This Week in Google 285 (Transcript)

Leo: It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google, Danny Sullivan and Jeff Jarvis are here. We'll talk about why the police want Waze to change its way. Google Fiber coming to four new cities and a debate over whether Android really is open. It's all next on TWiG.

Voiceover: Netcasts you love from people you trust, this is TWiT! Bandwidth for This Week in Google is provided by Cachefly.com

Leo: This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 285, recorded January 28, 2015.

Google Forked Itself

This Week in Google is brought to you buy ldproducts.com, the ink and toner experts. Shop online at ldproducts.com for high-quality products at discount prices. For 10% ink and toner cartridges plus free shipping excluding OEM, go to ldproducts.com/twit and enter the offer code TWIT.

And by Personal Capital. With Personal Capital, you can monitor your income, spending and the performance of your investments on a single, easy to read screen. Best of all, it's free. To sign up, go to PersonalCapital.com/twig

And by HipChat Plus. Collaborate, save time and be more productive with your teams. HipChat Plus is IM, video chat, plus file, code and screen sharing all in one place. Invite your team members and get a free 30-day trial of HipChat Plus at hipchat.com/twig.

It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google, the show where we cover Google, but also the Cloud and all that entails. Jeff Jarvis is back from Davos at his office in the City University of New York, CUNY, where he teaches journalism. He also blogs at buzzmachine.com and is the author of Geeks Bearing Gifts and a lot more. There it is, holding up the book, imagining new futures for news. Danny Sullivan is also here from Search Engine Land and Marketing Engine Land, all the different lands he's from.

Danny Sullivan: Even measles land.

Leo: Even measles - no. You don't have measles, do you?

Danny: No, but I've got to go to Disney Land on Friday, so …

Leo: Yes, we were thinking this would be a good time of year to go.

Jason: I'm actually going tomorrow so I might run into you.

Danny: Really? All right.

Leo: There won't be anybody there.

Danny: They're all down with measles.

Leo: How could there be a measles epidemic?

Danny: Because people don't get vaccines?

Leo: Apparently, in Southern California and Spades, or something, it's bizarre.

Danny: There's definite apparent hotspots where people just don't do it.

Leo: Well, you're all getting measles now. I had measles as a kid and I'm old enough - Jeff is too, we were children before there were vaccines for many of these childhood illnesses.

Jeff Jarvis: Yes.

Danny: I remember growing up and getting them in, what? What a miracle it was that we could finally have these vaccines to prevent all these diseases and now no one wants them.

Leo: Mumps, chicken pox, we had them all. In fact, sometimes, I remember parents, if their kids had chicken pox, would bring their kids over to get them. Before there was a vaccine, you thought, “Well, let's just get it out of the way.”

Jason: Really?

Leo: I know, it's hard to believe, isn't it, Jason?

Danny: To be fair, Jason, they would put them in the back of the car with no car seat and drive around with a cigarette in their mouth, a beer in the other hand.

Leo: It was a different time.

Danny: Don Draper was having a chicken pox party, what could you do?

Leo: That's right. In Mad Men he did that? There you go.

Jason: That's hilarious.

Leo: “Chicken pox, let's all get it.” But you want to do it kind of, when it's convenient, as opposed to during the school year.

Jeff: Leo, here's my question for you. When do you get enough hair to comb?

Leo: Sooner than I - not soon enough. But at least I have hair, there's some shading on the dome so it doesn't look quite so … I don't look like a skinhead any more. I just look like maybe I got a little over-aggressive, like maybe I was trying to be Bruce Willis or something.

Jeff: You're still [0:04:24] back from New Year's Eve.

Leo: No, I'm not. I still have sciatica in my right leg from - the doctor said, “Did you -” I went to the doctor and said, “Doc, my leg's numb.” He said, “Sounds like sciatica. Did you do anything?” Remember, when it started, I said, January 1^st. He said, “Did you do anything unusual that day?” I said, “No, not too much. Let's see, I rode a mechanical bull. I learned how to do light saber fighting. I worked with a stunt man to learn strowing. We had a pop and lock dance group teaching me some dance moves. I stood for 24 hours straight, and I shaved my head and got a tattoo.” He said, “Well, it could be sciatica. Were you really drunk?” he says. No, no.

Jeff: Did he recommend a good shrink for you, Leo?

Leo: No. He said, “You'll get better eventually and he threw me out of his office.” Anyway, good to see you back from Davos. It's odd to come back from Switzerland and have more snow in New York City.

Jeff: I know, and I'm jetlagged now, but it's okay.

Leo: Did you have fun at Davos?

Jeff: Yes, I did, and DLD before that in Munich. It's a good week; it's an exhausting week. I had my roommate again this year as Bill Gross.

Leo: Nice, I like Bill a lot.

Jeff: Bill's the greatest. He is just the nicest guy on Earth. There were a lot of interesting sessions, a lot of talk about publishers, Google and all that.

Leo: Any difference from previous Davos? This is the world economic forum. What is it, exactly? It's a bunch, as you call them, “machers” who got together …

Jeff: Yes, it was 2500 machers and I sneak my way in. I give them advice about blogging nine years ago and now they forget to dis-invite me.

Leo: You're like the court jester.

Jeff: Yes. We call it faculty, Leo, faculty.

Leo: Faculty!

Jeff: They're running sessions and things. How could you not go, once year round?

Leo: I think you should go. Was Skobel there this year?

Jeff: No, it was less of the big - there used to be the Club Hotel, used to be filled with Skobels and other folks. They're not there as much, more bankers. That's their business.

Leo: Maybe they've gotten over their fascination with new media and now they're back to -

Jeff: Then again, the forum is pretty amazing. It does everything in new media. It started publishing on Medium before Medium asked them too, it's got stuff all over. They're pretty good at that.

Leo: Anything new? Any new trends there among the top 1%?

Jeff: Everybody asks every year, “What's the new Davos?” Thank goodness I didn't hear anybody ask that this year.

Leo: I practically just did, so sorry. What's the mood?

Jeff: Shrug.

Leo: “I don't know.” Yes, it's not like they're all hot and bothered about something like HoloLens or something. They're not going crazy all over that.

Jeff: No, but Nadal did talk about that and I tried to understand what the heck a HoloLens would look like in the world. I'm not sure I cared.

Leo: There you go, there's your report from Davos.

Jeff: That's my really boring report from Davos.

Leo: I think you're sandbagging. I think Davos is probably the best party ever, you just don't want us to know.

Jeff: Mark Bettio throws a great party on Friday night. Google has a nice party with - now I can't remember. Davos, the Bettio party, the Killers performed. I can't remember who was at the Google party because I'm old and I forget. It was cold. There was a lot of talk about freedom of speech after Charlie Hebdo, a lot of talk about Google panic. At DLD, I met the new [German language 0:08:15], the new head of digital for the EU. He's talking about reopening copyright all across Europe. That's going to be a lot of fun. A lot of talk about level playing fields and trying to disadvantage American companies that are now taking advantage of easier regulation and I say, “Why not bring the regulation down for everybody rather than rising it up for everybody?” Just that kind of stuff.

Leo: I never ask you this. You travel more than almost anybody I know, do you use a Nexus 6 now?

Jeff: Yes, yes.

Leo: Does it work well wherever you go?

Jeff: Yes, except this time I tried in an emergency. The hotel WiFi was just as good as nonexistent. I tried it in an emergency to -

Leo: Oh, the T-Mobile free bandwidth.

Jeff: I have AT&T unlimited and I couldn't do the tethering. I couldn't make a hotspot.

Leo: You wouldn't want to. The cost of that would be prohibitive.

Jeff: Just for an emergency moment I wanted to and it wouldn't let me do it, which upset me. But we're going to have a story about unlimited in the run down later.

Leo: Good, we shall talk. I've actually briefly - maybe not so briefly gone back to the OnePlus One. They had a deal last January 20th, I think, that for two hours, you didn't need an invite. I said, “Oh, what the heck.”

Jeff: You bought another one.

Leo: I ended up buying another one because I'd given my old one to Father Robert. Jason still has his. Coming back to it, this is a great phone and I love Cyanogen mobile. We'll actually be talking a little bit about CM11 and maybe CM12.

Jeff: I find that the Nexus 6 is pretty much near to things - odd things like Bluetooth connections. The OnePlus One was flaky to me.

Leo: It's not official. Actually, might as well talk about it now, according to GreenBot, Cyanogen wants to take Android away from Google. “We'd do a better job. Let us maintain Android.” Kurt McMaster wants to build a Cyanogen which - you know, the story, the history of Cyanogen is kind of interesting. It was originally a custom ROM that people would root their Android phones and put Cyanogen on there. It was, basically, an AOSP version of Android that you would then, I don't know, quasi-legally download all the Google apps and make it a Google phone. Sorry, Google, I wasn't talking to you.

Jason: “Oh, oh, do you need something? I'm here. Google, did you say Google?”

Leo: “I'm ready.”

Jeff: “What's up, boss? Huh?”

Danny: Don't get it wrong, Leo. We're all right.

Jason: “Do you want me to look something up about Cyanogen? I can do that you know. I'm right here.”

Jeff: Let's go out for a walk, okay?

Leo: I think putting it on the OnePlus One gave it some real credibility because now it is the official operating system on at least one high-end Android phone and frankly, those of us who used it, Gina was always very complimentary. I knew you were too. Really liked it. So Kurt McMaster is saying he hopes to build CM into a full-fledged Android rival. He wants its own app store, a more open structure.

Jeff: It makes no sense to me. No sense. You're going to fight against another app store? Developers have to build for another app store? Ugh.

Leo: That's true but I do agree with him when he says that Android is really becoming a commercial product favoring Google services. While there is AOSP, it's the open source Android minus Google's stuff and no sane phone manufacturer is going to do that. Amazon is the best example of somebody who took AOSP, forked it and did without Google.

Jeff: Leo, the whole reason I use Android is because it is integrated with Google+, Google Mail, with Gmail and Google Maps and so on. That's exactly the selling point.

Danny: For you, but if you were in a developing country and you wanted a cheap phone that works the way the iPhone does but not with that price tag, you might not care that it would have to work with Google.

Leo: Now, this CM11 on OnePlus One has all the Google services on it.

Jeff: Yes, but Danny - you're not saving money if it doesn't work with Gmail.

Danny: You're going to save money if you're able to produce an inexpensive device that is not Apple's device and yet can still run popular apps.

Leo: Does it cost Samsung and others to make it a Google Services compatible version of Android? They don't pay Google money.

Danny: I don't think they pay to do it but you have to go through and be licensed.

Leo: You have to be certified, yes.

Danny: But that's what - I can't remember, I'm not going to be able to pronounce the name of the Chinese company. Is it -

Jason: Xiaomi.

Danny: Thank you. But you know, their strategy, I don't think, is that they're running Android, Google Android. They just seem to be running their own vanilla version of Android. But it means that they can produce a device that costs less but is like an iPhone in a market where iPhones are popular but expensive, hence the guy who comes to the airport with 800 of them strapped to his body.

Leo: If I'm Xiaomi, I also want to make a phone that is more Chinese-centric.

Danny: Yes, so if you're in China and it's like, “I can't get Google search? That's fine. I couldn't get Google search even if it was built in.” So I think that there is opportunity for those alternative systems and I think we're already seeing some of these countries have these alternative systems but in the US, I think it would be a huge challenge to try to say, “Hey, we're going to come out with Android and it would be just like Google Android except it won't be.”

Leo: Except none of the stuff you want.

Jason: Right. They're talking about deeper integrations in ways that Google doesn't give you access and that, to me, just screams forking in the same way that, like you're talking Danny, Xiaomi. What we're seeing right now is very interesting. Suddenly, in the past year especially, all eyes are on developing countries. All the money, all the users that are there that aren't using smart phones yet. So what we see here, I think, is Cyanogen going from this, “Hey, look what we can do with Android,” and turning it into a company that is specifically targeting themselves towards those developing countries because there's a lot of money potentially in the long run to make there in the next five years.

Leo: I don't care so much about that. I care more about the political - McMasters says that. He says, “Android today and iOS are essentially shells for Google and Apple services. Everybody else exists in these sandboxes with no access to the lower levels of the operating system kernel.” So he says that we could make it more open but the cost is, you don't get Google services. For Jeff, that's a non-starter.

Jeff: The cost to the ecosystem is that you get another store, developers have to develop for another thing. I think it's a high, high risk for him. Now you can create phones where you know you're getting quality software, you know you're getting plenty of apps. You're going to have a quality environment. I think it's hubris.

Leo: I don't think it's hubris. I think it's a political statement but I think it is, like many political statements, one that is fraught with peril and perhaps not even feasible.

Jeff: Again, it's all - [crosstalk]

Leo: It's a correct political statement. I would like to see it.

Jeff: NO, no, come on. “Big bad Google. Google shouldn't be promoting Gmail. How awful of you. We're going to take your software that you created, Google, and we're going to use it against you to compete with you because you're so evil that you allow us to do that.”

Danny: It's not that they shouldn't be promoting it, it's just that over the past four to six years that we've had Android, they have flipped it around and talked out of both sides of their mouths where they say, “Oh Android, it's all open,” but in fact, it's not open if you want to call it Android. If you want to call it Android, use that trademark -

Jeff: Okay, but Android, what's the other complaint about Android? The other complaint about Android is that it forked in too many variations and the fragmentation was awful. So people praised Google for bringing some control back to Android and now they're getting criticized.

Danny: There's a difference between bringing control back into Android and another difference - there's a difference between saying, “We're going to have a set of guidelines you should follow for a good Android operating system,” and saying, “Hey, if you want us to license you out so you can call yourself Android and then be able to have our Google Play services, you have to sign this agreement with us, Samsung, that says you've got to put Google on the front page of this and you have to put all this stuff over here and all these other things.” That wasn't about making sure that we had a consistent Android experience, that was about making sure we had a consistent Google experience. That's where I think you see some of the frustration that comes in, you know, they wanted to play the open card as Google often does when it sounds good, when they're competing against somebody who's not dominant. They've done this many times. Then when they get dominant, suddenly open is out the window. You've never, ever seen - wait, one last thing. You've never, for all that Google wants to talk about openness, you have never seen them say, “Hey, we should have the open web index initiative where we'll have one big crawler and everybody goes out there to get this data. Then anybody can build search applications on top of it.” Because you know, they own Maps. There's no sense in making that open.

Jeff: I think you're mixing apples and kumquats. That's not so much of a question. If you just stick with Android, you know, what I don't get is the attitude in the Cyanogen announcement. A company makes something - were we talking about Apple this way? Apple won't lose crap, right? Or if they do, it's at such a lower level of the tool kit that you can use but it doesn't have any of the value. Google can sell an - [crosstalk] I'm not in the position of defending Google again. I don't want to always be here.

Leo: You put yourself there, Jeff.

Danny: It's because Apple made it - [crosstalk]

Jeff: It's because I agree - [crosstalk]

Danny: Apple never made any pretense of saying, “Hey, iOS, it's the open operating system everybody can use.” They never did that but Google did and so I agree with you that it's more of a PR thing, that it's a nice thing to poke at them. It's not going to make much of a difference for the typical person who's going to buy a phone. I don't think they're going, “Oh, I don't want to buy this Android phone because that was Google and they didn't tie it in with all.” They're just like, “What's the best phone that lots of people are using, that's affordable, that has the key apps I want to run?” In the US, it probably means - go ahead, sorry.

Jeff: What's with the attitude in the Cyanogen announcement? It's the attitude of acting like Google is bad for doing what's in its interest. I'm going to take the OS that Google gives me for free, by the way, and I'm going to turn it against Google because Google is somehow bad for promoting its own stuff. The reason I get upset about this is - let me just finish. The reason I get upset about this, it's the same thing in Europe where they say, “Google promotes YouTube.” Of course they do. Spiegel doesn't promote Focus, and Focus doesn't promote Spiegel, but there's this different expectation somehow that Google and Android shouldn't. If you want a fully open OS, then make a Firefox phone. Make a Linux phone. Google's a company. What's so bloody surprising about this?

Danny: They are a company but it is a company that is inconsistent with its messaging to say, “You can't have our services on your version of Android,” right? And that's what they do because if you're going to create - hey, Android is free. Everybody can us it. But if you're building a version that we think is going to be too popular or is going to threaten our version and the control we want to have over ours, we will not let you have our services. That is not -

Jeff: Or it's going to be crappy, Danny, or it's going to be bad quality.

Leo: What if it's really great?

Danny: Leave it to the users to figure that out. If it's crappy, the users won't buy it. But to say I can't make a - [crosstalk]

Leo: You think Xiaomi is crappy because it doesn't use Google?

Jeff: No, I can't get my hands on one. I don't know.

Leo: I can tell you it's not. McMaster says, “We believe 35+% of Android today is non-Google Android.” Obviously, a lot of that is China but, “We believe the trend is going to continue that 50+% of the market will be non-Google Android.” He wants to capture 20% of that. “We are making a version of Android that is more open.” This to me is what's interesting. So, admittedly, I acknowledge this, Cyanogen built on AOSP, which we - you know, Google created it, in effect.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: I mean, Andy Rubin created Android before there was Google but then Google bought it and it's been Google building it. So thank you, Google, for that. But I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that we're going to take this open version of Android and continue it, and make it be better.

Jeff: I think that's all fine, Leo. I think that's all fine. What got me in the announcement was the attitude. It was the attitude saying, “Google is bad for promoting Google's own products in its own product that we're also allowing you to use for free.” I think it was ungracious. I think it was hubristic and I think it was - [crosstalk]

Leo: Looking at his statements, I think that might have been an analysis by other authors. I mean, he does say, “Android today is,” as I mentioned, “Is a shell for Google services.”

Jeff: He says he wants to move away from Google. He's treating Google as bad and that's all.

Leo: “The notion of what Google now is can be taken to the next level because we've leveraged it to other services where it can become complimentary, where other than just Google services ...”

Jeff: We're fine. The reason I'm sensitive is because of this European thing. I'm just back from Europe where I hear all this crap about, “How dare Google ever promote YouTube?” You know, and of course, if you ask for maps in Google, you'll get the Maps right up there. It's a ridiculous argument.

Leo: The issue is, so that people understand it, is that unfortunately, while there does exist this AOSP, this open version of Android, it doesn't have a very critical piece of the Google services which most apps rely on or many apps rely on to do what they do. So most apps won't work - or many of the apps you want won't work on AOSP without considerable modification. I think what Cyanogen is proposing, which would be great, is to provide an alternate set of services that aren't Google-specific so that developers who are writing the next Siri or Instagram could have a choice and maybe - if I were a developer, depending on how different it is. If it's a similar API, maybe develop both versions so that there's an opportunity. You know, what he says is, “When you're a developer, you would like more options than just creating a stupid little application that inevitably gets acquired by Google or Apple.” He says, “These companies can thrive on a non-Google Android.”

Jeff: But I also hear developers complaining about having to write for too many platforms as it is.

Leo: That's their choice. That's because they feel like - look. There's Firefox OS. There are many other phone OS but Android is a pretty good OS and the only thing that makes it not open right now is that without Google services, it's not complete. I think if they wrote, as [Luthairin?] in our chat room says, an API-compatible version of Google services, then maybe that would be - it's funny because Oracle and Google are in a fight over whether an API can be copyrighted. This would be interesting to see Google on the other side of that fight with Cyanogen. Cyanogen duplicates Google's Android API just as Google duplicated the Java API and is getting sued by Oracle. I think that would be a good thing. Nobody's making developers choose, it's just providing an alternative for somebody who wants a true, open source phone system or mobile operating system. I like that idea. Boy, I didn't think this would be such a good conversation. Who knew? I was just touching on that and was going to move on. Anyway, we'll see. I agree with you, Amazon did nobody any benefit by creating its fork of Android. It's good for Amazon but what if somebody did create a fork of Android that was more open and designed to be open. I think that would be great and obviously, Cyanogen thinks there's a way to make money off of it, which is fine. I guess they're a business. They have to. I wonder what the open source community's response is to this. Maybe the open source community is who should be creating an API.

Jeff: Wasn't there a case where - what was the deal with India where you couldn't do Cyanogen, Cyanogen was sold exclusively in one market?

Leo: Yes, and they've talked to -

Jeff: Cyanogen shouldn't be on such a high horse.

Leo: No, no. They're actually pissed off because apparently, something happened they didn't expect. So the deal was - who was it? The other company in this one, I can't remember it. Jason Howell is the Android expert.

Jason: Let's see here, it was OnePlus and was it MediaTech?

Leo: It was an Indian company and apparently, what OnePlus said is it was a timing thing, “We didn't realize they were so close to market.” So OnePlus got ousted from the -

Jason: India max, no, MicroMax.

Leo: MicroMax, because they apparently had an exclusive with Cyanogen but Cyanogen said, “This wasn't our plan.”

Jeff: All I'm arguing is, if you say you're open, that doesn't go for exclusive deals.

Leo: Well, this is a difficult thing for them because they're also a business. So maybe it should be an open source.

Jeff: So is Google. So is Google and businesses do things within their self-interest.

Leo: So what's so wrong, then, about Cyanogen doing a fork?

Jeff: Nothing, just don't attack Google for it. That's all I'm saying. Do whatever you want, and good luck and I don't think a fork of Android is going to work terribly well if people have to develop to a whole new store unless you're going to go into a developing country and really have marketing there to make it work. Good luck. But in the US, it's going to be niche, of niche, of niche, of niche.

Danny: I'm going back to 2007 to the post where they announced Android. What they announced was, “The Open Handset Alliance,” and the post is full of things like, “The first fully open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Through these deep partnerships with the carriers, manufacturers, developers and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a stand, open mobile software platform. We think this will be better, faster-paced.” That was 2007. Since that time we saw Google say things like, “Don't use Skyhook's location services. Use our location services. You can't have Google Play unless you do all this other stuff.” If you actually go to the Open Handset Alliance home page, the last, “What's New?” listing that they have on there is from 2011. So I get what you're saying.

Jeff: There was a bit of a misnomer there, yes.

Danny: It wasn't a misnomer. It wasn't.

Leo: Or was it bait and switch?

Danny: It was bait and switch.

Jeff: What they really did was give away something free. The issue was that it was free and that was their business strategy.

Leo: There's a difference between free and open.

Jeff: Absolutely, absolutely.

Danny: No, no. They have a business strategy of giving away things for free and have had that for a very long time, that continues. They have another business strategy of saying, “We're going to start some open initiative,” which they always do when they're behind in an area. When they get into an area where they feel more secure, the open stuff goes away and they just close it down, do things that benefit themselves. So I think that I agree with you, Jeff, what's - there's no problem they want to have Android, and they want to say Android's actually all this Google stuff, all these sorts of things. The people who want to poke at them, it's amusing to hear them poke at them. It doesn't really make that much of a difference but the reason that Google gets poked that way is because they set themselves up for it.

Jeff: Yes, yes, that's a good point, Danny. Good point.

Jason: Although, Google would probably still claim that it is open because it has the AOSP. So really, what happened here is that Google forked itself. It created AOSP which is the open thing and they still claim that we do have an open version of Android. Then they went in this other direction, the “Google version of Android,” which is what everybody wants now. So the other open thing is less desirable.

Jeff: But Jason, isn't there also a quality issue here too, and a fragmentation issue, so it's hard - what we're asking about here is motive. What part of this did Google do because it was bait and switch? What part did they do because the fragmentation was driving everybody crazy and there were quality issues around the Android brand? I don't know the answer to that. But I think that's what you're trying to grapple with.

Leo: It's a longstanding debate is, how open is Android?

Jason: Oh, yes it is.

Jeff: And we have lots of hours on this show about that.

Leo: I've actually changed my tune a little bit because I felt like, “Well, they're giving away source code.” But what's become very clear is that AOSP is a very weak -

Danny: If you're talking Android, Android is not open because Android is a trademark that Google controls and Google licenses. So AOSP is not Android, it just happens to have the name Android as part of the acronym.

Leo: That's part of the confusion, isn't it?

Danny: It also gets confusing because Google will use stats to their benefit. Google will tell you, “We don't control what the search is on Android,” when they mean Android OSP and they'll point to something like an Amazon phone as an example of that. “See, we didn't control that.” And they're kind of right, but not really, because that's not really Android.

Leo: Google really - Google is building on the strength of Google's services and really wants you to use Google services. You know what? Most consumers, like Jeff, want Google services. That's what Android means to them.

Jeff: I'm there.

Danny: Which is fine, and there's going to be some of those consumers who are like, “I don't want your forked weird thing of Android, I want this from Google because I know what I'm getting,” in the same way that they know what they're getting when they get iOS. That's what they want as well. That's fine.

Jeff: I'm not getting a Fire phone.

Leo: No, but I do think there's room in the world and I encourage Cyanogen mod for AOSP versions that have the same feature completeness as a Google services version and as an alternative to Google. What's wrong with that?

Jeff: Okay, Leo, here's what it does to me. I would be happier - see, but for me, who's not geeky into the openness of the split, I like having a OnePlus One that operated as an Android phone. A OnePlus One that can't operate as an Android phone because they're forked it, I have no interest in. So I like the idea of having competitive handsets by competitive manufacturers, that's what I was applauding Cyanogen for coming up with alternatives within the ecosystem. Now they're saying, “We're going to move away from that ecosystem.” God bless them, God speed, that's their business decision. But that takes me away from them because I have no interest in that.

Leo: It's ironic because I love Windows phone but I can't use it because it doesn't support Google services. So there you go.

Danny: Which, by the way, one last thing drives me batty. You know, Google is all about, “We're going to -” Again, “We have our stuff where people can get things,” or whatever. They just will not do anything for the Windows platform with the exception of building a search app, because heaven forbid, people not be able to do a Google search on their Windows phone. That is what they need to get fixed. I find it so disheartening because if you're using Google Voice or other Google services, you end up getting these third party apps and it's like, “Well, am I trusting my password with them? What's happening with it?” I think it's a security issue that Google ought to fix. It's not hard for them to develop stuff if they want to do it but - anyways. Windows - [crosstalk]

Jeff: [crosstalk] - Chrome.

Leo: I think you could make a strong case that it's an anti-competitive reason that Google doesn't do it. They could say, “Well, Windows phone is too small for us to spend the time on it.” It's not. It's because it's Microsoft and you don't like them. They don't like you.

Jeff: Skype on Chrome, Skype on Chrome. [0:33:03?]

Leo: Well, that's Microsoft doing something for - [crosstalk]

Danny: [crosstalk] - won't bring Skype on Chrome, or?

Jeff: Microsoft will not do Skype, has not done, are now making noise that they will, but the reason I'm on this Chromebook right now and I'm on Google+ right now is because there's no Skype on Chrome. Microsoft won't do it. So the game works both ways.

Danny: Can you not do Skype through the web?

Jeff: No, no.

Leo: He can do Skype. He won't use a Mac or Windows. He's insisting on using Chrome OS.

Danny: But you can't do Skype through the web?

Leo: A web Skype? I think that's the thing that they're going to do is a Skype on the web. I think that is coming. But Google's really solved that with RT, which I really like, whatchamacallit? What is it, Web RT?

Jeff: RTC?

Leo: Now I'm in acronym hell because I just did a Microsoft show. I've got RT on the brain. Web RTC, is that it? Ay-yi-yi. Let me take a break and let me get my brain into Google land.

Our show today brought to you by the source of my toner cartridges. I love these guys, LD Products, the ink and toner experts when you need high-quality printer ink or toner cartridges. Go to ldproducts.com. You don't go to a car dealership to buy gas, do you? So why go back to the printer manufacturer to buy ink and toner, especially when you know they practically give away the printer because they're going to ream you on the ink or the toner? LD Products offers a quality alternative at a fraction of the cost. In fact, some of these products are up to 75% off the OEM price. They do sell OEM cartridges and inks if you want to get them there at a very, very aggressive price. But I love these compatible choices. They've been in business for 15 years. BizRate and customer certified at Google-trusted stores, shipping over a million orders a year. These are big guys. You may not have heard of them, but you ought to have. Not sure what ink or toner? No problem. You can talk to a real person seven days a week in their US-based call center. Their customer service department is great. They talk to you like they're speaking to the CEO or the CEO's mom, even better. All their products are risk-free with a two-year 100% customer satisfaction guarantee. You can return a product for any reason. So if you've been worried, if you've been thinking, “I don't know, should I try a third party cartridge? Should I try third party ink?” Give it a try. By the way, these are remanufactured so it's good. It helps the environment and helps oil, plastic and waste out of our landfill. They operate out of a beautiful Platinum-Lead certified building in Long Beach. That's where the call center is, the warehouse, the headquarters. 110 thousand square feet of ink and toner and it's Platinum-Lead certified. That means it's very eco friendly. LD Products, they've got your printer needs covered. Remanufactured compatible and brand name products. But if you get the remanufactured, you're doing your little bit to save the Earth. Get 10% off ink and toner plus free shipping (excluding OEM) when you go to ldproducts.com/twit and use the offer code TWIT. Ldproducts.com/twit, offer code TWIT. We thank LD Products for their support and their great toner cartridges. I love these.

Never buying the manufacturer's toner again. This is for our HP, I think. Yes.

Have you read - we're going to try to make sense of this. I've been trying now for a week. We talked about this on TWiT, we've been talking about it on the Mac Break Weekly. Zoe Keating, she is a cellist -

Jeff: An amazing, amazing cellist. An incredible artist.

Leo: She does a lot of beautiful music and she has been using YouTube for two things. One is, she puts music up on YouTube. But the other is, there are thousands of people on YouTube who are completely legally using her music. She encourages that as background. In fact, the Game of Thrones special effects reel is done with a background of Zoe Keating cello music. So it's very popular. She does that buy turning on Content ID, that's the Google automated thing that listens to everything that's uploaded and says, “Oh, that's Zoe Keating's song,” and notifies her. Then she decides whether A, if she doesn't like it, she says, “I only issue a take down if it's hate, something really horrific that I don't want to be associated with.” Most of the time, what she does is share in the monetization. So if somebody's got ads on their YouTube video, she'll get some of the revenue from that. She says, “That's a significant value.” She sells most of her music - income comes from stuff she sells on iTunes.

Jeff: By the way, let me just - I met Zoe last year at Davos as part of a project I'm working on with the World Economic Forum on rethinking copyright at the next level. Zoe is a tremendous example of someone who finds new business models, who doesn't just sell content and restrict access to content, which is the old copyright model. Zoe says, “I want to have this kind of openness where people can use my stuff but I make money on it.” She wants data about who her fans are so that she can deal with them in valuable ways. Zoe is really a visionary, not only in her music but also in her view of creativity, copyright and business models.

Leo: So she - by the way, this is a very complicated story. The original post seems pretty clear but then Google has responded and said the stuff she says is patently false. Then she says, “Well, please explain to me because I've been negotiating this for a year.” She says that Google called her and said, “Okay, you have to sign on to the new YouTube Music services agreement or we will block your YouTube channel.” Google has since said, “No one said block.” But she's very clear in her memory of that. Now, if that's the case, it's quite Draconian because all of her catalog, this Music Key agreement means that all of her catalog must be included in both free and premium music services, everything she does, even if she does it elsewhere, has to be included there. “Even if I don't deliver all my music, because I'm a music partner, anything that a third party uploads with my name in the description will automatically be included in the Music service too. All songs set to monetize.” She has no choice in that.

Jeff: It seems to be that's as if they were an old time studio saying, “You have to have an exclusive.” I don't know who's right on which side of this, but that's what really got me most about Zoe's post was, “No, as an artist, I should have a full choice of saying what goes where.”

Leo: Well, she wants to say, for instance, release music on iTunes first. Then put it on YouTube. But the agreement says, “You have to release it on YouTube the same time you release it anywhere else.” It's a five year contract. She says, “This is onerous,” and I kind of agree with her. Now, Google's response which has been quoted by the Guardian, among others, is that, “No.” I don't know who to believe on this.

Jeff: What did Google say, in essence? I haven't read their response yet.

Leo: Google says, “We never said we'd block you.” Google says, “We never said you couldn't just have Content ID and opt out of Music Key.” They say, this is the Guardian, “YouTube is adamant it will not block musicians from uploading music to its service or running a channel if it doesn't make this agreement. The company also says it is not stopping artists from releasing music on other platforms earlier than YouTube.” So there's some debate whether what she says, Google said, they said. She seems very clear that, “No, they said this. They said it more than one time. I've been talking to a sales rep.” Now, I have to say, we've had conversations with sales reps from YouTube that have been completely goofy. So I don't know how well-trained or well-informed these sales reps actually are. I mean, my experience, talking to YouTube - we wanted to get on YouTube Live. My experience with that was not positive at all. We just threw up our hands and said, “Never mind.”

YouTube says, “Musicians who don't agree to its Music Key terms still have control over their content in terms of copyright. They can still get videos that use their music without a license removed but it's not clear whether they scan still use Content ID for that.” They may have to do it themselves. Believe me, if you have thousands of people using your music, that's not something trivial.

Danny: I think the most disturbing thing about Content ID is, Content ID wasn't designed as a way for Google to somehow try to force artists into putting things on YouTube or to somehow compel them into it. Content ID is an anti-piracy thing and it's a nice way for people to say, “All right, I don't have a problem with people using my music and I'm going to make some money off of this,” so you use your Content ID and you can figure that sort of things out. That really shouldn't be tied in with anything else; that should just be something Google's offering to anybody who has worries that their content is being taken and used on YouTube without permission.

Jeff: You're right, Danny, and it was a really smooth, good way around the copyright fight to say, “Go with the flow and make money on it.” Rather than issue a take down notice, issue a share notice, basically. I agree. You kind of can't - it's like when the bank says, “You have to use the automatic teller so you don't use tellers.” Then when you use the automatic teller, they charge you. They're getting it both ways. It's like an airline, you can't have it both ways. Content ID was a very clever and good way to get around the content fight, so leave it at that. I agree.

Leo: So Keating has posted a followup post, she posted it yesterday, with a transcript of her conversation with a YouTube representative. Now, it's a transcript. It's not a recording, confirming everything she said. She says, for instance, “Well, if I wanted to just let Content ID keep doing its thing and it does a great job at it, I'm totally happy with it. I don't want to participate in the music service. Is that an option?” The rep says, “That's unfortunately not an option.”

Jeff: That's where the crux of this is.

Leo: “Assuming I don't want to, what would occur?” So what would happen? “Well, in the worst case scenario, because we do understand there are cases where our partners don't want to participate for various reasons, what we basically have to do is - because the music terms are essentially, like, outdated, the content -” This does sound like one of my favorite YouTube reps. “Um, uh, the content that you directly upload from accounts that you own - the content owner would attach the agreement so we'll have to block that content. But anything that comes up that we're able to scan through a master Content ID, we could just apply a track policy but the commercial terms no longer apply so there's not going to be any revenue generated.” So, the rep says, “We will block your channel and you won't make any more money. You can still use Content ID but you're not going to make any more money.” She says, “Well, that's pretty harsh.” The rep says, “Yes, it's harsh and trust me, it's really difficult for me to have this conversation with all my partners, but we're really trying to create a new revenue stream on top of what exists on the platform today.” So unless Zoe Keating is lying and I take it from your experience of her -

Jeff: Or the rep has been misinformed and is trying too hard.

Leo: Yes. We don't know that.

Jeff: I mean, this is a case where it would be great, given the power of the TWiT network, to bring together somebody from Google and bring together Zoe Keating to say, “Let's iron it out here.”

Leo: I would love to do that. Yes. She says - you know, unfortunately, her husband is very, very ill right now and so she's focusing on that. She says, “YouTube is not at the top of my priority list right now.” So the fact that she's even been posting this is pretty impressive.

Jeff: Exactly. She pulled back entirely from before because of the tragic diagnosis for her husband. But she did say, “I'm relieved to see that he's somewhat stabilized and somewhat better.” That's why she's doing this now but this is the last thing she needs, the last thing.

Leo: You know, it doesn't feel good.

Jeff: No, it doesn't. I agree.

Leo: Either YouTube has sales reps who are freelancing and putting pressure on people, much the same way Comcast has notoriously put pressure on its customers.

Jeff: Which is a bad cultural thing.

Leo: Which isn't good. Or, worse, the rep is right and YouTube is lying to the press about what their deal is. Either way, it doesn't look good for YouTube.

Jeff: YouTube is just, I think with Susan Wojcicki there now, they're trying to get new senses of what the business of YouTube is which is good, because that means there's new opportunities. And in the discussions I have with publishers, YouTube is also an important thing for them and you have to be able to rely on getting good deals with these. The case of, it's one matter to go to Google News and say, “I quoted your story or mentioned your headline.” That's not, in my mind, copyright theft. But in the case of video and music, it's very clear cut, it's copyright-protected. And there's no copy in there, there's no summarizing there, it either is or isn't. So YouTube has to have pretty clear ways to deal with that and as Danny just said, Content ID was their way out of -

Leo: It was a response to the DMCA.

Jeff: Yes. It was a clever and good response. It was a great thing and look at - Zoe was brilliantly saying, “Okay, I'll go with the flow. I'll allow people to create. I'll allow YouTube to grow. I won't do take downs and I can make money. Koo-koo-ka-choo, group hug.”

Leo: But I think this betrays, to me, a little bit of one of the things I've worried about with YouTube, which is they would really love to entice artists to use YouTube but only to the extent that they can make money on it. They're very happy to parade the handful of artists who make a ton of money on YouTube but the truth is, the vast majority do not. YouTube takes a very large portion of their revenue. We don't know exactly how much, but something like half and in this case, they're leveraging Content ID to strong-arm somebody into signing rights over to YouTube?

Jeff: The issue is, if Google wanted to offer an exclusive deal with improved shares and better benefits, fine. Offer that. But to strong-arm from a position of strength and say, “It's exclusive or nothing,” that's like an old Hollywood studio. That's not what we want in this world. So I don't know what's true here. At the end of the day, I think I'm sensing from the Guardian articles that no matter what happened in the negotiations prior to this, YouTube is starting to see that they're not necessarily in the best position so maybe the good will come out of this.

Leo: I think it will.

Jeff: God bless Zoe for being open about this. It's wildly complex. YouTube needs to sit down and figure this out. There's no reason for it to end up in war with artists here if their desire in the end is the contrary. Their desire is to have tons of artists come on YouTube and succeed.

Leo: You nailed it with the old media because the old media really sees content creators as a gold mine to be mined, as a field to be plowed, not as partners in any sense of the word. They're just good for making us money until they're not. I've always been, as a long-time player in old media, I know this. There's always been this antipathy between the owners and the content creators. They don't like you and they like you just long enough to make them money, after that they get rid of you as quick as they can and I would hate for YouTube to treat creators that way. They've certainly made noises in the opposite direction but it now looks like their not.

Jeff: At DLD, I interviewed Samir Arora, who's the CEO of what is now called Mode Media, part of which is Glam. I'll make this as short as I can. Glam has become the seventh largest web property out there. In full disclosure, I've over time advised Glam. Samir did this really neat chart - it's on my blog but hard to see and it's too complex. But just to summarize it very simply, if you add people to content - if you add social to content, networks to content, you scale in ways that were never possible in old media. So the upper right quadrant, highest media margin, of his chart that he draws, is companies that do not pay for content and do not pay for traffic. Then below that a slight bit is companies that don't pay for traffic but do pay for content on a revenue share basis, which is to say, when it makes money. In that, he puts YouTube and Glam. They share revenue when it makes money. Then if you start going down the chart and go to the lower left, you get to old time media - no, that's the bad chart. That's a very old chart. You get to very old media companies. I think it's the third one down.

Leo: Good, because that looks like cancer. I don't like that chart at all.

Jeff: Exactly. It's this one. So there on the left you see places like Time Inc. and old media companies where they'd pay for audience, they'd market, they also pay for content whether or not it makes money, because that's what they have to do. So the margins on the upper right are far better than old media in the lower left. So YouTube is up there trying to invent new models where you enable huge amount of content, you don't pay for it except when it makes money, the social nature and the viral nature of things, you don't pay for marketing. It pays for itself. The audience does that. It's a very high margin business, extremely high margin. It's a good business. It's a platform business. We like that. But then you've got to operate like a platform. You've got to be open enough. Otherwise, if you start shutting down the platform, you're just turning yourself into, you know, a walled garden. An AOL, a Time Inc., pick who it is. Funny, they used to be together.

Leo: I've never been sold on the YouTube model. I always felt like this was more of an old media model in sheep's clothing.

Jeff: That's where we disagree. I think YouTube has been, can be and can remain a platform where -

Leo: I'd love that.

Jeff: It doesn't have to be Blockbuster blockbuster. People can make money - [crosstalk]

Leo: But is there a long tail on YouTube?

Jeff: Yes, sure. Sure.

Leo: So smaller titles can make something.

Jeff: Smaller guys can make something and then the other part of this is, this goes back to the copyright work you've been doing with the World Economic Forum, which we're now expanding into other industries. It's not just selling content. Zoe's a great example of this, right? Zoe says, “I want to sell concert tickets. I want data about my users so I can have a great relationship with them and they'll be loyal to me. I want to allow other people to use my music and thank you, YouTube, you helped me make money from that and identify from that.” What YouTube and Google should do, and Facebook, and all should want is content creators who do explore and can exploit new business models. Because if they find themselves supporting only the old business model of owning and controlling content, then they're back into the clutches of old media companies that, especially in Europe, are giving them hell.

Leo: Yes.

Jeff: So the more you encourage and enable multiple business models, more flexible, legal and tactical frameworks, the better off you are. So YouTube in the long run, I think, was smart enough to see that they want Zoe Keating to succeed. They want many Zoe Keatings. It's better off if they have a bunch of Zoe Keatings in addition to some Warner music.

Leo: I would hope they're smart enough. Their actions don't seem to be living up to that but I would hope so.

Jeff: Too, we should - [crosstalk]

Leo: The way this resolves will tell us a lot, won't it?

Jeff: I used to have an old city editor who had a tickle file, as he called it. He'd put something in the folder and say, “In six months, I'm going to look this up. In three months, I'm going to look this up.” This is a story where we should follow, Jason, if you've got a calendar, put this in here. We should come back in two months and see what's happened with this one.

Leo: I would hope that this is not a similar case to the Android conversation we had earlier where YouTube goes, “Oh, it's open. It's free. It's wonderful.” Then as soon as they get you in their web, boom. We got you. I would hope that this isn't a trend.

Danny: That's all right. Facebook just posted that they have 3 million views per day of video as part of their statistics.

Leo: That's the thing, not that Facebook would be any better, but I do think there are other choices. There's Vimeo, there's other places and I would hope there would be enough competition - I'm sure that's part. If Google is being evil, that's the calculus. “How long do we have to appear open to close down the other guys and then!”

Jeff: That's where Danny's point is right. Facebook looming there with video plays - YouTube has a monetization structure - [crosstalk]

Danny: But then it goes to the broader issue of, you know, this sounds tiresome but Google was the search company that was supposed to point you toward content. Now Google's a media company that wants to own and control its own content. Then it -

Jeff: Well, Danny …

Danny: It is! It has conflicts.

Jeff: We have to fight all the time.

Leo: Jeff and I have this fight all the time because I agree with you.

Jeff: They don't really own it. They don't really own the content.

Danny: They own pages that they drive people to, where they want to have people land. So, you know, they are in competition with other people in their own search engine. I'm not talking, they're in competition with Yelp. I'm not talking the absurd argument of, “They're fighting with other search engines.” I'm meaning, if I do a search for, “Watch Game of Thrones,” I'm going to do it right now. I get my ad that comes up, I get an ad and Google Play is the top thing.

Jeff: Danny, here's the difference. They're not making War of Thrones to compete with Game of Thrones, whereas Amazon is.

Danny: No, but they're listing themselves before iTunes. They're listing themselves before Amazon. In fact, they're listing themselves before HBO. They want to have a music service and a video service that competes with these other services. It probably makes sense and it's probably inevitable that they had to go that way. But it's difficult when you're also supposedly running a search engine that still thinks -

Jeff: Danny, search for Game of Thrones, what's the first thing that comes up?

Danny: Google Play, $2.99 an episode.

Jeff: No. I searched for Game of Thrones and HBO.com -

Leo: Log out of your customization. I see HBO, too, but -

Danny: Search for “watch Game of Thrones.” You're right, if I search for Game of Thrones, I'm getting just Game of Thrones the site that's coming up.

Jeff: Yes, I search for “watch” and they offer a service, I don't have any problem with them saying, “Hey, you can watch it on Play.” But if I'm searching for Game of Thrones, HBO comes up first.

Leo: Yes, because that's the Game of Thrones website. But if we're talking about somebody - how about, try “buy Game of Thrones.” That might be a really good one. Let's see where I can buy Game of Thrones. Number one, Amazon, then Best Buy, then Forbes with an article, then store.hbo.com. In fact, it's way down on there.

Danny: Actually, number one - go back up.

Leo: Is an ad? But then, there's the first result.

Danny: But you see over on your right-hand side, your shop for buying Game of Thrones? Those, for me, are -

Leo: That's an ad from Google Play. It says “sponsored.”

Danny: It doesn't matter that it's an ad for Game of Thrones. It's still them. Look at it. It's Google Play coming up.

Leo: It's also prettier, by the way.

Jeff: There's nothing wrong with that. Danny, go to - [crosstalk]

Leo: Well, that's a conflict of interest, Jeff.

Jeff: [crosstalk] - land up there.

Leo: That's a classic conflict of interest.

Jeff: HBO's not going to put Homeland up. They're a company. They do what company's do.

Leo: No, because Showtime makes it.

Jeff: Why are we so surprised at that? That's all. Again, I know I'm coming off like a fanboy but it's not.

Danny: It's not. Because their business, which they make most of their money off of still, is providing the ability for people to locate information across the web in a manner that's supposed to be trusted, unbiased and not skewed.

Jeff: And the listings are, but they've always had ads.

Danny: They have ads, but they also have their own content that competes with other people.

Jeff: It's not really - no. It's not really content. They don't have War of Thrones. They don't have their own show. They don't own shows.

Leo: What if Google - I would imagine this is just around the corner - does just as Netflix, Amazon and other have done, and starts making its own content. Would that change your tune?

Jeff: No, because then Danny's going to come back to me and say, “Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, I was right.” And you would be right. But right now, I'm right because they haven't done it yet.

Leo: Okay.

Danny: I don't see a difference between then, “We don't make the content,” and “We house the content.”

Leo: “We sell it.”

Danny: They have destinations. That's the thing to me. Do they have a place where they're trying to send you that's back within the Google network as opposed to sending you outside of Google? When they started, they didn't have things.

Leo: It really would be cleaner. You can't disagree with this, Jeff, it would be cleaner if Google were just a search engine. They do muddy the waters a little bit by having -

Jeff: When we get into that, Leo, right off the bat. When I ask for an airline and they give me the airline data, then the airline industry says - Saber and people like that, say, “Well, you're screwing me.” But Google says, “We're getting you right to the information you want. We're not forcing you to go through five other pages with five other ways.” As a consumer, I'll take that and give them - [crosstalk]

Danny: But there's a difference. The difference is, if you do a search - this is what I mean about the absurdity of search engines complaining about Google competing with them as opposed to content that the nation's, brands, owners or people who own and operate stuff. If I do a search and I'm trying to find a flight, presenting me with search results isn't necessarily good for Expedia but it's not taking away the ability for me to then still book the flight through the people who really matter, the airlines. Google's job is to connect me with what I want and to connect me to publishers, brands and people who have the services that I need. So the fact that, if I do a search on Google and I don't have to go then to Expedia and go through another step to get to the things is much different than if I do a search on Google and they send me to Google Play where they make their own money as opposed to pointing me over to iTunes or Amazon where the same exact service is being offered.

Jeff: But they do point you to Amazon, Danny. They do point me to Amazon. There's the search, it's right there. They pointed me to Amazon first thing.

Danny: For some things, not for all things.

Leo: This is an argument that will never end so I'm going to put it on pause. We have this all the time and I love this argument. Facebook's revenue is coming in, that's what Danny was referring to. Some information from Facebook. Huge, just huge engagement -

Jeff: What did revenue look like?

Leo: Let's see - revenue …

Danny: $10 billion.

Leo: How about profit? Net income, a little bit less. Profit, “shmoffit.” Who cares about profit? Then here, from Facebook and the YourTango folks, just a little promotional announcement on responsible relationships and you. [video plays]

Danny: $5 billion, income was $5 billion.

Leo: I'll leave the rest as an exercise to the viewer. Poor Timmy, he just doesn't get it, does he?

Jeff: Mobile accounted for 69% of ad revenue in the fourth quarter.

Leo: Parse that stuff. I'm going to do an ad while you read the Facebook results and we'll let Timmy just hang. Shame on you, Timmy.

This episode of TWiG brought to you by Personal Capital. I love Personal Capital, in fact, I know somebody who is finally fed up with their investment advisor. She was saying, “I lost money this year, this was like one of the biggest years on the stock market and I lost money. I'm moving it all to Personal Capital.” Keeping track of your investments is so important. Personal Capital's financial software makes it easy. Their one-click analyzers will let you discover your net worth. They'll let you analyze your cash flow, make it easy to budget. Really important, forecast the value of your retirement portfolio, see if you're saving and investing enough for your retirement plan. Detect 401K and mutual fund fees that are sucking your retirement away. Look, this is a problem everybody has. We've got all of our accounts online but they're each on a different website with a different password. There's no one place to look. Personal Capital brings it all together in a single page dashboard that tells you exactly what your money is doing and make sure that you're doing it right. It's your money, make more of it. Signing up is just quick and easy, you know what? It's free. It's free. You'll see the benefits immediately. Personal Capital gives you total clarity and transparency to make better investment decisions right away. I love this. I've been using this for almost three years now. Set up your free account at personalcapital.com/twig, free and the smart way to grow your money. We thank them for their support of This Week in Google, a really great company. Personalcapital.com/twig

Poor Timmy. Poor Timmy. I love her computing machine. [video continues]

Jeff: I love that, yes.

Leo: Oh, my, my, so much to learn from this video. So much to learn. All right, Facebook's results are in. What was the profit, $10 billion for the quarter?

Jeff: Revenue grew 49% in the fourth quarter, ended 2004 with 1.39 billion multi-users.

Leo: Wait, let's get that one out right in front. This is their new active monthly active user number.

Jeff: 86% of them accessing on smart phones and other mobile devices.

Leo: Remember when it was like, “Oh, Facebook, 100 million users. Oh, Facebook, 300 million users. Oh, Facebook, a billion!” 1.39 billion active users every month.

Jeff: 86% mobile.

Leo: And almost all of them mobile.

Jeff: Mobile ads accounts for 69% of ad revenue, too.

Leo: Remember, that was the other thing when Facebook went public. “Oh, they haven't cracked mobile. They'll never figure out how to make money in mobile. They can't make money.” Wow. Wow. That's pretty impressive. 86% mobile?

Jeff: Its revenue growth was exceeded by its operating expenses which grew at roughly 87% as a result of sharp increases in research and development costs, and marketing and sales spending.

Leo: And Mark doesn't care at all. That's fine. We're in investment mode, right?

Jeff: Facebook's overall revenue rose to $3.85 billion from $2.59 billion in the year-ago period. That's 54 cents a share versus the analyst estimate of 49.

Leo: So they're not making a huge amount of money, you know, $1 billion a quarter. But they're growing.

Jeff: They're growing. It's the Amazon world. They're growing.

Leo: But it's better than Amazon because Amazon had many, many quarters where they made no money. Facebook's taken a little off the top each month.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: Just to pay the rent. Wow. By the way, they have $11.2 billion in cash, so their position is good - nothing like Apple, but their position is good for acquisitions.

Jeff: What is Apple's cash now?

Leo: Oh, it's well over $130 billion, something like that. It's a big number I don't remember. Apple, by the way, just announced their revenue yesterday. They have now made more money in the last quarter than any company in the history of humankind. That's a license to steal, wow. More money than anybody - they beat the Russian Gazprom, the natural gas conglomerate from Russia for quarterly profits. They made more money than any company in the history of the world last quarter.

Jeff: I see this, now they made more than god.com.

Leo: Made more than god.com. You know, Facebook isn't in that kind of profitability but that's okay because they're making a billion a quarter, that's not bad and they're growing like crazy. Very interesting, but the main thing to me is they licked that mobile thing, which was really -

Jeff: I think, more impressive than where Google is on that, which is the advertising end.

Leo: Yes. Nobody thought they could monetize mobile.

Jeff: This is part of what Samir at Glam said, and at Mode says too, “The next thing,” he argues, “is streams.” So Facebook understands streams. Twitter understands streams. Google doesn't really have streams. They tried to with Google+, and I still like Google+, laugh at me if you will. But that's the closest thing they have to a stream whereas Facebook, streams are mobile and streams with ads inserted, that's what is working for now. I don't know how long that's going to go but that's working for now.

Leo: Do you think Facebook will ever have a revenue sharing system like YouTube does? I mean, here's an opportunity for - you were talking about this, Danny. There's an opportunity for Facebook here for people like Zoe Keating if they offer them monetization. Could Facebook do that? Would Facebook do that?

Danny: I think they could, you know, in order to drive people back to their Pages. The difficulty is that Facebook doesn't have a music service in the way that Google does. I think one of the things that kind of saves Facebook from the issues that Google has had with YouTube is that you don't typically go to Facebook, I think, and do your searching for videos. In fact, I even have to go look and see if video works, right? People go to Facebook because they think, “I want to hear this song,” and you search for it, you find the song and you play it. Facebook is much more about video discovery and pushing out the videos that they want. So they could make Zoe a star if they decided they wanted to make her a star by saying, “Great, let's make sure we're pushing more of her things that are out there.” But it's certainly giving people who are doing videos a new area to be exposed. I still think it's a bit different in the way people sometimes find people on YouTube. Of course you have people who tune into YouTube channels just because I want to hear this from a particular thing.

Leo: Of course, Zoe Keating does have a Facebook page and you can like her, but there's no rev share back to her. It's purely promotional.

Jeff: But there is an opportunity there. Danny and I were at a conference called Newsgeist a few months ago where Danny was brilliant. One of these we talked about, there was putting content in containers so you could embed it. If you could embed something on to Facebook, on to Twitter and on to Google+ and keep your business model at some level with that, then I think that opens up a tremendous amount for content creators across these services. Now, where do those services do it? One thing we talked to Google about that meeting was saying, “Google+, it's not taking the world over. So you can -” Sorry, my lights went off.

You know, you could use Google+ as a way to kind of push Facebook and Twitter a bit and do best practice with content creators. Ironic, given the discussion we just had about YouTube, YouTube being an embeddable content container with a business model attached was kind of the model for that. What I would hope is it could be used elsewhere, including even in Facebook.

Danny: What is this thing that you said they would use?

Jeff: You and I talked about it when we were at that session about what could Google do at Newsgeist, there was talk about basically, embeddable content containers.

Danny: Google+? No, I'm just …

Leo: On Google+, you just invented Google+. My god, you're a genius!

Jeff: I see you, Danny. I see you.

Danny: But yes, yes.

Jeff: I said that you were a nice guy, Danny.

Danny: I should let go of some Google+ hate. It's been a while.

Leo: There's really trouble because video just doesn't express sarcasm well. It's not your fault.

Jeff: No, America doesn't express sarcasm well.

Leo: You know, it's interesting. When I go to Zoe Keating's Facebook page in her About, it says her web page it twitter.com/zoekeating - I mean, @zoecello. So maybe this is a lesson we all should learn. You need a website. Is that really old school, old-fashioned?

Danny: No, no, no. For goodness sake's, everyone should have a website with your own domain name. It's like, do you want to have your own phone number that you control? She does - [crosstalk]

Leo: Actually, she does because he blog posts are all on zoekeating.com, so I take that back.

Danny: She probably does all on tumblr, but you know.

Leo: It's tumblr. Is tumblr like having your own website?

Danny: Not if it says tumblr.com after your own name.

Leo: It does.

Danny: See, so then here's what happens. In five years, tumblr crashes. Somebody buys it and it goes all Geocity and your home is gone. And on tumblr, you could be zoekeating.com and you should be, or whatever you made up.

Leo: Because then you could redirect.

Danny: Wherever you want to go.

Jeff: I mean, I had that problem way back when with Blogger.

Danny: I think that's also a lesson you're finding a lot of people start to realize where they thought, as Facebook picked up, “I just have Facebook page now. I'm just putting everything to Facebook.” Suddenly, they're like, “Where's all my traffic from Facebook gone?” It's like, well, you know, you didn't build your own house. You rented or leased somebody else's house.

Leo: And they can take it away.

Danny: So build your own house, set up your franchises, wherever the traffic is.

Jeff: There was another argument to be made. I agree with you, Danny, but if you look at what Andy Carvin has done under the Omidyar conversation with reported.ly. With reported.ly, he's on Twitter, he's on Facebook. They're on Twitter, they're on Facebook. They're on Medium and the closest thing they have, I think, to a homepage is on Medium.

Danny: You know what, people on Medium are going to discover the same damn thing. They're going to go off on Medium because it's all hot, it's the new tumblr or whatever. Down the line, they may be like, “Oh, I actually want to move to the next hot thing but I can't.”

Leo: Let me ask this, if you have a Zoe -

Jeff: You don't remember, you kids, what happened to us - [crosstalk]

Leo: Let me ask this. If you have, as Zoe has, @zoecello, 1 million followers on Twitter. Don't you always have a channel for saying, “I'm no longer on tumblr. Come to this site?”

Danny: You do but you've got people out on tumblr who then have to find you. By the way, all those links that people started pointing to your thing go away. Google kind of cares about that stuff as well. It's not hard to have your own home in most places.

Leo: It can live on tumblr, it just needs to be -

Danny: You can still be on tumblr. You can still say, “I want to have my tumblr and I'm going to post over there and point you to my main thing.” Or however you want to do it. Although, you know, I get that it can be a headache for some people at first. But I think it is a short-term headache that saves you from a long-term one.

Leo: Apparently, she does have zoekeating.com. So we're not singling you out, Zoe. We're just -

Danny: No, no. That's the other thing, too. It's really easy to sit back and say, “Someone should do this, someone do that.” I'm really a big believer in that you actually want to know why people are doing certain things. Some people want to be out on - I think, on Search Engine Land, we have a tumblr because there's people out there and we're not worried if that tumblr goes away, what will we do? But it's not our main house, right? It's like, “Hey, there's a tumblr neighborhood going up. We're moving in as well. And by the way, if the party gets big, come on over to our house, we've got more room.”

Leo: Here's one. The cops don't like Waze. They say this could be dangerous, that Waze tells you when there's a police officer on the road.

Jeff: Big bad Google again.

Leo: They call it a stalking feature.

Jeff: Which is ridiculous.

Leo: I doubt cop killers use Waze but anyway, they're campaigning to pressure Google to turn off - because Google owns Waze now, the feature that warns drivers when police are nearby. It could put lives in danger.

Jeff: Basic lesson is, you can't control information any more. We'll find some way to know where you are.

Leo: That information gets there because other Waze users spotted a police officer. Usually the reason for it is that it's a speed trap or they just want to let you know you should drive more carefully because there's an officer.

Jeff: It could also be an indication that there's been an accident or something, and there's a cop there for some reason.

Leo: You have a button for accident, too.

Jeff: You do, yes.

Leo: My experience is this is more like, “Hey, slow down.”

Jeff: But Google's answer was, “The more people think there are cops all over, the slower they're going to drive, which is actually better.”

Leo: Julia Mossler, speaking for Waze, says, “Waze does work with the New York police department and others around the world by sharing information. These relationships keep citizens safe, promote faster emergency response and help alleviate traffic congestion.”

Danny: I mean, it's hard because whenever they do a DUI at checkpoint, they're required by law to tell you they're going to be there.

Leo: Oh, really? They have to announce there's a DUI checkpoint?

Danny: They have to pre-announce where they're going to be. So -

Jeff: Really?

Danny: Yes.

Leo: Why is that?

Danny: Because people have a right not to, I guess, get into a search area. I don't know why it is. Maybe it's just the California law, but they have to announce them in advance. Also, when you come up to a checkpoint, you have to have the ability to turn away from that checkpoint if you don't want to go through it.

Jeff: Really? You're kidding.

Leo: Not in my neck of the woods.

Danny: I think I did a story on checkpoints once, so -

Leo: Not in my neck of the woods, out here they block all the turns.

Danny: They're probably violating the law and if you actually got a ticket - first of all, if you got a ticket, I'd hope that you did. Sorry, you know. But you're supposed to be able to turn off. That's part of the way the law works.

Leo: This is not the first time. Four US senators in 2011 asked Apple to remove all applications that alert users to drunk driving checkpoints. Nokia removed the sobriety check tracking function in one of their apps. Trapster was eventually discontinued at the end of the year but the founder says it's because Waze did so much of a better job. I understand that police would be nervous about this.

Danny: But if you were going to - I mean, you can totally understand, especially with what happened in New York. My first initial reaction when I saw that was like, “Wow, yes. That is scary.” Then if you think a bit more, it's like it is not difficult for you to figure out where police are without having it. If you're going to go out and try to find a police officer, you probably don't need to rely on Waze to figure out how to do it.

Jeff: The truth is, people don't just have guys who are on patrol in there. The truth is, they're putting up speed traps and God help me again, Google has a point that you end up slowing down. The cops don't get to zap as many people but if people are actually going slower, it's better.

Danny: Well, when we get the auto-driving cars, it won't matter because nobody will be speeding at all. It will be good.

Jeff: They'll report on all your movements and then we'll have a privacy crisis and that'll be the world.

Danny: I believe that's Grizzle.

Leo: What is Grizzle? Dare I ask?

Danny: Parks and Recs last night was so funny. Grizzle was this big Google-like company that's moved in and their site set in the future, like 2018. They're like, these drones appear and start delivering everybody gifts based on data mining all their searches and emails to try to get them to let them build something.

Leo: It's like Taylor Swift.

Danny: Yes, good one. No, Taylor's sweet. She would never do anything like that.

Leo: There's so much here and I don't want to belabor the point. Do you guys have anything - oh. I thought this was interesting. We talked, I think, last week about the thought that Google was anticipated to launch its own wireless company, an NVNO, sometime this year. Maybe in the first half of the year would be based on Sprint and T-Mobile and that's kind of the interesting new information is that Google would decide where you're getting the better signal from WiFi, T-Mobile or Sprint -

Jeff: Or what the better price is.

Leo: That would be even more interesting. Then you just choose it automatically. So you would be, if you were using Google's wireless carrier, in effect, a customer of all three, or Sprint and T-Mobile plus WiFi. Google did not have a comment on this but I think that's fascinating.

Jeff: I think it really is.

Leo: I would almost be tempted to say, you know, Sprint and T-Mobile would never allow that and yet, Sprint sells wholesale services to NVNOs where they're allowing them to undercut Sprint's own pricing. So I think -

Jeff: So does T-Mobile because our friends at - is it Tingle?

Leo: Ting.

Jeff: Thank you, are going to do, I think - aren't they going to go and have now a -

Leo: T-Mobile as well?

Jeff: GSM? They have GSM.

Leo: That must be it, yes. Isn't that interesting?

Jeff: They announced two things. They were going to do that and they were going to do - yes. “Ting to offer GSM network.”

Leo: Good. Well, I like this idea and hope Google does it. That'd be great, right? You just get whatever the best is. That's my concern about Sprint in general is Sprint is fine in some places. It's not great around here. It would be nice if you could switch off.

Danny: Who wouldn't want that?

Jeff: If you go to India, every phone you buy there has two SIMs.

Leo: For that reason, yes. Not here.

Jeff: The other story there that I think is really, really important since I have a grandfathered unlimited AT&T plan, the FTC just said that unlimited means unlimited. It's enforcing the damn dictionary.

Leo: It says, “Unlimited with throttling does not count.”

Danny: Now unless you get into the article, “Unless, you know, you made it clear.”

Leo: I tell you, I've gone into stores and said, “Wait a minute, unlimited. Does that mean it's unlimited, unlimited I can get as much as I want?” “Yes.” “Will you slow me down at any point?” “No.”

Danny: Totally fine.

Leo: AT&T and Verizon both have stopped offering unlimited plans to new customers, but unfortunately, they can't get Jeff Jarvis to leave. A lot of people are holding on through all sorts of loopholes to their unlimited service. This came, actually, out of a case with Tracfone. In fact, if you were a Tracfone customer who purchased an unlimited plan and was slowed down, you may be eligible for refunds. According to the FTC, Tracfone generally slowed data service when a customer used 1-3 gigabytes and suspended data service at 4-5 gigabytes. The case is about - it is the FTC, let's face it. The case is about false advertising, it's not about throttling. We're not challenging throttling in and of itself.

Danny: They should just do it because I don't know how the FTC - I don't know how they can go through and say, “Oh, unlimited is not unlimited if you throttle unless you make it clear to people that you will limit their unlimited thing and then it's okay to still call it that.”

Leo: No, unlimited just means we're not going to limit the number of gigabytes you get.

Danny: No, no. Unlimited means, you don't limit. By definition, unlimited means that you do not have limits. It's like saying, you know, uninflated means it's inflated but only partially.

Leo: I like it. Okay.

Danny: I just - ugh. That's, by the way, what drives me nuts about T-Mobile the most. I think they do these great, great advances to get people going off and raised the whole industry. Then you get into all this fine print and are like, “Oh, no, this is limited here. Oh, that's limited there.” Ugh. So just give us unlimited.

Leo: FTC should ban fine print.

Danny: Let them use their 5 gigabytes and then when they're done with using their 5 gigabytes, cut them off? Well, then that's not unlimited.

Leo: Angelina Jolie movies.

Jeff: My colleagues did both of your arguments for you. If you go to Android, I just saw this on Google+ because I actually still use Google+. I find fascinating things there and interesting people there that you're missing out on. But that's your choice. On your Android phone -

Danny: I am there every day.

Jeff: If on your Android phone, you type in, “Angelina Jolie movies.”

Leo: Which I have done.

Jeff: You get this pretty little grid.

Leo: I get most popular first.

Jeff: Oh, maybe you don't have the latest version. There you go.

Leo: This is the grid. Newest first, oldest first and then I get a list of -

Jeff: No, look at mine. Look at mine.

Leo: What's yours look like - oh, I don't got that.

Jeff: Look at the pretty grid. Now, this is interesting. If I go to -

Danny: Where is this, on Google+ or where?

Jeff: Just Google. But I'm going to make your argument for you. So then I pick on, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, okay, and I scroll down -

Leo: I wonder where I can get Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Hm.

Jeff: It tells me that it's available on Google Play and YouTube. So there's your point. Now, mind you, I can't use iTunes on this so it wouldn't do me any good to have iTunes show up.

Leo: I'm on Chrome on my Cyanogen mod -

Danny: Where are you clicking again? I want to see this again. So you clicked on Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then -

Jeff: Do you get this pretty grid?

Danny: This thing, okay. No, I see that and then I click on that. Then it was like trailers - I'm on Mr. and Mrs. Smith, great movie. Great movie.

Leo: Really?

Jeff: It's still pretty and you scroll a little bit.

Danny: Well, it was all right.

Leo: Really, you want to stand by that?

Danny: It was okay. Yes, I'm scrolling up. What am I seeing that's different? Well, yes. But it's also available on YouTube. Also available on Vudu. But you know what it is, Jeff, by the way? I probably have the Vudu app installed on my phone or it's a link over there. Technically, I'm betting you, Google would tell you that if you had Amazon Instant Video installed on your phone, that might turn into a link. But, you know, it is interesting that they still have their own stuff first.

Leo: Apps and anything better.

Jeff: If I try to click on Vudu, it tells me that Chrome Beta has stopped. A-ha! Conspiracy.

Leo: YouTube now streams HTML-5 video by default. That's good news. For a while, you had to choose HTML-5 as a choice but that, I guess, means no more Flash. Thank you. Thank you, YouTube. Pat them on the back for that. Google Fiber will come next to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Rawley Durham.

Jeff: I'm so jealous.

Leo: I know. Still not on that list. NBC discontinuing the video podcasts. Do we care?

Jeff: No. Evidently, all the networks are.

Leo: Why is that? Nobody watched them?

Jeff: They didn't take off. The old networks are stopping them.

Leo: I wonder why not. Skymall -

Jeff: This idea of podcasting having a larger share of ear? There's also a larger share of eye.

Leo: Well, audio is still bigger than video for most of our shows. It's not the case for all of our shows, iPad Today, for instance, which is very visual, has more video subscribers.

Jeff: What's the proportion for TWiT and TWiG, roughly?

Leo: I think it's probably 60/40, audio to video, but I don't know. It's always around 70/30 or 60/40, something like that. But that number is way up and we only started doing video five or six years ago. It's been growing. How about this? Man, Matthew Inman has power. He has social power. He, Ilon Lee, and Shane Small decided to do a kickstarter for a kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette, a card game called “Exploding Kittens.” Players take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game. You know, what, this is UNO with exploding kittens. It's exactly the same game, I think. So, they thought, “If we could raise, maybe, I don't know, $10 thousand on a kickstarter, we could go ahead.” Within 20 minutes, they got $10 thousand. Within an hour, they got - they are now up to $4.4 million for a card game.

Jeff: Jesus.

Leo: With 22 days to go.

Jeff: What does it cost to buy a card game?

Jason: It's like $20, I think, is the entry price.

Leo: Well, they've got $20 for the demo deck but of course, a lot of backers for the $35 NSFW deck with horrible images, too horrible to include in the kid-friendly version. That's the big one. That's 104 thousand folks. 200 backers pledged $100 or more. Five backers pledged $500 plus you get a custom card.

Jason: Drawn just for you.

Leo: Just for you. What the hell? I am in the wrong business.

Jason: Especially when it's a card deck. A card deck! I mean, I realize there's a profit but here it's just pure profit, printing that stuff.

Leo: Pure profit. This is like, “We would like to print money. Would you like to buy in? For every $5 you give me, I'll give you a dollar bill. Now how much would you pay?”

Danny: That's what you should do. You should do a card game that's made out of $5 and sell it for $20. Yes.

Leo: Unbelievable.

Danny: Your card game would be a $5 all cut up. Who can put it together? I'm thinking about stuff.

Leo: This is the equivalent of What's App selling for $1 billion or $2 billion. This is like, “Holy cow.”

Danny: I mean, they've actually - you're getting a product so, you know, hey. It's great.

Leo: Actually, you know what? You're not getting a product. There's no guarantee you're going to get a product.

Danny: Yes, they are.

Leo: I'm sure they will.

Danny: You're going to get a deck of cards.

Leo: I'm sure they will, but as you know, with kickstarters, there's no promise.

Danny: Oh, Oatmeal is not going to not give you the cards.

Leo: I know and of course he will. Besides, the fact that you paid $35 for a 50-cent deck of cards, there's no reason for him not to.

Danny: You pay that for other kinds of games. It's not the materials, it's the art and the game. It's like saying, “When I bought my Monopoly -”

Leo: $4 million worth of cards?

Danny: Yes, but it's like saying when I bought my Monopoly board for $15 that it actually cost me $15.

Leo: I think people are really tapping into the kitten hatred movement and we really ought to investigate that.

Danny: I think Oatmeal is a phenomenon.

Leo: Oatmeal is amazing. Matthew is amazing.

Jeff: As opposed to Go Daddy, which has the puppy hating movement.

Leo: Is this their Super Bowl commercial?

Jeff: There's two puppies to raise you, there's that, plus Uber tomorrow, for $30 is bringing puppies to you.

Danny: Now it's all devolving. Sorry, it's a great ad.

Leo: Okay, so the Go Daddy ad, this is going to be their Super Bowl ad.

Jeff: It was. It was going to be their ad.

Leo: It's not some sexy thing? I mean, they got away from the sexist stuff.

Danny: You've got to go find the Budweiser Super Bowl ad that's out now and play it, and we'll all be very touched. Then go find the Go Daddy puppy ad which is funny unless, you know, you don't agree with - [crosstalk]

Leo: I think it's, remember, Go Daddy ran those very sexist ads where you have the geek being kissed by the super model and the girls -

Jeff: Well, less super model and more porn star, but yes.

Leo: You know. Then last year, new CEO Bob Parsons said, “Goodbye,” took his elephant gun and rode off into the sunset. Then the new guys, last year, there were women in their ads but they were all web entrepreneurs. Apparently, that didn't really make it so they're back to controversy but not sexism. Let's watch the Go Daddy Super Bowl ad. [video plays] A dog being dropped off … running … just by the road, sad. It's raining and it's cold. Wait, here's a barn. He's found his way back. Oh, God. Well, I guess they said, “Hey, controversy. We don't have to be sex, we can just make fun of puppy mills.”

Danny: Oh, play us the Budweiser one now. Come on, you guys.

Leo: You want to get the bad taste out of your mouth? You want the Budweiser one instead?

Danny: Yes, please.

Leo: This is, I think, what they're making fun of.

Danny: It's just weird that the Budweiser ad just came out today, I think, and theirs came out yesterday.

Leo: They must have known, right?

Danny: Maybe.

Leo: Maybe they knew something. Here's the Budweiser ad, this will make you feel better. [video plays] Little doggy running out of a barn. Wasn't this last year?

Danny: No, no. Same dog.

Leo: Taking the horse carrier.

Danny: That guy should not be allowed to have animals, by the way. I think we've declared, right?

Leo: The dog is lost because he - oh no, it's raining. There's the Clydesdale. He's sad because he lost his dog but at least he's got his horse. Wait. The dog has come back to the barn. The Clydesdale spots the dog. The dog looks back. There's a wolf. Oh, my God. The dog barking at the wolf. He's facing off. The horses are coming. Here come the Clydesdales to rescue the dog! The wolf runs away! The horses are - welcome back. Meanwhile, the doofus who lost the dog in the first place is standing at the window with a cup of coffee. He sees his dog running back and then goes to Go Daddy to start a website to sell his dog.

Jeff: Sell the dogs.

Leo: It's going to be a hell of a game, Sunday. Just a little program note, by the way, we are starting TWiT an hour early so I won't miss a single commercial in the Super Bowl this year. We'll start at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m., Eastern time. Bartunde and Nick Bilton, it's always fun. Let's take a break. When we come back, Leo's tool, Jeff's number and Danny's thing.

Jeff: That sounds a little obscene.

Leo: You don't want to miss that! Our show today brought to you by HipChat. I love HipChat. We use HipChat every single day here at the brick house. How is your team communicating? Are they using a variety of emails, solutions, IM, a little bit of texting here, a little Cloud storage here, a little document sharing here? HipChat takes it all, puts it in one place. Email is too slow. Meetings get sidetracked. Regular IM does not work well. HipChat is so good, plus completely secure. It uses SSL to keep your teams in sync. It's like messaging but it's so much better because it integrates in the top developer tools like GitHub, Jira and Zendesk, 57 services in all that HipChat plays nice with. HipChat brings your entire project, your entire team's communications together. IM, video chat, document sharing, screen sharing, system updates, code sharing in a simple platform. We used it - we first used it with our web design team. Now we're using it when the engineering sails. We're going to set up our host HipChat soon. HipChat, it's easy to set up. It's fun to use. It makes your team wildly productive and right now, it's free. I want you to try HipChat Plus for free, don't need to give them a credit card. Just visit HipChat.com/twig, click on “Start Chatting,” to sign up, invite a few team members and you'll get all the features of HipChat Plus free for 30 days. After the free trial if you want to keep it free, you can use the freemium version, which doesn't have all the integrations but still is awesome. HipChat.com/twig. HipChat, your team, your project, in sync instantly. We do love it.

I'm trying to think what my tool should be. I've got a couple of things. This is, I think, kind of neat. It's a journaling app called Journey that has a corresponding - let me just real quickly pull it up on my Chrome and make sure I don't have any revealing journal entries. It's an Android device, Android app. It is a Chrome extension and I really like it. It's called Journey and it's got a few features. If you've been looking to journal, this is nice. You can add images to it. It will automatically put the weather forecast in your journal entries and your location in your journal entries, which is kind of cool. It's free. It's called Journey.

They also have an Inspirations page if you're looking for things to inspire you.

Jason: Is this it?

Leo: Yes, that's it. This just came out last week and I really like it. To inspire you to write, you pick an Inspiration and make it be the beginning of that entry. So, for instance, “Bruce Lee - Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” If I like that quote, I tap the light bulb and it now becomes the beginning of a new journal entry. There's lots of them. There's new ones all the time. I actually am kind of fond of this. I've been using it a lot. Journey, it'll bring journal writing back into your life and I really like it. It can even become a photo journal, a journal of your travels. What is the URL there? Is it getjourney?

Jason: It was 2appstudio.com/journey.

Leo: Jeff, you got a number for us? There's a lot of them this week.

Jeff: There was a fascinating column in the New York Times. Steven Davidowitz was looking at online behavior and sex. So I found lots and lots of numbers here, a few of them. He analyzed a general social survey as a source to get a start off here and found that heterosexual men said they performed 63 sex acts per year, using condoms 23% of the time. That adds up to 1.6 billion heterosexual condom uses per year. Heterosexual women said they performed 55 sex acts per year using a condom 16% of the time, that adds up to about 1.1 billion heterosexual condom uses per year. 1.6 versus 1.1, well, who's telling the truth? Men or women? Neither. According to Nielsen, fewer than 600 million condoms are sold every year.

Leo: Roughly twice the number of actual sales? Wow.

Jeff: Then it goes on and goes on to look at what Google can review about American attitudes toward sex. He said, on Google, the top complaint about marriage is not having sex. Searches for “sexless marriage” are three and a half times more common than “unhappy marriage,” eight times more common than “loveless marriage.” There are 16 times more complaints about a spouse not wanting sex than about a married partner not being willing to talk. Google searches for “sexless relationship” are second only to searches for “abusive relationship.”

Leo: I'd say they go together.

Jeff: Yes, I'd say so. On Google there are five and a half times more complaints about an unmarried partner not wanting sex than an unmarried partner refusing to text back. There are more complaints about a boyfriend who won't have sex than a girlfriend won't. Complaints about husbands and wives are roughly equal. “Taken together, the data suggests that America has managed to have sex about 30 times per year or once every 12 days.” Now, Screwgle searches suggests one predominant reason - enormous anxiety, much of it misplaced. Start with, guess what, “men's neuroses.” “It is in news that men worry about their genitals but the degree of this worry is rather profound. From a Google search alone, we cannot know the gender of the user, however we can often make a pretty good guess,” he says. I'm reading here. “For searches about sex and body parts, like 'my penis ___'. Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body part, more than their lungs, liver, ears, feet, nose, mouth and mind.” Side note, “One of the more common questions for Google about a penis is, 'how big is my penis?'”

Leo: What? You can't Google that.

Jeff: That men turned to Google rather than a ruler with this question is, in my opinion, a quintessential expression of our digital era.

Leo: I don't understand. Why would you Google that?

Jeff: I don't know.

Leo: The irony is, if you keep going, that more than 40% of complaints about a partner's penis is that it's too big.

Jeff: “Pain” is the most common word used in Google searches with the phrase “___ during sex.”

Leo: We don't have to read the rest of these.

Jeff: “Peeing, crying and farting round out the top five.”

Leo: Why are you people searching for this stuff?

Jeff: This is why Google rocks. You missed that story, Danny. You have every search engine story there is but you missed that story. I'm just shocked.

Danny: I am shocked.

Leo: Very few people search for “how to make your penis smaller.” Interesting, only 1% of all searches.

Danny: Well, that's - there we are, searching for sex. I'm going to have to read all this now.

Leo: This is in the Sunday Review of Books, oddly enough, at the New York Times. Steven Davidowitz writing.

Jeff: It's a cool column, really funny.

Leo: You know what's cool about it? He got it all by just looking up stuff on Google. Where do you get this information?

Danny: Where was he getting the data about men versus women?

Jeff: He mentioned that -

Leo: He just says, “Analysis of Google data.”

Jeff: He has that in there, why you can't tell if it's men versus women but he mixes up -

Leo: Well, if you say, “My penis,” you assume that's a man. But where is he getting all this? It all says “analysis of Google data,” so does Google publish all this stuff?

Jeff: By proportion, yes.

Leo: So where would I go to look this stuff up? Danny, would you know?

Danny: On the men versus women, I think you can - I'm not certain where he's getting these. Like, “Men's top Google concern about steroids is whether it might make their penis smaller.”

Leo: Just because they use the word “my,” I think.

Danny: But I don't know where he's …

Leo: Where would he get that?

Danny: Because it's like, okay, you have to get a list of all the searches related to penises. Then you have to get it ranked by number.

Leo: How do you get all the searches for academic reasons?

Danny: Google might have provided them, or you could use things like Google Trends.

Leo: He may have actually queried Google. I'd have liked to listen to that phone call.

Danny: See, like when he says, “Top 10 searches about 'my penis' include size, average monthly surges for the phrasing,” so … you could do that if you go into the Google Keyword tool, then do a search for penis and you're breaking it down by things. Then I suppose you could break it down from there by demographic. So now I'm going to have to go look. Thanks very much, but I'm not going to do that right now.

Leo: Let's have Danny do his thing and then we'll wrap this sucker up.

Jeff: Beat that, Danny. Beat that, Sullivan. That's what I'm telling you.

Leo: He has been, I can tell. Go ahead.

Danny: My thing was going to be semi-self promotional, I suppose.

Leo: Go ahead.

Danny: The Super Bowl is coming up. Every year, we run a thing on Marketing Land called “The Hashtag Bowl.” We'll be doing it again on Sunday where we look at all the ads that run on the Super Bowl and we count up how many of them have hash tags or which social media network is mentioned the most. At the end of it, we declare a winner. Last year, Facebook beat Twitter by just one mention. Sometimes people - yes. It was very, very close. The year before that, Twitter had won. We also just look at how often people are putting hash tags and we'll do followup coverage, like how effective was putting all this social media into the ads? If you did search for these hash tags, what did you get or where did you land? So it'll be interesting to see if we get some breakouts. Will we have more Snapchat in there? What other kinds of things will come along? Maybe Google+ will show a big surprise and will show more integration with that. It hasn't happened yet, but you know.

Jeff: You just don't let up.

Danny: First of all, you can see it's in our score board, so we care about it enough that we actually consider counting it and it's third on the list. So there is some respect.

Leo: It's a distant third.

Danny: But you know, we're looking at what's going with it. Last year, the numbers weren't so good.

Jeff: How's LO doing?

Danny: Oh, yes. No. Hell no.

Leo: I like this, this is fun. The social media.

Danny: Yes, so we'll have a live vlog during the game where we look at all the ads and as soon as it's over, we'll declare the winner of which social network was mentioned the most.

Leo: Does anyone do ads any more without a hash tag?

Danny: Yes, some of them do. I think last year, half of them didn't have hash tags or didn't have social media mentions. It's very common, too, that they do these things and then they don't pay attention to Search. So they put the ads up, then you can go Search and they've done a terrible job about helping you what the official ad was or the official information, that sort of stuff. So it's kind of fun to look at it. We're also going to give out an award this year where we talk about which official campaign, official advertiser, did the best job with the Super Bowl during their ads and social media tie-ins and who was the best unofficial news jacker.

Leo: Of course, Facebook will have, once again, its Super Bowl hub.

Danny: I thought that was new this year.

Leo: They've not done that before? You can like your favorite team.

Jeff: What is the Facebook hub?

Danny: It's all things Super Bowl.

Leo: Facebook.com/SuperBowl.

Danny: You can go tune in there and post. If you start tweeting - not tweeting. If you do a post from that page right now, it'll tell everybody you're watching the Super Bowl. Do “Update Status” and it'll automatically say “Watching Super Bowl,” and that's kind of hard when it hasn't happened yet.

Leo: From this page?

Danny: Yes, see where it says “Update status?” Just put anything in there, click and put your cursor in there and type a text.

Leo: Type a text. I am … oh my God, you're right. Not watching the Super Bowl right now. And post that and now it says, very confusingly, I am while I'm not. In fact, it would be amazing if I were. Oh, and then look at how it handles this. It's got a little thing with the logos of each team, a little football emoji. Wow. This is good marketing.

Danny: Yes, they want to get people over there.

Leo: This is the worst, by the way, picture in their banner at the top, though.

Jeff: What is that?

Leo: It's the blurry - it's literally a blurry photo of Phoenix.

Jeff: It looks like deflated footballs.

Leo: Oh, so Facebook. Here's a little tip. When you do a big picture at the top of your page, only the top part shows up. So those in-focus football helmets actually aren't visible.

Jeff: It looks like two giant turds.

Leo: You'd think Facebook would know how to use Facebook a little better than that. Look at that. Here's a little tip. You can go right in there and scroll your image around until the football helmets are the visible portion of the image. I would maybe fix that.

Danny: I like the cactus behind, doing the middle finger.

Leo: The blurry cactus picture. What is this?

Danny: Oh, there's a football in it, too. Wow.

Leo: Facebook, what the hell? Don't you even know how your platform works?

Danny: It probably looks better on your mobile. Mobile first.

Leo: That's how we do it.

Danny: Mobile first.

Leo: Now I have to try this. Oh, but I don't have the Facebook app on my mobile.

Jeff: You don't?

Leo: No, why should I? I hate Facebook.

Danny: But you just posted that you're not watching the Super Bowl on it.

Leo: I'm not watching the Super Bowl on Facebook. I hate it. Let me see, just out of curiosity.

Jeff: Hate's a strong word, Leo.

Leo: I have to log in and all that crap. No, Facebook makes me feel bad about myself whenever I use it, like right now. I want to thank you all for being here, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes This Week in Google. Thank you to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. You can see why everybody says you've got to read Search Engine Land. He's the man, he's been covering it longer than anybody.

Jeff: He's the man.

Danny: Very kind.

Leo: He's the king of the hill. He's the Al Unser, Jr. of Search.

Danny: If you're going to go with a racecar driver, why not Sullivan?

Leo: I know, that's a little weird, isn't it? I don't know what I was thinking. Thank you, Danny, really appreciate your being here today. Congratulations on winning the Indy 500.

Danny: It was a great honor. Always good when I get a speeding ticket.

Leo: It's like saying Jeff Jarvis is the Jay Rosin of Journalism professors.

Jeff: Hey, hey.

Leo: He's the Jackie Stuart of journalism professors at the CUNY, City University of New York. Thank you, Jeff, really appreciate it. Always a pleasure, welcome back from Davos. We missed you last week.

Jeff: I missed you guys. I thought of you at 10 o' clock at night as I was rushing down the hill. I thought, I don't have to slip and slide now.

Leo: Have a great week. We do this show and we'll be back next week, every Wednesday at 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern time, 2100 UTC if you want to join in with the live festivities, the shenanigans. But if you don't, don't worry. We make on demand audio and video available after the fact. We take out the penis jokes but we leave everything else in at TwiT.tv/twig.

Jeff: That didn't go over the line, did it?

Leo: No. What is the line, after all? Is there a line, really? I don't think there's a line any more. I can't find the line. Maybe that's just because I'm getting old.

Jeff: There's things I didn't read in that column, though.

Leo: Not much. You can also watch -

Jeff: I left out the ol' factory parts.

Leo: Okay, thank you very much. Now I've got to go back and read that article. We'll see you next week! Thank you everybody, take care on This Week in Google. Bye, bye.