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.
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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
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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
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Leo: Like recently?
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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 1st 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
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iTunes, Xbox, Stitcher, all of those places. Thanks for joining us! We’ll see you next time on This Week in Google.