show is going to be V Song, senior reviewer of The Verge.
00:00:29Hello.
00:00:30And, V, you just had a big announcement.
00:00:33Yes, I did. I launched Optimizer, which is our latest newsletter.
00:00:39All right.
00:00:41It's going to be a fun time.
00:00:43I will be having several existential crises as I test out tech's claims to make your life better with whatever app, AI, gizmo, smartwatch, you know, the whole spiel.
00:00:56Well, you know, we're going to we're going to dive into whether these things actually make your life better.
00:01:03I'm so excited for this.
00:01:04V has already been writing basically a bunch of these on the site.
00:01:07And so if you've been reading her stuff lately, being like, these are wild, these are ridiculous.
00:01:11Like, that's that's what Optimizer is going to be.
00:01:13It's going to be really fun.
00:01:14So check it out.
00:01:15The Verge dot com.
00:01:16We've got a lot to talk about today.
00:01:19There is a huge ruling in the Google antitrust case.
00:01:24Lauren Feiner, the Verge's senior policy reporter, is going to join us later to talk about that.
00:01:28But first, we've got Jen Tuohy here.
00:01:32She is in Berlin at the IFA trade show.
00:01:36Jen, how's it going?
00:01:37Good, thanks.
00:01:38Yeah, hot and sweaty.
00:01:40It's like 900 degrees in Berlin.
00:01:43But having a blast checking out all the fun gadgets and the robots carrying robots.
00:01:48So it's always a good time here.
00:01:52OK, I have an important question.
00:01:55How is your hotel room?
00:01:56Is there any smart tech?
00:01:58That's no, it's not.
00:02:02I've never been in a smart tech hotel.
00:02:05I think they only exist in California, honestly.
00:02:08OK, well, that's that.
00:02:09We need to make your next trip over to California.
00:02:11I thought I was hoping that because of IFA, you'd have a slightly smarter, swankier AI infused hotel.
00:02:19But no, nothing yet.
00:02:20No, OK, we'll get there.
00:02:22This one can't even do the air conditioning.
00:02:24It's definitely not smart.
00:02:25It's not good.
00:02:26What floor are you on?
00:02:28I can open my window.
00:02:29That's the nice thing about Europe.
00:02:31OK, OK, that's nice.
00:02:32Europeans let you open windows.
00:02:33That's, you know what, that's technology.
00:02:35Yes, that is.
00:02:36It's a different kind.
00:02:37That is very true.
00:02:37So Jen is in Germany for IFA.
00:02:41IFA is this big European tech show.
00:02:45There's been a lot of stuff going on.
00:02:46Samsung announced a new FE phone and a tablet.
00:02:49Anchor has a cool new party speaker slash party projector.
00:02:53But Smart Home is the star of the show.
00:02:55It has been for the last few years.
00:02:56There are a bunch of robot vacuums, a lot of smart lights, a big announcement from Philips Hue that turns its smart bulbs into motion detectors.
00:03:06We're going to get into all of that.
00:03:08I guess, Jen, you've been walking around the show all day.
00:03:11How is it and what are people buzzing about?
00:03:14So today was the media day.
00:03:17And unlike so IFA is kind of like CES for Europe, but unlike CES for America and here in IFA, you don't have to go to a little boring press rooms.
00:03:27They have their press conferences for all the media on the show floor, but they haven't finished putting their booths together.
00:03:33So we're basically dodging, literally dodging forklift trucks and ladders and like buckets of paint as we try and go and check out these press conferences.
00:03:44So I haven't got to really get hands on in too many booths yet because they're still building them.
00:03:50But we got a lot of announcements.
00:03:52So, but it was fun to get a few sneak peeks, you know, around the back of the curtain for some of the booths.
00:03:59So Dreamy had a big press conference in their booth today.
00:04:03And that was one of the more sort of, huh, this is kind of cool, but do we really need it moments, which was a stair climbing robot.
00:04:15And this is something that has been sort of dear to my heart in the robot vacuum world.
00:04:21You know, robots with various limbs and things like actual, like proper stairs.
00:04:27I feel like it's been announced before and they're like, it can, it's actually just like a bump.
00:04:30I know, you're right, you're right.
00:04:33We've had these levels.
00:04:34Now we're at the, so.
00:04:37What are we talking about here?
00:04:38Legs, treads?
00:04:39Treads.
00:04:40So it's, it's, it's actually, they call them arms or, well, there's two companies that have actually released the same robot concept.
00:04:47Eufy has one, which you can actually, are going to be able to buy relatively soon, I think next year.
00:04:52And then Dreamy has announced its concept and it's tracks.
00:04:57And they basically fold their sort of arms out from the body and turn into tracks and then track, track, track, track, track, track up the stairs.
00:05:06So it went up like nine stairs and then stopped, turned around and came down.
00:05:11That's almost a whole flight of stairs.
00:05:14That's almost.
00:05:14Is there a limit to the number of stairs they can do?
00:05:17Because, you know, I live in a four floor townhouse.
00:05:20It would be nice to have one stair climbing robot instead of four robo vacuums that are limited to each floor.
00:05:27So they didn't release specs on the Dreamy one, but the Eufy one, they did say it can go up to, I think it was up to five flights.
00:05:36And they can turn corners and so, you know, and do different shapes of stairs.
00:05:42But the way it works is instead of it actually being a robot vacuum, it's just a robot.
00:05:47And the robot vacuum gets into it and gets carried up.
00:05:51So it's like a stair lift for your robot vacuum.
00:05:53My God, that is so cool and so frightening at the same time.
00:06:02I'm just waiting for my cat to like decide, okay, I'm going to hop on and get a ride up.
00:06:07Okay, that rules.
00:06:08So it's a robot for your robot.
00:06:10It's a mech that your robot gets into.
00:06:12And that's, I feel like we've gone too far.
00:06:16I think we've over-engineered cleaning our floors.
00:06:18I really do.
00:06:20It's so impressive.
00:06:22And the thing that gets me is it doesn't clean the stairs.
00:06:24I want something that cleans the stairs.
00:06:26Oh, come on.
00:06:28It's right there.
00:06:29That's next year's robot.
00:06:30It will also carry the separate buy-it-separately stair-cleaning bot as it brings it up.
00:06:37So yeah, it's a little crazy.
00:06:39I love, Robobacs are always good for like truly ridiculous robot technology.
00:06:42It does feel like they really turned a corner this year and have been adding all these limbs
00:06:46and appendages.
00:06:48It's wild.
00:06:48It's not clear that any of them work like amazingly.
00:06:50You tested the one with the robot arm, right?
00:06:53And it was like, eh.
00:06:55It was fine at a vacuum, but the arm was very limited.
00:06:59Well, you know, it's Gen 1.
00:07:02It's a Gen 1 arm.
00:07:03Yes.
00:07:03So I do have one question about Aoife.
00:07:07Is it still at Mess Berlin?
00:07:10Yeah, which is a fascinating building.
00:07:14I mean, if you're into brutalist German architecture, then you will love this place.
00:07:18But it's also a maze, which is actually, you know, there are stairs everywhere.
00:07:22So honestly, I could have used one of these for me, like a Gen transporter to take me around
00:07:28the conference center.
00:07:30That's how they'll really impress us.
00:07:32Yes.
00:07:32So what has been your number one thing so far of the show?
00:07:35Well, I was very into all the Hue lighting announcements yesterday.
00:07:40They did a big event, not actually in the Messe, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it.
00:07:49And they did a big event where they announced a ton of new lights.
00:07:54The sort of headline feature for most people is that their products are getting cheaper.
00:07:58So they've released a new line of essentials light bulbs that starts at around $15 a bulb,
00:08:05which is still not the least expensive smart bulb you can buy.
00:08:09I mean, that's like a quarter of the price, right?
00:08:11Like a Hue bulb is $60.
00:08:13$60.
00:08:14So it's $24.99 for a single essentials bulb.
00:08:18But if you buy a four-pack, it's down to $15 a bulb.
00:08:22So it's, yeah, that's great.
00:08:24That's wild pricing for Hue.
00:08:26Can you change the colors?
00:08:28Yes.
00:08:28So they're all white and color ambiance bulbs.
00:08:30They just have, so they don't dim quite as deep.
00:08:33They have slightly less temperature range.
00:08:36And they say that while the color accuracy is very good, it's not, they don't, it's not as guaranteed to be matched perfectly with all your other Hue bulbs in the way that their premium bulbs are.
00:08:50So that was kind of nice, I think, for the market to see that because Hue has always been a very popular product.
00:08:56But the number one complaint I hear from people is it's just so expensive.
00:09:00And now there are all these other products on the market.
00:09:03And with Matter, you know, it's much easier.
00:09:05It used to be for Hue, they worked with everyone.
00:09:07So that was a great selling point and maybe one of the reasons you might think to spend more.
00:09:12But with Matter now, most smart lighting bulbs work with most platforms.
00:09:18So that they were kind of losing that differentiating factor.
00:09:21I think that probably played into needing to move, you know, have more choice for the, for people.
00:09:27But the really exciting thing, for me anyway, I'm not sure if this is as exciting for most people as the pricing, but is that they have released a new feature, which is a software upgrade that will go on every Hue bulb made after 2014.
00:09:43So basically second gen on, that turns your light bulbs into motion sensors.
00:09:48This is wild.
00:09:50This is what I've wanted this whole year of like building my first smart home in this very vertical townhouse.
00:09:59Like the Cold War, my spouse and I have is over the smart lights because I like to use voice and they're like, Google Assistant kind of discriminates against their voice and never works, even though we've trained it.
00:10:13So they're just like, I got to pull out an app.
00:10:17What's wrong with the light switch?
00:10:18But, you know, if it was a motion sensor, and I'm guessing it turns on when you walk into a room or turns off when you leave it, then we don't have to have any fights anymore about turning on the lights.
00:10:29That could be their tagline.
00:10:30This is going to save my marriage.
00:10:31Yeah, Phillips Hughes, saving people's marriages.
00:10:34Yeah.
00:10:34Well, you could get a motion sensor V.
00:10:36I mean, to be fair, you can buy motion sensors.
00:10:38We could, but, you know, it's kind of cool if you don't have to buy multiple devices.
00:10:43And motion sensors can be fiddly.
00:10:45It's kind of one of the advantages of this tech is it covers a larger area than, say, a traditional PIR sensor.
00:10:53But there are a few caveats here.
00:10:56You have to have three bulbs in the room, in the area you want the motion sensing because it kind of triangulates.
00:11:02And what it's using is RF sensing.
00:11:04So that's something that we've seen with Wi-Fi, wireless Wi-Fi sensing, Zigbee, Bluetooth.
00:11:11There's some of this in a couple of products that use Bluetooth mesh sensing.
00:11:16But this is the first product to launch that uses Zigbee RF sensing.
00:11:21And it's a technology developed by a company called Ivani called Sensify, which I wrote about a year or so ago.
00:11:28And we kind of speculated at the time that this might be what Hue was going to be using for its bulbs because they're obviously one of the most well-known Zigbee-based smart lighting lines.
00:11:39And so it basically just detects disturbances in the radio frequency signals between the bulbs.
00:11:45So that's why you need at least I think they recommend three to four, which could be a bit tricky and depending on what kind of a room you have.
00:11:54And you don't I asked and they said, no, you don't do like like three in a row.
00:11:58Like if you had track lighting, that's probably not going to work that well because it's not creating a zone.
00:12:03So there's going to be a bit of setting up to do.
00:12:06I did test a Wi-Fi version of this that Wiz, which is Hue's sister company, had for their bulbs.
00:12:14And it wasn't super reliable.
00:12:17It would turn on OK, but it was the turning off part that was less reliable.
00:12:22So but Hue says that they've worked been working on this for a long time, like multiple years,
00:12:28and specifically sort of fine tuning the reliability aspect.
00:12:32So I'm going to be really interested to to try it out because it is the idea that you can take a product you already own
00:12:40and upgrade it to get this kind of function is a great thing for the smart home.
00:12:47Also, not having little white boxes and sensors around the house.
00:12:51I mean, I have a Hue motion sensor.
00:12:52They're great.
00:12:53But like my kid will move it or my husband will get annoyed by the light.
00:12:59You know, it's occasionally it will blink a little LED light and he'll like put it flat on its face.
00:13:03So it's no longer sensing motion.
00:13:05But there is one caveat.
00:13:07You do have to have the new Hue Bridge Pro for this to work.
00:13:11Sorry, just got that one in there.
00:13:13No, no, no.
00:13:13So it really is remarkable, though.
00:13:15Like, I truly cannot think of another instance where a company went and retroactively added a major feature to 10 years worth of products.
00:13:25Yeah.
00:13:26And especially something as substantially different as this.
00:13:29Like, this is a very clever implementation and a very clever new feature.
00:13:34And, you know, you're right.
00:13:36Like, there is this important caveat.
00:13:37So you do have to have this new hub to enable it.
00:13:40Yeah.
00:13:41And it sounds like there's a legitimate reason for that, right?
00:13:43They're not just like pay gating it.
00:13:45Right.
00:13:46So it is a heavy technical load to process.
00:13:50So what happens is that the bulbs can be firmware updated to support the sort of tech stack of the Sensify technology with the Hue technology sort of mixed in.
00:14:01But they then all they do is detect motion.
00:14:05They don't know what that motion is.
00:14:07And so they send their signals back to the bridge, which processes, uses algorithms that have been kind of fine tuned to detect specific types of motion.
00:14:16So there are two use cases for this that Hue's touting.
00:14:20There's motion sensing for turning your lights on.
00:14:22And that's free if you buy the bridge.
00:14:25But it's also been used for security because Hue has a security suite of cameras and now a new siren.
00:14:33So you could actually use it like a security system.
00:14:35And the security algorithm is different from the motion sensing algorithm.
00:14:39The motion sensing algorithm actually needs to be more precise.
00:14:42But the security, I mean, more, needs to be quicker, needs to be super fast, whereas the security algorithm doesn't need to be as fast, but it needs to be very accurate because you don't want to trigger an alarm for a false alarm.
00:14:59So, yeah, and that they're charging for.
00:15:01That's a dollar a month or it's part of their Hue secure system.
00:15:05But, yeah, so the bridge is doing all that processing of the data that the radio waves disturbances are sending to the bridge, and then it decides what's going to happen, what's been triggered.
00:15:20Were they able to demo any of this for you yet?
00:15:23Okay, so you actually did.
00:15:24You walked in and saw the lights come on.
00:15:26Yes.
00:15:27And so, okay, this is my big question.
00:15:29Like how, obviously you have to do a lot more testing to see how reliable it is, but like, was it fast?
00:15:34Yeah, oh, yeah, it was very, it was very fast.
00:15:37But I didn't get to see how long it, so for me, as I mentioned, is the, it turning off.
00:15:42Because that's, that's the tricky one.
00:15:44Like, I get this with my spouse all the time.
00:15:46Like, the lights turned off on me and I, you know, I didn't want them to turn off.
00:15:51And I was like, well, you weren't moving enough.
00:15:54Oh, right.
00:15:54Well, this is important because you know, you say this in your piece, it's motion sensing.
00:15:59It's not presence sensing.
00:16:00Correct.
00:16:00And so, if you are just sitting there, the lights will still turn off on you.
00:16:05Yes.
00:16:05What about pets?
00:16:06Right.
00:16:07Like, what if I have a naughty little kitty who is zooming around at 2 a.m. and I'm trying to, I mean, I want my kitty to see.
00:16:16You're doomed.
00:16:16They can see in the dark.
00:16:17No, it is.
00:16:20It's just like having a PIR sensor in that if, if you have a large animal, it will probably trigger it.
00:16:26Like, my dog constantly triggers my motion sensors.
00:16:29But there is a sensitivity slider like there is with PIR motion sensors in the app.
00:16:34So, you can adjust, sort of fine tune it for your household.
00:16:39So, I mean, I think, and the turning off part is, to me, is quite important because I often have my lights turn off on me while I'm still in a room, while I'm still doing something.
00:16:50And that's very frustrating.
00:16:51So, that's the part, I mean, they didn't really demo that because they're not going to be like, let's sit here for 10 minutes and wait for the lights to turn off.
00:16:59So, I'm looking forward to trying that out.
00:17:01So, just do stretch breaks every once in a while and make arm motions.
00:17:06Yeah.
00:17:06And, you know, the next time your smartwatch is like, hey, you've been sitting too long, you can go like, oh, yeah, my legs also need me to move around.
00:17:15So, maybe this is a holistic health and lighting solution.
00:17:20I don't know.
00:17:21Or maybe you could have, we could somehow tie in your smartwatch to your motion sensing technology to tell you that you are still moving a little bit.
00:17:35Because this is something else I saw a lot of on the show floor today is a sort of holistic home, the holistic smart home.
00:17:46Everything's feeding data into a central AI-powered system.
00:17:52They don't want to say AI agent yet because it's not really agentic.
00:17:57But you can see that we could be moving to the point where data that your home takes in can then be processed and some sort of intelligent decision could be made to predict perhaps what you might want to do next or what you might want your home to do next.
00:18:17It's like you're getting a bit warm.
00:18:19Maybe your smartwatch can send that data and your home could decide to turn your AC on for you.
00:18:27I don't know.
00:18:27There was a lot of that.
00:18:28LG had a whole sort of AI home booth.
00:18:32They actually had an entire orchestra of appliances.
00:18:37Oh, my gosh.
00:18:38This sounds so much like, what was it?
00:18:42It's just fresh on my mind because we just had the Pixel event.
00:18:45But this sounds so much like that whole ambient computing thing that Google is always on about, just how everything will be invisible and you'll have, this is the conspiracy theory, you'll have all these devices just feeding data to each other and talking to each other.
00:18:59And the AI in your home will be the thread, another smart home pun, to tie it all together.
00:19:06And so, you know, it really, you know, I think back in the day where like ambient computing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:14But now it's just like all starting to fall together into the same piece and hearing this, I'm just like, yeah, I want motion sensors in my lights.
00:19:24Would be really cool if it talks to my smartwatch for those reasons.
00:19:28I mean, I'm sure we could think of a really dystopian use case for it.
00:19:32Like that, I don't know if you saw the Disney Channel movie, like about the smart home that goes really rogue on the family at one point.
00:19:41But, you know, I think, I think it sounds great.
00:19:45It would be super convenient for me, like me personally.
00:19:48This AI stuff does seem to be like, this is the next frontier for them, right?
00:19:52That SwitchBot also had this announcement that they're going to do an AI hub.
00:19:56And it seems like all these companies are going, okay, we put enough stuff in your home.
00:20:02It's kind of complicated.
00:20:04But maybe if we all mix it around with AI, yeah, like it turns into something more coherent.
00:20:10Like that's the next move.
00:20:12But we're not sure if it works yet.
00:20:15Yeah, that's, I think you're right.
00:20:16It's very much about like there is so much capability in the smart home tech world today.
00:20:21But getting people to actually use those capabilities is hard because it's a steep learning curve for a lot of things.
00:20:28Even just a motion sensor, just if you went and bought a motion sensor and tried to set it up and get it to work with your home and your routines, it can be frustrating turning the lights on when you don't want it to.
00:20:38Whereas if the home system can manage all of that stuff for you and ideally be able to kind of pull in data from all parts of your home, not just necessarily for your comfort, but also for convenience, for saving energy, for safety.
00:20:56Like one of the things this new tech, the sensing tech can do could eventually be good enough to sense if you fell over.
00:21:04So in theory, you know, your home could basically be watching you.
00:21:09And I know everyone's going, ah!
00:21:11No, your lights are watching you.
00:21:13It's not creepy.
00:21:15It's just merely a totally different appliance that shouldn't be able to see you.
00:21:18Right.
00:21:19So that is the benefit of this sort of ambient sensing.
00:21:22But I do see with the AI home bent that cameras are going to be a huge part of using this ambient home being proactive because the data, the richness of the data they get from cameras versus the data you get from sensors is just a step above.
00:21:41And so in terms of like, so SwitchBot, for example, they released their AI hub and they have a couple cameras that you can use inside or inside the home.
00:21:52They have one pan and tilt camera and they have a video doorbell.
00:21:55And they were sort of pitching it like we can see when you, you know, where you've left your phone because we're watching you in the home.
00:22:04Okay, that's a good feature.
00:22:05And then when you can't find your phone, you say, hey, SwitchBot, where's my phone?
00:22:10And they'll be like, you left it in the bathroom.
00:22:13And then your three robot vacuums go and crawl up to the bathroom and grab it with their arm and bring it back to you.
00:22:22Yes, there you go.
00:22:23You've solved it.
00:22:24It's all coming together.
00:22:26That sounds so cool and so scary at the same time.
00:22:29I know, like just like equal parts, like the idea of having cameras in every part of my home watching me.
00:22:35Like when you say like, oh, it'll tell you where your phone is.
00:22:38I'm like, I need that because I'm constantly dinging the thing at all points in time.
00:22:42And, you know, you're finding the sound, but your cat's sitting on it.
00:22:45So the sound isn't accurate.
00:22:47That sort of thing.
00:22:48Air tags don't work well through floors and all of that stuff.
00:22:51So that personally, this is all just personally in my life.
00:22:54I would love that.
00:22:55But at the same time, I don't know.
00:22:57I know.
00:22:58I don't want a camera in my bathroom.
00:23:00Yeah.
00:23:00I mean, the cameras, you know, ideally, though, yeah, you wouldn't do it.
00:23:04But if you have a camera at the front door, maybe you have a camera at the back door.
00:23:08Maybe you have one in the hallway.
00:23:09And then the other sensors could help for, you know, the bathroom stuff.
00:23:15But, yeah, there's got to be a way to kind of pull all of this together where it feels private and secure.
00:23:21And this was something that SwitchBot was focusing on, too, because their hub was entirely local.
00:23:25But they were also using vision learning.
00:23:30So machine vision learning, which is, has to use the cloud because it's such a high processing, you know, it requires a lot of processing power, which the hub can't do.
00:23:42And you would have to pay a monthly fee for those types of things.
00:23:44I can see more and more companies doing that.
00:23:47So using the AI for what the home sees in strategic areas so that it can then, you know, so to say I've lost my cat, it will know that it saw the cat leave through the front door because someone left the door open.
00:24:01But then the personal data can be more like wearables or sensors in the bedroom or the bathroom.
00:24:08But the key is tying it all together.
00:24:11And right now, everything is so disparate.
00:24:14Each company is like, you can use all of our appliances.
00:24:17Like that's LG with its appliance orchestra.
00:24:20It's like, look, we can make all of these work together.
00:24:22But that means I have to have everything from LG or I have to have everything from Samsung or everything from SwitchBot.
00:24:28So that next level is how do we bring all of this together?
00:24:32And how much is Matter and Thread helping with stuff?
00:24:35Like, like, it's a promise.
00:24:37It could.
00:24:38Nothing at the moment.
00:24:39Yes, could.
00:24:40Could is an important word.
00:24:42Yes.
00:24:43I mean, it's that's one of the reasons for Matter is so that we could have this more.
00:24:49It's an open standard.
00:24:50It provides the platform for the technology to talk to each other.
00:24:56So you could then bring in a Samsung AI home or LG's Furron agent, as they call it, or SwitchBot hub or something else to connect into the data that Matter provides.
00:25:11So you wouldn't necessarily, so Matter being any device can work with any platform, no matter who made it.
00:25:20So you're not locked into proprietary ecosystems.
00:25:23And that's really the foundation of, that was the point of creating Matter.
00:25:27So, yes, you can see that this could help create that foundation.
00:25:33And then the fight now, the arms race, is who becomes the brain of your home, because that is going to be someone you have to pick.
00:25:40Is it Google?
00:25:40Is it Apple?
00:25:41Is it Alexa?
00:25:42Is it LG?
00:25:43Is it Samsung?
00:25:44Is it SwitchBot?
00:25:45I put up a story over the weekend about how, when I talked to Google, they were basically selling the same idea about how the ambient computing world is going to happen, and AI is just going to be the glue that keeps all of these devices talking to each other together.
00:26:03So if you win the AI battle, and you're, in Google's case, Gemini is the bot that everybody chooses, then in some ways, like, AI is strengthening the product ecosystem.
00:26:19It's like putting putty and strengthening the walled gardens as opposed to tearing it down in some way.
00:26:26I think for the flagship products, definitely, for the phone, the speaker, the watch, but where it's democratized, you know, so it makes buying a light bulb, a $15 Hue light bulb now much more approachable, or a motion sensor, or a presence sensor, you know, we saw some cool new presence sensors out on the show floor today, or a door lock, you know, all of that now doesn't have to be from one company.
00:26:54That's where you get much more of the democracy, and being able to choose what you want to make your home work.
00:27:02But yes, I think the flagship products, you're going to be feel locked in.
00:27:06So 20 minutes of Samsung's keynote today was all about AI home.
00:27:13So at CES, they called it Home AI, but now they've rebranded, and it's now AI home.
00:27:19It's like, oh, thinking outside the box there.
00:27:24And it's, yeah, it was all about the Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Phone, Samsung Food, which is their meal planning, health, healthy eating system app, and then SmartThings.
00:27:37So bringing all of their pieces together to sort of lock you into that ecosystem.
00:27:42They don't really care which smart bulbs you buy.
00:27:44So, Jen, I know the show hasn't even technically started yet, but is there anything else we should...
00:27:48Or today. Today's Friday, right?
00:27:50Oh, my gosh.
00:27:50Well, as this is airing, the show has started.
00:27:53Just started.
00:27:54For you personally, well, it's really...
00:27:57No, but is there anything else we should be looking forward to throughout Aoife, or is it just going to be AI, AI?
00:28:04What, you know, what's next?
00:28:06Yeah, I think more robots.
00:28:08Robots.
00:28:08We always get excited about robots.
00:28:10There's some interesting...
00:28:13I did get to play with a robot pet today, which was quite cute.
00:28:17I love those.
00:28:17I love the weird pets.
00:28:18The weird pets.
00:28:19The pets are so good.
00:28:20Yeah, LG has its weird little baby in a bowl pet that it had at CES here.
00:28:26Do you remember that thing?
00:28:27No, that's okay.
00:28:27Was it the Marumi?
00:28:28What?
00:28:29No, it wasn't Marumi.
00:28:30It was called.
00:28:30It was like a Japanese one.
00:28:31But, yeah, so that's here.
00:28:33And there's also...
00:28:35Switchboard has its AI pet, and I saw, like, anime holograms in, like, a canister that's meant to be a pet.
00:28:48Lots of companionship type things.
00:28:50It's time to shut down Aoife.
00:28:52We have gone too far.
00:28:53It was like an anime character, and they were like, yes, it's your companion.
00:28:58It's like, oh, my daughter loves anime.
00:29:00And I got a bit closer.
00:29:01I'm like, I don't think this is for her.
00:29:02No.
00:29:03Was it, like, anime, like Pikachu anime?
00:29:08No, no, no.
00:29:08Or was it, like, Elon Musk Annie anime?
00:29:12Oh, no.
00:29:13Yeah.
00:29:13Oh, no.
00:29:15So, yeah, and then there's another robot with an arm that can throw tennis balls for the dog.
00:29:21That's better.
00:29:22Yeah.
00:29:22That's better.
00:29:22Yeah.
00:29:24I love that robot.
00:29:25So there's lots of fun robots, lots of appliances.
00:29:28I always get excited about appliances.
00:29:31Sweet.
00:29:31And I think there's laptops, too, in case people are interested in those.
00:29:36Awesome.
00:29:36Well, I'm very excited.
00:29:38Everyone should stay tuned to TheVerge.com.
00:29:40We're going to have a lot more.
00:29:41Jen, thank you so much for hopping on to tell us all about Aoife.
00:29:44I'll let you get back to the wild show at Mean Berlin.
00:29:51Awesome.
00:29:51All right.
00:29:52We've got to take a break.
00:29:53When we're back, we're going to have Lauren Feiner talking about the Google antitrust ruling.
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00:31:03And we're back, and we've got The Verge's senior policy reporter, Lauren Feiner, here with us.
00:31:14Hi.
00:31:15Lauren, you spent a bunch of time this spring in a courthouse watching the remedies trial of the Google antitrust decision.
00:31:25This started, I guess, a year ago.
00:31:27A year ago, a judge decided that Google had maintained a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
00:31:34Then this spring, there was a whole big to-do over what they should do about it.
00:31:39And that ruling finally came down.
00:31:41And people were expecting something pretty big, right?
00:31:44Yeah, yeah.
00:31:45I mean, this even goes back, you know, another, like, five years back to 2020 when this case was first filed under the first Trump administration.
00:31:54And then, you know, in last August, the judge finally said that Google is a monopoly in online search.
00:32:04And that was a huge landmark ruling, the first of these big tech cases by the government.
00:32:10And then there was all this anticipation of, like, okay, what is he going to do to make sure that Google can no longer have this, you know, power grip over this industry?
00:32:20And that leads us up to this past week when the judge finally issued his ruling and said, basically, Google can't do some contracts, some certain terms in their contracts, and they have to share some data to help search competitors, get up to speed with them.
00:32:40But basically rejected the largest of the DOJ's proposals of how to restore competition to this market.
00:32:48Right. The DOJ, like, swung for the fences.
00:32:52And they had these pretty big asks that I think the most famous of them was trying to force Google to sell Chrome.
00:33:01And then, like, everyone was coming out of the woodwork trying to buy Chrome even though it wasn't for sale yet.
00:33:06And the judge is just like, no, that's absolutely not happening.
00:33:09He said the government really overreached, too, by trying to get them to, as a backup, maybe have to sell Android.
00:33:18Most of the big asks just didn't happen here.
00:33:21And I think most of the big asks just didn't happen here, right?
00:33:24Like, the DOJ didn't get most of what they were asking for.
00:33:26Yeah, I think that's right.
00:33:28I mean, I think you could definitely look at this and say, hey, the DOJ swung for the fences, you know, put out all of these really big ideas of how to fix this market.
00:33:40And it probably wasn't going to get all of them.
00:33:43But I think it was surprising the extent to which they didn't get so much of what they wanted.
00:33:51You know, the judge really didn't go all that much further beyond what Google had conceded to.
00:33:57And in some ways, having watched Judge Mehta throughout both the liability phase and the remedies phase trials, you know, you could see that he was really grappling with what to do here.
00:34:09He's the first out of the gate with one of these rulings in this kind of new era of tech antitrust reform.
00:34:18And he really was, seemed very cautious about, you know, not wanting to create a new problem and disrupt something that's, you know, already set in motion.
00:34:29Well, it's really interesting.
00:34:30In his opinion this week, he goes into the fact that AI changed how he ended up making this decision.
00:34:41The fact that AI is now seen as a competitor search made him, I think, a little bit more cautious in what he did here.
00:34:50He has this one quote.
00:34:51He says, quote, much has changed since the end of the liability trial.
00:34:57Artificial intelligence technologies, particularly generative AI, may yet prove to be game changers.
00:35:03And then he just says, like, flat out, the emergence of gen AI changed the course of this case.
00:35:08And so there is this real thing here where I think possibly we could have gotten a much stronger version of these remedies against Google.
00:35:18But for the first time in decades, the first time maybe ever, Google actually is seeing some material competition.
00:35:26And I think, you know, V, you just did a whole Vergecast episode on this about people's use for AI.
00:35:34And search is one of the big ones now.
00:35:37I mean, like, you and I talked pretty heavily about using AI for search because, sorry, Google, your search kind of sucks now.
00:35:46Like, it's so weird because on the one hand, we use Google the way that we use the word Kleenex to mean tissues, right?
00:35:54Google just means go search something on the Internet that's in our vernacular that pretty much would make you think that, hey, this is a monopoly because we don't say, oh, go Yahoo that thing, right?
00:36:05We say go Google that thing.
00:36:07But to our Vergecast discussion, it's not good enough anymore because all of the SEO slop has just changed that game.
00:36:17So it's sort of like, oh, once again, because I've been watching Law & Order and I had to have perplexity tell me what season it was that Finn Tutuola cuts off his ponytail.
00:36:28Like, AI was actually able to tell me, like, it told me a wrong answer and someone called me out online and then I looked it up again and then it told me the right answer.
00:36:38So you do have to kind of handhold it a little bit, but it's still telling you what's more likely to be an answer when your traditional Google search isn't going to help you anymore.
00:36:49I had a situation this morning where my fridge was, the ice maker was spitting out clay balls and I was like, what is happening here?
00:36:58I'm concerned about that.
00:36:58I'm very concerned.
00:37:00Why is my ice maker spitting out clay balls?
00:37:03And then I asked, and Google was not giving me any answers.
00:37:06And so I asked AI and they're like, well, this is either a sediment issue and you're just going to have to do a lot of work or something's wrong with your thing.
00:37:15And why don't you just empty out the ice bucket?
00:37:18And I was like, oh, I can empty out the ice bucket.
00:37:20New homeowner here.
00:37:21I've never had to do appliance maintenance before.
00:37:23And I found out that my spouse had put an eye mask with clay balls in them in the ice maker.
00:37:28Oh, my God.
00:37:28It had opened up a hole and that's why clay balls were coming out of my ice maker.
00:37:34So I was like, AI didn't give me the right answer in this situation, but it did kind of put me on a path that got me to the right answer for a search and a question that I had.
00:37:44Whereas just typing it into Google did nothing for me.
00:37:48So it's like a really, I get where the judge is coming from, but also I'm like, come on, man.
00:37:56It is one of those ultra specific things.
00:37:59I, again, I did the exact same thing.
00:38:01I was trying to look up, do you remember the chat app Trillion?
00:38:04I just like, I was like, how do I search for a chat app that was popular in 2006 with a weird like infinity logo?
00:38:11And it was just right.
00:38:12Like, I can't Google that.
00:38:14But you're right.
00:38:15Like, it is pretty remarkable that if this remedies trial had been held probably a year earlier, certainly two years earlier, we may have ended up in a very different outcome.
00:38:28Because Google, it seemed kind of borderline impossible that Google would see material challenge to its dominance in the search industry.
00:38:38So I'm just going to read out, I think, a quick TLDR of how I'm seeing the things that they actually have to do.
00:38:45And Lauren, you can tell me if this is about correct.
00:38:48But here's what the judge is going to require of Google, assuming that this sticks.
00:38:53The judge says that Google has to stop making exclusivity contracts for products like Search, Chrome, and Gemini.
00:39:01So they can still make default contracts, but they can't say it's the exclusive provider of those things.
00:39:06Google has to stop tying some of their apps to the placement or use of other apps on their devices.
00:39:14So they can't be like, if you want Gmail, you have to use Chrome.
00:39:18If you want Gmail, you have to use Gemini.
00:39:21They can't do that anymore.
00:39:22They're going to have to syndicate some of their search results.
00:39:26And that's like with an asterisk.
00:39:28There's like a big subset there.
00:39:30And they have to share some of their search index.
00:39:33Is that about right?
00:39:34Like it's a lot of like half measures here.
00:39:37That's right.
00:39:37And he leaves open some possibility that he could expand some of this in the future.
00:39:42For example, you know, he finds that, you know, these remedies aren't actually enough to restore competition.
00:39:49Maybe he'll look back on the payments part of this or something like that.
00:39:53So there's some options here.
00:39:55But that's basically the extent of what Google has to do if these remedies hold up.
00:40:00Well, and actually, we should touch on the payments part because that was a big thing at issue here.
00:40:04And he thinks they're fine, right?
00:40:07Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he necessarily would say, oh, this is totally fine.
00:40:11I think throughout the trial, even the liability phase and the remedies phase, we saw, you know, he really felt like the fact that Google was paying Apple, you know, $20 billion to be the default search provider on Safari was pretty indicative that, you know, they felt like they needed to hold on to this position.
00:40:34Even though they keep saying that they're the best.
00:40:38And so he really seemed to kind of hang on to that fact throughout the trial.
00:40:43But at the same time, I think he heard from both Eddie Q from Apple and an executive from Mozilla who said, you know, we would basically be pure losers here.
00:40:55If you decide that we can't get these payments from Google because Google is still dominant.
00:41:02People, our customers are still going to want to go to Google and we have to provide that option.
00:41:08And yet we'll no longer be able to be paid for it.
00:41:11So I think that was something that he really wanted to consider here and probably drove some of his thinking around whether Google could be able to make these payments.
00:41:19It's really fascinating.
00:41:21You know, I think the critics of Google are pretty upset about this ruling.
00:41:26They think that it's not going to go far enough, at least from what I've seen.
00:41:31But as I was reading the opinion, you know, you do sort of like see how the judge landed here and you start to feel for him in terms of the challenge of threading this needle.
00:41:42Because you look at the payments, which were one of the big things at issue here, and it's like, okay, so maybe you say, you know what, it is bad for Google to be able to pay to be the default and therefore crowd at everybody else.
00:41:54And then you think from the judge's point of view, okay, does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Apple $20 billion a year, but Apple sets Google as the default search anyway, because Google is the best product?
00:42:08Does it help Google or hurt Google if I ban them from paying Mozilla a bunch of money and then Firefox dies and even more people have to use Chrome?
00:42:16And you just keep going through these things and it's like, oh, like this is kind of tough.
00:42:22Like how do you make space for competitors without actually hurting the rest of the industry at the same time?
00:42:30Because all of these companies are just hooked on Google's money and Google, you know, saving them a bunch of cash would actually be a perk for them in some ways.
00:42:42Yeah, definitely.
00:42:43I think, you know, Judge Major talks a lot about, you know, judicial humility and, you know, not wanting to kind of take proactive action that will cause more harm or disruption or, you know, pretend that he can know the future.
00:42:58But at the same time, I think critics of this decision are saying, you know, he really didn't go far enough and we already, he already found that there's this issue in this market that revolves around how Google has conducted itself.
00:43:15And, you know, a lot of these critics feel like he hasn't gone far enough and instead did a sort of half measure that says they can't have these exclusivity in their contracts, but they can keep paying heaps of money to be the defaults, which, you know, already he's kind of found that the defaults act as a way that Google has been able to maintain its monopoly power.
00:43:37So a question I have is, like, a lot of times with law, and one thing that I've learned just serving in unions is that you can want all of these ambitious things, but you really have to think about enforceability, right?
00:43:50Like when you decide you're going to do things a new way and you're like, hey, what if we do it this way?
00:43:55I think one of the challenges that I learned about was how implementable is it actually?
00:44:01So are the things that he's, you know, asking Google to do, are these things that materially make a difference?
00:44:12Are these things that the government can enforce?
00:44:15Or is it just sort of like we said that they're doing this here, but actually it's a status quo?
00:44:21Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the reason why the Justice Department was pushing for a breakup or what they'd call structural remedies in the first place is that, you know, a lot of people who advocate for those kinds of remedies say they're the easiest to enforce because you don't have to monitor it.
00:44:38You don't have to babysit a company.
00:44:40You just break them up.
00:44:42You just say Chrome can no longer be owned by Google and they have to sell it and they have to break it apart.
00:44:48And obviously that's easier said than done, but, you know, once it's done, it's done.
00:44:54These behavioral remedies, like, you know, having to, you know, not put certain provisions in their contracts or share certain search data, that's something that kind of does have to be monitored for compliance a little bit more.
00:45:11But, you know, I think in this case, it doesn't seem like so hard to do that.
00:45:17But I guess the devil will be in the details of how they're, you know, they have to do that if, you know, they actually get to that point.
00:45:25So the thing that I think is a little tricky here is I sort of see how he lands at we can't ban these payments.
00:45:34As for how he lands at the rest of the remedies and what is required of Google to create competition, it gets a little more complicated, I think, because he actually carves this, like, pretty narrow path.
00:45:46And I don't know that this path is necessarily tied to the ways that Google created its monopoly and enforced its monopoly.
00:45:54And I think that's what a lot of the remedies were about, right?
00:45:57The remedies were Chrome enables Google's monopoly, so we will remove Chrome.
00:46:03Android enables Google's monopoly, and so we'll threaten to remove Android.
00:46:08And kind of as I see it, what he's doing instead is saying, I'm going to create a little narrow path that will allow more competition to bubble up.
00:46:18You're saying that the problem is that Google has such a lead in search that no one else can catch up and compete with them.
00:46:25So I'm going to give you some basic tools so that these other companies can bubble up and start to create competition.
00:46:31And from my read of the opinion, he's basically saying, listen, all you other companies, you can have basically a map of what Google is doing, and that's kind of it, right?
00:46:45We'll give you some supporting stuff.
00:46:47So you'll have a map.
00:46:48Like, the search index is essentially a map of the Internet to let them understand what Google is indexing.
00:46:54They're going to get some basic search syndication, but they can only syndicate up to, like, 40% of their search.
00:47:01From Google.
00:47:03And that's supposed to sort of help bootstrap them.
00:47:06But the judge is pretty blunt about, from there, you've got to do it yourself.
00:47:12You can't keep going back to Google and getting more information about how they build their search engine.
00:47:17You need to invest, and you need to build a good product.
00:47:19You need to compete with them, which is still a pretty big ask of the industry.
00:47:24Yeah, I think it's important to know that, you know, in antitrust law, when it comes to remedies, you know, the goal here is not, you know, let's undo every anti-competitive thing that Google did up until this point.
00:47:36Because some of them maybe are irrelevant to the market at this point.
00:47:40The goal is to restore competition to the market that Google has monopolized.
00:47:44So, you know, I think the goal with these remedies is basically to make it so that, you know, rivals really can compete in this market in a way they haven't been able to in, you know, decades based on Judge Mehta's ruling.
00:48:01So, basically, they, he's implementing all of this to say, okay, let's give some of these rivals kind of a jumpstart in the way that they haven't been able to do that in years.
00:48:16Because, basically, delivering valuable search results requires a lot of data, collecting a lot of data requires a lot of users coming to your service and putting in a lot of queries.
00:48:27And if Google is gobbling all those up, then no other company is really getting that.
00:48:32So, the goal is to kind of give these other companies a jumpstart in that way.
00:48:37And so, that's kind of what he's trying to do here.
00:48:39But at the same time, he's kind of limiting that a lot more than what the Justice Department said would be necessary to really get them there by saying, you know, we're not going to let you have access to this on a periodic basis.
00:48:54You'll just get, like, one snapshot in time, and that should give you a sense of, like, what Google knows.
00:49:00Or, you know, saying you can only have some access to some of these features for six years rather than ten.
00:49:09So, I think that's kind of how he's tried to, like, walk this line.
00:49:14And he's really wary of making these rivals dependent on Google.
00:49:19He doesn't want them to feel like, okay, we have, like, a long runway to figure this out.
00:49:25And we could just, like, coast on Google's data.
00:49:27In the meantime, he wants them to build up to be their own services.
00:49:32Have you heard from, you know, the Mozilla's, the DuckDuckGo's, like, how they feel about this?
00:49:36Like, is this going to be helpful to them?
00:49:38I mean, I think Mozilla is relieved that they will not be losing a huge chunk of their revenue that comes from Google for default payments for Firefox.
00:49:49I think DuckDuckGo was really not happy with this ruling.
00:49:57And, you know, they ultimately said, their CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, said in a statement, quote,
00:50:05Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors, including an AI search.
00:50:10As a result, consumers will continue to suffer.
00:50:13We believe Congress should now step in.
00:50:15And, you know, if you're calling on Congress to step in at this point after we've seen these bills shot down before, you know, that really feels like a last resort.
00:50:26So, there's this take out there.
00:50:29And I'm curious your thought.
00:50:30Like, it seemed people, Google clearly lost the lawsuit, right?
00:50:36They were ruled to have a monopoly.
00:50:39That is the last thing they wanted.
00:50:40But when it comes to the remedies, it kind of seems like they won.
00:50:45Do you agree with that?
00:50:47I do largely agree with that.
00:50:49I mean, basically what the judge granted was pretty much most of what, pretty much all of what Google had proposed that they said, we'd be fine with this, which is basically the exclusivity contracts aspect.
00:51:02And then he imposed somewhat more of what the Justice Department asked for in terms of some of the search data and other syndication that he ordered.
00:51:13But really, the DOJ lost out on all of its other big ass.
00:51:19So, you know, it's not a total loss for the Justice Department, but it's far short of what they asked for and seems to be far short of what many critics here think would be necessary to restore competition.
00:51:32I want to ask maybe a bigger picture question.
00:51:34You had this story that ran on Thursday.
00:51:36You said the tech antitrust renaissance may already be over.
00:51:40Can you dive into that more?
00:51:42Because there was, I think, this big burst of momentum and energy toward, you know, tearing apart big tech.
00:51:50And it seemed like this was going to be the moment.
00:51:53And I think you're saying maybe it fizzled out before it even started.
00:51:58Yeah, I mean, I started on this beat about six years ago when a lot of this was starting to bubble up.
00:52:05And at the time, you know, there was this kind of feeling around antitrust for a long time that, you know, we should kind of just look at like prices and do prices go up or down?
00:52:18And what does that mean for consumers?
00:52:21And we should really be restrained in how we think about antitrust.
00:52:24And that was just beginning to change with things like Lena Kahn coming on the scene with a proposal about how we should look differently at markets that aren't necessarily, don't necessarily have a price tag for consumers, like is the case in digital markets a lot of the time, but still have, you know, a lot of power.
00:52:46And, you know, she kind of came onto the scene making a argument about how to go after Amazon's alleged monopoly.
00:52:54And then we saw this explosion of interest from lawmakers, from outside groups, and, you know, eventually from the enforcers themselves to actually kind of take this new approach to antitrust.
00:53:09And, you know, in 2019, we saw the House Judiciary Committee start to investigate all of these companies.
00:53:17We saw the DOJ and the FTC begin to look into all of these companies.
00:53:21And all of that has resulted in lawsuits at this point against Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon.
00:53:27I mean, that's just unheard of for at one point in time to have huge monopoly cases against all of these companies.
00:53:35So it was really a milestone.
00:53:37And then, you know, in the last couple of years, we've seen these cases begin to go to trial and having the initial liability finding from Judge Meta saying that Google is a monopoly in online search.
00:53:52I mean, that was just huge.
00:53:53That was such a watershed moment for this movement and seemed to really solidify like, OK, really, we can get the courts on board here if we put in the work, if we bring these cases.
00:54:06And I think getting to this point and seeing, OK, yes, we got a court, the Justice Department got a court to find a tech company to be a monopoly.
00:54:18But then he does kind of the bare minimum to remedy it.
00:54:25That is that's a real setback.
00:54:28And I think it's it just casts some doubt on how far courts will really be willing to go to address this problem.
00:54:36And, you know, it could be that in a few years, it turns out that this was the outlier.
00:54:42You know, there's Google is going to face the DOJ later this month in its other case that it lost to the Justice Department over its ad tech monopoly.
00:54:51And it's very possible that the judge in that case could say, I'm going to break up part of Google's ad tech business.
00:54:59And we could see some more more, you know, aggressive rulings in some of these other cases.
00:55:05So it is too soon to know what the arc of history on this will look like.
00:55:09But I think it is just a kind of a warning to the optimism that's existed in this space that, you know, there's still such a long road ahead and the hardest part may be yet to come.
00:55:23I'm just curious, because, like, you're kind of mentioning that this is a marathon, not like a 5K, just to use runner analogies.
00:55:32But, you know, I'm just curious how much of the environmental vibe shift plays into this, because if this started six years ago, then, well, a lot of this momentum and energy.
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