This Week in Google 258 (Transcript)

It's time for TWiG - This Week in Google. Gina Trapani has the day off. Danny Sullivan is here from search engine land, along with Jeff Jarvis. We'll talk about all the Google news and your last chance to write to the FCC about net neutrality. It's all coming up next, on TWiG.

Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for This Week in Google is provided by Cachefly. C-a-c-h-e-f-l-y dot com.

This is TWiG - This Week in Google, episode 258, recorded July 16, 2014

The Google Mule

Leo Laporte: This Week in Google is brought to you by Hover.com. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. It’s simple, it’s honest, it’s easy to use. For ten percent off your first purchase, go to Hover.com and enter our promo code, TWiG7. It’s time for TWiG - This Week in Google, the show where we cover Google but anything else we also want to talk about. We talk a lot about journalism. That's partly because we have one of the most prestigious professors of journalism in the entire world, sitting on my right hand. It’s the lovely and talented Jeff Jarvis...

Jeff Jarvis: I'll try not to bore you with journalism today, and try to stand up to substituting on Gina Trapani's screen.

Leo: Aaah, you are on Gina's screen. So you're on my left hand. I apologize. I was looking over here, but wait a minute. It’s Danny Sullivan of search engine land. A great person to fill in for Gina Trapani. Danny, great to have you.

Danny Sullivan: Thank you, it’s great to be here.

Leo: Gina has the day off, as you probably  figured out. I put some journalism stories in here, Jeff, because I wanted to ask you about them. See, I think of you, man. All the time.

Jeff: I sense the audience running away.

Leo: You know, it’s funny, I was talking to Abby about it, and she said, "That's kind of inside baseball." But there was an article in Medium from a BBC tech journalist who says tech journalists are facing extinction. Very soon, I won't be needed. David Lee, writing here. Danny's yawning.

Danny:  I don't know. It’s like this on top of yet another OSU's dead article. I almost tweeted yesterday that telegraph marketing soon will be dead.

Leo: No more dot dot dot dash dash dash adds in your inbox.

Danny: Exactly. OK, in that case, yeah, because you know. No, I don't think tech journalism is going to die.

Leo: He actually makes the point that I would make, which is that... You know, he was talking about basically how in the nineties the BBC had an internet correspondent, and the notion that, "Wow, there's an internet correspondent." It blew everybody's mind, and of course nowadays if you don't cover, you know if you're covering the news you're covering technology. And I think that's probably more of the story, which is, technology journalists, to survive, need to be techno experts, writing about everything else. And i think that's a fair way to put it. A journalist is always a journalist, and that's not going away.

Danny: So, that’s sort of like saying everyone uses money so we don't need any money correspondent. You know, and the reality is that I agree with the idea that you don't necessarily have to have a reporter who just covers the internet because it’s a weird new thing. On the other hand, it's extremely helpful to have a reporter who covers the technology beat because they want to do in depth coverage of what's going on in the technology beat, in a way that you don't cover or don't understand if you're just a journal aside reporter. I deal with this all the time, with all this the whole right to be forgotten stuff where you had people who didn't know search engines who would understand what they thought was going on with search engines and make assumptions that weren't necessarily correct, because they weren't search journalists, and they weren't even tech journalists. They were like, "I'm a political journalist, but I understand some of this technology stuff so I guess I know what I'm talking about."

Leo: Right. And that's actually a real risk, isn't it? that technology will be written about by people who use it and so they think that they understand how it works. The net neutrality base is another example of the deep technology you need to have to understand what's really going on. Because it’s beyond me sometimes, and certainly beyond any general assignment reporter.

Danny: And I think that you get both of those, by the way. I think that sometimes it’s great to have someone who doesn't understand technology because they don't sometimes get so caught up in try8ing to explain all the nuances and they approach as a normal, and you get a better perspective in that way. But I think we'll still have tech journalists.

Jeff: In other words ,when everyone's a tech journalist, no one's a tech journalist? And part of the problem with tech blogs, don't we know, is that the explosion of bad Xeroxes getting weaker and fainter with each copy is really ruining the field to an extent ,and there's only so many good ones. You are one Danny, I think We Code is good, I think The Verge is good. But there aren't many now, there's a lot of crappy copies out there. And that affects the feel, but that doesn't mean that it takes away from the need for people who do it well.

Leo: An article in New York magazine about Kara Swisher. Did you see this?

Jeff: Some picture I can't figure out.

Leo: It looks fake. It looks staged, silicon valley's most feared and well liked journalist. I'm not sure about the well liked, but feared for sure. How does that work?

Danny: You said that, I just hid in the trees.

Leo: It’s the strangest picture. It looks like it’s staged. She's supposedly talking to Jane Metcalfe, founder of Wired, who has apparently...

Jeff: Extras from ten b movies, extras from ten b movies.

Leo: Yeah. I didn't know that Jane Metcalf wore scarves kind of like Steve Tyler from Aerosmith.

Jeff: And behind to the right looks like, you know, like, an extra out of costume from Ben Hur...

Leo: It just begs to be photoshopped.

Jeff: And then the guy with the gimme what, you know, who looks like he's out of some baseball movie.

Leo: It’s a very weird picture... You know, it’s funny, because I think probably people kind of gloss over and start reading the article, but you and I both went, "What's going on in this picture?" Strangest thing.

Jeff: I couldn't come up with a way to tweet about it and say what was so weird about it, but it’s very weird.

Leo: But it’s also the way it’s lit, it’s very odd. Anyway. We shouldn't focus on the picture because it’s really about Kara. We're forgetting. But I laughed a lot, because at one point, it says, "One of the reasons for Swisher's unusual status in the valley is her longevity. Now 51, she began covering tech in the early nineties."

Danny: Yeah, I kind of laughed.

Leo: Wow. That long ago... Anyway, she certainly is one of the most powerful people...

Jeff: And she's one of the best. It’s good that We Code has high standards, and for them a scoop is really a scoop, and they link to things and you know, here's the thing to me. Before We Code, Mossburg was the brand. Now to me, Swisher is the brand.

Leo: Yeah, I agree, and Walt's not been writing a whole lot of We Code. He's kind of the elder statesman at this point. Speaking of weird pictures, did you scroll down to see the picture of Kara, that they... That's weird too!

Danny: That one's creepy...

Leo: She's in the ivy, lost in the ivy. And there’s her dogs, one of whom crapped on our cottage floor when Kara visited us a few years ago. I'm not sure if it was Fineas or Le Roy but anyway... Isn't that weird? It looks like the add where they pulled the old Chicago Cubs there and the Ivy at Wrigley field. I can't remember who the add was for, it kind of reminds me of that. Kara is... A character. We love Kara. Anyway, enough inside baseball. Let’s talk about Google, big story. Al Mallaley who's just recently departed as CEO at Ford and a really, I think, well regarded CEO, perhaps one of the best CEOs in the country, has now taken a job with Google. He's on the board of directors.

Jeff: Wasn't he rumored to be a CEO candidate for Microsoft? Or was that always just speculation?

Leo: Well, it was speculation. Nobody really said. In fact, one of the things we heard is that the Ford board went to Mallaley and said, "Will you please deny this because we can't get back to business until you do?" So I don't know if he really was considered, he certainly was mentioned. I know Mallaley because we've interviewed him many times for this show. Ford was a sponsor and we always got good access to him, and I always regarded him as very smart. He was an engineer at Boeing, he designed the triple seven cockpit, went to Ford and really turned the company around, to the point where they didn't have to take any money from Congress, as the other big automakers did.

Jeff: And don't have the disasters that GM has...

Leo: No GM disasters, exactly. Ford has become very successful probably the most successful US auto manufacturer, maybe the most successful in the world. And he's a smart, cagey guy. But I knew he was retiring three years ago, he told me, "I'm in my sixties... You know how it happens when you hit sixty... It’s all downhill." He said, "I'm in my sixties, I want to spend more time with my family. This is much more like I expected." It’s a second chapter for him, on the board of directors effective July 9th, so he's sitting in there now.

Jeff: I think Google's biggest problem now, which Schmidt has long said, is that the company is too big. It’s hard to manage, I hear that from around, inside that it’s got issues. Mallaley to go to a huge company like Ford, I hope  there's some insight to figure out how to keep Google being Google.

Leo: Yeah. Yeah... I wonder, you know, you've served on boards.

Jeff: Yes. Tiny ones.

Leo: How important... I guess it depends on the company. For instance, Microsoft's board, is really a rubber stamp. There's only a few people with any power on the Microsoft board, the rest are just there to say, "Yes, sir." What is... I don't know, maybe you have some insight. What is the Google board like? Is it small, run by individuals?

Jeff: I don't know. No, I don't think so...

Leo: I think Larry is, and Serge of course, and Eric Schmidt... Jon Dore. There's a strong minded guy. Jenna, partner client at Perkins...

Jeff: Dianne Greene...

Leo: She's from Intuit, was a member of the board at Intuit, MIT. She's CEO of VMware from 98 to 2008. Smart technologist. John Hennessy, president of Stanford.

Jeff: Not going to be that tough.

Leo: Anne Mather. I don't know what Anne Mather... She was previously director of central European enterprises. Moneygram ,she was at moneygram international. She was pixar exec, evp and cfo at pixar. But only from 99 to 2004. She was also... You know, one of the things it tells you is which areas Google has some ambitions in. Paul Melany, former CEO of Intel. There's a strong minded guy, Paul Melany is not going to take a backseat to anybody. Rom Saram, who is adventure capitalist, was also amazon in the early days. And Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton. Two vague academics, Stanford and Princeton.

Jeff: I think there’s a few strong personalities on there. I think this is not a board that's going to fight Serge.

Leo: That's the problem when you have founders on the board and former CEOs on the board. It really is tough, to you know, stand up if you're, you know President of Princeton, saying, "I think Google should do this." Yeah, well, thanks.

Jeff: I love to be on one of the boards, I find it absolutely fascinating. One of them I was the outside director, and I was, well, I've always been the outside director. But I was needed in that capacity. there were issues in the board, and I was the guy who wanted to stand back and say, "No, everybody." And face them in the top...

Leo: That's what a board should be doing. A board should not be...

 

Jeff: It’s a small group of people, you get the dynamics a lot  easier than you do with a company, and you know... When time warner with task forces all over, it’s all  very good. When you have six to eight people and you have a tough issue before you and you can see where the interests are, that makes it pretty clear.

Leo: I do think it’s interesting that they've got someone from the movie industry on the board. Allen has experience in autos, of course, so would be telling me about the Thomas Cars, that would be interesting. But he's also an aerospace engineer, and certainly Google has some aerospace ambitions with project drones and so forth. I think it’s a good snag. I'm sure he'll be on either boards, it’s not a full time job.

Jeff: I'd love to be on that board. It'd be fun.

Leo: How does that work, does the board... probably the board has a committee of board members, to nominate people and the board as a whole votes.

Jeff: They also hire editors just from work. The issue is you have higher liability within public company.

Leo: Incidentally, happy birthday Jeff. He turned sixty yesterday!

Jeff: My entire comment on it was you period, f word period. 

Leo: I saw that. I loved that! That’s how I started my day yesterday, was that little choice post on Google+. I loved it. Is Google+ dead? Danny, what is going on with Google+? You know, Google is kind of a pain. They mention a Google IO but Larry in the interview took pains to say, "We're very happy with it."

Danny: Yeah. He'd be very excited about it. He'd be more excited about Google+. I guess I don't want Larry to be that excited about anything, in order to survive...

Leo: Well, it was Violet Blue blamed Sergey Brin, in no uncertain words, for letting her down. Now the good news is, that one of the things Violet Blue was so excited about was the Name wars earlier on. Google+ demanded you use your real name and people like Violet Blue and others who... I guess her real name is Violet Blue, so that's not an issue, but there were others, our own Dr. Kiki, I understand ,from Sanford whose best known by her brand, Dr. Kiki, had trouble being Dr. Kiki. She succeeded, lady Gaga succeeded. You know if you're big name, you succeeded. The example that Violet Blue brought up that was the negative ,was that somebody who was in gender transition, kind of got out of tour and employers because she had two Google+ accounts, an official one and her own. And because the names had to match, it got revealed to her employers that she was in transition. She wasn't ready for that to have happened, and that’s one of many good reasons why anonymity might be nice. Google has announced, yesterday were going to let go of that requirement and were going to allow you to use handles on Google+. But is that much of a real change?

Danny: You know. It has... I don't think that's a change, suddenly it'll cause people to embrace Google+ if they weren't doing it already. I suspect it’s a change that’s being done, in part to hide other disconnects from what Google+ was to what it is becoming. In other words, back when Vick left and then the rumors came out that Google+ was going to die, there was all this discussion of, "No, it’s not going to die!" and, you know, we love it and it’s going to stay there, and I think really the better perspective was, "No, they're not going to kill the Google+ sharing system, but all the Google plusification within Google, where they would take Google+ and use that to underpin everything, is going to slowly over time be backed away. And the products are not going to be required to have all this Google+ stuff in them, although they'll still use Google+ accounts. And if you think about it that way, then you can imagine that if say, you're on youtube, and you are used to having a handle or a name or whatever, you don’t want to start up your youtube account and be forced to have first name, last name, and all this weird stuff. And in fact, when they merged the two together, they didn't force that upon youtube. And if Google goes out and b rings in other products, or if they’re changing other products that are out there, they may decide, "You know, enough with this." We wanted everybody to have a verified identity on Google_ and they all had to have certain names, we're not trying to shove Google+ at anybody anymore, so let’s back off on the name requirement because not only does that help with the relatively small people who are upset about it, I mean it wasn't impacting that many people, and I'm not saying it wasn't a big issue for those people, but if you want to list all of the reasons why goggle= isn't more popular, this wasn't a big issue for it. But there may be other... issues that are going on, but I suspect that this is tied to something we haven’t seen yet. And to give you an example of that, and then I'll shut up, but a week or two weeks ago, Google announced that they were no longer going to show images for authors in their search results. It used to be that Google was on this big thing like you should use Google+ and tell us your name, and then link it to your website so that if you've written a post, we will have a picture of you that we'll show along with your name and you're an author and everything. And they dropped all that. And everybody's like, why did you drop all that, because you told us that this was really big and was really helpful and it did a lot of good stuff for people, and I suspect one of the reasons they dropped it was because they knew that they were going to let up on the name requirement. And maybe they'll start to let up on the image requirement, with authorship and whatever. So if someone wants to go by a name, BigDaddy Check Out and that's their name they want to have it, it may not be the author name that Google wants to reflect in their search results that anybody might see as well. And so, there's all these things going on that they don't think we're getting the full picture of and I suspect that this name change isn't just about dealing with some of the real issues people have had, but it’s connected to other stuff.

Leo: And look, I just searched for my name, Leo Laporte, and I did the author equals and the real link or whatever it was you were supposed to do, and it used to be when you'd find my blog there'd be a picture of me on the left, and it’s gone. Thats kind of annoying, I mean, I spent all that time getting that working and I liked it.

Jeff: The conspiracy theory on that was that ii reduced click through to Google ads. I have no idea. Not that I saw.

Danny: And that was based off of one really really tiny little study and i Know the person who did it, we looked at it and we thought, "Should we write an article?" and we'd like to see a little bit more off of this, before we decide that was the reason they dropped it.

Jeff: Paranoia speaking, more than anything else. The reaction I saw to the name change thing, was uh oh. The  trolls are going to come back to youtube. I saw that at a lot of sites.

Leo: That's the tradeoff, right. Real name policy means really in general, you're going to be responsible for what you post. Whereas when you, on the other hand.. There's real value to anonymity on the net, we don't require real names in our chat room, for instance. That has a mixed bag. People can do drive throughs and stuff, they're not really responsible for anything that gives them the freedom to speak. Certainly if you're a whistleblower or there's, you're you know, in a country where it’s not ok to speak your mind, these are all valuable things. Doesn't Google still, this is my question for you Danny, doesn't Google still know your real name? Isn't it in fact just giving them more information, tying your handle to your real name?

Danny: It depends on how you sign up for stuff with Google, right? If you open a gmail account, I don't think they're requiring you to... It’s not like they verify your name, so you can put anything that's in there.

Leo: I  have a gmail account that's Chief Twit. So I could change my name to Chief Twit on my Google+.

Danny: YOu could change it now if you wanted.

Jeff: Good luck having two or three accounts, there's something going on about that still, but...

Danny: You don't want to have multiple accounts. You never want a Google apps account. But they can figure out your real name if they want to...

Leo: That's to me, it’s saying, OK you want to be conspiracy theory minded, and it seems to me the real advantage to Google is good we know their real names, we're gathering information on that. Now we'll know their names.

Danny: i think the real name issue kind of goes to something else that seemed to be part of what Google was trying to do, which is that, and this goes to Eric Schmidt's book that he brought out last year, which is that, Google had this belief or seemed to have this belief that the more they could verify everyone's identities the more they could then decide, this is good information, this is bad information, you know. We can drop this person, we cannot drop that person, and so, this seemed to be a blow against all that, right. If you're not going to be verifying people and having them use their names, then this whole thing that you were spitting up about how we're going to have verified information and so on, doesn't work as well... Although you get other benefit’s that come out, which may be information that you weren't going to give, because people don't want to share under their own names.

Jeff: I think it was the... I have a slight different take on this, and it’s incomplete. But I think that... We had a discussion a few weeks ago, when Zuckerberg said he was bringing up the big blue app, and he doesn't care if you use whatsapp, for chatting and using Facebook for this and so on and so forth... Google's essential structure is they have an underlying beta base on top of all kinds of apps, maps, mail, calendar, and so on, that generate signals about your context and what you're doing right now that help Google give you better services and results. So what should that underlying database look like? The problem is that Google+ kind of violated that. It said, "Everything social is right here, in the same thing." If you want to do photos, it’s here. If you want to do talking, it’s here. If you want to do hangouts, it’s here. And you got to come to Google+ to do that and I think that's antiGoogle. I think it’s better to have these things be somewhat separate. Underneath that is a separate function of identity. And so I think identity needs to be a lot more sophisticated than it is now, where you will have your real name here. It wasn't a good enough policy. Obviously when you use wallet, Google knows something real about your identity. When you use android, Google knows something real about your identity. Maybe not your name, but they have something that is tangible to tie into. And so does the quality of identity, that I think is much more subtle and enters into things as we move forward and it’s not as simple as saying number one, you must use your real name in Google+, and number two all these functions fit with that identity in Google+. Thats what was getting them in trouble somewhat, so I think separating them out as concepts will let them develop in ways that I can't predict.

Leo: We know they're sitting there, at Google, and they know exactly what they're up to. You mortals, you mere mortals. I think that it just...

Danny: It’s reading the tea leaves as best you can.

Leo: I just think, jeff, that that underscores what I was saying. I think Google does have a coherent database, and giving them your name is just one more signal, it’s very easy for them to pull like that with your real name. It’s all in the service of gathering as much information as it can about you.

Jeff: And the solution to the damned multiple account problem.

Leo: Which has never been solved.

Jeff: Never been solved, they've promised and promised and promised, saying, "We have the same problem." And they haven't. The solution is, for me to have the facility to say, that and that is me.

Leo: But that's what author equals, it did.

Jeff: But the same...

Leo: But that's me.

Jeff: They should both do that.

Danny; I think this kind of goes with what you're saying, Leo and some of what you're saying, Jeff, where they're trying to force us all into one place. If you flip back and look at Facebook. You have a Facebook profile and you can decide to put stuff out on your Facebook profile as you want ,but it primarily is only used at Facebook. Your bio and these links... Your profile, right? Your Facebook account, and your account can be able to do all sorts of things, like I'm going to have an instagram account and if I use my Facebook account to open instagram, I'll set up my profile as I want at instagram, separately from my profile for Facebook. And what Google had was Google accounts, and Google accounts started gaining Google profiles and then we got Google+ and then they made the whole thing like there are no more Google accounts, you really kind of have a Google+ account. Although there are some people with Google+ accounts that don't enable Google+ so those are Google. I mean, they really kind of got rid of the idea of Google accounts, and I think that's what's coming back is that we're going to have Google accounts and Google accounts may have profile information, that primarily you might see from within Google+, but you use your Google account for other stuff, like I want to enable maps and on maps, I may have a different profile, might even have a different nickname that I want to use when I'm on maps, then when I'm commenting on youtube and different places, as part of this whole spirit of... the days of one giant app for everything is over, now it’s all about everybody's got this single purpose app that's sort of coming back.

Leo: Also I should point out, it’s very possible that Google, is completely benign, wasn't serving people, wasn't a good thing okay. You know, it’s very possible Google said, you know Violet made a good point. Lets get rid of that.

Jeff: I get religious about things.

Leo: This could be Vic's thing.

Jeff: Religious about it. Okay, but now he's gone, does anybody really care about that? Alright.

Danny: there's mention here in the thread, it’s a really really long thread, who actually commented and said this isn't the work before Vic left, and Vic was told where it is, so it wasn't something that happened. Just suddenly happened, at the same time, you know, as a reaction to the violence concerns over two years, three years, it’s like... I maybe I'm just too cynical, but part of me thinks, yeah, Google's about to launch its own secret app, and so they decided we better have an anonymous name situation, because...

Leo: You think that's what's going on? Oh yeah... Wow. I like that. That's a good theory.

Danny: Right, but then I mean, if you're Google and you're looking at the explosion of things like this, I remember them saying they want to do this sort of stuff but they can't do it because we said we had to have real names. Then suddenly, saying, "Well you know we thought about it, and you're right. It only took us three years. It made sense, but now, you know we thought we arrived at the right decision."

Leo: in the time since snapcheck came out in secret whisper came out, Facebook has tried twice now to create such apps. Google hasn't done anything that way, and they can't.

Jeff: I think it’s a problem with Google credibility, when they come up with things that are like that. Account architecture and identity architecture being separate things, I think that’s the kind of Google way to look at things. And if anybody knows their way it’s you, Danny.

Leo: One of the things they said is that up to now, Google flags pseudonyms or names that were even unusual names, like Violet Blue for review. That's gone. Pending appeals have all been granted. If you appealed and said no, I want to use that name, they said OK. And now you'll be able to change your name. It used to be you could change it three times in two years, which is not a lot, but now it’s once every ninety days. Once every three months.

Danny: Another thing, by the way, is if you really are kind of scaling down Google+ and you're losing people and you don't really want to spend a lot of time on it, having someone sit there and deal with all this stuff, isn't it easier just to say, you know, whatever you want. Whatever, you're good. You fight people who are assigned to try and enforce these trolls, say it’s alright.

Leo: I like real names, I really have mixed feelings about this. Real names do raise the quality and the tone of the conversation to the degree that people have been able to use phony names on Google+ is easier for trolling and harassment on Google.

Jeff: What was happening is that it got to the point on Google+ put up a photo and get the horrible comments banned. Cool, okay. Hiiii. How would all those things appear, they appeared in names that would appear to be thai or vietnamese. We don't know your real name anyway. Where's the dictionary of real names across all languages? It’s pretty hard to give anybody a job to say that Twang Dong is not a vietnamese real name. Or a made up spam name.

Leo: Here’s the good news. We've had three years of real names, that's enough. The tone has been set. We can say, fine, now we'll stop ,but really the tone has been set. What am I going to do, change my name? No. So job done. Mission accomplished. Another way of describing this. One of the creators of Google glass has gone over to Amazon, I thought that was kind of interesting. Maybe Novartis, who was one of the research directors, maybe he's going to amazon to do Glass at Amazon, or maybe there's another big points...

Jeff: Glass has such cooties now. Nobody cared that he left.

Leo: He did also do Google contact lenses. Which is something that's actually starting to come to the market. I think that Novartis has proposed... Well they have to do FDA approval, obviously, it’s not imminent. But, these would be contact lenses with circuitry that would be able to do things like, for instance, measure your blood glucose level. That's something Google doesn't probably want to get into the business of, because you have to get FDA approval, it’s a medical device. It’s kind of a different kind of business. Let Novartis do this. That's what they do so well.

Jeff: I went and spoke to Novartis once, in Male, and the size of the structure having to test things... I knew it, intellectually, when you sat down and saw how many people they had to get for each test, you only have to go through the data, Jesus. It’s unbelievable. But for good reason, but...

Leo: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's that big New York times article, we all saw, by Andrew Rosser, who somebody said was Wall Street's favorite Times reporter. Murdock offered a billion dollars for Time Warner, but buried in there is the notion that now that Time Warner turned it down, it might be in play and that Google might be interested.

Jeff: I think that's the most absurd speculation of the month. Because Google cannot own content. It just will put itself in terrible... That's not. That's not, that's a platform company. It doesn't own the content there. It doesn't even when it bought extra networks, it kind of shoved the content aside and put the platform. And the problems there, with that extra network, the problems there in Europe now, about complaints that they advantaged their own spot. Yeah, they're going to push their own maps and that's OK, but if they're going to push their movies against someone else's movies, the antitrust festival is just going to be gigantic.

Danny: Back when the rumor was in the day that, Google could buy the New York Times, I used to feel the same thing, like no they would never do that because they don't own content and that's a real conflict. They all own all sorts of content now, and I've given up trying to figure out if there are no go areas for Google or not. Their reasons why they wouldn't do it, and are they going to do it... Other reasons why they wouldn't do it, but yeah. I can see Google deciding... And they could buy something like Time Warner and they could decide that they want to sell off parts of it and keep the cable frame. When they keep this as a continued experiment in what we're going to deal with in delivery information...

Jeff: Why would you want anything thats in Time Warner?

Leo: Oh, I want AOL! What would you want? That's a good question. What does Time Warner offer? They spun off the cable division. That's the one the Comcast is now, right?

Jeff: They spun off the cable, maybe they wanted. Time Warner Cable might have wanted it, but that's delivery. They spun off the magazines because they have cooties, and so with HBO it’s Time Warner Studios...

Leo: That's not on HBO, I agree with you. But I don't think they should show on Youtube, frankly, but that's another matter. When Sorkin wrote of this in the Times, I guess Variety magazine asked Jeff Bewkes the CEO of Time Warner about the speculation and Bucks says, "I know nothing." No word on whether he did it in a Hogan's Heroes accent. I know nothing! So we don't know, you know this is classic rumor crap.

Jeff: It's also rumored we're not having fun and putting Time Warner in.

Leo: You've got to think he just loves that. Like you're ancient, you're rich, let’s just play with them.

Jeff: I got interviewed by the BBC a few minutes ago, and everybody's got to speculate and have fun with this now, and it’s around Sun Valley, it’s silly season.

Leo: Hey, let’s take a break because when we come back, I want to talk about what some are speculating is a massive shift to Gmail. Too bad Gina is not here, maybe you talked about it with her last week, I don't know, because this is something really Gina would have something to comment about. A, gmail API and how that might change things, coming up. First though a word from our sponsor. Hover.com, a better way to register and manage your domain names. You know, when I discovered Hover, I moved everything over there, by the way they have a great concierge service that will help you move your sites. The valley, they call it now the Valley Transfer service, for free, they will move your sites over, they'll let you - which, by the way is not an insignificant chore, I wish I had to use this valet service because there's other domain name companies that don't want you to move and they'll lock your domain, they'll make it hard. The valet service does it for you for free, they transfer all the DNS settings, they do it all so easily. And, the cost is ten dollars and that includes an additional year on your domain. Right now Hover is having a sale on all the new domain name extensions through September first, whether you're an existing customer or new customer, great time to start a new project. Every single new domain deep discounted. I'm talking .club, .ninja, .guru, . just about anything. Geeks, developers, designers, programmers love Hover. They know it’s going to be simple, they're done with the idea that you try to buy a domain name and you have to go through eighty pages of yes no questions. Do you want to buy this, do you want to buy this. they don't let up selling. Hover gives you what you need, you register the domain name and they give it to you. We can be Google club this week. This week in Google community. This week in Google camp, academy, institute, international foundation, estate in education in all. You get .education for sixteen bucks per year. That's good. Look at all these! They make it so simple, they give you who is domain privacy, because I kow you're going to want that. You can add email to any of your domain names, that's a real good reason. YOu may say, "I don't need to do a website, I'm not doing a website." But let me ask you, are you still using @aol.com, @hotmail.com, even @gmail.com as your email address? What if you decide to move next year? Are you going to have to tell everybody you changed the names? Best thing to do, do this when your kids are young. I did it for Abbey and Henry. Get their names as a domain name, then they can say, "Hey, my email, it’s abbey@abbeylaporte.com." And no matter what they use, from now on whether they use gmail or anything else, they have it forwarded by hover to that system. They're so good. Very powerful DNS mannagement. Bulk management tools, fantastic support team. The best support around. They're famous for their no wait, no hold, no transfer customer service. When you call, you'll get a real person. leolaport.exchange. .holiday - Oh, I need that one. .email, see there you go! Get your name.email. See if laporte.email is there? Because then I could say, leo@laporte.email. That would be a good. Quick get it, before someone else does! Hover.com, that's one of the problems with hover, it’s so easy and quick. People can jump in. I'm going to do it. I love hover.com, and you will too. I want you to go to hover.com and get ten percent off your first purchase, all you have to do is use the offer code TWIG and the number 7, TWIG7 because this is in the seventh month. We thank hover so much for their support. I want to see. See, by the way, the management council is so cool. I've got the whois privacy, I do lock down, I have auto renewal. I have all twit careers I have. I have agency, twit company, twit equipment, twit expert... I love that. Let me see, let me try... Add a new domain...

Danny: Unfortunately, Laporte.email has been taken.

Leo: Like recently?

Danny: I'm not sure. I searched for it right after you asked, and it’s gone, so sorry about that.

Leo: I can get laporte.today, laporte.link, laporte.guru, laporte.fm, photos, pics, webcam, recipes, see wouldn't you like to have you know, your family name .recipes? .wiki, .report... Laporte.report, ooooh!

Danny: Oooh!

Leo: Lets add that to the card, it’s on sale at 16.81.

Jeff: The Laporte Rapport.

Danny: You can get domains with attitude, so you can get laporte cool.

Leo: Here's one for you, Jeff, you can get Jarvis.gripe!

Jeff: Yeah! You got a problem with that?

Leo: This is fun. This is really great. I highly recommend you play with Hover. Sign up, I moved all of my domains there because it’s just the way to do it. Hover.com give it a try, today. Laporte.bike. Laporte.camera... That's where my phone goes... It’s kind of hard tho, I got to warn you, you start playing with this, you're going to end up registering a bunch. Laporte.computer, I like these. These are good. Laporte.cheap...

Danny: I like Laporte.dating

Leo: Yeah, I saw that. Here's domains with attitude. Laporte.sexy is available. Laporte.ninja, laporte.buzz... These are fun, domains with attitude. Or you can use non-english. Laporte.uno. Laporte.viajes, laporte.morte, laporte.futbol, that would be good. I can't stop. Stop me now! Thank you so much Hover. Oh, here's freelaporte.com! So if I ever get arrested. Let me just register that, and that would be good if I become a political prisoner, it would be nice to have lying around. You might want to register that for yourself.

Danny: Even if you spend a lot of time at the DMV, you know?

Leo: Yeah! I'm going to make that my instagram account. Laporte Garden.com, laporte criminal.com, this is so awesome. Alright, I'm going to check out. I got this. I got laporte.report and freelaporte.com. Alright ladies and gentlemen, what was I going to say? Oh. Gmail has announced an API, this is one where we really wish Gina were here. Because, you know, the Verge wrote a story... This is more than just like a little announcement. This is the new Gmail. Maybe Danny you can elucidate.

Danny: Oh gosh. I'm not even up on it.

Leo: Yeah. Well the idea would be...

Danny: It’s easier for third parties to interact with Gmail and...

Leo: I can fill this in a little bit for you, because I've struggled with gmail's iMap. Gmail's iMap implementation is nonstandard. It’s one of the things that screwed it up at apple mail. Because... Yeah they do some things that are not supported in iMap. For instance, you can use iMap to get your Google mail, but you know Google's labels are not iMap folders or labels. And you can have multiple labels on a single message, which iMap does not allow. that's why they're not folders. So, it’s a potential problem and iMap implementations with gmail just you won't necessarily get a one to one match. So, but iMap is an API, if you think about it, as is pop3. These are agreed upon protocols for contacting a server and interacting with it. You say, give me the mail. The last check I got was this, give me everything new. The server reacts, there's more to it than that, but that's basically what a protocol does, what an API can do. But I think Google is responding to the complaints about how goggles iMap is always saying, look, "we're going to give you better than iMap, we're going to give you full API." So if you're a full email client, you can do all the things that iMap does and then some. They say it doesn't replace iMap, but I think you can still use iMap.

Jeff: You can now imagine email as being more integrated with other things.

Leo: Exactly. Now there are limit’s, it really isn't an iMap replacement because there are limited number of calls that you can make, each day, to the API. So it’s much more you're describing, jeff, where I'm using a program, maybe I'm using float board and I want to email something. Normally with float board, what it'll do is launch an email client and do it that way. With an API, if you've got Google credentials and flipboard you can just have flipboard send it.

Jeff: Aha, or you could create a new wowee calendar application that you can schedule things...

Leo: In fact, in the story that I read, the Sunrise, which makes a fabulous web based but also android and ios calendar, that uses Google calendars, said, "Yeah, we could use this. This would be good." So, yeah, I think this is... I'm not sure I would agree with the Verge, "This is the next generation of Gmail."

Jeff: No.

Leo: but we don't know.

Jeff: It depends; somebody might do something amazing with it.

Leo: Right. They still don't have an API. They have a limited API for Google+. Ellis Ember, writing in The Verge, says that gmail API could turn our email accounts into goldmines and that's a good thing. No wonder Google started this, before gmail, you deleted the mail as you went because you didn't have enough storage for it. And Google's whole pitch with gmail was don't delete, save all your mail and now you have great search, and that mail becomes a database of useful information. That just takes it to the next level, I guess. Okay. Apple and IBM are partnering in enterprise. IBM is going to port many of its enterprises, quite a few enterprise apps to the IOS platform. Some have said that we're talking about this on windows weekly, this is perhaps targeting Microsoft which is a very compelling mobile API, for mobile platform for enterprise. But most agree it’s really aimed at Android, which doesn't. And it could become a big differentiator between ios and android. In the enterprise space.

Jeff: Part of what Paul's said on Windows Weekly surprised me, is "Oh, IBM is not that much in enterprise anymore."

Leo: Yeah.

Jeff: And you guys have been one to make fun of them for a while.

Leo: That's actually not true, I think we... Obviously IBMs entire business is enterprise.

Jeff: Yes, but I wonder what he meant by that, in terms of what's it’s clout? To deliver enterprises through this, is I think what he was saying.

Leo: Right, well, in particular, compared to Microsoft, which has a very compelling enterprise story across all platforms, as your cloud, desktop with windows, and of course on the windows phone, they all integrate. I think it goes after Microsoft a little bit of this. But, it really puts the screws to Android. Because Android really, i mean... It’s... You... And I mentioned this, it might really be against Samsung, because Samsung is starting to move the enterprise to their nox platform and so forth...

Jeff: Because didn't IO and Google take on nox? That's what I'm saying, they took on, as in hugged.

Leo: Yes. Smart move.

Jeff: What would Android need to do to be competitive in enterprises? What's the vulnerability with blackberry dying? Where is the opportunity there?

Leo: the pitch on blackberry was that it was a secure server, that you could run in your enterprise so your email would be secure, safe, controlled. The blackberry as a platform itself was secure, so you don't have to worry about industrial espionage.

Jeff: Everybody except the Saudi Arabian and American governments, but come on.

Leo: And they gave the source code to India, that kinda... But I think you can't say that about it. at least the perception of android is that it’s insecure, it’s unreliable, it’s a patch and mess of holes. It doesn't have a consistent story across the board. IOS has a much stronger, I think, story there. What this is in response to is the fact that business was owned by blackberry and Microsoft until 2007, and all of a sudden the iPhone came out and people started bringing their own device to work. And IT directors who first rejected this, were forced to embrace it. And that's really changed the landscape. All of a sudden you're seeing iPads in business, you're seeing iPhones every. It’s almost put blackberry out of business. I think it’s one of those partnerships, the IBM/Apple partnership, it’s one of those partnerships you see every once in a while where two companies get together, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or something like that. Hidden from Google.com

Jeff: It’s not quite what I wanted it to be, it’s a little too manual right now, but I do hope it can be automated, to find everything that had the right to be forgotten that's now memorialized and Streisand forever.

Leo: It was just a matter of time before someone did this. A list of search results omitted, erased or censored due to the EU's right to be forgotten.

Danny: Oh, yeah, that completely bogus, made up website.

Leo: It’s not real?

Danny: No.

Leo: Aww crap. Awwwww.

Danny: You look at the first comment, like the first comment should be mine, asking the guy some questions on how you come up with all this.

Leo: Where do you get this stuff?

Jeff: You get it from occasional stories or something.

Leo: there's no mechanism.

Danny: There's no mechanism, it’s guessed. So for example, take the third one Mario Constantia Gonzalez, I'm probably not pronouncing it right. That is the guy who caused the whole right to be forgotten. To my knowledge, he hasn't actually filed a right to be forgotten request. And actually, if you search for his name you will still find the whole thing that kicked all this off, so that's bull. Yeah. So, some of these other things, they've taken some of the ones down that I've called out and said that wasn't correct. But you don't necessarily know that these are correct.

Leo: What they have on the right is a link to the source, and it seems like the sources are news articles about...

Danny: Yeah, but the sources are news, so what's happening is, Google sent notices to publishers saying, "We've taken an article out of search results for names we will not tell you or name or names we will not tell you." So what people started doing when these first went out was going and thinking, "Right well this article was about this former Merrill lynch banker therefore the Merrill lynch banker is trying to clean up all the search results." And in fact, in that particular case, it happened with BBC, it wasn't around the banker, Google came back and said actually it was about one of the twenty seven people who commented on the article who decided they didn't want that article showing up in their name. So these articles, you can make a leap as some people are, mistakenly in doing this that whatever the article is about that must be the person that made the request. Or potentially you could go through and pick out if there was only one name mentioned and make that. But the source is not the source, but these were things that were being told. In fact we don't even know why the source, like, hidden for Google hasn't even told you who submitted the links. You could go submit a link and say that Google told you this had to be removed, for all I know whoever this guy is that created this site isn't doing anything to verify it. So it’s like this whole site, and it’s really... Argh.

Leo: But don't they...

Jeff: They do put on the page, where there's a link erased, there is a reference on that page, it says something has been not included.

Danny: No, no. Not on the source pages.

Leo: no, but on the Google search results, it says, you're not seeing the full results.

Danny: That's right, and Google will show you that message for virtually any name you search for, regardless of whether or not something was pulled, that's the other confusing thing here. So Google did two things, in recent weeks. One, they started telling publishers whether or not a link was pulled, but they didn't tell what it was pulled for. Two, they started putting increasingly and eventually it will be for every name for someone who is not a celebrity, a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says some results may have been removed. Or some results may not have been removed, because the problem is Google wants people in the EU to understand that this kind of censorship is happening, but they can't put it on just the places where it's happening, because in some cases where someone has a common name then that's effectively putting that particular person and saying they made the request. So, their policy is we will disclose on any common name that we can come up with and we're rattling it out even more and more. But basically, if you do a search for a name, you get one of these notices, we want a notice to come up for any name you search on to tell you that the results may or may not have been censored. that's not an indication that censorship might have actually happened. And the reason that you get the exception for the celebrities is because if they started putting that on just every celebrity name, then people would assume the celebrities are going out. It’s like the reverse, people then would see this for celebrity names and assume the celebrity tried to keep something out, so they're not trying to make it show up for celebrity names so people don't get the wrong impression in that regard. These two things are being connected, so this site is bull... It’s like bull. It’s like crap no one should share it, no one should talk about it. This kind of sight may emerge with care, could be done to help you understand that but a lot more care should be happening than what's going on with this guy's site.

Leo: What about the judge that says, "Microsoft has to delete or reveal email stored on servers anywhere in the world." The US judge. Remember when we talked about the Canadian judge that said Google had to delete stuff on its servers everywhere in the world? Now there's a US judge who has said that Microsoft doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where the data is stored, it can be stored overseas.

Jeff: There have been a few cases like that, where judges have tried to say, "If it’s in your control, that's sufficient."

Leo: So all of this is happening...

Danny: But this is part of it. And I've got this article called the Myth of Google censorship. There's this game that gets played with countries that want to censor search results and Google and to some degree other search engines and what you see as Microsoft. And the game is like this, "Well we want to regulate the internet, and at the same time we know there's no possible way we can regulate the internet. We don't control the whole thing, so if we want search results censored, we're going to tell you to censor search results." And Google will say, "Okay, French Court. We have now removed the results from Google France. Censorship is done!" And then the court goes, "AHA! You have removed it from Google France, nudge nudge. Alright we get it, we've done the censorship. We're okay, because no one in Google france would ever go to Google.com!" And this is like what happened in China, right? There's this whole thing in Steven Levy's book, where he talked about how when Google had to do the censorship in China, they censored the stuff for China, they didn't censor for .com and no one really thought to look at the .com site, they don't think about it, and so, OK we have censorship. And where server data is stored, it’s the same sort of thing. Oh, you're a company doing business in our country, right. You have offices here, you sell advertising here, you reach out to our consumers, you are a business entity, let’s say, operating in the UK, regardless of whether or not you want to rout all your money through Ireland, regardless of whether or not you want to claim that all the server data is stored on the US. But since you want to say all that stuff, I guess we can't possibly get the data off your server and now you're going to have countries saying, "I don't care where the data is. You're a business doing business here. We want that information to deal with our legal processes." And in some cases, it’s a legitimate reason to say that. Some cases not legitimate, right? But it’s sort of this like, calling bull on this whole, "Well it’s not located in the country, therefor I guess we can't touch it" Because data only has jurisdiction on the part of the cloud... If you run a cloud, if you're Google that runs a worldwide cloud, the argument that well you can't get to the data, you know with your legal request because this isn't the US doesn't hold up. It holds up even less when you've got the US running around just getting the data it’self, whether it wants without legal processes.

Jeff: But you have governments including Canadian and European, and for a while brazil, trying to insist that their citizens data had to be held in their countries. No there were two reasons for that, one was supposed to protect it, but also the other reason was because it made it more susceptible to subpoenas of those governments in those countries.

Danny: I agree.

Leo: I mean you're absolutely right, Danny, but I kind of liked this phoney dance, because it kind of preserved the integrity overall. Now if a country, any country says, "Well we don't want any information to show up on Google, about Falun Gong." And then enforces it, worldwide, there goes any information about Falun Gong, whether you're in china or not. And that bothers, that worries me. Does that not worry you? I mean, I agree, it was fiction, but it was a useful fiction.

Danny: Oh, no, I mean I... There's all sorts of things that I get worried about on when you want to make data requests and you want to make censorship requests and everything, but I think we're about to go into this new era of the myth of well, this is only happening on this server. Or this is only happening here, I don't think that's going to change. But it’s going to make... But we know that, but it becomes much more complicated if you're a politician and get called out on it. Because now you have to decide, "Do I want to turn this into an international incident." Do I want to, you know.

Leo: So maybe, Okay, maybe then the right way to do this is be honest. Let's say it's everywhere. Now what are we going to do? But the Chinese government can still rule, hey, we're going to block. You have to block all search results for Falun Gong worldwide. Then what?

Jeff: That's the problem I had with Sarkozy and with Viviane Reding. Viviane Reding in europe said I want european's data to be held up to european's data standards all around the world. I'm going to dictate this, I'm going to dictate law around the world. Well then there's nothing that stops the government of China or Iran or so on saying, "We want the same freedom."

Leo: Or if Germany says, you cannot sell nazi memorabilia on ebay. You only change that in ebay germany, but you sell nazi memorabilia throughout the rest of the world. Now this is...

Jeff: Says, no. Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, then what?

Jeff: You end up with the lowest watermark of freedom and the highest watermark on regulation, and that's my fear.

Leo: That... I hate that. So whats happened is, Danny, we had a useful fiction which everybody knew was a fiction but at least it protected, you know. It didn't bring us to the lowest...

Jeff: Understand the rationale behind Larry's island. Right, so take one of those hover domains you had, you know.

Leo: Freelaporte.com!

Danny: His island doesn't protect him from doing business in other countries that are still going to find ways to regulate and demand stuff that they want.

Jeff: I know.

Leo: How do we solve this? Maybe we need an international court? Maybe this all needs to go international?

Jeff: No. I don't want any government involved in it, that's the problem. Governments are going to hold together the institutions of old, they're going to hold together on this.

Leo: Then we're screwed.

Danny: You ask how you're going to solve it, and yet you talk about, Jeff, about people in Brazil want the data stored there, whatever. It’s like, at the same time, the place that you thought was supposedly this safe place for all this stuff...

Leo: We need a dark net. We need an underground net run only by the technical elite, the hackers of the world, and just keep government out of it.  What do you say?

Danny: No.

Leo: No?  Okay.

Jeff: Because you still need—

Danny: I think that there’s a place in the world for rule of law, and I think we should we should have reasonable laws that are—

Leo: There’s a lot of place for the rule of law.

Danny: Right.  I think we should have reasonable laws and that…

Leo: But should it be the lowest common denominator of freedom?

Danny: No, but I think that if Google were serious about not wanting the censorship to happen in the EU, for example, they would say, “Okay, we disagree with this right to be forgotten and that it’s implemented so badly that we won’t do business there.”

Jeff: Oh, come on Danny.  Danny, Danny, they’re not going to—

Danny: But you ask how they’ve changed.

Jeff: But they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders—full disclosure, I am one in a small tiny bit—to run the company well.  You’re not going to cut off all of Europe because you get pissed off with it.  You just can’t do that.  It’s just not—

Danny: They did it to China.

Jeff: Naa, they didn’t really.  They didn’t really.

Danny: They did do it in China.  They pulled off of China.  They’re not running a—

Jeff: But (a) they were prevented from doing meaningful business in lots of ways there; (b) they still serve Chinese consumers through Hong Kong and through .com, and it still works. 

Danny: Yeah, but in the way that they want.

Jeff: Europe’s an entirely different thing.

Danny: And what Google could say is, “Look, we are going to…”  I agree with you.  They’re not going to do, but they’re not going to do it—

Jeff: Emotionally, I agree with you.

Danny: ­—because it is too expensive for them to do—

Jeff: No.

Danny: —not because it would be the right thing to do.

Leo: By the way, did they not go back into China? 

Danny: They don’t do the censorship anymore.  If you try to go to Google China with the Chinese extension, you I think either I think either get redirected or whatever to Hong Kong—

Leo: Google.cn goes to Google.hk.

Danny: Right.  And then in Hong Kong, they just do whatever they want.

Leo: Right, right.

Danny: And I can’t recall what the situation is with their business operations that are there.  I think they could still have business operations, but by virtue of not acceding to the censorship demands, they made it more difficult for them to try to grow the market share that they were already struggling with in the earlier—

Jeff: The Chinese made it virtually impossible for any foreign company to succeed there, so they weren’t succeeding anyway.

Leo: Right.  So maybe, the only hope is that countries like China, rulers of countries like China, see the detriment to this and—

Jeff: Oh, but there’s no detriment to China because now Chinese Twitter and the Chinese Google and the Chinese this and the Chinese that are all succeeding.

Jeff: Right.

Danny: And eBay and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Leo: I was reading my favorite magazine, and I love it because well, for instance, the best dresses to wear this season, 40 wedges guaranteed to make your summer easier.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: Sixteen of our favorite brunettes, and all of a sudden, I’m reading an article, low and behold, about a Google employee.  Google’s security princess, Parisa Tabriz.

Jeff: I was getting ready to be all upset that this was sexist and horrible, but—

Leo: I was too, but before you get to the good part because it is all right, but I do have to read this.  “Tabriz appears to wear black almost exclusively.  It’s slimming she says shrugging, not that she needs to worry about that.  She has a simpatico face, always worn bare, that could elide from one ethnicity to another and a classic Gap in its heyday sleek tomboy aesthetic: dark-washed jeans, clean-line crewnecks, and Chuck Taylors, with the occasional bomber jacket thrown on top.”

Jeff: (Laughter)  Your radio voice was born for this.

Leo: (Laughter)  I thought, oh crap, but it turns out Tabriz, who is in charge of security, information security at Google, and yes indeed, her card does say “Security Princess,” this is actually a great article (laughter).  This is Elle Magazine, which is a fashion magazine, and it’s related to their Elle’s Women in Tech Series.  There’s an article, “Why We Need Women Who Code,” and despite that one paragraph, a lot of this is actually pretty good.  Isn’t it Jeff?

Jeff: Yeah, it is.

Leo: It’s well written.

Jeff: And that fact that she has the irony to make that her own title is kind of delightful.

Leo: Yeah, so it’s a profile of her, and it really talks about her as an intelligent person.  They talk about—I don’t know why I’m seeing an Estee Lauder ad, but that’s…  (Laughter)

Jeff: It was time.

Leo: I don’t.  Well wait a minute.  Maybe I do need Estee Lauder lipstick.  They talk about steganography and how she used steganography.  This is actually an article worth of Wired Magazine.  They’ve got a good writer to write about it, and despite that one paragraph about fashion—

Jeff: What we see from the issues of misogyny going on with technology companies, and we don’t have to go through the catalog, there’s been a lot of them recently, I think you’ve got to attack that from both ends, and one way is to a women’s audience.  I wish Gina were here for this discussion today.

Leo: I do too.

Jeff: To make it more appealing, to make it more—something to aspire to. 

Leo: They talk about Google’s struggle to get my women in Google.  They talk about Tabriz’s—she says she doesn’t perceive gender as a negative for her, although she’s one of the few women and has always been in her field.   She thinks she “may be a little more pushy than the female stereotype.”  Among the women she mentors, some continue to struggle to navigate Google’s at times Darwinian environment, she says where you have to kind of demonstrate authority without explicitly having it.  That’s a very good description, by the way (laughter).

Jeff: It is.

Leo: Kudos to Elle who wrote this article and apparently is doing other articles along with 40 wedges guaranteed to make your summer easier—

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: —about women in technology and why we need women who code, and that’s good.  That’s great.  I think you’re right.  I think is a very important part of the front is to go—

Jeff: We’ve got a push and a pull.

Leo: Yep.

Jeff: We’ve got to push the guys to understand better, but we’ve got to pull the women into technology.

Leo: Yep.  Wow, and they’ve got beautiful pictures of Marissa Mayer and other women in technology. Grace Woo at Pixels IO, Genevieve Bell—

Jeff: This is not sexist of me, but I’ve got to see what’s Marissa wearing.

Leo: Let’s see if I can find her.  Actually, maybe they shoot her because she’s so well known.  SpaceX, the operations lead and CFO at Square, Code for America.  There’s Kara.

Jeff: There’s Kara.

Leo: Looking good.

Jeff: Nice leather jacket.

Leo: I think Elle provided the jacket.

Jeff: Oh, yeah.

Leo: I’m guessing.  No, they do not have—they mention Kara.  There’s Caterina Fake.

Jeff: Oh, Caterina Fake.  Yea!

Leo: Who we love.

Jeff: We do love her.

Leo: Who is totally awesome.  Anyway, thank you, Elle (laughter).  I was so prepared to go, “Oh, God.”

Jeff: Yeah, I was too.  That’s why I put it in—it was like Chartbeat, you share before you read.

Leo: Yeah.

Jeff: I stuck it in the rundown, and then clicked on the link and said, “Ohh.”

Leo: Actually, I did the same thing.  I bookmarked it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Leo: I want to make sure we get everything in you guys want to talk about, so if there’s any story that I have missed—

Jeff: There was so much stuff today.

Leo: It’s a jam-packed day, and we’re almost out of time, so I don’t want to go crazy.  Quartz talks about how busy Marc Andreessen has been on his Twitter.  He joined in Twitter in 2007, but for some reason, January 1^st of this year decided to start tweeting and tweets every 10 minutes.

Jeff: He’s amazing.

Leo: Pmarca.

Jeff: And Fred Wilson has done some tweets about really admiring—can we say that Andreessen invented the tweetstorm?

Danny: No.

Leo: He didn’t invent it, but he has mastered it.

Jeff: He has mastered and popularized it.

Leo: He is basically writing entire articles on Twitter (laughter).

Danny: Re-invented it I suppose.

Leo: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, I guess that’s the way to put it, yeah.  But then the key to him is that once he does that, then he goes into conversations.  I mean, I actually have an Andreessen column on my tweet deck.  I don’t have a column for any other individual user on earth.

Leo: Wow.

Jeff: But to try to make sense of Andreessen, I dedicated one to him.  And Twitter needs some better functionality because you can’t really judge the conversations.  The threads don’t hold together.  It needs a lot more work on this, which Fred Wilson kind of acknowledged in some tweets about this.  He’s admiring what Marc has done, and it’s hard.  I’ve done a few where I’ve gone to four or five, and it doesn’t hold together very well.  When I asked him about this, whether he kind of wrote them out ahead of time, and no.  It’s just ad libbed.

Leo: And if you look at where he’s tweeting, it’s like right after meals.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: So I think it’s in the crapper, but just a thought.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: I wouldn’t speculate.  FCC is giving us a few more days to (laughter) comment on an open Internet.  You can e-mail openinternet@FCC.gov; 780,000 comments so far.  It was to close on Monday.  This is of course on the FCC’s—

Jeff: Fervor out again.

Leo: Yea, keep up the good work, folks.

Jeff: I called in to Howard Stern today to urge his viewers.  He had John Oliver on today.  Before John arrived, I called in to say, “Everybody’s got to do this.”  I filed my comment on Buzz Machine if you want to see it. 

Leo: Good.

Jeff: We all should be filing to the FCC by Friday.

Leo: If you haven’t seen John Oliver’s screed against company F-ery, AKA open Internet or pro open Internet, AKA anti-net discrimination, do watch that on his show.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: See the terminology’s what’s really killing us.

Jeff: You’re getting your double negatives all in a knot.

Leo: He’s saying you shouldn’t say, “I’m for net neutrality.”  You should say, “I’m against cable company F-ery.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: It’s on his “The Week—what is it called?  “The Week Ahead”?  “The Week Behind”? 

Danny: “Last Week Tonight.”

Leo: “Last week Tonight.”

Jeff: Which is a great show. 

Leo: Yeah, you can see it on YouTube.  It’s 15 minutes well spent.  And then e-mail openinternet@FCC.gov or visit the FCC’s own site where you can—

Danny: Or else we’re going to have people like Comcast in charge of our lives and Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block certainly know what that looks like.

Leo: You know, I saw this when they posted on Google+ and immediately said, “You know, I’d love to play this on the radio show.”  Little did I know that every media outlet in the world would pick this up within minutes.

Jeff: Oh, yeah.  TV, it’s everywhere.

Leo: It’s on the Today Show; it’s on the nightly news; it’s everywhere.  I’ll play you a little bit of it.  You’ve certainly heard it by now.  Veronica and Ryan are moving, of course, good friends of TWiT and they’re moving.  He was the founder—well, not founder, but former editor and chief of Engadget, founder of … I forgot.  Geek.

Jeff: Gidget?

Danny: (Laughter)

Jeff: Gidget, Gadget.

Leo: Gidget?  Gadget.  Brilliant guy, great guy, regular on TWiT.  So is Veronica, and they were moving, and they wanted to cancel their Comcast service and take up a new service called Astound, another provider.  Ryan is in the other room while Veronica’s trying to do this, and after about 10 minutes of hearing her get more and more frustrated, he gets on the line and records the conversation with one of the most aggressive retention specialists I’ve ever heard, a Comcast representative.  Comcast apologized via Twitter almost immediately.

Comcast Rep: It sounds like you don’t want to go over this information with me.  I mean, did you all want to go over that information?  Then that’s the easiest way to get your account disconnected.

Ryan: I am declining to state why we are leaving Comcast because I don’t owe you an explanation, so if you can proceed to the next question.  If you have to fill out your form, that’s fine.  Please proceed to the next question, and we’ll attempt to answer that, if possible.

Comcast Rep: All right, so being that we are the number one provider of Internet and TV services in the entire country, why is it you would not want to have the number one—?

Leo: (Laughter)  The guy will not take no for an answer.

Jeff: You know what’s beautiful about this is that Ryan uses a customer service tone of voice back—

Leo: He does not lose his temper, which I would have.

Jeff: I would have been spewing the F-word like you wouldn’t imagine.

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: I would have been going berserk or nut-o.  Maybe my kids could tell you what that sounds like.  But no, Ryan stayed extremely calm and just said, “Are you done?  Are you done now, sir?  Can we cancel?”

Leo: Can you go to the next page because I want to cancel?  Finally, the guy says, “Well, I’ve already done it!”  And then Ryan says, “Can I have a confirmation number?”  He says, “No.”  (Laughter)

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: First of all, Comcast admits it’s an employee.  It’s not some third party.  This was an employee.

Jeff: But also Comcast doesn’t admit is this is the culture they’ve created.

Leo: Right.

Jeff: They try to blame the employee or “we’re embarrassed by this employee.”  I’m sorry, no.  this guy is doing this because he’s afraid he’s going to get shot with the prisoner escapes.

Leo: I think that we agreed.  We talked about this I think yesterday or the day before.  I think we agreed that the likely case is that this representative it will cost him money, either cost him a bonus for every person that cancels on that phone call.  So the guy’s fighting for his life.  This is not about Comcast.  This is about money.  So whether Comcast is embarrassed or if the guy is poorly trained is not the issue.  You create this culture by rewarding people for not letting people cancel.  And one hopes that Comcast will get a better idea thanks to this.

Jeff: (Laughter)  Yeah, sure. 

Leo: Somehow I doubt it.  Anybody’s ever spent any time on—the worst thing that happens, this has happened to me because I’ve had similar conversations, is that you get tagged by the office of the executive at Comcast.  And I think it was because I’m an Internet broadcaster, radio broadcaster.  But for some reason, I kept getting calls from them, and they’re even worse (laughter).  They’re supposed to be nice.  They’re supposed to you know, “Oh, no.  Brian really cares and wants to make sure you’re happy,” but it ends up being worse.  I end up yelling at her too (laughter).

Danny: I’ve got to say, that’s stuff’s not uncommon.  What surprised me though was I had in the past two months I had two things that I had called AT&T—you know, when you’re dealing with your cell phone you don’t normally—but I had called them because I was trying to check on the new plans.  They had come out with this new plan for the Family Plan or whatever and it ended up reducing my bill like $60.00 (laughter).

Leo: Right.

Danny: They put me on it, and was like, “Yeah, we’ll move you over to this.  It’s much better.  You should be on this sort of plan.”  Then I went and I got a new phone, and they were like, “Yeah, we’re going to give you this new phone.”  I bought the new phone.  I’m like, “Oh, I want to pay full price and not be under contract or whatever.”  Then they’re like, “Okay, and by the way, we’re going to take $100.00 off because you’ve been a regular customer for so long (laughter).”  I was like, “What?  I don’t understand what’s going on here.”  And then the other day Time Warner, this was like last week, I get an e-mail from Time Warner because they’re our cable company here.  We don’t use cable.  We like to use them for the Internet, but they’re like, “We’ve sped up your Internet speed, and you just need to order this new thing, box and we’ll send it to you (laughter).”  So I’m like, “Oh, okay.”  So I get the new box, and I plug it in and I’m having some trouble with it.  And of course, I plug it in at like 1 a.m., right?  And I call and somebody answered the phone right away and they talked me through it.  And I get it all going and I went from 10 megapixel whatever to 30.  I mean, I have speed like I can’t believe.  Then I was having problems with the router, and they sorted all that out.  I was like, “I’m sorry.  I thought you were like my cable company.  I was supposed to hate you.”

Leo: (Laughter)

Danny: I mean, really I was like—so I’ve been in that kind of situation that Ryan’s been.  I’ve gone through that with Verizon when they kept changing my hotspot and they started charging me for a hotspot they didn’t—I went to the iPhone, and suddenly the hotspot that I never got charged for, they started charging me $30.00 a month for even though I paid full price for the iPhone.  And I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with Verizon where they just go around and around like, “Well, we don’t offer that plan.”  And I’m like, “I know you don’t offer that plan, but that’s what I was paying and that’s the reason I paid for the new phone and you’re supposed to give me the same thing I had before.  So why isn’t somebody just enabled to do this like—?”

Jeff: Try to get the Nexus 7 connected with those bozos.

Danny: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah.  Now you know why Jeff’s so angry (laughter).

Jeff: I was a nice guy before that.

Danny: It’s driven me so much in insanity with Verizon that I’m seriously thinking about just leaving them entirely.  I mean, I have three different phone providers because you do it professionally, you want to have every network and you can cover the stuff.  And so I look at the Comcast thing and I think, yeah, you’re maybe going to lose some people because you didn’t manage to retain them.

Leo: It costs you so much.  It costs you so much more.

Danny: But the better way to retain us would just be better customer service even if we want to leave.

Leo: Yeah, yeah.  Well, that must be apparent to Comcast at this point because this is a huge black mark.

Danny: You’d think it would be apparent to them, but what happened with the whole Comcast guy and all that stuff and all these things.

Jeff: They don’t care.

Leo:  I know.

Jeff: Aww, they don’t care.

Danny: How could you still be having this sort of thing happen now in this day and age?

Leo: It could cost you in another way because they also realize that in many cases, you don’t have a choice.  So I don’t have a choice.  If I’m going to have cable TV, it’s going to be from Comcast.

Danny: Right.

Leo: But it does cost you in other ways, Comcast.  For instance, I really want Turner Classic Movies in my Comcast.  I’ve gone online and tried to do it.  You can’t.  And I am not going to call a Comcast representative because I loathe every time I’ve talked to Comcast.  My blood pressure’s gone through the roof.  In effect, I want to spend more money with you, and I won’t because I don’t want to talk to you.  That’s not the kind of reputation you want in the world.

Jeff: What it could really affect is Congress could latch onto this now—

Leo: I hope so.

Jeff: —and say, “Well, you’re going to let these people merge and become an even bigger cable company?”

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: This is how they treat customers?

Leo: Exactly.

Jeff: That’s the real impact here.

Leo: Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block have single-handedly blocked the Time Warner-Comcast merger.  Right on!

Jeff: We should hope.  We should hope.

Leo: (Laughter)

Jeff: And the other thing is I didn’t read the story yet, so I’m doing the horrible thing of sharing before I read, but I saw a link go by right before we got on the show that a part of the reason that Ryan wanted to—the two of them wanted to shift was because of Comcast’s net neutrality stance.

Leo: There you go.

Jeff: I think I put a link up.

Leo: He says we told him our reasons.  You may think we’re being intransigent, but we actually told him several times our reasons.  That was not the reason the representative continued to harass us.  He just simply did not want to cancel.  Very simply.

Jeff: It wasn’t great.  I didn’t put up on it, but a young girl has already made a song out of it. 

Leo: (Laughter)  I’m sure there’s many.

Jeff: Oh, it’s going to go—

Leo: I hope it goes forever.

Jeff: Yeah.

Leo: Just live on forever.

Jeff: I only wish we’d had the first ten minutes of Veronica going bat—

Leo: Oh, poor Veronica.  Well, she’s sweet.  She would not.

Jeff: But well, obviously, she got so frustrated that he had to take over.  But his strategy is just brilliant.

Leo: Yeah.  He just keeps his cool and just—and I’m glad he recorded it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Leo: And I’m glad he posted it.  By the way, he posted it on SoundCloud and it’s really fun to look at all the comments (laughter) as you go along.   All the people who posted you know because you could put little—

Jeff: But he was also great.  He took out the name of the rep, and he also when Comcast did apologize, he’s very clear back to them saying—

Leo: Don’t fire the rep.

Jeff: —you shouldn’t fire the rep.  This is a Comcast problem.

Leo: It is.

Jeff: It’s not a rep problem.

Leo: It’s not a rep’s problem, although that rep probably could do better in another field.

Jeff: But I think you’re right, Leo, when you said earlier this week is that it could be how they’re going to lose money, that he gets held to account or he could get fired if he loses too many people.

Leo: Right.

Jeff: God knows what fear they have them under.

Leo: Exactly.  I don’t necessarily blame him.

Jeff: Is this like Sheriff—what’s his name?  Sheriff Arpaio, the guy in Phoenix who puts male prisoners in pink underwear.

Leo: (Laughter)  Jesus.  That’s not legal.

Jeff: You know, that’s how they treat us.

Leo: Is that legal?

Jeff: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Leo: You can’t put (making sputtering noises).

Jeff: Arpaio.  Is that his name?  I can’t…

Leo: I don’t know.

Jeff: But cable companies treat us like prisoners.

Leo: They put us in pink underwear.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: Comcast has to stop putting us in pink underwear.  All right, we are going to get your picks of the week.

Jeff: I have one more thing.

Leo: Yes?

Jeff: I want a quick war shot tester because while we’ve been on the show, this has been going all around Twitter.

Leo: The Airbnb logo?

Jeff: Look at Airbnb’s new log.

Leo: I knew you were going there.

Danny: No, I already read that thing.  It’s stupid we even have to have an article about it.  Jesus, God!

Jeff: But it’s going all over.  Now there’s just tons of it everywhere, Danny.  The interpretations are (laughter)...

Leo: Let’s go to Airbnb.  By the way, I did an Airbnb last month.  I’ll never do it again.  The reason?  I don’t like it.

Jeff: Well, it’s creepy.  I canceled mine.

Leo: The person came over twice and wanted to check us out.  There was a lot of misrepresentation about who actually owned the place.  I got an e-mail from a guy who owned it, but turned out that was the management company that managed it called AirEnvy.  And then after we stay there—and by the way, it’s no cheaper than a hotel and it didn’t have an curtains on the windows—

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: —I get an e-mail from the woman who does own it saying, “Did you see my Buddha toothbrush holder because it’s gone?”  She’s accusing us of stealing her ugly-ass Buddha toothbrush holder.  She sent us pictures.  I said, “I never saw that.  That wasn’t there when we checked in.”  And I’m never doing it again, but it may be the new logo, which looks a little bit like an IUD.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: What is that?

Jeff: People are putting many sexual interpretations of this.

Leo: Why that’s a lippy’s loop.  I don’t know what that is.  It’s an A.

Jeff: There’s a bit of an odd phallic view.  There’s a vaginal view.  There’s a—

Leo: Chad, show my screen, because if you go to the Airbnb website, it rotates.  It rotates around a little bit.  It’s lively (laughter).

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: It’s lively, and it does seem a little bit—it’s a little pointy.  Hmm.  They have made videos about it explaining it.  Anyway, Airbnb’s not for me.  I’m sure it’s great for people who like—I don’t like regular B&Bs.

Jeff: Oh, God no.

Leo: It’s too intrusive.  I want anonymity.

Jeff: yeah.

Leo: I want somebody who’s in the business of hoteling, not like it’s a hobby.

Jeff: Where’s the minibar, excuse me? 

Leo: Yeah, no minibar in an Airbnb.  Or maybe there is.  There was a stove.  There was a refrigerator.  But there was no microwave.  I don’t know why (laughter).  All right.  Enough of that.  Danny, I don’t know if they warned you, but we like to get picks, tips, tricks, anything you’d like to share with us.

Danny: I could hear that coming up, and so I scrambled, but yes I do.

Leo: (Laughter)

Danny: If you were to type something into Google like “schedule an appointment,”—

Leo: Yes.

Danny: You will find that now within the search results, you can create an appointment for yoru Google calendar.

Leo: Ooo, ohh, that’s the way to do it, Google.

Jeff: That’s so Gina Trapani of you.

Leo: Which means if I have Google Voice turned on—

Danny: Oh, yeah.  You might be able to do that as well.

Leo: Schedule an appointment for 5:00 for a dentist.

Danny: Okay, Google.  Schedule an appointment for 4 p.m. with Leo Laporte.

Leo: (Laughter)  With Leo Laporte and TWiT.

Danny: I wonder if I could do that.  “Okay, Google.”

Leo: Now Google’s thinking.

Danny: “Schedule an appointment for 4 p.m. with Leo Laporte.

Leo: Shh, don’t say anything.

Danny: It’s a pity you can’t see my screen.  It’s awesome on my screen.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: My screen’s doing crap.  I think I broke Google.

Jeff: After last week’s show, tons of people complained that every time Gina said—okay let’s do it right now—“Okay, Google,” everybody’s things were waking up.

Danny: It’s like I can’t believe that story you were talking about earlier on the Xbox and what was his name? Aaron Paul.

Leo: Yeah, Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad.  Apparently, there’s a great Xbox ad he has, and he talks to his Xbox apparently.  People’s Xboxes are responding.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: What a world.  It’s one thing I liked about the Moto X, it was trained to your voice.

Jeff: Okay, now hold on.  Let’s do a little test here.  Okay, Google.  Search for Leo Laporte.

Male Voice:  And perks up the Snapdragon processor, and that’s where Android-ware’s bonuses come to the forefront.

Leo: Now what are we watching?

Male Voice: When the screen is on, all you need to do to initiate actions on the watch is speak to it, saying, “Okay, Google.”

Leo: What happened?

Jeff: What was that?

Danny: It was exactly what you were talking about.  This is the phone’s Okay, Google jumps in after it pauses the video you can watch, it pauses the video that’s playing.

Leo: See, my watch now does that as well.  Right?

Danny: I’ve had that happen because I do a lot of press interviews, and so there’s been times where I’d be like—they’re asking my questions about Google and so I’ve have my browser open; I’ve had my phone sitting there.  And I’ll be saying, “Well, okay, Google,” and then bleep, bloop.  It just launched up again.

Leo: (Laughter)  Well, I don’t mind.  It’s worth it.  But thank you for the little trick, Danny.

Jeff: That’s good.

Leo: You can schedule your appointments to Google.  Jeff, you got a number?

Jeff: Yeah, I guess.  I don’t know how much you’re allowed to play, but how could I not go with Letterman’s Top 10 questions about the Google Robotic Mule?

Leo: There is a Google Robotic Mule (laughter)?

Danny: (A) There’s a Google Robotic Mule and (b) Letterman has 10 questions about it.

Leo: All right.  Let’s hear.

Letterman: Number 10: Will it take away jobs from actual mules?

Leo: (Laughter)

Jeff: (Laughter)

Letterman: Can I keep him, Pa?  Number 8: Will it get along with my mechanical yak?  Number 7: Does it have that authentic mule smell.  Number 6:—

Leo: These just write themselves.

Letterman: Recently, I talked

Danny: Should I buy or lease?  Number 5: Will I need a new charger?  Number 4: How soon before it tries to kill me?  Number 3: Does it kick better than Brazil’s soccer team?  Number 2:—

Leo: (Laughter)  Ooo.

Letterman: Frequently asked questions about the mule.  Can it do this?  Get it off of there.  And the number one frequently asked questions about the robotic mule: Robotic mule?  You mean John Kerry? 

Leo: Ahh, yeah.  You can tell Letterman’s ready to retire (laughter) can’t you?  He’s basically phoning it in at this point.  He doesn’t even want to read it.  “Number…”  My pick is actually this watch.  I like it.  Did you guys get Android Wear yet?

Jeff: Mmm.

Danny: Mmm.

Jeff: What do you mean?  From…?

Leo: No, I bought it.

Danny: Yeah, you know what?  It doesn’t have as much Google Now as I want.

Leo: Well, I want more, but I’ve always wanted more Google Now, right?

Danny: I know, but it’s like I’m getting all these other notifications, and I want more Google Now stuff.

Leo: It’s got my calendar.  My Amazon package has been delivered.  I’ve taken 2,429 steps.  It’s 75 degrees in Petaluma.  It’ll be 81 degrees at the high.

Danny: I went with the Samsung one too, which disappointed me because it’s got that stupid clasp, and so I’m like at Disneyland and it flies off and it goes all over the place.

Leo: Oh, I hate that clasp.

Jeff: Oh, good.  I’m glad I did the right thing then.

Leo: We bought the LG.

Danny: Well, the LG looked nice, but then it’s kind of—I liked the strap better, but it was kind of bland.  I mean, we’re all waiting for the Moto 360.

Leo: All of them and I think Chad had a really good insight, which is the technology’s basically identical in all of them.

Danny: Yeah.

Leo: I mean, yeah, the Samsung has a heartbeat monitor, but because Google wanted said companies to add design flare as a differentiator—

Danny: Yeah.

Leo: I think that’s right on.  So expect some interesting designs.  These are just the first.  I don’t know.  I was not a fan.  I’ve abandoned every watch and device I’ve had, including the Pebble, which Chad has.  This is a Pebble, but it’s a little bit nicer.

Jeff: I’ve been meaning to ask.  Is Chad considering giving up the Pebble?

Chad: I would if I had $200.00 to drop on it.

Leo: (Laughter)

Jeff: (Laughter)

Chad: Yeah, I’m still rocking the Pebble, and I still love it.

Leo: Better battery life on the Pebble.

Chad: Right. 

Leo: This you have to charge every night.

Chad: Right.  Yeah, this one will last about four days.  The Pebble will.  And the only other thing is that  I just cannot wait until I get a notification on my wrist and I can just easily say, “Reply” and it will do that.

Leo: Well, you can do this.

Chad: I can’t do that with the Pebble yet, so that’s the thing that I desire about everything.

Leo: You have to tie it to Hangouts if you want to reply because I’ve used the SMS app on the HTC1 and the Verizon SMS app, and in both cases, it refers you to the phone if you want to reply.  But if you use Google Hangouts, which that’s not my favorite SMS application, it will show you the entire context, the entire thread—

Danny: Yes.

Leo: —and let you reply, which is simple.

Danny: And then I’m still trying to figure out what it’s doing (laughter) because of course I use Google Voice, so then I did that.  So it texted, but it sent out through Google Hangouts and it went to the right place.  All of a sudden but then it came up with my not Google Voice number because of course Google Hangouts can’t understand Google Voice and oh, my God.

Leo: Right.  Yeah, there’s glitches.

Danny: But you know, I had the Galaxy Gear and I find myself kind of missing having a camera, which I thought was stupid (laughter).

Leo: Oh, that’s interesting.  Yeah, I took a lot of pictures with the Gear too, and they’re not bad.

Danny: Yeah, I was kind of like I thought yeah, you don’t need a camera on the watch.  Who cares?  It’s so stupid.  And then there’s times I’m kind of like yeah, it would have been nice to just discretely take my spy photo (laughter).

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: Chad, just be patient because you know when the Moto 360 comes out, you’re going to be getting this one.

Chad: I’ll get that one, yeah, yeah.  And that’s the other thing is there’s too many—I assume in September we’re just going to see all sorts of stuff.

Leo: Oh, we’re going to see an Apple watch.

Chad: We’re probably going to see an Apple watch.

Danny: Yeah, redefine the whole thing.

Chad: Right.

Leo: Maybe.  Maybe not.

Chad:  I’m still liking my Pebble.

Danny: No.

Leo: You don’t think—you’re being sarcastic, Danny Sullivan.

Danny: I am.  I don’t know.  I can’t remember who did the post.  There’s been a couple of these were people are kind of going, “Yeah, a watch.  Who kind of cares?”  I was really excited to get the Androidware watch.  I’ve been waiting for it, and like I said, especially with Google Now on my wrist, this is going to be awesome.  And I’m not getting Google Now on my wrist as much as I wanted.  And if the iPhone watch comes along and it’s—they don’t even have Google Now, right?  So maybe they’ll come up with something that blows me out of the water, but if it’s just I can get more notifications, yeah that’s nice.  It’s nice being able to glance at your watch and not have to pick up your phone.  It’s a little less impolite, but you know.

Jeff: Naa, I’m actually liking it better than Danny, but I’m also learning a lot.  I’m learning the journalist lessons.  The New York Times application is just ridiculous because every morning it tells me, “We have 20 new stories.”  Well, no….s-h-i you know what.

Leo: I would guess that, yes.

Jeff: Yeah, of course you do.

Leo: Tell me when you don’t.

Jeff: Circa does a very good job with alerts.  The Guardian does a good job with alerts.  They have to be sparing.  Alerts also have to get to your Google Now point, a lot more personal, a lot more relevant to me.

Leo: Right.

Jeff: And they’re not at all yet.

Leo: But that’s all going to come because—

Jeff: They’ll come.

Leo: —we’re basically using software that didn’t even envision the watch.  It’s kind of Pushbullet. It’s just you’re getting the standard stock notifications.  Presumably they will get better at that.  Hey, we’re out of time.  I want to thank you so much, Danny, for filling in for Gina.  It’s always great to have you on, searchengineland.com.

Jeff: Wonderful to have you, Danny. 

Leo: Yeah, he’s just the greatest.

Danny: Thanks, good to be here.

Leo: Marketengineland.com.  Anything else you want to plug?  When are you doing a podcast?

Danny: A podcast?  I used to do a podcast.  I don’t have any time for it anymore.

Leo: Who’s got time?  I’ve got to write.

Danny: All I’ll say is that we at Marketing Land we want to start a new holiday retailer section because it is July, and you should be thinking about holiday marketing if you’re a marketer.

Leo: (Laughter)  It’s time.

Danny: On the one hand, I hate when people start pushing the marketing messages to consumers, but from a—if you actually are involved in marketing, you need to be planning that stuff now.

Leo: It’s your business.  That’s right.

Danny: So that’s part of a new section we launched.

Leo: Yeah.  Great to have you, Danny.

Danny: Thanks.

Leo: Always a pleasure.  And he’s of course @DannySullivan on the Twitter.  Jeff Jarvis, professor of journalism at the City University of New York, CUNY.  He’s also the author of many books including Public Parts, his latest and Guggenheim the Geek.  I’ll get it right one of these days.

Jeff: (Laughter)

Leo: You know, the other guy.  I want to say Heisenberg the Geek.

Jeff: That that would sell.

Leo: Wait a minute.  Don’t tell me now.  Huh?  It’s the guy who invented the printed press.

Jeff: Yeah. 

Leo: Jeez, you think you’re old at 60.  If my mind’s like this now—

Danny: (Laughter)

Leo: —I’m in deep trouble.  Three years from now I’m not even—Gutenberg.

Jeff: There you go.  The chatroom told you, didn’t they?

Leo: No, they didn’t.  I just made it up.  And he also blogs at BuzzMachine.com.  That’s where you can read his comment to the FCC.

Jeff: Hey, hey.  TWiG army, TWiT army.

Leo: Get on it.

Jeff: What’s the address again, Leo?

Leo: OpenInternet@FCC.gov or you can go to FCC.gov/comments.  Please, you have until Friday.

Jeff: Two lines, three lines.  Doesn’t have to be an essay.  Just do it. You have until Friday.  Do it, do it, do it, do it.

Leo: What would you recommend if they’re going to write one line?  What would you recommend?  I believe in a free and open Internet.  Please…what?

Jeff: Declare ISPs common carriers and give us—what I said in mine was it was the Al Franken rule.  We don’t want to change the Internet.  We want to keep the Internet from being changed. 

Leo: There you go, like it.  Thank you everybody for joining us.  We do TWiG 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern Time, 2,000 UTC every Wednesday right after Windows Weekly.  I’d love it if you’d stop by and watch live.  We appreciate that.  We have people in the live studio audience as well.  You can e-mail tickets@twit.tv if you want to be here for this show and any of our shows.  You can also get on demand audio and video after the fact anytime, Twit.tv/twig or wherever finer podcasts are aggregated, iTunes, Xbox, Stitcher, all of those places.  Thanks for joining us!  We’ll see you next time on This Week in Google.