- 11 months ago
Sure, you could drive to the grocery store and to school. But wouldn’t you rather grab a few hundred of your friends and bike-bus everywhere? The Verge’s Andy Hawkins joins the show to tell us all about his adventures with electric cargo bikes, and why he thinks they’re the ride of the future. After that, Lauren Feiner calls in from just outside a courthouse in Virginia, where she’s watching the remedies trial in Google’s adtech monopoly case. Google already lost the case; what happens next is still anyone’s guess. Finally, David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about how to feel about summarizing YouTube videos with AI. The short version: you should feel a lot of things.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of bike buses, which are, it turns out, exactly
00:00:05what you think they are. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing a thing I
00:00:10never thought I would be doing, which is updating and using the Rabbit R1. This is the truly terrible
00:00:17AI gadget that somehow is still an ongoing concern. It's been like a year and a half now,
00:00:24and they just put out a sort of fascinating new software update for the thing that completely
00:00:29changes the interface. It's all touched now. It has some new ideas about how to do little apps
00:00:34that you can make with prompts. The thing is still bad, and you shouldn't buy one, to be clear. I have
00:00:39one that is unopened in a drawer over here because I think someday it'll be like a museum piece of
00:00:44weird AI. But we're still in this phase where I don't think anybody knows anything about how AI
00:00:49gadgets are supposed to work, or even if they're going to be a thing. And I confess, as bad as
00:00:54this thing is, I genuinely admire the hustle. But anyway, we are not here to talk about this
00:00:59delightful little orange thing. We're going to do two things on today's Vergecast. First,
00:01:04we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins about his experience with electric cargo bikes and basically
00:01:09what it means to take your car drives and turn them into bike rides. He is, you will learn,
00:01:16very passionate about this. We're going to have some fun. After that, I'm going to talk to Lauren
00:01:20Finer about what's going on in the Google Ad Tech Remedies trial. Google was declared a monopoly in
00:01:26ad tech and now has to fight to see what's going to happen next. She's been in court all week. We're
00:01:31going to talk about it. I'm very excited. We also have a fun question from the Vergecast hotline.
00:01:35Lots of good stuff to get to. But first, I'm going to make some apps on this thing and tell you if it's
00:01:40any good. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Andy Hawkins is here.
00:01:49Hi, Andy. I'm here. Hello. Andy, I have brought you here for a selfish reason. I just feel obligated
00:01:54to tell you this right up front. Every once in a while, I bring a person onto the Vergecast to solve
00:01:59a specific problem for me specifically. Okay. This problem that I'm having is that I cannot convince
00:02:06my wife to allow me to buy a very expensive e-bike and use it to carry my children and my stuff
00:02:12everywhere all of the time. You have successfully done this in your life and I have brought you here
00:02:18to teach me your ways. Well, I think maybe the first problem that I'm detecting here is that you
00:02:24are looking for your wife's approval. I never sought that. I just ran roughshod over my wife's
00:02:30feelings and her aspirations. No. Forgiveness, not permission. I love this for you.
00:02:35Yes. No, no. This is a problem that I hear a lot from my friend group, my social circle,
00:02:43my neighbors. It's something that a lot of people have come to me with, which is that I want to get
00:02:48a cargo bike, but I don't know if it will act like I'd afford it, if it's going to fit in with my
00:02:54lifestyle. Drivers are crazy in my town. They're expensive. Where do I put it? People seem to have
00:03:02lots of concerns about this purchase in their life, which is so fascinating to me because
00:03:08people will just get up and buy a car, buy two cars without any hesitation. They'll just be like,
00:03:14oh, I love Subaru. I'm just going to get another Subaru and I'll have two Subarus because I think
00:03:20it's a reflection of the world that we live in. We live in a world that is built for cars and for car
00:03:27drivers and for driving as the primary mode of transportation. It's not built for e-bikes.
00:03:33We're looking for ways in which to shoehorn an e-bike into our lives. We have some concerns about
00:03:39that. Yes, just to say that I hear this a lot from people. This actually makes me feel a lot
00:03:43better, I have to say. You just did a big story for The Verge about your adventures as a cargo bike
00:03:49guy. I'm curious, rewind a little bit for me. You're a car guy professionally.
00:03:56You car for a living in some ways. How did you become a bike guy? When did this start for you?
00:04:04I've always been a bike guy and I've only just recently been forced to become a car guy as the
00:04:11transportation editor, but the bike guy is my default setting. That's been the way I've lived
00:04:16my life for a long time. I grew up in the suburbs, in the Midwest, riding my bike everywhere with my
00:04:22friends. It does feel like in some ways that we did have a little bit more free range as kids growing
00:04:28up in the 80s and 90s to bike around that kids these days don't seem to have, which we can touch
00:04:35on. I've always been a bike guy. I grew up biking in my suburbs. Then I moved to New York and biked all
00:04:43around New York. Now I'm back in the suburbs again. I'm like, oh man, I have to become an SUV guy now,
00:04:50but I didn't want that to happen. Fortunately, the timing was great because cargo bikes have
00:04:56been really on this trajectory of popularity in the US. They've been a thing in Europe and China
00:05:03and elsewhere for a very long time, but I would say prior to the pandemic and then definitely over
00:05:09the course of the pandemic, cargo bikes became a lot more popular and were selling at a higher rate
00:05:15than they were before. Interesting. What makes a cargo bike a cargo bike? Just to quickly define
00:05:21our terms here a little bit. You're specifically talking about the thing you got is an electric
00:05:25cargo bike. I know what makes a bike electric. What makes a bike cargo? It is the ability to carry
00:05:31cargo, whether or not that is items, grocery items, packages, whatnot, or children potentially,
00:05:37even multiple children. But we're not talking like little basket on the front, I can put a Trader Joe's
00:05:42back in. That's not a cargo bike. No, but there are cargo bikes that do feature a front bucket that
00:05:48extends out past the handlebars that are called backfeets. It's a Dutch term. And that is one style,
00:05:55one form factor of cargo bikes. Many other ones are what are called long tail cargo bikes. It's
00:06:01sort of an extended rear rack on the bike that can support payload a lot of weight depending on the
00:06:08frame and whatnot. So yeah, it's just any bike that has an electric battery and a motor and that can
00:06:14carry a lot of cargo. And it's been great. It's been great for my life. It's been great for a lot
00:06:19of people's lives. It's allowed them to replace car trips for errands, for taking kids to school and
00:06:27to activities and friend playdates and things like that. So it's really been a remarkable thing.
00:06:33Honestly, it's changed my life for the better. I am the kind of guy who I'm concerned about things
00:06:38like climate change and traffic safety because we live in a time in which many more people are being
00:06:46hurt and injured in car accidents and car crashes. And I think that one of the solutions to those
00:06:52things is just taking more cars off the road and replacing them with more sustainable modes of
00:06:56transportation. And the cargo bike is a great way to do that.
00:07:00Yeah. So why do you think cargo bikes have had such a huge rise in the last few years? I mean,
00:07:05I think part of the reason I'm fascinated by this space is I've been covering various versions of
00:07:11these like last mile vehicles for forever, right? And I think for all the reasons you just laid out,
00:07:15the idea of I have somewhere to go that is close by that actually doesn't require my car, but literally
00:07:22the only way I have to get there is my car is a bad situation that we have found ourselves in in a
00:07:27sort of unique way, especially in the US. And so I'm all for ways to solve that. And, you know,
00:07:34I've covered the weird like hoverboards and the one wheels and the scooters. I got really into
00:07:40scooters for a really long time. And I will I will go to bat for scooters for forever. But
00:07:44there's something about the cargo bike in particular that feels like an answer to the question in a
00:07:52different way. Like, why do you think that's the thing that really caught on for people?
00:07:55Yeah, I think it's a couple of sort of trend lines that are intersecting. I think one of which
00:07:59is, you know, sort of the technology, right? E-bike technology has improved. We've now are seeing,
00:08:06you know, lithium ion batteries being developed that can power vehicles for, you know, these,
00:08:11these, these e-bikes for, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 miles of range. They're powerful,
00:08:17you can get up to, you know, 20, 25 miles per hour. And, you know, I think as we saw sort of
00:08:24an influx of imports from China, mainly of e-bikes and people realizing that this is something that
00:08:30they could, you know, start to use as a way that, you know, it's not like a traditional bike. You
00:08:34don't end up sweaty and bedraggled at the end of your ride because it, you know, sort of takes a lot
00:08:39of that effort out of it. And yeah, I think a lot of, you know, sort of people in the cycling
00:08:42community would see that as cheating. But, you know, my argument, my rebuttal to that is that,
00:08:47you know, transportation doesn't need to be exercised, nor should it be exercised.
00:08:51You know, it's, it's really just about getting from point A to point B in the, in the car,
00:08:55in the e-bike and especially the cargo bike is a great way to do that. It's the utility of it,
00:09:00right? That it's, you know, it's sort of in this form factor, but also you can take up,
00:09:04you can sort of throw on a lot of stuff. You know, it's, it's more than just the passenger.
00:09:08When you can add passengers, you can add cargo, you can add, you know,
00:09:12sort of all the things that you need to carry that you would need to, as part of,
00:09:16you know, the errands that you're running. So the utility of it has been, I think,
00:09:19a real positive aspect of it. And then I think also the pandemic had a lot to do with it as well.
00:09:23You know, we were all cooped up in our houses. We were looking for ways to get out,
00:09:27socially distanced ways to get out of our houses and e-bikes were a great way to do that. So
00:09:31a lot of the sales were peaking during the pandemic. They flatlined a little bit,
00:09:36but then they've sort of since recovered and sales are back up to sort of that pandemic level.
00:09:42So I think it's been a bunch of different things there that have sort of led to this,
00:09:47this growing popularity of electric cargo bikes.
00:09:50I so envy people who picked up like active outdoor activities during the pandemic. Like,
00:09:55I just, I really earnestly admire all of those people. I got like way too into
00:09:59one very specific version of the FIFA video game. That's what I did during the pandemic.
00:10:05And I learned how to juggle. Like those are the, those are my pandemic hobbies.
00:10:09Yeah. Or the sourdough people, right? Like, are they, do they still have their sourdough?
00:10:13What's going on?
00:10:13If I had put that into biking, everything would have been better. So I'm curious for sort of your
00:10:18own experience. Cause I think I want to touch on a lot of what you said about the kind of like
00:10:22macro way in which these fit into the world, but you've had this thing for a while. You've been
00:10:27using it for a while. Like what, what's actually on the list of like things that a cargo bike has
00:10:32solved for you day to day?
00:10:34It's really just been like an incredible thing in my life. You know, we've, we're a one car
00:10:39household, which in the suburbs is really hard to do. But having that cargo bike as a way to sort of
00:10:46allow us to make those trips when my wife has the car or I have the car, she's able to take the bike
00:10:52out or I'm able to take the bike out and go pick up the kids or go to the grocery store or what have
00:10:56you. And it's a way of sort of, you know, reducing our own carbon footprint to some degree,
00:11:01which is, um, you know, I think pretty great. Uh, I think it's, uh, everyone's looking for ways in
00:11:06which to, I think drive less, uh, and to, you know, sort of be more climate focused. And this
00:11:12has been our way of doing that.
00:11:14How long did it take to redo your routines? Like I, I think about a while ago I bought,
00:11:19uh, I bought a scooter and I was like, I'm, I'm going to be a person who just like takes the scooter
00:11:24to all of the things. Cause most of the things I need are too close to drive. Like it's going to be
00:11:28great. And then I would forget, I would find myself in the car halfway to the grocery store
00:11:33and I'd be like, Oh crap, I was supposed to take the scooter. And there, I think the thing that I
00:11:38came away from that experience with was just realizing how car centric everything is like
00:11:44including our lives. And like, did you, did you have to spend months sort of deliberately being
00:11:48like, I am going to do this on the cargo bike before it felt like a natural part of your routine?
00:11:53Um, yeah, I think that's, that's a really great question because it, it did take, I think a
00:11:58little bit of a psychological shift, right. Um, that there was a lot of stuff that we would
00:12:03probably just naturally have taken the car out to do that. I had to be like, okay, no, let's,
00:12:07let's take the cargo bike, you know, let's sort of like try to figure a way to like repack the
00:12:11things that we were going to take with us. If we were going to the town pool or we were going to a
00:12:16playground or, you know, we were going to some sort of, you know, uh, uh, afterschool activity or
00:12:21whatnot. Um, it definitely took a little bit more, you know, like it's, it's going to get dark soon,
00:12:25right. Um, we have to make sure we have our lights and our reflector vests and all these other things
00:12:30to make sure that cars can see us when we're out of the road. Um, and I do think a lot of that
00:12:34adjustment has to do with, you know, making sure that you feel safe while doing that because so
00:12:39many people have, have told me, you know, since this video has come out and also just, you know,
00:12:44over, over the years of covering this, uh, this industry that they would love to adopt a cargo
00:12:49bike, but they just personally don't feel safe enough doing it because that where they live is
00:12:54just not, you know, not bike friendly, that the drivers are particularly crazy. There's just not
00:12:59enough infrastructure around to support that kind of lifestyle. Um, and to that, I say, I, I totally
00:13:04feel that. And I understand where those people are coming from because yes, broadly across the United
00:13:10States, it's, it's not really safe to, to, uh, have a cargo bike or to bike in general as part of your
00:13:17normal day-to-day lifestyle. And so I would say that, you know, I found like a group of people
00:13:24in my town in particular that were also very interested in biking. We started a bike bus and
00:13:29that sort of created a community around cycling, especially with kids to school every, uh, every
00:13:34Friday, but no, yeah, it's like you, you, you ride in a, in a big group, right. And this sort of the
00:13:39idea being that there is safety in numbers, right. Cause it is kind of daunting when you're, you know,
00:13:44we've got little kindergartners on their, on their bikes, riding, you know, in the street
00:13:49alongside of huge trucks and SUVs and buses and all of this kind of stuff. But we're, you know,
00:13:55we're biking with them. You know, it's a big group. We're all biking together. The kids are
00:13:59laughing and talking amongst themselves. We were inspired by a man named Sam Balto, who has since
00:14:04become a friend of mine, uh, who is a, um, a PE teacher out in Portland, Oregon. And so he had a
00:14:10cargo bike. He was taking his, his kids to school and decided, Hey, what if other people want to bike
00:14:15as well? And just started doing it on a weekly basis, playing lots of fun music on the ride.
00:14:21They'll sometimes have, you know, uh, special guests come along. Uh, and, uh, it really grew
00:14:27into like this incredible thing where he was having like hundreds of kids ride, ride with him. So we're
00:14:32like, Oh, we could do that in our town as well. So we started with just like five parents and their
00:14:37kids biking to school. And now, you know, it's been three years of doing this every Friday
00:14:42throughout the school year. Uh, we have, you know, upwards of 400 kids that ride, um, to all seven
00:14:48schools in our town. We have multiple routes. We have, uh, an interactive map on our website,
00:14:53uh, and all this stuff. And it really is just sort of brought the town together in a way that has
00:14:58been, I think really positive. And you can just see it in the kids' faces, uh, when they get to ride
00:15:02to school, you know, we're blasting K-pop demon hunters and Chapel Rowan and all the things that
00:15:07they love. Um, and it's just like, they get a little physical activity and they also get to
00:15:12experience the world outside of a car, right? Cause like so much of this is about, you know,
00:15:17long car lines in some communities to drop off and pick up kids. It's just such a, a depressing
00:15:23thing. I think for so many parents, what's a way that we can sort of make this a little bit
00:15:27more joyful and a little bit more, you know, beneficial for, for, you know, community building.
00:15:32Uh, cause especially in kids feel so isolated and lonely these days. Uh, and it's a way of
00:15:38sort of bringing them together. And I do think honestly and truly that the cargo bike was really
00:15:43an important factor in helping us sort of build this, uh, this thing that we did.
00:15:48That's really cool. I do think that interaction with like the rest of the road is, is a big piece
00:15:53of the puzzle here. And you've touched on this a little bit, but it seems to me that like what
00:15:59you're describing is, is very familiar sounding to anyone who is like lived in sort of a bike
00:16:04centric city in Europe where like everybody bikes everywhere. Or like, I think about the,
00:16:10the countries in Asia where the, those like Vespa style scooters are absolutely everywhere.
00:16:15And it's just, this stuff is just much more sort of intermingled and interactive. And in the U S it
00:16:22is just cars. It's, it's just cars. And so I think one of the questions, and this is the thing I
00:16:27talked, spent a lot of time thinking about and talking to people about with scooters in particular
00:16:31is like, yes, there is a technology product problem here, but there's also like a human
00:16:38social problem. Like, where do I write this thing? Where do I put it? What's the right, if I'm,
00:16:44am I supposed to be in the bike lane and are the people in the bike lane, not riding e-bikes allowed
00:16:48to be pissed at me for it? Or am I supposed to be in the road and pissing off all the people who
00:16:52are in cars that want to go faster? Like, I guess the problem with this is there's no way to solve
00:16:58the problem without causing a problem. Yeah. But I do wonder, like, do you think we're making any
00:17:04kind of progress figuring out how all of these different things are supposed to interact with
00:17:08each other? So it's been a really interesting phenomena because I do think that one of, one of the
00:17:15aspects that's been really fascinating to watch with sort of the, the rise in popularity of e-bikes
00:17:20is all of the tensions that has, has resulted in that, right? So for the longest time, you know,
00:17:26the cities that did have bike lanes, they were the exclusive realm of, you know, normal cyclists,
00:17:31right? Either the people who did it recreationally or the people who did it for transportation.
00:17:35And then you had sort of the, the rise of the delivery workers you see in e-bikes in places like New
00:17:40York and even in the suburbs and like my suburb out here in New Jersey, we have a lot of guys
00:17:45riding e-bikes, riding electric mopeds, delivering food. Uh, and then became, you know, sort of like
00:17:51the, the rise of the, uh, you know, sort of the, I would call it the e-bike teen and the e-bike teen
00:17:58has, has, has led to a lot of, uh, very, uh, panicked Facebook posts, I would say across the country,
00:18:07uh, as well as some, uh, you know, some very like, you know, uh, desperate conversations on
00:18:13places like next door and other places like that, where everyone is now up in arms over these
00:18:18teenagers writing, um, very high powered electric mopeds and sometimes even motorcycles in some
00:18:26cases. Um, and I do think that it, it has raised a lot of people's, um, you know, uh, concerns over
00:18:35safety, you know, to which I would say it's good that kids are riding bikes. It's good that they're
00:18:40riding e-bikes. They should be safe while doing it. They should wear helmets and they should follow
00:18:45the, the, the rules of the road. But what are the rules of the road? Like, I don't know that it's
00:18:49as simple as you just said it, right? Like I was out the other day and there were these two kids
00:18:52riding. I mean, they couldn't have been more than 12. And if you had just shown me the things that
00:18:57they were riding, I would have been like, that's a motorcycle. Like it just, it just is. And so we're at
00:19:01this point now where like, I, I don't know where you're supposed to be. I don't know how fast you're
00:19:07supposed to, I like, I don't know whether to yell at this kid who's cutting me off on the street while
00:19:11I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, I think all of this stuff, and especially once you get to these
00:19:15very powerful electric bikes that go, you know, in some cases, like 25 plus miles an hour, like
00:19:21you could make a pretty compelling case that that's a car and should be treated like one or a
00:19:25motorcycle. Yeah. Or a motorcycle. Right. And so I think all this, all these things are so
00:19:29blurry and it feels like we, until we have some kind of answers, everybody's going to hate
00:19:33everybody. I think it really exposes that there's this sort of this huge gap in our regulatory
00:19:39environment right now that if you just throw, you know, um, uh, pedals on something and you can,
00:19:46you can legally call it a bike and it doesn't matter if there's a 750 watt or a thousand watt motor
00:19:52underneath the thing and that the, that the person using it will actually never end up actually
00:19:56pedaling, uh, that they can just use a throttle. I think that there's a, there's a pretty solid
00:20:00argument that that is not a bike that is a moped or a motorcycle and that it should be,
00:20:05you know, uh, um, you know, uh, the rules that apply to mopeds and motorcycles should also apply
00:20:10to, to this, to this vehicle, but that's not the case, right? Because we, there's this, there's this
00:20:14giant loophole that exists, uh, and the regulators are not keeping up with it. So, um, and I do think
00:20:21that aside from sort of like the consumer safety aspect of it all, the infrastructure also is a huge
00:20:26piece that we're lacking, uh, uh, towns today. There's, you know, it takes years and years and
00:20:32years to get anything protected infrastructure wise built in any kind of town because it has to
00:20:37be endlessly debated. There have to be 10,000 community meetings, uh, you know, and everyone
00:20:42is so concerned about parking and the loss of, uh, you know, space for cars, but fundamentally we've
00:20:47already given over all of the space that we have to cars and we're going to have to take some of that
00:20:52back if we're going to have enough infrastructure to support all of these new riders and these new
00:20:56vehicles that are cropping up. So that's something that I talked about in the video with, um, some of
00:21:01the e-bike folks, um, that I reached out to and they, they acknowledge that the little space that
00:21:05has been allocated to bikes is now, you know, it's at capacity and we need to either figure out how to
00:21:13get more space so that there can be both enough room for the e-bikes and also the analog bikes and
00:21:19for the drivers, because we fundamentally just need to get everyone out of each other's way,
00:21:24right? The cars, the cars want their own way. The bikes want their own way. And when they all start
00:21:29mixing and intermingling, that's where danger comes from and, and, and people get injured and people
00:21:35get killed, especially children and teenagers. So I do think that, uh, we are, uh, not prepared
00:21:42at the moment. You're starting to see more towns, um, that are committed to making themselves more
00:21:49bikeable. That was something that I found in the research, um, that more towns, uh, uh, have become
00:21:55more bikeable. Uh, but there's still a long ways to go. And I do have concerns that, uh, you know,
00:22:01sort of like what is safe today, uh, is, is only going to get worse if we just keep ignoring this
00:22:06problem. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons I think cargo bikes are specifically interesting on this
00:22:10front is that there's something about doing it in a way that is explicitly useful that I think
00:22:17changes the conversation and actually really productive way. And so like in the town I live
00:22:21in in Virginia, um, last year, 2024, they did a big project to, uh, expand and essentially block
00:22:30off a bunch of bike lanes, right? They just put up those like little white poles to just put a little
00:22:34space between the bike lane and the cars and people flipped out. And of course they do, right?
00:22:40Like everybody loses their mind about everything, but, but the one piece of the argument that I thought
00:22:43was so interesting on the pro car lobby was essentially I'm in my car because I need to go
00:22:49somewhere and you're going to make traffic worse for me so that some, you know, some loser on a bike
00:22:56can, can have their delightful outdoor exercise. And I like, I think to some extent that's like
00:23:00disingenuous. And I think study after study has proven that it doesn't actually increase traffic.
00:23:03So like that is what it is. But I think the idea of, of a bike like this, that is, it is,
00:23:09it is, I'm going to the grocery store in my car and you're going to the grocery store on the
00:23:12bike. And actually you're not, you're not out for a joy ride. You are out to do something.
00:23:16And the only difference in our goals is the mode of transportation we used to get there.
00:23:20I actually think like resets some of that debate in a way that is really productive.
00:23:26And so I wonder if the rise in all this is actually going to make that stuff easier to talk about.
00:23:30I completely agree with you. And I, and I can tell you from, from personal experience that that's
00:23:34the case, because I feel like if I was going into my town council meetings during the public
00:23:39comment period and talking about, we need more public, you know, more bike lanes and more
00:23:43protected infrastructure. And I was wearing spandex and like racing gear and like, get a job.
00:23:49Yeah. They would laugh me out of the room and they say, you know, forget this guy. But if,
00:23:54but instead I go in wearing my bike bus vest and I'm dressed normally and I have my kids with me and
00:24:00I'm like, Hey, here's my kids. We bike to school every Friday. We think it's a great time. We wish that we
00:24:05could do this more often, you know, uh, all the time. And it would be great if the, if you would
00:24:10support lower speed limits, you know, livable streets, protected infrastructure. And that has
00:24:15had a serious impact. It is had an effect. We have gotten through, I think, to some of the people who
00:24:22are in charge through, through the, through the presentation of our argument. I feel like because
00:24:27we're saying we want to use this, uh, for the utility aspect for the, the, the social aspect,
00:24:33because we just want to get around in a way that doesn't contribute to climate change.
00:24:37And that's better for everybody around us. Uh, and that takes cars off the roads. They,
00:24:41they, they, I think that that argument really has a lot more sway. Um, and so I do think cargo bikes
00:24:46have a way to do that as well, because they, you know, that's not something that you're just,
00:24:51you're using out of a sense of recreation. You're using it out of a sense of utility, out of a sense
00:24:56of, you know, like, how can I make my life a little bit better, uh, while using cars less. And I do
00:25:00think that, um, that's been sort of a real game changer in, I feel, uh, in sort of a lot of these
00:25:06local conversations that are being replicated and going on all over the country right now.
00:25:12I do remember one really eyeopening part of my brief schooner opening experience was, uh,
00:25:20suddenly you've like noticed differently how annoying it is to drive all the time in a way that
00:25:26I think is actually, we just don't notice it cause we just do it right. It's just life.
00:25:31And I think when you suddenly are sort of pulled out of the amount of time you spend
00:25:34looking for a parking spot and then looking for your car and sitting in traffic and waiting for
00:25:40red lights and other cars are idiots. Like just having your eyes open to that a little
00:25:45made everything else seem more appealing that it's like, Oh sure. I'm going to have to do like
00:25:52a little bit more work to like find the lights so that I can get home afterwards. Uh, but I get
00:25:56to park my bike right out front of the damn grocery store. And that is a pretty big win.
00:26:02Um, all right. I need to let you go here in a minute, but first you've now had a lot of experience
00:26:06with this. So if I'm, if I'm shopping for a cargo bike, which I hopefully will be very soon,
00:26:11as soon as Anna hears this and agrees that this is a terrific idea and good for the world.
00:26:15Uh, what's, what's the most important thing? Like having used one of these for now,
00:26:19like what matters most if you're trying to buy a cargo bike, I would say maintenance and
00:26:23repairability, making sure that whichever company you're buying from that has some sort of either
00:26:28a relationship with a local bike shop and a way that you can get your bike tuned up and repaired.
00:26:34Because you know, the thing about e-bikes, especially cargo bikes, they get used a lot
00:26:38more than regular bikes. That's sort of like their magic power. Their secret power is that you use them
00:26:42all the time. So they wear down a little bit. They're going to need to get tuned up, make sure that
00:26:46your local bike shop is able to do that. Um, and then I would also just say, if you have a little
00:26:51bit of money to spend and you don't mind, uh, shooting for something that a little bit top
00:26:55notch, anything with a Bosch motor is pretty incredible. That company has a fantastic, uh,
00:27:00service reputation. Their, their e-bikes are, uh, uh, the motors that they, that they build are
00:27:06really far and away a lot better than most others. So, uh, those are the things I would say to look for.
00:27:11That's good to know. Do you think there's a path towards these things getting less expensive?
00:27:15I think I've been waiting for years as they've risen and lithium ion technology has gotten great
00:27:20and EVs are everywhere. I've been waiting for these things to sort of hit a price point that feels
00:27:27plausible. And like, I know you're going to say, well, it's cheaper than buying a car. And like,
00:27:32I'm sure that's true, but these are really expensive bikes. Like, do you, are we, are we,
00:27:37is there a glimmer of hope that it might get more affordable over time?
00:27:41So there are definitely a range. You can get bikes that are more, uh, budget, uh, uh, and
00:27:46affordable, um, that, you know, won't break the bank. You can get a, a good car, a decent sized
00:27:51cargo bike for, you know, I would say around $2,000. You don't have to spend six, $7,000 on the
00:27:56premium model. Uh, but that said, you know, like I said, make sure there's an adequate customer
00:28:02service and maintenance and repair and repair, uh, uh, system in place. But yeah, I, I, I do have
00:28:08concerns because, um, the vast majority of bikes, uh, come from China. I think like over 95% of bikes
00:28:14are built and made in China. And I think as long as we have this tariff structure and trade war
00:28:20situation going on, uh, I, I don't see a lot of hope for the future. There have been legislatively,
00:28:25uh, some efforts to kind of try to bring onshore some of that bike manufacturing, offer some credits
00:28:31and some incentives to people to build the bikes here in the United States. Uh, but that's, uh,
00:28:36still, uh, uh, a ways off, I think. Fair enough. So I'm stuck with the, at least it's cheaper than
00:28:42a car argument, at least for a little while that I would say that that's a pretty persuasive argument
00:28:46for a lot of people, especially as cars also going up in price. Uh, so, you know, if you, if you
00:28:53look at it through that lens, yes, a knee bike and especially a cargo bike is still a lot less
00:28:58expensive than, you know, a RAV4. See, Anna, Andy said it, not me. Andy said that.
00:29:05I'm available for all questions. Andrew.Hawkins at theverge.com. Hit me up with your e-bike
00:29:09questions. I, I love, this is the, I, I'd much rather answer e-bike questions than get yelled
00:29:14at about Tesla. So please. I love it. And if you want to join the bike bus, just, just hit up Andy.
00:29:19Yes. He'd love to have you. Please, please do. Please do.
00:29:22All right, Andy, thank you. As always, we need to take a break and then we're going to come back
00:29:26and we're going to talk about ad tech trials because that is what we do on the Verge cast
00:29:31is we talk about the ad tech stack. We'll be right back.
00:29:35Support for this show comes from LinkedIn ads. When you're running your own business,
00:29:40every decision could feel like make or break and you can't afford to waste a penny.
00:29:45So if your B2B marketing is still falling short, it may be because you're preaching to the wrong choir,
00:29:50whether you know it or not. If you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads.
00:29:56LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers,
00:30:02according to their data. That's where they stand apart from other ad buys. You could target your
00:30:07buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all so you
00:30:13can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. That's why LinkedIn ads boast one of the highest B2B
00:30:19return on ad spend of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. So get your ads in front
00:30:25of the right people and make your B2B strategy work. You can spend $250 on your first campaign
00:30:31on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash
00:30:38Verge cast. That's linkedin.com slash Verge cast. Terms and conditions apply.
00:30:42All right, we're back. Coming to you live from a Panera outside of a courthouse in Alexandria,
00:30:53Virginia, where it is time for Google to fight for its life in the ad tech world. Lauren Feiners here.
00:31:00Hi, Lauren.
00:31:01Thanks for having me.
00:31:02So you're on lunch break. Describe us the scene. Where are you? What are you doing? You're on audio
00:31:06only. Just paint us a word picture of your life right this second. Yes, I am outside the beautiful
00:31:12Panera in Alexandria, Virginia, which has really great broccoli cheddar soup. That's true.
00:31:19And you know, it's pretty nice out here and I can use my phone. So that's something that I can't do
00:31:24inside the courtroom. Yeah. So this is, I just want to say just an incredibly rude thing that this
00:31:31courthouse is doing to you. You and I have both spent a lot of time in courtrooms over the last
00:31:36couple of years covering Google trials. You, unfortunately, much more than me. But the thing
00:31:42where you can like sit in a media room and watch a stream of it while you're on your computer.
00:31:46Nice, lovely, delightful, totally manageable. The thing where they like scream at you until you turn
00:31:52off all of your devices and you sit and you write with a pen on paper, like our ancestors did,
00:31:58just cruel and mean. And I did not appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty archaic, but yeah.
00:32:04I'm not a fan. But so the trial that you're in right now is the remedies trial for the Google
00:32:11ad tech case. And this is not the other Google antitrust case. It's the other other Google
00:32:17antitrust case. But just real quick for people who have not been following the twist in terms of
00:32:22the ad tech thing, kind of catch us up to the beginning of this particular trial. Like how in the,
00:32:29give us the sort of Cliff Notes versions of what this fight has been about?
00:32:32Yeah. So I think the Google antitrust trial that most people will remember is the one over search
00:32:40where recently we got the court ruling saying that Google doesn't have to spin out Chrome in order to
00:32:45remedy its search monopoly. That's a separate case. This case was filed during the Biden administration
00:32:53administration and is about Google's ad tech monopoly. So basically Google owns a series of
00:33:01tools that work in different sides of the ad buying and selling market. And the judges found
00:33:09that Google monopolized two markets with two of its tools and also illegally tied together those tools.
00:33:16And why does any of this matter? This all sounds really complicated. Basically, I think, you know,
00:33:22the thing I often remind myself as I'm sitting there listening to all of these really complicated
00:33:27terms and acronyms is really what this whole case is about is the revenue stream that funds a lot of
00:33:35journalism and a lot of websites across the internet. So the portion of advertising we're talking about
00:33:43is what is referred to in the trial as open web display ads, which are those ads that appear in
00:33:50kind of like boxes on websites you visit, like probably in the middle of a page or on the side
00:33:56of a page of like the New York Times, for example, or, you know, some other publisher site. And you might
00:34:02be thinking those are really annoying, but they are something that is an important revenue stream for a
00:34:07lot of publishers.
00:34:08Yeah. And I think that the thing you said is important to keep remembering that Google already
00:34:14lost this case, right? That they will inevitably appeal. And it's weird that we have to go through
00:34:19the remedies before they can get to the appeal. But there's a lot of like logistical nonsense in
00:34:24all of this stuff. But as with the search trial, Google lost. And the question now is, is what do we do
00:34:31about it? And so the trial is now a few days old. And I think you've gotten to get a real sense of what
00:34:37both sides want to do here. So let's start with the government. What does the government at this
00:34:42moment think the right answer is at the end of this trial?
00:34:46Yeah. So at a high level, the government wants to impose both some behavioral changes on Google
00:34:53and what it's allowed to do, not allowed to do in terms of its use of ad tech tools. And then it also
00:34:59wants to impose what are called structural remedies or what colloquially we'd call a breakup. So it wants to
00:35:05do a few different things. Basically, the judge found that Google illegally monopolized the markets
00:35:10for two basically publisher side tools. So you have the market for publisher ad servers, which Google's
00:35:17double click for publishers or DFP operates in. And that is a tool that publishers use to basically
00:35:24manage their inventory, manage those boxes on their website that they're selling for advertising.
00:35:29And then it also monopolized the market for ad exchanges. And that's a tool that basically
00:35:36publishers use to get bids from advertisers that want to place ads on their website. So it's like
00:35:43the exchange where literally these transactions are kind of meeting in the middle.
00:35:47Right. And it's worth saying that that's two out of the three parts of the process. And so
00:35:52the way that I think I've come to understand it is basically there's how the advertisers say what they
00:35:58want to buy. There's how the people with ad space publishers and whatnot, say what they have
00:36:02available. And then there's the thing in the middle that connects buyers and sellers. And the argument
00:36:07the government made the whole time was that Google is the most popular and important player in all
00:36:11three of these things. And it uses that power to make all three of those things more expensive and
00:36:16worse to enrich Google. And the fact that it lost on two of the three parts of the puzzle
00:36:21is a pretty big deal, right? Like it seems like to me, at least coming out of that trial,
00:36:27it was like, oh, Google lost this in a pretty meaningful way.
00:36:32Right.
00:36:32Is that helpful to you? Okay.
00:36:33Yeah, no, definitely. And we should say that, you know, Google did win on one count about its
00:36:40buyer side tools, the advertiser side tools, where the judge said that the DOJ didn't prove that it
00:36:47had a monopoly on that side of the market. But, you know, that side of the market is still obviously
00:36:53relevant to how these other tools work. Because, you know, part of the issue is that the judge found
00:36:59that Google illegally tied together its publisher ad server tool, DFP, and AdEx, its ad exchange. And
00:37:06AdEx has unique access to Google's buy side of the platform as well.
00:37:12Right. And the government's case is basically like, you own all three of these things. You should not
00:37:18be allowed to own all three of these things. And so we are going to take at least one, but maybe two
00:37:24of them away from you. And thus, there will be more competition. Right? Like, is it kind of that
00:37:28straightforward?
00:37:29Pretty much. There's a little bit of complexity. So I think the most straightforward is that they want to
00:37:34have Google divest AdEx. It's AdExchange that sits in the middle there. And then it says,
00:37:40after that, we also want Google to have to open source what it's calling the final auction logic
00:37:46that sits within DFP. And so that's also a structural remedy. And basically, what that means
00:37:54is that if DFP is where the final decision happens of who is going to get to place this ad on the
00:38:02publisher website. So you have bids often from other exchanges that might come through a thing called
00:38:07prebid or header bidding. And then you have AdEx gets to decide if it's going to bid. And then you
00:38:13also have what's called direct demand, which is, you know, deals that had already been negotiated. And
00:38:18the publisher has to decide, you know, when it's going to place those. And that final decision between
00:38:23those three things happens inside of DFP, which publishers say is basically a black box. And they don't
00:38:30know why anyone wins or loses besides, you know, on price.
00:38:34Okay. So you mentioned, obviously, this is a different trial from the other Google trial. And
00:38:39I think you and I have both had sort of beaten into our heads, the idea that one trial is not
00:38:44necessarily indicative or predictive of another, even when they're happening simultaneously. But it
00:38:48does feel like the bones of what the government is asking for is the same in both cases, where
00:38:52the one thing is like, okay, you have to you have to divest the thing that makes you powerful,
00:38:57or at least one of the things that makes you powerful. And then you have to give everyone
00:39:02kind of the secret sauce, right? And this is a big thing in the search trial, too, right? Was
00:39:06the idea that like, actually, what other search engines need is Google's ranking data, and some
00:39:12like real transparency into how Google actually built the thing that is so successful, so that
00:39:18they can go and do it, too. And Google fought that tooth and nail. And basically, Google's argument
00:39:23in the search case was like, actually, there's tons of competition, nothing's wrong, you're all
00:39:26idiots, everything's fine. Is that Google's argument here, too?
00:39:30In a way, I'd say it's a little bit different here, in the sense that I think Google has,
00:39:35you know, some of their behavioral remedies look somewhat similar to the government's,
00:39:39I'd say, you know, there's definitely significant differences.
00:39:42Just the fact that there are behavioral remedies in Google's mind is is something.
00:39:47Yeah, yeah, I think like in the search case, it was more like, well, do we'll stop doing these
00:39:52sorts of contracts that were found to be illegal?
00:39:55They took the word exclusive out of some contracts. And we're like, is that enough?
00:39:59Yeah, yeah. Here, they would be, I'd say, somewhat substantially changing the ways that its ad tools
00:40:05bid into different places. And it would change a good amount of processes, open things up a bit more,
00:40:10but not as far as the government wants to go. And I should also say that a contingency that the DOJ has is
00:40:16that they want to reserve the right to force Google to also divest DFP if its other remedies don't do
00:40:22enough.
00:40:23Got it. Okay.
00:40:24But here, I'd say that, you know, different from the search case, the tools that it's trying to get
00:40:31Google to divest have really been central to the case throughout, where during the search trial,
00:40:38you know, Chrome was obviously an important place where search is distributed, but it wasn't like
00:40:44the central tool that was like at issue in the trial.
00:40:47Yeah, this would be much closer to if the search app was like, or the search trial was demanding
00:40:52that Google sell search. Like that way, it's much more direct in that sense. And I think
00:40:57that that might be why it has always felt like Google is on more aggressive defense on this one,
00:41:04because it is like you're not just trying to kind of prop up competitors and, you know,
00:41:09slap us on the wrist for bad conduct. You're trying to take away the thing that
00:41:13makes us all of our money. Like this is, you know, you mentioned this is this is how a lot
00:41:18of the money moves around the internet. This is also how Google makes a lot of its money.
00:41:21This is like, it does a lot of, you know, first party ads and stuff. But this is like a true
00:41:25money machine for Google, and has been for a really long time. And the way that this stuff works
00:41:32is a huge economy. And so far, the biggest beneficiary of it has been Google. And so yeah,
00:41:38it's just it's just been fascinating to me to see Google seem less worried about losing Chrome
00:41:43than it seems about losing addicts. But I'm actually curious on that front, what it has
00:41:46felt like in the courtroom, because you've now been in both of the remedies trials. And you've
00:41:50gotten to sense sort of the the vibes and the feelings coming from both sides. What is this one
00:41:57been like compared to the search trial? How does it feel just listening to people talk in the courtroom?
00:42:02Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. You know, it's obviously the different attorneys have,
00:42:06you know, somewhat different styles. So there's a little bit of just that probably contributes to it.
00:42:10But, you know, I think this is a case where the divestiture of Chrome maybe felt, you know,
00:42:16I don't know if this was a feeling that was coming from within the courtroom, or just a general sense
00:42:21of, you know, it's such a big ask. And it's such a big part of the business. And that would change
00:42:26so much. So I think just the scale of that felt different in a way, although I think, you know,
00:42:31it feels possibly like, this might be a more attainable ask for the government in this case. So in a way,
00:42:39it feels like there's a lot of practicalities being discussed about how this would work. And,
00:42:46you know, I think something that I've been thinking over the past few days is there's times where I
00:42:50almost have to remind myself, like what you said earlier, David, of like, Google did lose at least
00:42:56most of this case. And I think the Google attorneys at times are, you know, kind of,
00:43:02they're doing a decent job of kind of making you forget that, in a sense, because we're talking
00:43:10about, you know, I think there's suggestions of what would be fair to make Google do and,
00:43:15you know, how much engineering work would be involved in some of the remedies that the DOJ
00:43:19proposed. But, you know, we also have to remember that Google lost this case, because it was engaged
00:43:26in anti-competitive behavior for a decade. And Google is also arguing things like that,
00:43:32this whole category of advertising is declining. But, you know, some of the witnesses for the DOJ are
00:43:39saying, well, yeah, because it's been a market that's been dominated by one player, and you have
00:43:45to go through this one player's tools to do these transactions. So it's less attractive to a lot of
00:43:52stakeholders. And it's, you know, not a place that people have been wanting to innovate or invest in,
00:43:59because the sense is that, you know, all roads lead back to Google.
00:44:03Yeah, actually, I was curious about this, there was this whole sort of kerfuffle at the very beginning
00:44:08of this, because Google said in a legal filing, essentially, in as many words that the open web
00:44:12is dying. And part of their defense is who cares, the open web is dying. And then they went back and
00:44:18amended it to be like, no, no, no, no, just the advertising market on the open. And it's like,
00:44:22well, first of all, those are the same thing. And second of all, you said what you said,
00:44:26friendos. Has that come up? Like, has this sort of existential crisis of the internet
00:44:31been part of the conversation this week?
00:44:34That hasn't really come up directly. Yeah, I don't know, you know, it's hard to know what
00:44:38Google really meant in that filing. In the first place, they did revise it to say, I think,
00:44:43open web display advertising, which is like the main term that is being used in this case,
00:44:47to describe this like segment of advertising. But yeah, I think it's come up in the sense that,
00:44:53you know, Google wants to point out that this category of ads is on the decline. And you know,
00:45:00maybe this won't even be relevant several years. And of course, you know, we're hearing about AI and
00:45:05what role does AI play, but really not, not at all to the extent that we heard about AI in the Google
00:45:11search remedies trial.
00:45:12Right. Yeah, AI was Google's whole defense in the search remedies trial was that none of this
00:45:17matters because AI is making the, even if we did do all of this for 20 years, it doesn't matter
00:45:22anymore, because AI is so important and so powerful that it's upending the market anyway. And I think
00:45:26to a large extent, Judge Meta in that case, was sympathetic to that. And I think one of the things
00:45:32I've been thinking a lot about this week is that the listening to the questions that the judge was
00:45:38asking in that case, actually gave a lot of information away about what was going to happen
00:45:43in that case. And he was asking a lot of questions about what overreach would look like and, and
00:45:48whether divesting things was actually going to accomplish the things that they claim to be
00:45:52accomplishing. So it makes me wonder what, what is the judge saying? What kind of questions is the
00:45:58judge asking this week? Has anything kind of piqued your interest?
00:46:02Yeah, yeah, I think she's asked some really interesting questions. You know, she has made it very
00:46:07clear that she really wants to hear from technical experts about the feasibility of this. And I think
00:46:13especially the DOJ's breakup proposals and, you know, what would be involved here. And, you know,
00:46:19when one industry expert was on the stand, she kind of was dismissive of it and said, you know,
00:46:25this is window dressing, you don't need to concern yourself with window dressing. Speaking to the
00:46:29attorneys, she's kind of done with the industry witnesses who are just testifying about the impact on
00:46:35them, because she heard a lot of that in the liability trial. So she really wants to get down to the
00:46:40nitty gritty. And I think, you know, there's been questions that are probably good for Google, good for the
00:46:47DOJ, and maybe relatively equal measure. You know, at one point, she kind of said something like, the devil is in
00:46:55details and worried that the, you know, actual implementation of the technical things here would be a lot more
00:47:04complicated than what's being presented and wondering if the user experience might be different if some of these
00:47:11tools are migrated to another buyer, for example. But we've also heard her ask today about, you know, how exactly it would
00:47:20work to open source the final auction logic and where that would live and getting an understanding of
00:47:25like what that actually involves. And I think one thing that came up yesterday that was really interesting
00:47:31was there was a Google witness on the stand who helped craft Google's remedies proposals. And this
00:47:40executive also had been involved in a couple of projects that Google did to analyze potentially spinning
00:47:47out ad-ex and, you know, kind of doing some of the structural things that the DOJ is talking about
00:47:52in slightly different ways. And Google found that they actually considered shutting down ad-ex altogether.
00:47:59And that seemed to pique the judge's interest. And she asked, well, wouldn't that be a very simple
00:48:04and elegant solution here? Because the Google executive was raising the concern of, you know, who's going to
00:48:10buy ad-ex and does it just recreate the problem if another ad exchange buys it or another big tech company
00:48:15buys it? So, you know, that was a really interesting thing, especially because that's not even something
00:48:21the DOJ is asking for here.
00:48:23So rather than force them to sell it, just shut it down altogether?
00:48:27Yeah, because, you know, there...
00:48:29That would be fascinating.
00:48:30It would because there are actually a lot of ad exchanges that are out there that have testified in
00:48:35this trial. It's just that they don't have the same access to Google demand as ad-ex does. And,
00:48:41you know, it's different from the publisher ad servers where Google is pretty much the only
00:48:46player in that market.
00:48:48Right. Yeah. And I think that's, again, a key difference between this trial and the search
00:48:53trial, right? So much of the search trial hinged on why are there no other good players in this
00:48:59market? Like, why is it impossible to build a successful search engine? And I just like, I will never be
00:49:04able to get Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, out of my head on the stand saying, I would give you all of this
00:49:10for free just to have the query data. And like, we are all so far behind now, there's not a chance
00:49:15anybody can catch up. This is different in that it does seem like it would be more straightforward
00:49:21to just blow the market open and say, well, everybody, there are a million potential competitors
00:49:25out there. We're just going to give them the same access that you have, and then we'll have a
00:49:30competitive market. Like, I just, I grant that I am very unsophisticated when it comes to how the ad
00:49:35tech market works. But it does seem to me that it would be an easier thing to just sort of throw
00:49:42the doors open on this one than it would be to like, gin up a way to create 10 new search engines
00:49:48from scratch. Yeah, I think at a high level, that's pretty much correct. I think, you know, there are
00:49:54things in place here that just, you know, there need to be different pathways opened. And that's kind
00:49:59of what they're looking at how exactly to do that. But some of the actual tools do exist.
00:50:03Yeah. So what do you think there is to learn from the other trial? Is there is there obviously,
00:50:09again, these are different things, different judges, every trial is different, on and on and
00:50:13on. Did you do you see anything happening now that is like rhyming with some of the other
00:50:19trials that you've been sitting in? Is there anything that you feel like is being carried
00:50:23forward here? Yeah, I mean, I think, in a way, it's hard to make that assessment yet,
00:50:29because we have this one data point of this kind of like new era of tech antitrust. And
00:50:34that data point is that the judge was willing to call Google a monopoly, but wasn't willing
00:50:39to break it up. Right.
00:50:40And I think we're kind of in the midst of the second data point. And, you know, so far,
00:50:45it definitely was notable to me that the judge seemed wary of, you know, doing something that
00:50:51might further harm the market, create a new problem, do something that's just technically not feasible,
00:50:57and, you know, kind of nonsensical from a technical sense. So, you know, I could see
00:51:03that potentially being an issue where she worries that some sort of breakup would be too complicated.
00:51:10But on the other hand, perhaps she does end up agreeing with the government that a breakup is
00:51:15really the simplest way to go. That's long been the argument from people who favor structural
00:51:20remedies is, you know, rather than having behavioral changes that require a court to appoint someone
00:51:27to look after a lot of changes and make sure that the company's staying compliant, that,
00:51:33you know, structural changes, it'll take some time to get there. But once it's done, it's done. It's a
00:51:38separate company. It's not owned by Google anymore. Right.
00:51:41So I think it'll be interesting to see which way that goes and whether Judge Metta's ruling is
00:51:48instructive to that or if it is ultimately an outlier.
00:51:52Yeah, I think the behavioral remedies piece of it to me is really interesting because
00:51:56it's so much of what has happened in this trial has been about bringing to light the shady stuff
00:52:02that nobody knew that Google was doing. And I think about like all the first look and last look
00:52:08stuff that Google was giving itself, which to me is like the most sort of straightforward version of
00:52:11what you're able to do when you control the whole ecosystem, which is Google would run a whole
00:52:16fair bidding process and then give itself a last chance to win. And it was just like,
00:52:21what if you could see the winner of every auction and just decide whether you wanted to win it
00:52:25is like pretty clearly unfair and is not the kind of thing that Google was like,
00:52:31you know, advertising that it was doing. And so I think this idea that suddenly someone is going to
00:52:36be able to come in and like immediately suss that stuff out just seems suspicious.
00:52:40And so I like it seems obvious to me that that's what Google would want because like we're going to
00:52:45have this person who part of their job is to try and see what we're doing. And yeah, you can see why
00:52:51it is cleaner to just be like, no, just just stop having ad X be yours. But also why that causes a
00:52:57whole set of other problems. So I think, yeah, where this judge lands on sort of feasibility versus
00:53:04success, I think is going to be really fascinating and seems hard to know at this point.
00:53:07Yeah. And that's something that the DOJ brought up in their opening arguments, actually, that,
00:53:12you know, this is such a complicated space. And, you know, it's not hard to imagine Google being able
00:53:18to bury some code or some change that's difficult to detect that kind of recreates a problem all over
00:53:26again.
00:53:26All right. So you have another week of the Google trial, and then some amount of time,
00:53:31and then we'll get an answer from the judge. Is that is that what we're in for here?
00:53:34Yeah, that's what we're in for. And, you know, remember, this is the rocket docket in the Eastern
00:53:38District of Virginia. So, you know, that is speedy in terms of legal time, not in terms of real people
00:53:45time. But, you know, that said, we could get a decision, you know, if you think about in the search
00:53:51case, which is, you know, not known as a speedy court. We had the remedies trial, I believe, in March or
00:53:58April. And then we got the decision, I think, at very beginning of September. So, you know, if I
00:54:04would think maybe a much shorter timeframe than that to get a decision here.
00:54:08Yeah, so it does seem like this is this is one where there's just a lot hanging in the balance. And
00:54:14Google, I'm sure is feeling good about itself after the search trial. But seems like it's probably
00:54:18pretty wary of this one would be my guess. And it'll be it'll be fascinating to see what they come
00:54:24in on, like, sort of how hot Google comes in, making its case, because it came in pretty hot
00:54:30on the search trial that it was basically like all of this is shenanigans. Let's just move on.
00:54:35But in this one, I'm just curious to hear what tone Google tries to strike as it tries to navigate
00:54:42its way around this. Absolutely. All right, Lauren, you have court to get back to another week of the
00:54:47Google trial, lots more to do, we're gonna have to be back on to talk about how all of this shakes
00:54:51out whenever it does shake out. For now, we're gonna take a break. And then we're gonna come
00:54:55back and do a question from the Vergecast hotline. Lauren, thank you. We'll be right back.
00:55:00Support for this show comes from Zapier. If you're looking to integrate AI into your business,
00:55:05but don't know where to start, Zapier says they're here to help. Zapier wants to empower
00:55:09businesses everywhere to create processes and systems that let computers do what they do best,
00:55:15which in turn can free up humans to do what they're best at. Zapier helps you automate the most
00:55:19tedious parts of your day-to-day job with over 7,000 integrations and service offerings.
00:55:25Zapier lets you and your team actually reap the benefits of AI, not just talk about it.
00:55:29Zapier is for everyone, tech expert or not. That means no IT bottlenecks and no complexity.
00:55:35In fact, 3.4 million companies are already automating with Zapier to streamline their rev ops,
00:55:41marketing, sales, IT, HR, and more. Join the 3.4 million companies already automating with Zapier
00:55:49and transform how you work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com
00:55:54slash verge. That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash verge.
00:56:08All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, you can email
00:56:12vergecast at theverge.com. You can call 866-VERGE-11. A thing I would like people to start doing is
00:56:18sending us video messages. So if you want to just like take a selfie video asking us questions
00:56:22and email it to us as like a Google Drive link or something, I don't know. Don't break my computer
00:56:29with malware, but send us videos. You know what I mean? Anyway, this week's question is about AI.
00:56:34It's a fun one. Let's hear it.
00:56:36Hey, Vergecast. This is Roy from Toronto, Canada speaking.
00:56:40One-time listener, first-time caller. And I have a question about YouTube and its relationship
00:56:48to AI, but especially Gemini. So I am what you might call a power user of YouTube as I listen to
00:56:57several minutes, sometimes hours a day. A lot of my podcasts, a lot of just general content on there.
00:57:06It's basically my main source of media consumption. And lately, I've noticed that Gemini does an
00:57:16incredible job of summarizing these videos. And I never realized the extent to which,
00:57:23especially as a busy family man who has very few minutes or hours to spare in the day,
00:57:30I never knew how much I watched YouTube videos just to get information.
00:57:34And the reason I know this is because I started asking Gemini to summarize videos for me.
00:57:41And it gives me a quick, accurate, factual breakdown of the main points of a video.
00:57:47Is this an existential concern for YouTube creators? Am I the only weird one doing this?
00:57:53Could this become a trend? Would love your thoughts.
00:57:56Okay. I love this question for a bunch of reasons. Because one,
00:58:00Roy, you are not the only person doing this.
00:58:02Two, this is incredibly intended behavior. This is what Google and all of these companies want you
00:58:07to do, is summarize things with AI. And three, summarization is one of the things that AI is
00:58:14actually very good at. I think if you ask open-ended questions of an AI bot or a large language model of
00:58:19any kind, you run all kinds of risks, right? Things get really complicated, things go off in weird
00:58:24directions. But if you just give it a body of work and say, make this shorter, it's actually
00:58:30very good at that. And so you see a lot of these tools out there now that are like feeding a book
00:58:35to an AI model in order to get a summary back. And then it's like, well, you've now read the book.
00:58:41And like, you haven't, you've read a summary of the book and that's fine. But the summaries are
00:58:45often very good. And I've even started doing it in my own research with a lot of like white papers
00:58:50and studies. It's a really great way to just like quickly digest a lot of information. And I think
00:58:55one of the fascinating things about YouTube is that it is both a very good and a wildly
00:59:01inefficient way to just consume information, right? Like if you want to watch a video because it's fun
00:59:07or it's interesting or it's visual or you like the people or whatever, that's fine. But like my favorite
00:59:12example of this is always when I have like some very small DIY house project to do. And I just want to
00:59:19know how to take the thing out and then put the other thing in without burning my house down.
00:59:25And what I have to watch is eight minutes of intro video before I get there. And another version of
00:59:32this that exists on the internet is like the recipe websites where it's like, I go to a recipe site and
00:59:37I have to read 2000 words and scroll past 12 ads just to get to the recipe. Like that exists, not because
00:59:44that's what the creators want to do, but because that's how they have to make a business out of it,
00:59:47right? Like all of the data on that recipe webpage is structured in such a way that Google will find
00:59:52it and rank it so that you will click on it and see it. And YouTube is very much the same way,
00:59:57right? Like videos are longer so that people can show more ads in the middle. The longer videos are,
01:00:02the more watch time they get, which means they'll get surface more. And it's just this incredible
01:00:06flywheel of things you have to do in order for the platform to give you the kind of audience and
01:00:11access that you need in order to be successful. So it is a Gemini summary of a YouTube video and
01:00:17existential threat to the creator of that YouTube video. Absolutely unequivocally. Yes. If, if
01:00:22everyone stops watching YouTube videos and starts getting summaries of those YouTube videos,
01:00:26it's the end of that business for people on YouTube. You become a person who is making training
01:00:34data, not a person who is making content that people want to actually consume on YouTube. So like
01:00:39cast it out long enough and make that activity mainstream enough. And it absolutely all falls
01:00:46apart. The whole thing falls apart. And this is, this is what nobody in this industry is reckoning
01:00:50with right now is if all of this stuff works, it all collapses. But that is, that is an existential
01:00:56crisis of my own that we don't have to do right now. So I think what I would say, and, and this is
01:01:02just my own way of thinking about like, how do I support the internet in a way that works for
01:01:07everybody is like, watch the videos as, as many as you can, and as often as you can, but also
01:01:15understand that if what you want is a piece of information and that if the video is not giving
01:01:20it to you in the most efficient way, you shouldn't feel bad about not watching the whole video. You are
01:01:26not obligated to watch things just because they exist. And if what you want is a piece of information
01:01:30on how to take something out of your wall, it's okay to find the most efficient version of that
01:01:35information. And frankly, I think the fact that 10 minute YouTube videos is the most efficient version
01:01:39of information is like insane on its own. But watch the things that you want to watch, go actively
01:01:45consume the things made by the creators that you like that that is the thing that all of the rest of
01:01:52the business and the system and the economy of it all works. If you consume the stuff that you like,
01:01:58as often as you can, like, it is not exactly that simple, but it's close enough to that simple
01:02:04that that's reasonable advice that I can give you is it when you're looking for a piece of
01:02:09information, look for it in the most efficient way possible. And I think in many ways, as we've
01:02:13talked about on this show, AI search engines are really powerful for that. If what you need is sort
01:02:18of a piece of data in the haystack of the internet, AI bots and AI search are better at that than
01:02:25Google. And that is a thing that is going to change a lot about how the internet works and how
01:02:31money flows around the internet. And we haven't fully shaken that out yet. But you as a consumer
01:02:36should not feel bad using the best product. But if what you care about is that the creators who
01:02:40make the things that you like continue to be able to make the things that you like, consume those
01:02:45things, don't summarize the things and let that be enough, because it's not, you should be engaging with
01:02:50the things that you like, as often as possible. And also like tell your friends, and put the video
01:02:55on in the background and mute your computer and just let it play on their playlist for a long time.
01:02:59This is like, do it with verge videos. If you want to watch 700 consecutive hours of the verge
01:03:03cast without ever watching any of it on YouTube, I have no problem with that. I would love that would
01:03:07be very grateful. All of this is to say, yes, it's on existential crisis. And no, it's not generally
01:03:14your problem to fix it by never touching AI summaries. And I think if you feel morally
01:03:20icky about some of these things, you're right to and you should lean into that. But you also
01:03:25are not required to feel bad all the time. I hope that helps. Welcome to my own existential crisis.
01:03:30This is what we do here. Anyway, that's it for the verge cast today. More existential crises to come,
01:03:35presumably in every episode forever. But for now, the verge cast is a verge production and part of the
01:03:40Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk,
01:03:44you can always email us vergecastateverge.com. You can always call the hotline,
01:03:49send me non malware filled Google Drive links with selfie questions to your videos. We love
01:03:54hearing all of them. We'll be back on Friday with lots more news. We've got a lot of smart home stuff
01:03:59to talk about this week, some big stuff going on. We're going to talk about all of it, all the AI stuff,
01:04:04all of our feelings, and all of our existential crises. Until then, we'll see you next time. Rock and roll.
Comments