It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google sells only a fraction of the number of phones and smartwatches pumped out by Apple and Samsung, the company’s work in mobile software, large language models, productivity services, and computational photography make it just as much of a heavyweight when it comes to consumer tech. But Google’s reach also extends far beyond your pocket and your wrist. Let us not forget about the company’s dominance in search. In fact, it’s currently in the throes of a protracted antitrust trial brought by the US government. The feds have accused Google of stifling competition and using its reign over the search ecosystem to stuff the experience with ads and misleading sponsored results.
This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave about Google's ongoing antitrust trial and all the new gadgets and AI-powered services the company announced this week.
Read Paresh’s other stories about Google’s antitrust trial. Read all about Google’s new Pixel 8 phones and Pixel Watch. Get all the details on the Pixel’s computational photography tricks. Read about the new Bard-powered Assistant in the Google phones. Read Lauren’s story about where memory ends and generative AI begins.
Paresh recommends weathering the heat wave with some soft-serve, such as Meadowlark Dairy. Mike recommends the Technothrillers collection on the Criterion Channel. Lauren recommends reading poetry, like that of Ada Limon, Louise Gluck, and Seamus Heaney.
Paresh can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Lauren Goode: Mike.
Michael Calore: Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Happy antitrust season.
Michael Calore: Antitrust season. Wait, I thought it was like new-hardware season.
Lauren Goode: Well, it's that too. But this year, instead of asking, "Why does Google make hardware?" We're also asking, "Why is Google so dominant in search and advertising?"
Michael Calore: We are? We're asking that?
Lauren Goode: Well, federal prosecutors are asking that. And we, by extension as journalists, are too.
Michael Calore: So is this one of those atypical episodes of Gadget Lab where we don't talk about gadgets?
Lauren Goode: Oh, no. We're going to talk about your Pixel phone. Don't, you worry.
Michael Calore: Awesome.
Lauren Goode: But then we need to address the elephant in the room, and Google is the elephant.
Michael Calore: All right, let's do it.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Lauren Goode: Let's do it. Hi everyone, welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Michael Calore: And I'm Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And we're also joined in studio this week by WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave. Paresh, it's so great to have you on the show.
Paresh Dave: Thank you. Hello.
Lauren Goode: I think this is your inaugural Gadget Lab.
Paresh Dave: It is. I'm excited to finally be here. It's only been like 10 months.
Lauren Goode: We were just letting your voice get really warmed up. We were just waiting for the big news to come out of Google. So as Mike and I talked about, thankfully we are almost at the end of tech silly season, and it has concluded with Google. Google held a press event in New York this week, where it showed off new hardware like the Pixel 8 phone and a new smartwatch. It also highlighted a bunch of software updates that basically continued the trend this year of sticking generative AI in absolutely everything. All in all, it felt like a pretty routine product announcement event. But this time period is anything but routine for Google. It's currently the fourth week of a historic antitrust trial. The US government is investigating whether Google has used its dominance in online search to stifle competition and fill its platform with ads. And we've brought Paresh on the show because he's writing about this ongoing antitrust case for WIRED. But first, let's give the people what they want. Gadgets. This is the Gadget Lab after all. So let's do a quick rundown. Mike, are you going to update your Pixel phone?
Michael Calore: Oh yeah, probably.
Lauren Goode: You are.
Michael Calore: I mean, I have a 6 now, and the 8 is out, so it's a two-year upgrade path for me usually. So yeah, I'll probably upgrade.
Lauren Goode: What's new about the 8?
Michael Calore: Well, these are phones. Phones are boring. You kind of know what to expect whenever a new phone comes out. And that is the case here. The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro are mostly the same as last year. They have slight hardware improvements. The edges are a little bit rounder. There's a new chip inside, Google's Tensor G3 chip. It's faster and more capable than the G2 before. The screen is a little bit better, a little bit more advanced.
Lauren Goode: Do you ever think a company would say, “This is our new G3 chip, it's worse than the G2”? “We've gone backwards, the opposite of Moore's law.”
Michael Calore: I mean, that does happen, right? With the budget phones. But these are not budget phones. These are flagship phones. So of course, yes, they're always going to say it's faster and better. These are also more expensive. You get a hundred-dollar price bump on these over last year. The smaller Pixel 8 is $699, and the larger Pixel 8 Pro is $999, a hundred bucks more than the models that came out last year.
Lauren Goode: OK. So they're getting closer to iPhone prices.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Yeah, every year.
Lauren Goode: So a big thing for Google smartphones is always the camera. Talk about the camera. How much better is it?
Michael Calore: Well, there are several improvements to the camera, but they are not hardware improvements. There's software improvements, and this has been the case for a while with phones now. Companies brag about the size of the sensor and however many lens elements they have crammed into the phone. But really the most important thing is the software that powers the phone. So Google has always been at the forefront of computational photography prowess. And here, there are a lot of things that the Pixel can do, and these are exclusive Pixel features. They are crazy, weird AI-powered features. The most startling one is called Magic Editor. It's sort of an upgrade over the Magic Eraser that we saw earlier from Google. This is a tool that lets you remove objects, move people around in a scene, change the lighting, change the sky, erase or change shadows, within a photo that you've already taken. It's crazy powerful. There's also a feature called Best Take, which will assemble a perfect photo for you of many shots. So let's say you're taking a picture of a group of people, like three or four people, and you shoot five photos, and there's not one photo where everybody is smiling or looking at the camera. This tool will actually go through all of the photos that you shot and pull out the heads and the faces that are smiling and looking at the camera and assemble them all into one photograph. There's also some video stuff. When you shoot videos, you can remix the audio that's in the video, to pull out the musical performance or the voice of the person who's speaking and quiet the background noises and the distractions that are happening in the background.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. They gave a demo of a baby giggling, and there was a dog barking in the background and they were able to remove the dog from the background.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Poor doggie.
Michael Calore: Yeah. So these things aren't perfect yet, but they're still incredible to see. And they're also interesting because they show that Google is not interested in just making your photos brighter and the colors better. It's interested in giving you the photo that you want. And it's probably stepping on a bunch of ethical considerations and things that people like us who are journalists, who are very concerned about truth, might sort of squint at a little bit, but it's really fulfilling a consumer want. People just want a great picture of them on vacation with a beautiful sky where everybody's smiling, and this phone can do that for you. And that's kind of wild.
Lauren Goode: Paresh, what do you make of that?
Paresh Dave: I would be pretty scared, not knowing what I'm seeing out there in the world if it's totally Photoshopped. I mean, it adds to the feeling that when you're scrolling on Instagram that nothing is real, right? We were so concerned a few years ago about all the filters on there. This just adds to sort of that toxicity, potentially.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. I wrote a story earlier this year for WIRED, titled “Where Memory Ends and Generative AI Begins.” It was about not only Magic Eraser, Magic Editor, which actually went during the writing of it, I was very confused by which product, but we're learning more and more from Google each and every day. Also, about Adobe Firefly, which is a plug-in that is generative-AI-based. That can dramatically change your photos in Adobe Photoshop with just a few prompts. And the sense that I got from talking to people for this story is, well, one, that we have real issues to figure out around watermarking and provenance and whether or not that's even effective for flagging fake content. But two, we've always been able to edit photos in some way, shape, or form. Now, it's just the speed with which we can do it, how quickly and accessible it is to anyone, who even doesn't have a particular set of skills, who can just type some stuff in and say dramatically change this photo. And I quoted Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation in that story who had said, “Perfect your memories.” Which was the phrase Google used at the time. Perfect your memories, is perhaps the most haunting phrase I've ever read. That's where we're headed.
Michael Calore: It's so true.
Lauren Goode: Mike, what else came out of Google today? There was a new watch, right?
Michael Calore: Yup. Pixel Watch 2, which feels mostly iterative. It's still a great watch. We still like it. The heart rate sensors are a little bit better. The case is all recycled aluminum now, instead of stainless steel, which I'm a little bit bummed about, I prefer … [loud beeping]
Paresh Dave: There it is.
Lauren Goode: There it is.
Michael Calore: Wow. And I—
Lauren Goode: We interrupt this podcast for … Oh, I had Do Not Disturb on.
Michael Calore: Same here.
Lauren Goode: Wait. Oh, there. Well, there it goes.
Paresh Dave: Isn't it two minutes early? It's 11:18. Someone's a little trigger-happy it sounds like.
Lauren Goode: So folks, we interrupt this Gadget Lab podcast because our gadgets are blowing up. This is a test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. The purpose is to maintain and improve alert and warning capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. No action is required by the public, and we require no action of you, our listener right now, except maybe to stick with us and we apologize for that.
Michael Calore: I just want to note that Paresh is holding two phones and he's struggling to turn both of them off right now.
Paresh Dave: You can't do anything with this notification. You can't make it go away.
Lauren Goode: It's not actionable. Who do we complain to about that?
Paresh Dave: This seems like an Apple problem.
Lauren Goode: I feel like we should just task it to—
Paresh Dave: How do you get rid of it?
Lauren Goode: I don't know.
Michael Calore: Don't look at me, man. I've got a Pixel over here, and I was able to dismiss it immediately.
Lauren Goode: I think we need a neutral party to sort this out. Let's bother Adam Mosseri.
Paresh Dave: Maybe send him an alert.
Lauren Goode: Well, he's fixing Threads. Let's just fix the emergency alert system.
Michael Calore: So where were we?
Lauren Goode: We're talking about the smartwatch.
Michael Calore: Right, the watch.
Lauren Goode: And James Park from Fitbit was there on stage presenting it. James Park's still there.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: If I was that guy and I started Fitbit and I was acquired by Google … How many years has it been now? Four years?
Michael Calore: More than that, I think.
Lauren Goode: I'd be out of there.
Michael Calore: Yeah, maybe. Although Fitbit still exists as a company, and they still have their own strong brand, and people love Fitbits, and they just put out new watches last week. There's a new Charge 6 out there in the world that people are buzzing about. So it is kind of strange that Google makes many smartwatches and trackers now, and that one of them is Google Pixel branded, and the others are all Fitbit branded, but they also run all Google software, Wear OS. Not all Fitbits run Wear OS, but all the most important smartwatches in the Android world are all on the same software now. So I feel like the watch is getting there, and it's still interesting to see Google putting a lot of effort into it and making it something that's actually desirable. So I want to kick it back to you two, because I know that you have both been following a lot of the Bard and Google Assistant news, which also came out this week, and I feel like we should talk about that.
Lauren Goode: Paresh, AI, do you want to take the lead here?
Paresh Dave: Yeah. I mean, basically Google is integrating its generative AI, its large language model, into Google Assistant, but they aren't clearly saying how it's going to be integrated. It's not going to be available on Nest smart speakers just yet. It's only available to test users, and it may be in the Assistant mobile app. It may not be. It's a little confusing how they're going to integrate it. I mean, I just want the simple things. I just want Google Assistant to know when I say, “Turn off the TV.” That it turns off my Roku, and I don't have to say, “Turn off the Roku.” Which is kind of annoying. And here they're trying to pack it with all this more stuff. I think Lauren, you're familiar with some of the examples that they're talking about?
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Will Knight and I—Will being our colleague at WIRED—got a briefing on this ahead of the event. And to your point, Paresh, this seems like a very, very early mashup. The company did not have a name for the product, nor could Google explain how and where it will live on your phone, exactly. OpenAI just announced that ChatGPT is going what's known as multimodal, which means that it's not just a text-based chat app anymore. It incorporates voice and photos. And so now, that's what Google Assistant through Bard is doing. And so it felt to me like this was a feature-drop race, like ChatGPT did it. So now Bard, Google's going to do it. But one of the examples that we got was, for example, when you're using something like Google Assistant now and you ask it for a result, it just gives you a pretty simple answer. Or I use Google Lens sometimes to upload a photo and say, “What is this thing?” Or, “What is this pair of sneakers?” Or something?
Michael Calore: Does this look infected?
Lauren Goode: And then does this … Mike, we're not supposed to talk about that. It's private. OK, I got to try to resume my thoughts now. So you upload a photo to Google Lens, and oftentimes there's a commercial element to it. Google Lens will show you a link to buy the sneakers that you're showing in a photo. The way that Sissie Hsiao described it, who is a VP of this product category at Google, said, “Now for example, if you are looking at a photo of a hotel on Instagram, looks cool, you can ask the assistant, what is this hotel? And is it available over my birthday weekend?” And that it's able to go deeper into not just the web, but its own training set to bring back a result for you, that adds more context to what that photo is. And then eventually it seems like there would be some kind of booking element to that. So then that does become another commercial product for Google.
Michael Calore: Yeah, for Google.
Lauren Goode: But they said they're not doing that now.
Paresh Dave: The thing is, though, Google has been talking about completing these shopping actions through Assistant for years, and no one that I know of buys things through Assistant. No one buys things through smart speakers really on Google systems. So I don't feel like this gets them any closer. It still sounds a little bit wonky.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, it does. It seems like the first step is just the adding context part. And that's a delicate balance too, because the last thing that people want is a really verbose spoken answer from a voice assistant. You just want the short thing. You don't want it to go on for two minutes typically. And then the next phase seems like it would be, OK, is there a commerce angle here? But to your point, partially, no one's used Alexa for that, right? That's part of the problem I think for Amazon.
Paresh Dave: Exactly.
Michael Calore: Yeah, it feels like a tough nut to crack because a lot of people are very used to clicking a Buy button by themselves, making a decision for themselves about what to buy, even though that decision is informed by all of these things that they read online. So they do a bunch of product research, they ask their friends, and then they make the decision to do it themselves. But asking a robot to do all that research, ask its robot brain, and then actually press the button is a step too far for a lot of people.
Lauren Goode: I think the big overarching question is whether or not any of this makes Google Search better, and Google Search is what we're going to be talking about in the next segment of the show. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back with more.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: So yes, Google is still making gadgets. It's also currently part of a landmark antitrust trial. It's stacking up to be one of the most expensive antitrust cases ever. And I think more relevant to our Gadget Lab listeners, it has the potential to reshape the way competition works on the internet. So I think we've all noticed that search quality has degraded in recent years. You go to search for something pretty straightforward and your top results are all ads. Google has long promised relevance and personalization, but now the whole thing tends to feel cluttered and confusing because of Google's monetization schemes. The question at hand, though, is whether Google actually violates the Sherman Act in the way it handles its search product. So Paresh, to start, who is bringing this suit against Google, and what are they alleging?
Paresh Dave: The suit is being brought by the Department of Justice in nearly every state district territory in the US. The allegation is unlawful maintenance of monopoly. Specifically, the government is alleging that Google has a monopoly in the general online search market. Makes sense. And in Search Ads, which also makes sense. And effectively the allegation is that Google uses these contracts, exclusionary contracts, to become the default search provider on iPhone on browsers, and that those contracts effectively keep out competitors because the defaults matter so much, because we don't really like switching defaults. And then on the ad side, there's this allegation that Google slow-walked adding support for buying Bing Ads to SA360, which is this tool that advertisers use to buy Search Ads. And because there was just support for Google Ads, well, Google Ads dominates.
Lauren Goode: What kind of market share does Google currently have in search?
Paresh Dave: Google has about 90 percent of the market in the US and globally. Bing's the close second—not close second, I mean. As you can tell, I mean, that's enormous.
Michael Calore: So you mentioned that people don't like to switch their defaults, and this is sort of at the heart of this case, right? Because there are other search engines, and when you download a new browser, you get to choose which search engine is the default in your browser. But they all default to Google, and most people never change it, right?
Paresh Dave: Correct. And there was just testimony this week from the former CEO of Neeva, which was a search engine competitor that cropped up over the past couple of years, speaking to this about even when they could get people to switch the default, various things made people switch back, and it was just so hard to switch the majority of people over, even when they were given the option. And many browsers don't really make it easy to see those options.
Lauren Goode: How is Google's relationship with Apple a part of this?
Paresh Dave: It's a major part of it because iPhones are sort of dominant here in the US, as you have both talked about on the show a lot. And as a result, it's an important entry point into search. And one of the things that we've learned in this trial is that Microsoft was willing to lose money. It was willing to give Apple more money than it made from ads, to make Bing the default on iPhones, and Apple said no.
Lauren Goode: Why did Apple say no?
Paresh Dave: Because Google can pay a lot more money.
Lauren Goode: So just to be clear, though, I think most of our listeners probably know how this works. When you're on an iPhone, you open the Safari browser to run a search and you run a quick search that is actually powered by Google.
Paresh Dave: Correct.
Lauren Goode: OK. What is Google likely to argue here?
Paresh Dave: Google's defense is that consumers love it, that it's just made a really good search engine, one that's way better than Bing, and that it doesn't really have an overwhelming share. When you consider the broader search market, it considers Amazon a competitor, it considers Yelp a competitor. All these places where we go for verticalized search, so it's restaurants or shopping, Google says all of that is really competition. And when you bring that into account, Google's market share naturally goes down, and it says it doesn't really owe anything to anyone, that there's nothing that requires it to support competitors under the law, and that it's not really harming consumers. Consumers are getting search for free, and it argues that they're generally happy with it.
Lauren Goode: Do you agree with that?
Paresh Dave: I'm not so sure. As you were saying, when you search now, so many of the things that you see are ads. And we had this experience recently where we were trying to make a last-minute travel arrangement and we were trying to look up a visa. The first result went to this site that's like a visa arrangement company that tries to expedite your visa or something, and not paying attention, we thought it was the real government website. We ended up spending over $100 for what should have been a $50 purchase. Fortunately, they refunded us once we realized it wasn't the real government website. But that seems like a problem. Maybe Google shouldn't be allowing ads for on searches for government services.
Lauren Goode: And you're a pretty tech-savvy internet consumer.
Paresh Dave: Correct.
Lauren Goode: It could happen anyway.
Paresh Dave: But we're always in a rush, right? People are in rush. If you're not looking close enough, things like this can happen, and it can cause serious stress or serious financial distress for people.
Lauren Goode: And there's an experience on Google now too, where Google will offer these cards of information. It's indexing all these other websites, and you end up sometimes not even having to go deeper into that website, whether it's a Wikipedia or a Yelp or something, because of the information card that is presented to you, you sort of get what you need and you can move on. But in the generative search experience, which Google is still, I think, categorizing as experimental for those of us who have played around with it, that's pretty much what it does. It uses this advanced AI to serve up like a summary, a summary of the web for what you're looking for, right at the top of the page. I'm wondering how generative AI is going to play into this case too.
Paresh Dave: Yep. That's what Google is experimenting with, but there's huge concerns with it. One, the information, can you trust it? We've heard all about hallucinations from these large language models. Two, it's a big concern for publishers. There's a big concern about the traffic that Google normally would send to websites when you click on a link. If Google is just giving you all these answers, how are publishers going to survive in that? And I think another thing that we've learned from this trial already, just a few weeks in, is that Google at various times has basically changed the way that the search layout looks like and the search experience works and what options you have to ring more ad money out of it. There's this phrase in one of the internal Google documents that was cited in the case that they wanted to basically “shake the cushions,” as if they were shaking the sofa cushions to find the spare coins in there.
Michael Calore: So you're talking about Google adjusting the layout of the page to make ads more prominent?
Paresh Dave: Essentially. Yeah.
Michael Calore: I think this is a really interesting time for us to be talking about this, because all of these large language models are now speaking to us, and when you ask your phone a question and it delivers an answer in a voice that sounds kind of human, it changes the trust relationship, right? It makes you as a person trust the device a little bit more because it sounds like a human delivering it to you. So what happens when we start getting ads in that experience? What happens when that information is wrong? We tend to trust those things.
Paresh Dave: Even more so for vulnerable populations or younger populations. We know that kids love using these smart assistants, and if we're reliant even more on them, it raises even more concerns for what kind of information our kids are being taught by these systems.
Lauren Goode: We should try to run a search right now just to see what happens. Hold on. Google.com, what should we search for?
Michael Calore: Does this look infected?
Lauren Goode: Does this look infected?
Michael Calore: I'm just kidding. Just kidding.
Lauren Goode: Do you know that's a studio album by Sum 41?
Michael Calore: No.
Lauren Goode: I didn't know that either.
Paresh Dave: You could ask that.
Lauren Goode: It came out in 2002. Yeah. OK. But here's the thing, on the side here, there's a sidebar that says about 99 percent liked this album. OK? 99 percent of who? I would like to know. Does This Look Infected? It's the second studio album by Canadian rock band Sum 41, released on November 26th, 2002. That's from Wikipedia. It lists genres, the length of the album, the producer on it, Greg Nori, people also search for. OK, so if I was just doing a really lazy crazy research, which I am, I wouldn't really need to go any deeper, right? I wouldn't need to go to Wikipedia and click on that or Amazon Music or Spotify and click on it. But just, let's see, I'm going further below. Really, there's nothing here about an actual infection, Mike. It's all Sum 41. I want to know what their SEO strategy is. Anyway, so far we're not doing actually a very good job of proving the point that the first of seven results are ads. Let's do this. So Paresh, you were looking for how to get a visa to New Zealand and … sponsored, sponsored, sponsored, sponsored. Then after those first, which really takes up the whole top of the digital fold here, below that, immigrationnewzealand.govt.nz. So yeah, I could see how it would be very easy to fall for travel services, newzealand.com, newzealandvisitor.online, etravelportal.com.
Paresh Dave: And really the way that the government there recommends that you get the visa is through an app. So the first result really should be a link to the app where then you can click and sort of send it to your phone to download it if you weren't already browsing on your phone.
Lauren Goode: So what's the biggest difference between the Google antitrust case of today and the Microsoft antitrust case from two decades ago?
Paresh Dave: The big difference in the Microsoft case is that the government was alleging that Microsoft was tying its Windows operating system, using its dominance there, to get people to use the Internet Explorer browser from Microsoft over competitive options. There's not that same tying here. It's the fact that Google is just using these contracts to gain dominance. That's the big issue in the Google trial.
Lauren Goode: Let's say this doesn't go in Google's direction. What happens?
Paresh Dave: In the worst case for Google, it's not allowed to have these contracts anymore. It loses default status on iPhones. It loses default status on browsers like Mozilla Firefox. That could mean a lot less users for Google. It could face other types of penalties. There's been talk that it has to break off or sell off parts of its business. Maybe it can't sort of have the ads business and the search business together. That seems unlikely in this case, but there are other antitrust cases that are coming against Google, and part of the value of this case is that it's going to set the tone for some of those cases, and potentially give the prosecutors in those cases a little bit of a preview of the best way to navigate those other cases.
Lauren Goode: What happens if Google wins?
Paresh Dave: If Google wins, we're stuck with it as the default, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon, because they're making so much money from the search business that they can afford to continue to pay for these defaults in a way that no other company can.
Lauren Goode: And you're going to be following this through at least the end of November, we believe the case is going to go on until?
Paresh Dave: Yes. Barring a government shutdown that knocks things awry in the trial. But I would say another thing that's important as far as what happens if Google wins is there's also this concern that was expressed in the trial this week by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, saying that there could be this vicious cycle with search going into AI, where Google is now using all this money that it makes from the search business to say that we want exclusive access to this pile of data. Maybe news articles from WIRED and Condé Nast, and it can pay more for those than Microsoft can because of this giant search business. And then Microsoft and its close partner OpenAI won't be able to train on Condé Nast content anymore when they're trying to train their large language models, only Google will, and then Google's large language model ends up being better than Microsoft's. So Satya Nadella sort of said in this trial that none of us have solved the problem called, if in a world where most content is not crawlable, how do you build a large language model? And is it potentially only Google that builds it? So this search trial sort of could set the tone for the future of AI as well.
Lauren Goode: Right. On the one hand, I totally hear Satya Nadella's argument. On the other hand, part of me is like, “Oh, boo-hoo. These multibillion-dollar companies or trillion-dollar companies can't afford to buy our entire data set of published content.”
Paresh Dave: His argument was he just doesn't have as big of a wallet as Google does.
Lauren Goode: A cash file. Yeah. All right. Paresh, you're going to be following this very closely for WIRED, so everyone can read more about this on WIRED.com, but stick around because we're going to take a break and come back with our recommendations.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: Paresh, as our guest of honor, what is your recommendation? What is your very human, not Googled recommendation?
Paresh Dave: Well, maybe it's just because we're in a heat wave right now in the Bay Area, but I think much of the world is in heat waves, even though we're already in October and in sort of the fall in the northern hemisphere. But I would say get some soft-serve. I just learned over this past weekend about Meadowlark Dairy in Pleasanton, California, one of the top-rated soft-serve places. Apparently they have pumpkin spice, don't you worry, and it was delicious. But I think the most important thing is that it was really cheap compared to the crazy amounts that you have to pay for ice cream in San Francisco often. And it's sort of very, very quaint. Anyone who's been to an In-N-Out burger shop where in the drive-through line, they have the people with the iPads or whatever, taking orders. It's very much like that. So it was a neat experience.
Lauren Goode: What's your favorite flavor?
Paresh Dave: I got a pumpkin vanilla swirl.
Lauren Goode: You went for it?
Paresh Dave: Yeah, but they had chocolate as well. I didn't get to try that.
Lauren Goode: Nice.
Michael Calore: That's awesome.
Lauren Goode: Mike, do you eat soft-serve? Do you have vegan soft-serve?
Michael Calore: Yes. They do make nondairy ice creams, which I indulge in. My favorite is Mr. Dewie's in Albany, North Berkeley, California.
Paresh Dave: They have multiple locations, actually.
Michael Calore: They do. Yes. Yes, you're right. Thank you. Yeah, there's one in Alameda or something. Anyway, East Bay represent cashew ice cream. So good. I got to say, it is the best feeling in the world to walk into an ice cream store and be able to order whatever I want. So I really like that about it.
Lauren Goode: I just went for soft-serve two nights ago.
Michael Calore: That's awesome.
Lauren Goode: In Noe Valley, and I don't know, near in my neighborhood, but I don't know the name of the place, but I've been there a bunch of times. What is it called? Do you know?
Michael Calore: I have a little card. I have a loyalty card from that place.
Lauren Goode: It's great. It's totally self-serve, there is a human working behind the iPad. You can just go up, make your own thing, tap to pay, walk out.
Michael Calore: Yeah. You pay by weight.
Lauren Goode: It's a little dangerous.
Paresh Dave: But is that soft-serve or froyo then?
Michael Calore: It's soft-serve.
Paresh Dave: OK.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Uh, there might be frozen yogurt too.
Michael Calore: Yeah, sure. They have dairy and nondairy options.
Lauren Goode: What they do, they do have a nondairy option. Yeah. Delicious. What's your favorite topping? I got some Heath bar. Not that anyone asked. What's your favorite topping?
Paresh Dave: Those mini chocolate pieces that have the caramel inside, very delicious. I don't know what they're called.
Lauren Goode: Mike, I'm going to guess your favorite topping.
Michael Calore: What is it?
Lauren Goode: Impossible Burger.
Michael Calore: How dare you?
Lauren Goode: What's your favorite topping?
Michael Calore: No topping. Just give me the goddamn ice cream.
Paresh Dave: Naked.
Lauren Goode: What?
Michael Calore: Yeah. What? I feel like ice cream done well doesn't need toppings.
Lauren Goode: Fair enough. But cashew ice cream without toppings?
Michael Calore: It's, hey, don't knock it until you tried it.
Lauren Goode: OK. OK.
Michael Calore: It's delicious.
Lauren Goode: All right, I'm going to go to your place in the East Bay. OK. All right. Paresh, thank you so much for that. Thank you for bringing us back to not only summer, but childhood in summer. I really appreciate that. Mike, what's your recommendation?
Michael Calore: Techno-thrillers.
Lauren Goode: Tell us what this is.
Michael Calore: OK. This is a collection of films that is this month on the Criterion Channel. So if you are a subscriber to the Criterion Channel, you can get access to this selection of movies. It goes back to the early '70s, all the way up to present day. And it's all of these great movies that have to do with the internet and technology and disasters that are wrought by technology. And it's a really wonderful collection. It includes such classics as The Andromeda Strain, the original Westworld, Brainstorm starring Christopher Walken, Videodrome, David Cronenberg movie. Existenz, another David Cronenberg movie. Minority Report, Dark City.
Lauren Goode: The Net.
Michael Calore: The Net with Sandra Bullock. Demonlover, the Olivier Assayas movie. It's really great. I'm a Criterion fanboy. I'm a charter subscriber. I signed on before they even launched, and it's really nice to have movies on there. There are more movies on there now, that are not like foreign films or strictly underground art house movies. There are movies that were a little bit more popular in their day, or have a broader appeal. And this collection pulls together a lot of those. It's a lot of fun.
Lauren Goode: I'm looking at the website right now. This is amazing. You know what's missing from here?
Michael Calore: What's that?
Lauren Goode: Ex-Machina.
Michael Calore: Ex-Machina is missing.
Lauren Goode: That's a good one. Alex Garland.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Well, you know the way that streaming rights work.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Plus that's a little bit newer than a lot of these.
Michael Calore: Yeah. There's a couple of movies here from recent, like the Saul Williams movie, Neptune Frost I think came out just a couple of years ago. And that's on the collection.
Lauren Goode: Ooh. Sneakers is on here. 1992.
Michael Calore: A lot of great stuff.
Lauren Goode: This is great. Great recommendation.
Michael Calore: Thank you.
Lauren Goode: Fitting for Gadget Lab.
Michael Calore: And what's your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: I was going to recommend an album this week. You and I talked about it, but I'm still listening to it, wrapping my head around it. I'm going to recommend reading poetry.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. I've been reading more poetry at night. It's good for the adult brain, for the internet adult brain, doesn't require the commitment of reading a big thick book, but in many ways good poetry is masterful writing because of its incisiveness. So I would say the three poets I've been reading a lot of lately are Louise Gluck, Seamus Heaney, and Ada Limon. Ada Limon, the 24th poet laureate of the United States. She's amazing. I actually sort of, I'm working my way back into her catalog because I read a poem, this amazing poem that she wrote. It was published in The New Yorker called “The Endlessness.” It was published in The New Yorker earlier this month. And so now I want to read more. Louise Gluck. I recently read The Wild Iris, which is a 1992 book that won the Pulitzer Prize in '93. Seamus Heaney. I'm reading a collection, it's called Opened Ground. It's select works of 10 or 12 of his books over the past 30 years. And “The Badgers” is one of my favorite poems.
Michael Calore: Are you reading these ebook, or are you reading them paper book?
Lauren Goode: No. Real books.
Michael Calore: OK. Does poetry work on ebooks?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, sure. Of course it does. But there's something about the tangible books that I still like and also just making notes in the margins or dog-earing pages.
Michael Calore: Wait, are you making edits in the margins? Are you like …
Lauren Goode: Yeah. I've told Seamus, look, I've connected with him in the beyond.
Michael Calore: This part lags.
Lauren Goode: You are this pr-eminent poet, but I have thoughts.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: No, I'm not making edits.
Paresh Dave: Have you found AI-generated knockoffs of these poets?
Lauren Goode: I have not. But here's the thing. I do have faith in, perhaps this is incredibly naive of me. I have faith that the ChatGPTs of the world are not going to be able to replicate really wonderful poetry. So far, the ChatGPT for example, it's not funny at all. It doesn't do a good job with comedy. I've asked it to write skits and they're just like, they're terrible. They're kind of pathetic. And so let's do, this is a great prompt here. Let's do it. Write a poem about … What should we write a poem about?
Michael Calore: Louise±
Lauren Goode: I was going to say, Louise Gluck.
Michael Calore: Write a poem about a field of flowers.
Lauren Goode: A field of flowers, and also divorce from Louise Gluck. OK. Let's see. Oh, so interesting. There's a shield here. “I'm not able to provide verbatim copyrighted text from Louise Gluck's work. However, I can create an original poem inspired by her style and the theme of divorce. Here's a poem for you. In a field of blossoms colors bright, where petals dance in golden light, amidst the blooms of red and blue. A tale of love now torn in two.” This is awful. This is terrible stuff.
Michael Calore: Simple rhyme schemes.
Lauren Goode: Rhyme schemes. And actually, when you ask ChatGPT to write poetry, it often defaults to rhyme schemes.
Michael Calore: Yeah. And very standard meter.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Yeah. Standard meter. And not a lot of, there's not a lot of creativity with assonance and consonants, and there are no vibes.
Paresh Dave: Does it sound like her style at all?
Lauren Goode: No, it really doesn't.
Michael Calore: One might say that there's no poetry in its response.
Lauren Goode: There isn't, and the world is filled with poetry. You just have to be listening for it. Well, we hope that this podcast was a poetic experience for all of you, or at the very least, you learned a lot about Google. Paresh, thank you so much for joining us this week on Gadget Lab.
Paresh Dave: I appreciated you having me.
Lauren Goode: And thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on the company formerly known as Twitter. We're also on Instagram, Mastodon, Threads.
Michael Calore: Bluesky.
Lauren Goode: Bluesky. We're all the places. Just check the show notes. Our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth, who knew that Does This Look Infected, was a Sum 41 album. That's why he's so great folks. Goodbye for now. We'll be back next week.
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