 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thank you to all of you, including Jeff Wilkes, Father Cadan, Pele Glendale, and our new patrons, Jesse and Drew. On this episode of DTNS, Spotify's podcast strategy is in some flux. The European Commission is after Google again, but Chromebooks get some creative boosts. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, June 22nd, 2023 from Studio Mac OS Sonoma. I'm Sarah Lane from Lovely Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Rich Trafalino from Deep in the heart of Texas. I'm Justin Robert Deog and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Well, we are going to talk about all the things on the show today. But as always, we start with some quick hits. DuckDuckGo released a public beta of its privacy focused browser for Windows. The beta browser has been available for Mac OS for more than a year. But the Windows version uses the Windows Blink browser engine and therefore reports itself as Microsoft Edge. It includes a tool to watch YouTube videos without affecting your recommendations plus third party tracker blocking, enforced encryption, cookie pop-up management and email protection. Microsoft will raise the retail price of the Xbox Series X game console in many countries starting August 1st. The price will rise to $650 in Canada, 480 pounds in the UK, 550 euros in most of Europe, as you can imagine, and $800 in Australia. Microsoft will not raise the price in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Japan or the US. Sony raised its prices for the PS5 in most markets last year for some context, not doing this in a bubble for sure. The Xbox Series S meanwhile will remain at its current $250 price, but will also offer a model with one terabyte of storage for $349. Also starting July 6th, the price of Xbox Game Pass will rise $1 to $11 a month and Game Pass Ultimate gets a little price here up $2 from $15 to $17 a month. The information reports that V. Pappas has left their COO role at TikTok and in a memo to employees said that the time is right to move on and refocus. Pappas will stay at TikTok in an advisory role. Pappas was also the interim CEO of TikTok back in 2020. If you're saying, weren't they CEO? They were at one time, moved into the COO role in April of 2021. The Wall Street Journal sources say Twitter CEO Linda Jacarino has resolved a dispute with Google over paying its cloud for cloud services. Reportedly, Jacarino met with Google cloud head Thomas Curian and the two companies are now in discussions for a broader partnership, including things like ad spending on Twitter and the use Twitter's API. Meta released version 55 of the Quest OS for Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets. The update promises a 19 percent increase in GPU speed on Quest 2 and 11 percent boost for the Quest Pro. It also boosts the clock speed of both headsets by 26 percent. And the update supports dynamic resolution scaling, multi-touch on the browser and lets you set up a numerical passcode as an alternative to the device unlock pattern if you so desire it. All right, Rich, let's talk about what is going on with Spotify these days. Yeah, we're going to be digging into it specifically what Spotify is doing with their podcast strategy within Spotify Studios. The company has recently pivoted somewhat from its big plan for originals within its in-house studios. You may recall Spotify previously acquired a podcast that works with big names here, Gimlet and Parcast. Both teams experience a layoffs under Spotify with many pointing to Spotify exclusivity as the reason for the drop in viewership had to have that premium subscription. Spotify also had an exclusive 20 million dollar deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's production company, Archwell Audio, and the company announced that was over earlier this week. They had one podcast series as a result of that deal. Yeah, 12, 12 episodes, and that was the end of it. Now, Spotify's deals with several other big name studios and creators have also ended. And that's why I think a lot of people are trying to have this conversation of what's exactly going on here. Barack and Michelle Obama's production company Hire Ground reportedly opted not to renew its contract with the Spotify last year over the issue of being locked into that exclusivity, you know, being part of one platform. Now, we are podcast producers. We know the medium as a whole is ever evolving. We still consider ourselves in the early days. Audiences can be fickle, et cetera, et cetera, especially with so many listening options. Now, Spotify does have an exclusive with, you know, the likes of Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan still has the most widely listened to podcasts in the U.S. Now, Justin, knowing what we know about what's going on here, what do you think Spotify's next move is? Not having a TV executive run their podcast company. I think that's the biggest thing that they made a mistake with is they had Don Offstraf, who ran such gigantic sterling successes as the CW running their podcast vertical. And that's why they made these horrifying deals with Obama and Meghan and Harry as will will obviously be clear to everybody listening to a five day a week podcast. Consistency matters in this medium, not names. Sure, it would be great if Harry and Meghan were on every single day talking about various things. And you got to know them more and more and more, but they are guarded public celebrities. So is President Obama. For whatever you like or don't like about them, they're not here to be with you in your ear and the most personal medium of all time podcasting. So the reality of what they have to do is realize where their successes have been and where their failures are. Their biggest success is that they overtook Apple as the most listened to platform for podcasts. That's a huge win. That is a platform changing kind of movement. So good for them there. They've they largely panned out with Joe Rogan, which is good for them, and they've largely panned out with Bill Simmons on his ringer acquisition. And that is extraordinarily important because they allow that to not be exclusive. That is still available on all other all other podcasting platforms. And I think has continued to be a win for them and shout out to the legend Bill Simmons, who called Harry and Meghan effing grifters. Now, you know, you you mentioned Bill Simmons. And, you know, I I just want to like point. I want to point out the idea of, you know, sports anything like we're talking about podcasts, we're talking about cable news, whatever sports is something that people, many people can talk about all day, every day. It's a great daily type thing. So that is that is an exclusivity when I suppose I just don't know how many other exclusivity podcasts are going to be the former president of the United States. Like, you know, people aren't listening. Well, you're not doing it consistently every day all the time. There's something to that. Here's what matters for Spotify. You are downloading their app. You are in their ecosystem and you are more willing when you want a music subscription, which is where they make their money to sign up for Spotify music subscription. That's their play when it comes to podcasting. It's just get people in the door so they can a cell ads and be get a subscription from them. I think that they are a Patreon esk play away from really making podcasting something that matters for them financially. Because if they can take a big on that, that actually matters. And I'll point out for this for the ringer. They're not just sports. They're also pop culture. The rewatch is a massive vertical for them. And they've done very, very well outside of that. Look at what Bill Simmons did. Look at what Joe Rogan is. And you have two different versions of a success for them, either a big massive everywhere hit that you can sell ads on or a big hit that's exclusive. I think they've actually done very, very well. The biggest thing that they have suffered from is the self-inflicted injuries, two of which look like Harry and Megan. Yeah. The idea of kind of shifting the expectation that the default destination for podcasts is Apple podcast iTunes, you know, whatever, whatever the current name of that is and bringing themselves into that mixture, right? Just as a huge win. And also going along with that is kind of bringing like streaming ad tech. I know that's like the most boring thing, but like they are bringing modern ad tech to a podcasting platform, which I cannot be understated, like how rudimentary the state of advertising still is on podcasts where they're basically the only game in town that can dynamically insert ads at the time of listening to an ad break to that point. And I feel like that's the path they have to go on, like use their technical advantages to draw in, you know, people into more partnerships with them, the exclusivity that will take care of itself. Like you said, they can add on Patreon kind of level, you know, general access and then have some paywall to access, you know, behind the scenes, which brings you further into the Spotify ecosystem. But for me, it's it's the technical advantages that I feel like Spotify has to, you know, kind of double down on rather than than trying to bank on content necessarily. All right. Well, over the last few years, the European Commission has brought the hammer down on Google, hitting it with 8.25 billion euros in antitrust fines since 2017. Last I checked, that's a lot of money. Fines have come from a lot of things like Google's app bundling practices on Android to using search to steer users to its own shopping platform, some classic self-preferencing and abusing its dominant position in search ads. Now we have a recently issued statement of objections from the EC. That seems to ratchet up pressure on the company with antitrust commissioner Marguerite Vestiger saying divestiture is the only way to prevent the search giant from abusing its position against other search providers, advertisers and publishers. This comes after the US Justice Department similarly proposed a Google breakup as a possible remedy for its market dominance. Yeah. So the European Commission specifically focused on Google divesting its sell side platforms, ad exchange and double click for publishers from its demand side business, which help advertisers place ads online. And the idea is that Google providing tools that help both of those sites offer ad space and place ads creates an untenable conflict of interest, which the European Commission says has led to market abuse since way back in 2014. The EU could also hit Google with a fine of up to 10% of its annual turnover. We talked about that in a previous show recently on here on DTNS, which would be a maximum of $22 billion based on 20 22 revenue, but you know, that's a lot of money. So the statement of objections doesn't mean that Google will immediately be in court over this. However, Justin, you think about politics quite a bit. How significant is this that we're seeing both the DOJ and the EU looking at calls to break up Google? Do they work together? When I think of the European Commission and the DOJ both opposing something relating to monopoly or antitrust. I immediately think, Oh, wow, the DOJ is doing something because the European Commission does this all the time. They wake up, they go to sleep. They take a snack. They're thinking about anti-monopoly, let's break up a big company. That's like, what is what can be broken up today? Let's go ahead and get into it. All that being said, I think that there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of moving pieces. Number one, the ad market is not what it was 10 years ago. And I think if this kind of decision was being talked about 10 years ago, then this would be a different conversation. Google is in a position where they probably desperately want to protect the fact that they have this kind of system because the goose that laid the golden egg in terms of internet advertising dollars does not lay at the frequency that it once did. And so that increases their ability to want to make sure that it keeps going on forever. That being said, we will see whether or not in this tech climate, maybe they do spin it off and they have a preferential relationship with it. But I don't think at this stage, you're really, really worried about any kind of immediate movement. In fact, I would say the thing to look for is whether or not politicians look at this as a cause du jour to start ringing the bell that this should happen sooner rather than later. Yeah, that's the piece I guess that's missing for me, right? Is this is going like Google has a lot of tools that they're supposed to. Obviously, this hasn't stopped them getting fined in the EU. As you said, Justin, you know, they wake up thinking about that kind of stuff. You know, we're hearing Vestiger talking about, you know, close and fruitful cooperation with the DOJ, which is not something that we hear about, like that to me is what stood out as unusual. But until at least on the US side, we're seeing, yeah, I don't know, some political hay being made out of it. I think there are a lot of different ways this can go about. Like I said, the statement of objection does not automatically like go to any kind of court proceeding. But what it could do is definitely put Google against the negotiating table. There's a lot of different outcomes that I could see from this. They are under the alphabet umbrella, whether that, you know, like a potential spinout could be a wholly unsubsidious, it kind of like a del vmware kind of arrangement or something like that. Even still, I have to imagine as as fine happy as the European Commission has been. I don't even want to characterize it as that, but there are numerous I will investigation. There are numerous antitrust investigations still underway against Google from the EC, you know, like leveling that, that, you know, 10 percent annual turnover fine even. I feel like we will this is a multi year process still, though, seeing two giant regulators on the same page with this. I do think that is pretty remarkable. Well, and to your point a couple of minutes ago, Justin, that the ad market isn't what it once was. You know, many people in the industry would agree. Bloomberg estimating that Google properties would hold 31.5 percent of the digital ad market in 2023. My mic agrees, followed by meta properties with 20.5 percent of this year. So still Google still still way ahead. But I wonder how much that, you know, that Google is going to lean into like, well, you know, it's, you know, sure, we were dominant ones, but, you know, things, but also it's what they're selling, right? Yeah. Yeah. What are they selling on their own site on search ads? What are those those keywords? What are they selling out to the wider web? Can they just make an agreement with a select amount of clients as opposed to making it a anybody can take these ads if they want it kind of scenario? The idea of a blog traffic, which was a large part of what we were looking at with these sorts of sites, is not what it once was. And who knows what it's going to be as more and more information commoditizes into A.I. situations. Well, one thing we do know is that we love our patrons. Now, if you listen to the show regularly, you know, we're in a pledge drive of sorts. We have fewer than 400 patrons to go to reach a new goal. We know we can do it. It is a lofty goal, but it's possible. We want to have 4,000 paid patrons by next Thursday, week from today. If we do, we're going to have Molly Wood on the show the very next day. And then once a month on a Friday from then on, we want to call them Molly Fridays and we want to make Molly Fridays happen. Patreon.com slash DTNS. If you're not already a patron, now is the time. Let's make it happen. Well, if you're using a Chromebook in schools, things are about to get easier when it comes to accessing creative tools for starters, the user interface designed to a Figma is now free for all U.S. students kindergarten through 12th grade in a partnership with Google. Figma offers a free version of this. You can already access it, but it limits free users to three files. So pretty significant restriction there. However, the education program, you get the full Figma enterprise version ordinarily costs you $75 per person per month. So, you know, some interesting value there. Any school can access the program through a Chromebook or apply to get access on another platform and Google added a new integration that will make it easier for schools to distribute Adobe Express. The app is now available in the Google Admin Council and our console and can be rolled out with a simple toggle as opposed to a whole big licensing rigmarole. And teachers can now integrate Adobe Express projects with Google classrooms, which is big when it comes to grading and all that stuff. And interesting reminder, seeing these two announcements, Adobe reached a deal to acquire Figma in September and is waiting on regulatory approval. So, Justin, obviously, Chromebooks have been taken over education in the last couple of years. Big deal to get this kind of tooling available, right? Indeed, it is almost as impressive as it is to release a program to schoolchildren named Figma. Better than Ligma. Look, you said it, not me. Look, obviously, when it comes to technology for kids, there is a lot of it is a very, very complicated deal, right? You have the digital divide and what it takes to have people at a young people at a very, very developmentally interesting part of their lives. Learn these kind of tools and where it takes them in life, as well as the contractors for which do it. And there is no denying, or at least I will throw it out to the parents here that are on this call, that Google has been the dominant player there. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I was trying to pull up the numbers, like just to get some hard figures out that the latest I had is 2018, 60 percent of US K through 12 computer shipments, Chromebooks. And I can only imagine, given we saw triple digit growth in Chromebook shipments in the pandemic, that that number has had to at least remain stable, if not significantly increased. I mean, this is like growing up, I don't know about you, but the Apple 2E, right, was like the standard computer, right? And like the computer lab that you would go to. And for me, like all I see is like my son, when he gets into kindergarten, is going to have a Chromebook to use in first grade. He'll have one to take home. Like it seems extraordinarily ubiquitous. What is interesting to me here is that this to me, this is kind of like a recognition that these tools are like kind of the new level set for like the tooling that you need. Like that or that's expected, right? I think there were books were. What would books were to us? A Chromebook is now to a modern education. I would say more like word processing, right? Like back in like the reason like a lot of people like got a computer was because like you could do you could write your papers on there and you could, you know, then then it became then it became access. Then it became then it became collaborative tools, right? I think that was the first reason Chromebooks like was just easy networking. Google had a good and mostly Napster. Yeah. Hey, Morpheus, too. Let's give some love to Morpheus. Let's go as well. Rockster, shout out. But I mean, it wasn't it wasn't that long ago. I don't know. College 13 or so years ago, where it was like all the schools are getting iPads. Well, the Chromebooks made a lot more sense, not only because it was cheaper to be able to, you know, give a bunch of kids a bunch of Chromebooks, but it just made more sense based on what kids need to do in the classroom. Well, yeah, I mean, they're they're more utilitarian, and I would say that tablets are probably still the future because they're only going to get cheaper and they're only going to get easier to access. And also the concept of a interfacing with a touch screen is probably only going to become more and more with the natural way to do stuff is. But when it comes to to Chromebooks, I mean, I think the only question is how cheap can you make them? Because fleet computers are something that used to be thought of from a per school basis as like, you know, everybody on this panel probably understands one computer lab. So a fleet of computers was what? At a maximum 24 to 40 computers, depending on how big your school was. Now you're buying it for lucky. The entire class, right? Like you are you are buying it for almost everybody so they can take it home and it's still school property. And then you can understand that you're giving these to children. So you're going to have to replace probably a third of them. We saw a lot of consternation about what like the acquisition of Figma might mean for Adobe and kind of kind of the overall creative collaboration market. And I think it's interesting seeing this tool becoming effectively like it's a free default, right? Within education now that you can turn to and that like, you know, with the footprint of Chromebooks that kids can kind of become used to using. And I I I wonder like if there's an appreciation for how incredibly powerful that is for these like for an app to be kind of default in a computing landscape. Admittedly, it's a different situation than when I was going to school when like, you know, you only had the apps that were in the computer lab or whatever was loaded on the one iMac that you had in school or something like that. But I do think that's enormous. Like I think of like the the role that MS Paint played in my life. And I think like how important like that, like and how advanced this is is is kind of exciting. Also, if Adobe and Figma complete that acquisition, that's a big footprint in education for Adobe all of a sudden, too. And also getting them into a world in which, you know, every child could be a subscriber to one of their well, yes. Get them. Yeah. Oh, it's this free thing. Oh, it turns out it cost seventy five dollars per month. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, oh, you've graduated. How did we do that? You should also graduate to our paid version. And now there's no grokster to steal it from. The taste till you're 18 is free. Well, we don't always talk about bugs here on the show, but today is the day. A new system designed by a team at Japan's Tohoku University is using bugs to mimic human hands when building robots. If you say, Sarah, that's crazy. What could it possibly mean? Specifically, woodlice, sometimes known as really pulleys, sometimes known as, you know, little bugs that you see in your house and are kind of cute and roll up into a little ball. But they have other opportunities, turns out. Also, captive chitons, a.k.a. small marine mollusks to temporarily serve as robots hands. OK, let me explain this a little bit more. The team 3D printed small seats, not even kidding, for these bugs to sit on the end of a robot's manipulator arm, kind of get a handle of what's going on. Then had the woodlice and the chitons pick up tufts of cotton and submerged quirks and they didn't have terrible results. Now, the woodlice apparently lost interest after about two minutes. They said, I don't know what you want us to do here. But the chitons were quite engaged. Lots of questions still need to be answered. In the early days, Dr. Josephine Gallupon, who led this experiment, told new scientists, especially for sentient animals, we would like to establish a kind of mutual interaction with a cooperative relationship. Now, I think she is obviously, you know, speaking to, you know, where many people would say, hold on a second, like, what is going on here? Are the bugs having fun? What are the why are they here? Are they are they being held against their will? But it turns out that I mean, we don't really know these answers. But we do know that they are interested in acting as robotic arms. Hmm. Yeah. This this kind of like forcing a robotic cool. Right. As long as it's a symbiotic relationship, right? Where, hey, listen, the robot's getting some out of this. It's getting the sweet bug to pick up stuff. As long as the bug is getting something out of this, I don't know how deep we want to go into cruelty to bugs. But like as long as it's a symbiotic relationship, I'm fascinated by this idea of like, hey, we can how much do we need the bug to get out of it? Like, what is our what is our threshold? Like, if this polly is rolling, then didn't it kind of just do what it would do anyway? You know, I'm not a bug ethicist. I only took the undergrad course intro course to bug cyber ethicism in college. So I I don't know, but I'm fascinated by this use case. Don't have to literally don't have to reinvent the hand. We can just use bugs. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, early, early tests seem to indicate exactly that. All right, Rich, let's check out the mailbag today. And Deed Roberto wrote in about with an argument that in gaming, bigger monitors aren't always better. This was something we discussed with Scott yesterday. And this was in response to a GDI discussion about Samsung's big old 49 inch OLED curved monitor. And Roberto says, I've been using a 50 inch 4K TV as a monitor for a few years now and wouldn't change it. My eyes are not what they've used to been. And they never used to be that good to start. So I like that 4K TV has more space to work with in more space to work in, while text is still large enough for me to read. I don't need accurate color or super sharp images. It goes on to say when it comes to gaming, I agree with Scott that you miss a lot of what's going on in your peripheral vision, especially when you're talking about things like first person shooters, but the sense of immersion is greater when playing simulators, thinking about like Microsoft Flight Simulator. And you can always play an FPS in a windowed mode at a lower resolution, so you don't miss anything. And you'd get better frame rates, too, as a bonus. In terms of real time strategy, it's kind of hit or miss. But depending on the game, but Roberto, I love this perspective. You're a big old monitor user and you don't apologize for it. Be proud. I like it, Roberto. Yeah, you know, I we talked about this, like you said, Rich with Scott Johnson in yesterday's show and earlier as well. I don't really I mean, I'm not sitting here at this monitor. I have quite a large monitor, you know, for our show, but I don't use it for gaming. But what I do use it for is I turn it over to this side and then I do like Apple Fitness Plus stuff. So it is a TV monitor to me, but it's not something that I'm super close to. So it doesn't really matter if it has like the best quality ever. So I think, you know, it really depends on, you know, what's your office set up? You know, what what are you using this monitor for? Is it just gaming? Is it also TV content? Is it, you know, is it a design challenge? It's a design challenge. Like the problem is we're thinking of like if you think about using a 15 inch monitor, like where I have mine right here, like, yeah, that's ridiculous because my desk is set up for a 24 inch or using your TV as a monitor. Well, that's so far away. I feel like if you design a space for it, I'm sure that would be really awesome. Well, thanks, everybody, for writing in feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those emails to send us emails, whether it's something we've talked about on a previous show, something we might talk about on a future show or anything in between. But in the meantime, we're going to thank you, Justin Robert Young, for being with us. Let folks know where they can keep up with your latest. Well, there is a live version of the Great Night program with myself and Brian Brushwood, and it takes place right here in South Austin. The first time that we've actually done a live show out and about, it's going to be an amazing experience because it's on a Friday night, June 30th. If you are anywhere near Central Texas, head on over to gigstan.com, G-I-G-S-T-A-N.com. Search for Great Night, and you will find our live show. Soundspace at Captain Quacks is the venue. It is amazing, and we will see you there. gigstan.com, live Great Night on June 30th. Will there be bats involved? Probably not. Although I think we're back into bat season now that it is the summer. I think that's when the bats are back. But we're a little bit further out from the bats specifically. But you never know. I mean, the bats might hear this podcast and be like, we're coming. They are noted podcast fans, although they were mostly into Harry and Meghan. So I don't know what they're saying. It was a glorious 12 episodes, and it was great. They loved it. They were like, we really love the very natural interview style of Meghan Markle. Well, listen, patrons. DTNS patrons do stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. We're going to be talking about Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, perhaps being in a cage fight in Las Vegas. That may never happen, but it may happen. We're just not sure because the Internet is very weird. But Stranger Things and social media have happened and we all know that. But just a reminder, you can catch our show. DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Twenty hundred UTC. You can find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live. We are back tomorrow with Owen J.J. Stone joining us. Oh, doctor. Oh, doctor. Draw on the top tech stories. Don't miss it. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Ironman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.