This Week in Google 247 (Transcript)

Show Tease: It’s time for TWiG - This Week in Google. Shakespeare’s birthday, we’ll celebrate with some folks. Take a look at Google Plus. Is it dead? Or not? And the new Facebook. A kinder gentler Facebook? It’s all next – on TWiG.

Netcasts You Love… From People You Trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for This Week in Google is provided by cachefly.com.

Leo Laporte: This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 247, recorded April 30, 2014

Snackable Content 

This Week in Google is brought to you by Lantronix, maker of the Xprints server. Print from any Android phone, tablet, Chromebook or Kindle Fire to virtually any printer. For more information, visit xprintserver.com/twit and enter the code TWIT to receive free shipping on your order.

And by Zip Recruiter. Zip Recruiter makes hiring faster easier and cheaper. Post your job to 50+ job boards with one click. Try Zip Recruiter for a free four-day trial right now. And ziprecruiter.com/twig.

And by Personal Capital. With personal capital, you’ll finally have your entire financial life in one place. And get a clear view of everything you own. Best of all, it’s free. To sign up, go to personalcapital.com/twig.

It’s time for TWiG - This Week in Google, the show that covers the Googleverse, the Twitterverse, the Facebookverse and, because it’s The Bard’s 450^th anniversary, the Shakespeare-verse. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Gina Trapani, smarterware.org and ThinkUp! Hi Gina.

Gina Trapani: English major really appreciates that intro. Hello, good to be here.

Leo: Nice to have you. And, Jeff Jarvis, who teaches professionally, is the professor of journalism at University of New York, CUNY. He is also the author of Public Parts, and What Would Google Do? Hello, Jeffrey.

Jeff Jarvis: Hello hello hello. Always a pleasure.

Leo: I guess this is actually an interesting story. It has nothing to do with Google, but it does have to do with Shakespeare - the 450^th anniversary of Shakespeare, who was born, we perhaps think, on April 23, 1564, a week ago. St. George’s day. He was baptized on the 26^th, so I’ll say we’re just on it. But what’s kind of fun is, somebody from DailyNewsGems, Bill Lucey, reached out to a bunch of people on Twitter saying, “What’s your favorite Shakespeare quote?” Tina Brown said, “A little touch of Harry in the night.”

Jeff: Ooh.

Leo: You go, girl! I don’t know what that means.

Jeff: Well, her husband’s name is Harry.

Leo: I didn’t know that. See? That would be my favorite. That’s very good. From Hank Sank - Henry V. The obvious one, from Merchant of Venice, Chris Matthews said, “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.''      Pat Buchanan said, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” From Henry V also. Good one.

Jeff: Adur short would have gotten extra points if he had said, “Let’s kill the lawyers first.”

Leo: Ha ha. “Let’s kill the lawyers first.” Sam Tanenhaus, American historian and writer-at-large for The New York Times said, “The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.'' I’ll have to think about that one. No, oh, I changed the whole meaning of the sentence – “that fools may NOT speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.” Alan Dershowitz,“Our doubts are traitors And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.'' I like that, from Measure for Measure. David Ignatius, author of Body of Lies, publisher for the Post. "Men must endure Their going hence even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all." That’s from King Lear. Do you want to know what Kara Swisher’s was?

Gina: Yeah.

Jeff: She regretted it, she said on Twitter.

Leo: Yeah that’s the one she regretted.

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

For now hath time made me his numbering clock:

My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar

Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,

Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.

Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

Are clamorous goans, which strike upon my heart,

Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans

Show minutes, times, and hours.”

Jeff: You are a good Shakespearean!

Leo: I love Shakespeare!

Jeff: Leo as King Lear!

Leo: I’ll do Lear. Actually that’s from Richard II.

Gina: This is Kara’s quote. This is the quote I want to pick for her. “Although she be but little she is fierce.”

Leo: There you go.

Gina: From Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s what I would have chosen.

Leo: See, that’s why she regrets it. She knew there was better. She says, “I really picked a depressing Shakespeare quote.” That was fun! Anyway, happy birthday to the Bard. The Bard of Avon.

So, we covered this morning at 10 AM, and you can see it in our TNT episode this week with Mike Elgan, and a couple of people from -  a writer from Forbes whose name escapes me, shoot!  and from 9to5Mac, Zach somebody. I’m always telling Mike, “Mike you’ve got to tell us everybody’s name so we know you’re talking about” – and  now I’ve forgotton! We covered F8, the Facebook developers’ conference - the first one in three years. (Although they did say that they will do this every year from now on.) But they’re probably watching how Apple and Google do their developer conferences and realizing how important these events are. And especially this one, because Facebook essentially, I believe, has decided. . .

There you go!  Parmy Olson of Forbes and Zach Hall of 9to5Mac. It’s right there in the show notes.  Sorry about that Parmy and Zach.

Jeff: It’s age, Parmy and Zach.

Leo: It’s surely age. It’s not that you’re unmemorable. It’s that time doth fly in seconds and minutes and groans!

I believe, and I think Mike Elgan had the insight this week and posted this, that these companies particularly Facebook, realize, but Google certainly started it, that the way to success lies not in making a webpage that everybody wants to go to. I think Yahoo learned this very early on. The portal is not it.

Jeff: They still haven’t learned it.

Leo: Yeah we’re still learning it. But in fact, to create a bunch of attractive honeypots, if you will, Google Docs Google Voice Google+, apps across all platforms - and then unite them across a common ad platform. And so you gather data. And this is what Google really has been doing from the beginning. You gather data from all these little flowers and you bring it back to the home office and you make honey and then advertisers advertise across it all. And you know everything, and you’ve got a great platform.

Jeff: And the key to that, Leo. . . And I’ve been thinking about this, too, as a lesson when I hear people in my business say, “Mobile first. We’ve got to be mobile.”  Well, what they think is they’ve bought another bloody portal. And when Zuckerberg said to Farhad Manjoo that he was breaking up the Big Blue App, I thought about Google and the point of it is that Google’s not thinking about the brand first, it’s thinking about the user first. So if I want to get somewhere, I go to use Waze and if I want to communicate in email I go to Gmail, if I want to search for something I go to Search. They’re appropriate contexts for my needs. It’s not that they’re trying to create 25 cool apps that they’re trying to do things that are appropriate for what the user wants at that moment. And so Facebook is going the same way. That’s why I don’t think Facebook’s bothered about trying to integrate WhatsApp, because WhatsApp is a different function, so you go there for that. Instagram is a different function. You go there for that. But you’re right. Then you have a relationship with a person across all those platforms and that gives you the opportunity for targeting and advertising and all that wonderful good stuff which we in media don’t understand still.

Leo: And in fact it’s very interesting, because it also gives you the capability - and Zuckerberg was at pains to say this - that you can say, “okay you can be anonymous.” So Facebook Connect, that’s the Big Blue button that says Sign I Via Facebook, and a lot of apps use it, a lot of websites use it - now can say, and will say, “Sign In Via Facebook, that will let everybody know your personality and who you are - or “Sign In Anonymously.”

Jeff: But as someone pointed out in Twitter, I forgot who it was, Facebook will still know what you did.

Leo: You’re only anonymous to the website.

Gina: You are only anonymous to the developers of the third-party app, right.

Leo: Well, I think it’s a spin isn’t it? It still works just as well for Facebook, maybe even better. Because Facebook owns the relationship now.

Jeff: And that’s not so cool for the app developer, eh app developer?

Leo: and that’s going to be a challenge, isn’t it?

Gina: Yeah, the benefit of using something like Facebook Connect is that users don’t want to have to create another username and email address and password, right? They can just login and it’s easier. It’s an easier user experience. Easier onboarding. Which third-party small apps, new apps, need desperately. That’s what Facebook Connect offers. Part of the offering is, “Hey I can get this person’s email address without asking them to type it in” which is annoying, particularly on mobile. So I was thinking about Log In Anonymously, which hasn’t launched by the way. This is something that’s going to happen eventually. It’s not just talking about it. What do you get as an app developer? You get a token? Okay, so the user still has to enter an email address. As an app developer, I need some way to communicate with the user. It’s generally through an email address or for your mobile app, Push Notifications, I guess, or your phone number. But yeah, this definitely benefits Facebook and it benefits users, so that’s a good thing.

Leo: So Facebook has to come up with some sweeteners. And they came up with a couple. The first thing they said is, “We’re going to keep our API solid and consistent for a minimum of two years. We want to be solid, reliable. We want to be the platform that you trust. And in order to get you to participate, not only will we give you Connect, which your users want, but we’ll also give you things like Parse. We’ll give you the tools for a very affordable price, presumably, for the database that you need. A lot of things that you want in your app that would cost you money or you would have to develop, we will now give you. An entire developer platform and an ad platform.” And that’s the come-on, isn’t it? “Live in our universe. We’ll make it easier for you. We’ll make it easy for your users, your users will be happy. The trade-off is, if you want more information, you’ll have to ask for it.” By the way, people do that right now on Facebook Connect. It’s a little annoying for me. They say Connect with Facebook, then you connect and they say Now Create a User Account.

Jeff: Oh, that irritates the hell out of me.

Leo: But that’s why. And you’re going to see more of that right?

Jeff: You’re right and now the advantage of using Facebook Connect goes away. And this is the question whether as an app developer, is Google Signin going to be better? And the argument from Facebook is “Oh, we’re giving you all this, but we have more control over privacy.” Which may be a good argument. What do you think, Gina?

Gina: On the mobile side, Google Signin is way easier, particularly on Android, because you’re logged in to your Google account on Android. You just choose the one you want and you’re in. And I’m not sure how it’s implemented on IOS, but I think it’s a similar thing. I think that you are logged into a suite of apps. Whereas with Facebook, now look Facebook has incredible usage on mobile, so presumably maybe you are already logged in to Facebook, but coming from my perspective which is from one who doesn’t use Facebook as much and is kind of Android-focused, I would go with the Google login first, because it is the most seamless login experience for a native mobile app, particularly on Android.

Leo: By the way, it’s not Google+ login anymore it’s the Google login.

Jeff: Is that confirmed?

Leo: Well, the rumors are.

Gina: We should talk about that. We should talk about Google+.

Leo: Oh, we’ll get to that, believe me. We’re going to get there don’t you worry your sweet little head about that. We’ll definitely be talking about that, I just want to get the Facebook F8 stuff out.

Leo: They also launched a new mobile ad network called Facebook Audience. And Mark winded up the proceeds in a very Larry Page way – we’re going to call these Larry Pages now - where the CEO comes back on stage after the keynote, as Larry did last year at Google I/O, and says a final word about who we are and what we mean and what we do. Now Larry went on and on talking about that island and he answered some questions from Scoble and it probably wasn’t is on-point as it could be. Mark was very on-point, and he basically said that, “We are going to make our customer first focus, the focus of what we do. As much as we consider ourselves hackers, we’re going to consider ourselves serving the customer.” And he ended with that. And I think that’s a message not just to the audience watching in and the developers at the conference, but as much to it Facebook employees. Customer first.

Gina: Is that a tension with “Move Fast and Break Things”? I feel like there’s a natural tension there.

Leo: Well, that’s why he deprecated Move Fast and Break Things. Right at the beginning. He put Move Fast and Break Things right on the top there and he said, “No, because we want to give you a stable and consistent platform.”

Jeff: Oh, that’s a big change!

Leo: It makes sense. Move Fast and Break Things is great for apps, but not for the platform. You want the platform to be rock solid.

Jeff: They made a great big deal of “We’re now God” five years ago. About “we’re killing a lot of apps, we’re opening the platform, developers, developers, developers, we love developers” and then for many of the apps people couldn’t get any attention for the apps, and developers just went away. So are they trying to say “developers, you’re welcome back?”

Leo: Yes.

Jeff: What is the relationship of Facebook to a developer now? Like Twitter. I think if I were a developer and I put a lot of effort into something on Facebook or Twitter, I’d feel burned.

Leo: Right, but this is the opposite isn’t it? I have to say, Mark has shown a real great willingness to change his mind. For instance, remember he was pushing HTML 5 as the app platform and then they said that was a big mistake and they said bye-bye.

Gina: He moves fast and breaks things in his own leadership and I respect that. Though it does make you wonder, what’s it going to be at F8 next year? I think Neil tweeted earlier some of the things that were announced at a previous F8 and are not around anymore at all.

Leo: Move fast. Right. I think this is a redefinition of what he sees as Facebook. And I think he’s actually right. And I think Google pioneered this idea. They continue to acquire apps, but now he’s saying, “We don’t even have to acquire apps. If you are an app developer, develop to our platform. And you’ll be part of the family.”

Jeff: Again, he said that before. I’m just trying to understand; what’s the difference in the attitude toward developers from five years ago when it was opened up, and then apps went into obscurity. And so what is it they expect now from developers versus what they expected the last time they opened up?

Leo: He closed out by saying this – here’s the quote I was looking for - “We have this really strong hacker culture at Facebook. And it’s helped us grow, but it has been really focused on us. Instead, we want to instill a culture of loving the people we serve as strong as our hacker culture, if not stronger. It’s an honor to serve you in our mission.” Now the cynics will say yeah yeah thanks Mark, but maybe he’s sincere. I feel like he’s as sincere as Larry Page was.

Jeff: I think he sincere, I’m just trying to understand -

Gina: The paradigm shift.

Leo: That’s what it is. I think it’s a massive paradigm shift.

Gina: A tremendous paradigm shift.

Leo: And I think he’s saying that. He started off saying we used to have this famous mantra, Move Fast and Break Things. That mentality made sense in a startup, but we’re 10 years old and we need to be a platform now and we have to be stable and consistent. Stable and consistent. I think it’s smart. But I think the lesson is learned from Google. And I think if you’re Facebook that you see a brave new world. You’re an ad network. You are acknowledging what you have been all along. It doesn’t have to be invented here.

Jeff: Well this is also part of the breaking up . . . Ah! Okay, here’s the difference. The first time they opened up, they said, “Feel free to write apps onto, into, as part of, Facebook.”

Leo: And your son Jake did, right? Jake was a big developer.

Jeff: Yes, he wrote it and sold it for pretty penny. Now, I think what they’re saying is no no we’re breaking up the Big Blue App, as he said, so feel free to use our API to write new apps on top. Like Paper.

Leo: Yes. That’s exactly what he’s saying.

Jeff: That’s the difference. Okay! Now I understand.

Leo: And more than that, he said we learned how to massively scale a network. We have 1.2 billion users. And we can handle it. And you can use this. We are offering you this platform. And boy do we know how to serve 1.2 billion users. You know, what would be smart for them? To go out and buy M-Pesa or some sort of mobile payment platform, instead of creating their own. And acquire a bunch of users in the developing world who use their phone as a bank. They are already using WhatsApp.

Gina: Right.

Leo: They could use a Facebook Wallet. I think there’s a huge opportunity here. I really do. I think Google knows this. They were smart enough to realize it.

Gina: Yeah but get Facebook numbers and non-US in Canada countries.

Leo: Yeah. They have to get people to trust them, as Google has also learned. They have to get developers to buy in.

Jeff: The story we’ll probably talk about later, there’s a lesson in here I think, too, from Twitter. We’ll have a story later about Twitter’s slow growth, but I do wonder whether if Twitter had kept an open attitude with developers and had developed outside of itself on an API, would it be bigger now? Would it still be growing faster?

Leo: I’ll tell you what, I just love this space! I love covering this space. It’s an intellectual exercise every minute.

Jeff: It is. Here’s the other way, Would Google+ be bigger if it had ever done the right API?

Leo: Yeah, let’s talk about that.

Gina: Oh yeah, that is interesting. It is interesting.

Leo: Is it over for Google; Vic Gundotra says goodbye;  the untold story of Larry Page’s incredible comeback; and what happened to Twitter - all coming up. There’s lots more to talk about. Also the Google Changelog. We’ll do in that just a second.

But first I want to tell you about this. Wouldn’t it be cool if all of the printers that you deal with day-to-day could handle Google print? Google Cloud Print is so cool! I love Cloud Print! If you have a Cloud Print – enabled printer, you can print from anywhere. From your phone, from your laptop. To any printer that’s Cloud-enabled at home or at work. But a lot of older printers, maybe your printer, just aren’t compatible with Google Cloud Print. That must be a little bit frustrating, right? I want to print to this printer and it doesn’t understand it! Well here’s a way to do it, affordably and very easily. We’ve talked about the Lantronix folks before. Their X print server. They have an air print version that works with Apple devices. This is their new Cloud Print edition that you plug into almost any printer and it suddenly allows a wireless mobile printing from your Chromebook, from your Android device, from your iPhone, even from the Kindle Fire. And it will work with the printer you already own. Wire-to-wireless, USB or network. It’s the first and only print server officially certified by Google for Cloud Print and Android printing. Prints to your existing printers. You don’t have to buy a new one. More than 4000 top brand printers. It literally turns it into a wireless printer. And it’s easy. You might think you have to download or – no! You just open it up, plug it in, then print! It’s got a web interface for advanced configuration, but I can tell you right now in my experience you don’t need to do anything. You just plug it in. It automatically discovers all the printers on your network. It says, “You want to make these Cloud Print?” You say yeah and that’s it. This is such a great idea. You’ve got a USB printer that you currently have to plug into, suddenly it’s Wi-Fi enabled. It’ll work on your network. It even works with large multifunction printers, pretty much any printer. It’s 149.95. For up to 10 network printers and a USB printers simultaneously. People use these in schools and offices. You plug this one thing and, and boom! You’re working. Visit Xprintserver.com/twit for more information and to get yourself one. In fact, when you use the offer code TWIT you’ll get free shipping on your order.  Xprintserver.com/twit. X print server Cloud Print edition from Lantronix.

Jeff: I want that now.

Leo: Isn’t that great? Because you’re a Chromebook guy, right?

Jeff: I’m a Chromebook guy and it would be perfect for me. I need that. Basically, my Mac does two things in life. This show. And it’s a print server. That’s all it does anymore.

Leo: We’ll send one to you posthaste.

Jeff: No, I’ll get it.

Leo: You don’t have to get it. We’ll send it to you. We have a few lying around.

Jeff: That’s cool.

Leo: It’s great, isn’t it?

Jeff: 10 printers? That’s great.

Leo: Yeah. I get an email from a teacher who’s using that Apple version. She was responsible for running the network in the school. As always, there was nobody in charge of IT, so she was put in charge of it. She said, “I couldn’t believe. I plugged it in and all of our printers were suddenly air print compatible.” If you’ve got Chromebook, this is a huge thing. Hey let’s not delay it. Sometimes we delay it and I regret it. Let’s do it right now. Ladies and gentlemen, break out the horns.

The Google Changelog!

Leo: It’s Time. And now here’s Gina Trapani. The latest.

Gina: Google released iOS apps for Google Docs and Google Sheets. The apps are on the iPod iPhone and iPad and they let you create and open and edit documents that you started on the web. You can share with other users, work off-line, add or respond to comments. With Sheets you can format cells, enter and sort data. Everything is saved automatically as you type. Both of those apps are available for free in the iOS App Store right now.

Leo: How different is it from just using the Drive app?

Gina: I haven’t actually had a chance to try these out. I think it’s just a much more native experience than the Drive app. And Slides are not available yet, but they are coming soon.

Leo: Cool.

Gina: Speaking of Google Drive, Google Drive can now cast presentations to the Chromecast.

Leo: That’s cool!

Gina: Yeah that’s really cool, right? So this only works from the desktop right now. To cast a presentation, there is a Present button in the top right corner of the Google Drive document. If you have the Chromecast extension installed, (you have to have the Chromecast extension installed but you do if you have a Chromecast.) You should see the option Present on Another Device and from here you can select which device to cast to. Really really nice. So just skip the projector and plug it right in to the TV. I like that a lot.

Let’s see. Google Glass updates. Field Trip, which is the app that gives you information about things in your world is integrated to Google Glass. We knew that, but now it’s voice-integrated into Google Glass. So, Glass wearers can say, “Explore nearby.” It’s one of the main core Glass voice commands and Field Trip will show the wearer interesting facts about the world that surrounds them as they walk. And Glass is also getting another much needed feature. I was pretty excited about this.  Field Trip is pretty cool, but now Glass will have smarter phone answering. So Glass will know if they’re not on your head to ring your phone and not your Glass. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my Glass ring, because it was connected to my phone.

Leo: So your Glass would ring and not your phone?

Gina: Not your phone, yeah.. So I would hear my phone ringing and… Yeah, you have to grab your phone and switch it to phone. So some nice Glass updates there.

Google Search now lets you filter restaurants by what’s open now, price and more. So Google Search on the web or an Android. You can filter restaurants search results, so if you go to Google and search, “Show me some restaurants in downtown Austin”, related searches you can filter by how expensive, what kind of cuisine, if it’s open right now, the Zagat rating, which is very very helpful. So, do your Google searches for restaurants.

Jeff: You know what I really really want?

Leo: What? Tell me what you really want, what you really really want.

Jeff: I’ll tell you. I want a lot of things, but don’t get me started. When I’m driving from here to there, I want to be able to say, “Starbucks on the way.”

Leo: Yeah, that seems sensible. That seems like a small thing to ask

Gina: That does.

Jeff: It really does and in Waze, I have a destination, it knows what roads I’m taking and – find me the next Starbucks.

Gina: Or find me ATM or gas station.

Leo: With some GPS apps, you can do an intermediate stop.

Jeff: Really? Usually it’s just the nearest and you’re 20 miles between exits, and it doesn’t matter that there’s a Starbucks 2 miles away.

Leo: Chad says he wants a How-do-I-get-gas-on-the-way button.

Jeff: Well Waze tells you the nearest, cheapest.

Chad: There needs to be a pit stop option, because either you redo a complete new navigation and sometimes I’ve already chosen a different navigation and I have to re-choose it.

Leo: I find it annoying. My car is always saying, “You’re out of gas, you’re out of gas. You want to see gas stations?” No! I want to keep driving.

Jeff: Are you one of those horrible people who drives down the fumes?

Leo: Yep.

Jeff: You’re also one of those horrible people who appears two minutes before the flight takes off?

Leo: If possible. Sometimes that’s not always easy to do, but I try. I like to walk in that plane as they are closing the door.

Jeff: Oh no! I’m there two hours ahead. My mother made me neurotic as hell.

Gina: I feel like this says a lot. I’m learning a lot about you. Five years later and this is indicative.

Jeff: What about you Gina?

Gina: I aspire to be Jeff, but in reality I’m Leo. I come late and I’m like harried and freaked out.

Leo: I’m always late for everything. I just show up late.

Jeff: You’re the only TV network on earth that doesn’t give a crap about the clock.

Leo: And I’m proud of that, even though it drives our audience crazy. It drives them crazy! And I don’t want to drive our audience crazy. I should do a Mark Zuckerberg. We built this station on the notion that no show should start on time, but now we want to take care of you, our audience.

Gina: I’m pretty much never ready to start right at four, so I’m really glad – it’s like it’s built for me.

Leo: See, you and I.

Jeff: The week after next when I go out to Google to do a privacy thing, the next day, Wednesday morning, I fly back and I think I would land at 2:30 at Newark. And I live 20 minutes away from Newark airport. Leo would say, “Don’t sweat.”  Jeff would say “I’m usually home at least an hour before the show something could go wrong” and I’ll be really nervous, and I can’t tell anybody because I’m in the air. “Maybe I’ll stay two more days just so I can be on the show.” That’s the way I think.

Leo: They should have on Google Now a setting for that. What kind of person are you? Are you a Jeff or Leo?

Jeff: It’s a neurosis slide.

Leo: Yeah, a slider.

Gina: It’s 15 minutes before show time and Skype’s saying, “Hey do you want to install updates?” and I’m like “What could go wrong?”

Leo: I do that too.” Let me just update Mac.” I do it in-show. Actually I was so proud, because I flew to Colorado to see my son on Thursday last, and I arrived just as the boarding began for my row. I like walked in. It was just swell. That’s what I want.

Jeff: I’m so proud that I am now a Global Services on United. We go on before the pilots. We go on the first, right? And it’s that horrible moment that I used to hate, those people say, “Excuse me, excuse me. I’m Global Services, let me through.”

Leo: Oh I hate those people.

Jeff: I know, they’re obnoxious, right? So even though I know I’m going to be the first to board, I don’t have to line up, and I don’t have to do anything, I still show up early.

Leo: Good man.

Jeff: I’m neurotic.

Gina: It’s admirable. I really do aspire to be that person who’s on time and prepared. I’m always the one with wet hair.

Leo: Well, now that you’re a mom, it’s probably even worse, right?

Gina: Oh, forget it. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s true. Because anything can happen with a baby.

Leo: I didn’t know this, but apparently Wednesday is app update day at Google land. Did you know that?

Gina: Yeah, I noticed that Android Police had said something like, hey it’s Wednesday so things will get updated. I just assumed it was TWiG day, so Google got their updates just in time for us!

Leo: I like this update on Google Now. I like this a lot.

Jeff: The true test of whether it’s TWiG day or not is whether they listen to us about I/O.

Leo: Well, we’ll get to that next.

Gina: Yes, they did.

Leo: They did?

Gina: Yes, still working on it, but someone did. So it worked. Yes.

Leo: But first we’re going to tell you where you parked.

Gina: Yes. Last item in the Changelog. We talked about that this might happen. Google will now remember where you parked. And I believe this happens automatically. This is a Google Now feature. Google updated the Search app and the update is rolling out right now. Basically,  new card detects when you stop driving, and remembers where you parked. That APK is rolling out now if you want to get it right now.  You can go to Android Police; they’ve got manual download. You can side load the AP K if you want. I haven’t had a chance to actually try this out. I believe that it happens completely automatically, which is the beauty of Google Now.

Leo: I just love that.

Gina: Yes, it’s amazing. It’s great. It’s pretty great. Earlier, when we were talking about Facebook and apps, I was thinking about how both Facebook and Google Now, even though they want to spread the love across different apps, there’s still that core experience where Facebook is the news feed and now, for Google, it’s Google Now - where all that data kind of feeds back and forms the core experience. And more and more, it feels like it’s Google Now for Google.

Leo: They have such a massive advantage. Although, I have to say I’ve been playing with Microsoft’s new Windows phone 8.1.

Jeff: Somehow you don’t play with a Windows phone, I don’t think.

Leo: I do. But I don’t play with it all the time. So, they’ve added Cortana, which is a dictation capability. But, it’s very Google Now-ish, too, and I wonder if Microsoft’s going to be able to do this. So, obviously they’re playing catch-up, and – apparently it’s not doing anything, maybe my network’s down. That could be.  But the idea of this is apparently it will tell you things like – well it just asked me this morning, “Hey it looks like you live here, is that right?” And I said yes. “It looks like you work there, is that right?” Yes, and then it says, “Good. We’ll provide you with complete information from now on.” So here are news updates based on I told it my interests. It knows where I am and has the weather forecast, but it will also have commute times and you can look at your calendar. So this is very close to Google Now

Jeff: But, it’s going to butt its head up against privacy…

Leo: Yeah. Well. This is why you do what Facebook did, and Google has done, which is you have signals across of broad variety of things. Microsoft does provide mail, right? They have Thing Search. They have a similar layer to Google services. For you and I and Gina, we don’t care because we’re in the Google world.

Jeff: I mean, I imagine if you use Outlook, if use all of the docs and all that stuff in the Microsoft world, it makes sense. And, as I’ve often said on the show, it was the apps that created the hardware.

Leo: Right.

Jeff: It was the services.

Leo: The services.

Jeff: The services, which created the hardware.

Leo: And then they’ve got One Box. If you use Office, they have Office on it. The quick thumbnail on this is they’ve caught up. Windows Phone 8.1 has in many respects caught up. If you were in the Microsoft ecosystem. If you are, as I am, in the Google view system, Google has screwed you. And that’s not Microsoft, it’s Google. Because there’s no Google+ on here. There’s no Google Voice on here. The Gmail support is weak. It’s there, but it’s not sorted very well. It’s the “All” view.

Jeff: And that’s why there really could never be a Facebook phone, because you don’t do all of these things on Facebook.

Leo: Yes I agree.

Jeff: It’s one ecosystem or the other. It’s Microsoft or Google and those are the only two real competitors

Leo: Apple has it, but Apple has such strong privacy protections, they are never going to be willing to do what Google did which is say, “Oh and by the way, we’re aggregating everything from everything you use together.”

Jeff: Oh, and plus you don’t do as many things… Well maybe you do.

Leo: Apple, theoretically, has a similar capability.

Jeff: You’re right.

Leo: So I have to say Windows phone is every bit as good, if you live in the Microsoft ecosystem, as Android is if you live in the Google ecosystem. I just wish Google – in fact, if anyone’s listening, Google – it would be really nice if you provided your stuff here on Windows phone, because then it would be a really solid choice for a lot of people.

Gina: What is the market share?

Leo: 4%

Gina: Wow!

Leo: 4%. Although I have to say, that’s what the Mac was for years, right? And we didn’t, as Mac users, say…

Jeff: Was it that low?

Leo: Oh, it was 3 ½% for almost until very recently. It was very very low.

Gina: It’s not like it was not developing for other…

Leo: No. Google says it’s because it’s too small a platform. They are very much anti-Microsoft. They made Microsoft pull down the YouTube app, remember?

Gina: Oh, that’s right.

Leo: They don’t want their apps on here. And it’s a little frustrating. The only app that’s on here is Google Search. You should try it and see if it does… I doubt if it does.

Gina: 4%.

Leo: Hey! As a former 4%er . . .

Gina: Just a comment.

Jeff: I went to the Acer event in New York this week.

Leo: Oh yeah I saw that, how was that?

Jeff: It was interesting. The reason I was there was wanted to see ten new Chromebooks. All they did was add an Intel core into their Chromebook. So it’s a lot faster. And it will do video better, they say. Which is fine, but I’m greedy, I want lots of stuff. It started off with Jason Chen, who started as CEO of Acer in January, saying, “We’ve got to turn around. We’ve got to bring it back.” Very candid, I thought. Also charismatic. But just saying straight up, “We know the PC industry is awful, dying, it’s not even an industry.”

Leo: It is. It’s dying.

Jeff: He emphasized Chromebooks as a growth area and tablets as a growth area and phones. So it’s interesting to think that that fight over the market share for PCs then became rather moot.

Leo: So if you want Google to remember where you parked, you need Android for now. Presumably, it will do that on iOS eventually. Or no? No, maybe not. I don’t think as an app you have access to that stuff.

Gina: Yeah, the Android API actually can tell you if you’re driving or biking or walking and I’m not sure that IOS offers that. It may be Android only.

Jeff: So what if you take one of those things we have here on the East Coast called a bus.

Gina: Ha ha ha ha

Leo: You never stop moving.

Jeff: But you don’t have…

Leo: “You parked your bus here.”

Jeff: Yeah, well you think you park your bus?

Leo: Yeah. Google buses.

Gina: That’s a really good question actually. I should take my phone on the bus and see how it goes.

Leo: But that’s where you say, “No don’t keep track of it anymore, I’m taking the bus.”

Gina: Right.

Leo: You all know where you bus stop is right?

Gina: Yeah that’s true. Worst case scenario . . .

Jeff: Well, you got off there.

Gina: You got off there and it knows it’s a bus stop.

Leo: As soon as you stopped moving, yeah.

Gina: And the bus is a very particular kind of movement.

Leo: If your mommy drives you to work, it’s the same thing. It only knows when you stop moving fast. It doesn’t know who drove you.

Gina: “Mom dropped you off here.” Anyway that’s all I got.

Jeff: That’s the Changelog!

Leo: We have Cortana running the board here today. Thank you, Jeff.

Chad: It had been so long I thought we were done with it or something.

Jeff: No, we were still Changelogging.

Gina: We were still Changelogging. For the longest time, I used  Access Point and Cortana, and of course the password was 343guiltyspark. And now Cortana is another thing. I guess it’s not another thing, but I don’t know. I loved Cortana before she was a voice that said things.

Leo: She was in Halo.

Gina: She was in Halo. Voices always feel like they’re women!

Leo: They should, because I was told that for jet fighters the heads-up warning when you’re stalling that goes, “Pull-up pull-up” is a woman, because fighter pilots listen to female voices. “Pull up, pull up, you’re going to die, Jimmy. I didn’t mean to drop you off here. Pull up.” I think men listen to women’s voices.

Gina: In Halo, Cortana is the brains and he’s the brawn. She’s amazing.

Leo: She’s the monitor of installation. 343guiltyspark. Are you a Halo fan?

Gina: I am.

Leo: I didn’t know that about you. You?

Gina: Yeah I played the first one a lot.

Leo: It was awesome!

Gina: He was pretty awesome. It was pretty violent. Pretty awesome. It’s the same part of my brain that watches UFC.

Leo: That is fascinating. Speaking of fascinating, we’re going to talk about Larry Page’s incredible comeback. I’ve really got to know – Jeff, you’ve done the research you know if this Nicholas Carlson article is full of it or accurate. So we will find out.

Jeff: Also peeved greatly our good friend… Oh no, senior moment… Oh this is so embarrassing . . .

Leo: His name is Eric Schmidt

Jeff: Writes for Wired – nice guy -

Leo: Oh, Steven Levy –

Jeff: Steven Levy basically said most of that stuff is stuff that he reported.

Leo: Ooooh. Thank you, Nicholas. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Zip recruiter.com, our sponsors for this segment of this week in Google. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Of course, there are many many job boards. Some better than others for what you’re looking for. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just press one button, put your job posting on 50 jobsites all at once, plus LinkedIn, plus Facebook, twitter, and Google Plus? You can! You can, with ziprecruiter.com. That’s where the zip comes from. In fact Zip Recruiter will add your company logo and colors so your job pages look like they are an extension of your business. You have unlimited users on your account, you can create an instant job page on your website, include a company careers page as a careers link. This is all part of their service. You’ll post once and you will watch the qualified candidates rolling to zip recruiter’s easy-to-use interfaces. ziprecruiter.com will even automatically highlight the best candidates. You screen them right then and hire the right person fast. We use Zip Recruiter and we’re very happy with them, so we thought we’d try to give you a chance to try it. Over 100,000 businesses have used Zip Recruiter to find the right employees. Our listeners can try Zip Recruiter for a free four-day trial by going to ziprecruiter.com/twig. ziprecruiter.com/twig. We really thank Zip Recruiter for their support of This Week in Google!

Larry Page, the untold story. As seen in Steven Levy’s In the Plex.

Jeff: I don’t know how true that is. I have no idea which one of the men… I take no statement here.

Leo: There’s a couple of interesting things. He starts with an anecdote about an early day, the first couple of days of Google. Larry decided to fire all the middle management. They have 400 employees and he said, “Why do we need people managing programmers?” So he fired them all. And apparently, characteristically, and this was kind of an interesting insight, in public he had a staff meeting and said, “By the way, you’re all fired.”

Gina: It was the project managers, right? He said he didn’t think that engineers should have to report to someone who is not an engineer, and he felt the project managers were politicking and only pushing for the projects that they cared about. He thought that it should just be a flat organization. That engineers should just self-organize and go with the things that they wanted to go with. It sounds a lot like GitHub, doesn’t it?

Leo: Ha ha ha

Jeff: Ha ha Ha

Leo: “Talked with a flat, robotic tone.” I guess Larry, like a lot of geeks, wasn’t really comfortable with people. As Page talked, Carlson wrote, although who knows maybe Stephen wrote this, “he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact.”

Jeff: Geeks!

Leo: He’s a geek. I don’t even look you in the eyes. “Though he was an appealing presence with an above average height and nearly black hair . . .” That’s appealing. “He was socially awkward.” So apparently that was a mistake, because they ended up hiring all the project managers back later. This is an interesting one. The investors said, “You and Sergey are not qualified to run this company. You’re under 30. you need to bring in adult supervision.” That’s always what Larry and Sergey called Eric Schmidt. Apparently there was a lot of resistance to it from everybody, but those investors won. Schmidt was brought in. Oh, here’s another one. “Everywhere you look there were know-it-alls ready to gleefully tear into you. For Pages’s employees, working at Google felt more like a never-ending thesis defense.” Page had originally bonded with Brin over a day of fierce argument, that’s how their relationship grew. Their debates were not shouting matches; they were a series of blunt points made by one side than the other, with a little name-calling thrown in. Page would call one of Brin’s ideas stupid, and then Brin would say Page’s idea was naïve and then they both called each other bastards.

Jeff: Once again, geeks

Leo: Yeah.

Jeff: Every geek except Gina, who looks too nice to be a geek.

Gina: Well, male geeks.

Jeff: Exactly

Gina: This is a very masculine way. Like the whole game of one-upmanship is a very - not trying to be sexist - but it’s a very masculine style of communication. One that certainly women can engage in and men cannot engage in, I’m just generally speaking. But yeah. This kind of thing drives me crazy. I’ll be honest. It’s like the, “Who’s smarter?” The, “Well, actually …” Anyway.

Leo: “Well, actually… If you knew anything.” This actually - sidebar here - I saved this out to a pocket, it was an interesting article. I wonder if you’ve read it. Let me see if I can login to my pocket and show you. About programmers and why being a programmer is such a bitch.

Chad: It’s in there. It’s called Programming Sucks.

Leo: Basically, the premise is that all programs are written by a bunch of dicks.

Gina: Ha ha Ha

Jeff: Ha ha Ha

Leo: It’s from still drinking.org and basically it’s like building a bridge that . . . He says: Imagine joining an engineering team. You're excited and full of ideas, probably just out of school and a world of clean, beautiful designs, awe-inspiring in their aesthetic unity of purpose, economy, and strength. You start by meeting Mary, project leader for a bridge in a major metropolitan area. Mary introduces you to Fred, after you get through the fifteen security checks installed by Dave because Dave had his sweater stolen off his desk once and Never Again. Fred only works with wood, so you ask why he's involved because this bridge is supposed to allow rush-hour traffic full of cars full of mortal humans to cross a 200-foot drop over rapids. Don't worry, says Mary, Fred's going to handle the walkways. What walkways? Well Fred made a good case for walkways and they're going to add to the bridge's appeal. Of course, they'll have to be built without railings, because there's a strict no railings rule enforced by Phil, who's not an engineer. Nobody's sure what Phil does, but it's definitely full of synergy and has to do with upper management, whom none of the engineers want to deal with so they just let Phil do what he wants.

Gina: This is awesome.

Leo: It sounds so real doesn’t it? Sara, meanwhile, has found several hemorrhaging-edge paving techniques, and worked them all into the bridge design, so you'll have to build around each one as the bridge progresses, since each one means different underlying support and safety concerns. Tom and Harry have been working together for years, but have an ongoing feud over whether to use metric or imperial measurements, and it's become a case of "whoever got to that part of the design first." This has been such a headache for the people actually screwing things together, they've given up and just forced, hammered, or welded their way through the day with whatever parts were handy. Also, the bridge was designed as a suspension bridge, but nobody actually knew how to build a suspension bridge, so they got halfway through it and then just added extra support columns to keep the thing standing, but they left the suspension cables because they're still sort of holding up parts of the bridge. Nobody knows which parts, but everybody's pretty sure they're important parts. After the introductions are made, you are invited to come up with some new ideas, but you don't have any because you're a propulsion engineer and don't know anything about bridges.

He then says, “Would you drive across this bridge? No.” Every single program you have every used has some version of this dynamic.

Jeff: You left out one part.

Leo: What?

Jeff: The lead developer goes and they hire new one and they throw out absolutely everything that was done before.

Leo: That’s probably the best thing they could do. Start over. But you know, we forget. We think of software as written somewhat perfectly with attention to detail and we forget that it’s written by humans, many of whom are dicks. Most of them can’t look each other in the eye. Oh my Gad.

Gina: Now I just kind of want to quit.

Leo: But you are mostly working on your own, right? That’s the way to do it. He says, “Every programmer occasionally, when nobody's home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It's a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the rest of the files and the inevitable collapse of all that is good and true in the world.

This file is Good Code. It has sensible and consistent names for functions and variables. It's concise. It doesn't do anything obviously stupid. It has never had to live in the wild, or answer to a sales team. It does exactly one, mundane, specific thing, and it does it well. It was written by a single person, and never touched by another. It reads like poetry written by someone over thirty.” I love this. It’s the best piece ever!

Gina: I work with a lot of great engineers, with my company, some of whom were just contributors, and you know certainly we bought into these issues, but I have a very strict Not In Our Community. We don’t blame. We don’t do this one-upsmanship. We don’t re-factor because it just makes it prettier for the programmer. We build things that service the user. But these are all things that you have to continue to reinforce.

Leo: It’s entropy!

Gina: It is, and I was telling Jeff in the preshow that as a perfectionist and a completionist, it hurts me to push code that isn’t… Like Steve Job’s story about painting the back of the fence that no one sees. It hurts me when the back of the fence isn’t painted. I push code like that all the time, because code needs to get used or else it doesn’t matter, right? If no one uses it, then it doesn’t matter. If it’s not working, then it doesn’t matter and there’s a big scale of functioning. I could go on about this forever, but, yes, part of the way that I got around this is by leading my own projects. And trying to set the tone of “This stuff doesn’t go on here.” That’s not always possible. Particularly if you’re in a big company on a software team that you get assigned to. But it’s funny. It’s all true. This stuff all happens.

Leo: This is why you want to work for Gina.

Gina: This is why you want to start your own company. You think “I don’t want to deal with this BS.”

Leo: Yeah. Isn’t there, I can’t say the name of this programming language, but there’s a programming language called BrainF*** that is intentionally horrible. This is in that language - a little code snippet on the screen here -  this is how you do Hello World in that language; +++++++++++++{>+++++++++++++++++++++ - that is BrainF***. And people write code in it just to be ornery.

Gina: One of the ways that I also avoid the hemorrhaging edge stuff is that I use a very old programming language. I use php in mysql.  It’s old. No one cares about it anymore. But what’s nice is that it works and it has years of testing behind it. And it doesn’t really attract programmers who are like, “Well, actually, you should be writing this in Gold and not in Ruby.”

Leo: Been there.

Gina: It’s a good advantage.

Jeff: It’s like German doing an imitation of an American accent. That was Gina doing Programmer. I like that.

Leo: Did you see this? I didn’t see this. There’s a programming language called LOLCODE that is written in lolcat.

Hai

Can Has STDIO?

VISIBLE “HAI WORLD!”

KTHXBYE

Gina: ‘kay thanks, bye.  Hahaha.

Leo: Sorry, programmer joke. Let’s move on. I’m sure we have other things to talk about. Oh yeah. The end of Google Plus. What do you think? Vic Gundotra gone, in a flash.

Gina: Very quickly.

Leo: Fired?

Jeff: I don’t think so. I think maybe frustrated, but he’s too respected. He’s very respected in that world.

Gina: Friends of friends told me that he was a real pain to work for. And I didn’t think anything of that, because I think a lot of managers are really a pain to work for. But I don’t know.

Leo: We all like Vic, but we don’t see the management side.

Gina: We don’t work for him.

Jeff: In my last meeting with him and Bradley a few weeks ago when I was there last time - Vic like a Googler holds tight to the chest and he’s demanding. And, you know, can be dismissive. But he’s very smart and I respect the hell out of him. I think he’s done something amazing. We’re getting these deathknell things. Anthony De Rosa, who’s now at CIRCA, just tweeted a wonderful thing. He said Twitter and the web are dead. Long live back web and PointCast

Leo: Ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha

Gina: Everybody is writing like XXXX is dead. Facebook is dead, Google plus is dead, everything’s dead.

Leo: It’s a dumb trope

Gina: Everything’s dead. Walking dead, zombie dead.

Leo: I was talking to my daughter Abby, who is very smart for 22, and we were talking about sick joke cycles. There is a professor at Berkeley called Alan Dundess , a sociologist. He says sick joke cycles always have to do with morbid fears that are suppressed in society, but come out as jokes. The dead baby jokes cycle was right when RoeVsWade happened. And was very tense over abortion. Segregation led to the elephant jokes. You figure out why. So I said, why do you think zombies? Why do you think we’re so into zombies? And Abby said, “Well I think it has to do with the fear of ecological disaster, the end of the world as we know it and an overall kind of underlying fear that this will not stand. That we are, in fact, decaying. Before our very eyes. And everything is dying.”

Jeff: That’s depressing.

Leo: Why else would we be into zombies? I’m an optimist. I’m into fairies.

Jeff: A late optimist, but an optimist.

Leo: I come and go. You know. So I don’t think Google Plus is gone by any means, but it seems to be the case that many of its employees have been transferred to the Android group, right?

Gina: Let’s talk about what we mean by Google Plus? Do you mean Google Plus the social network? Do you think the social network is going to stick around? Because I think that there’s actually a possibility…

Leo: That it might be gone?

Gina: But Hangouts and Photos?

Leo: Well, Hangouts got moved to Android, Photos got moved to Android. They’re both standalone apps.

Gina: Those are the things I use the most in Google Plus that are specifically Google Plus of course, not counting my Google login to everything else. But Photos and Hangouts are the way that I use Google Plus. I just haven’t gotten into the social network. And I wonder if the social network part of Google Plus won’t make it. And if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that Google Plus was a failure.

Leo: I’ll tell you this, though. It would be devastating to confidence in Google.

Jeff: Yes!

Leo: And every time they kill a widely used thing - Gina is already over this because they killed Wave – she wrote a book about it!

Gina: And Reader.

Leo: And Reader. And Buzz. And you can go on and on, and we’re watching the knife hanging over Google Voice. If they kill –

Gina: Oh don’t say that.

Leo: Well, exactly. At what point do people say, “Well screw that. I’m never trusting Google again.”

Jeff: Versus what Zuckerberg said today – “You can trust us.”

Leo: Right

Jeff: “We’ll be here for you.”

Leo: There is a detriment - even if this is not a hugely successful thing…

Jeff: I’m still going to argue about that, because yes the numbers are kind of trumped with signins and all that, the numbers were ridiculous. But I do find conversations there. I do find people there. The growth rate was considerable. It’s sizable. It’s bigger than Twitter which is also being declared dead today, which is just as ridiculous. I don’t think that Google Plus is a failure. I think it’s part of a larger strategy. The bigger question, then, is what is that larger strategy? Does Google need these singles? Are they willing to just kill this because it’s not a single they expected? And then risk that trust?

Leo: By the way, just so you know, the breaking story was TechCrunch. It says “Google Plus is walking dead.”

Jeff: Zombie!

Leo: I rest my case! Well, okay, here’s one thing. Google+ might be something that Facebook tricked Google into launching. Because it seems to be, and Facebook certainly was a strong proponent of this, that social search was the more important search, but I’ve got to say that may not have been what happened. That Facebook’s own social search has been a flop, there’s no evidence that Bing benefits from social integration, Google might have realized, you know what, that was a mistake, these signals we’re getting in Google+ do not help us in Google search.

Jeff: But it’s not just search Leo, it’s also advertising. And …

Leo: Is there any advertising in Google+?

Jeff: No, that’s not the point. Go back to what you said before. Google is a bunch of disport applications, what ties it together is the relationship with the user and the knowledge that comes from that.  So you don’t have to put advertising in every app to get the advertising benefit. The question that I would say is, I don’t think Google+ alone gives you terribly valuable signals for that that monanization and that relevance, that serving of relevance. Right, maps gives you really valuable signals, search gives you really valuable signals. Plus, not so much, and it’s a signals business.

Gina: Google+ is the technical equivalent of the UFI privacy policy. Right, Google+ is Google saying, we know who you are across all of your apps because you’re using the single sign in, it’s a platform right. And to me, I look at the social network of Google+ as one app, where hangouts is another, photos is another, and then YouTube, which all got retrofitted back in, YouTube, Gmail, etc., is another, so, and Google Now is only possible because of Google Sign In. if you think of Google+ as just Google sign in, as in I’m the same person across all these things, that’s a huge success. I think this is why when people talk about Google+, I think that they’re referring to the social network, and you’re right, Jeff, there’s not a lot of signals there, I guess there’s +1s and reshares and things, I don’t know.

Leo: Is this what Facebook was talking about? The death of the “page”, and the rise of the app? I love Google+, and a lot of people love Google+, I love Buzz, and a lot of people love Buzz. That’s irrelevant. We can acknowledge, how much love you feel for it is not a determinant. Even how many people us it may not be determinate. I just think that it’s a mistake to kill another service at this point.

Jeff: I think it would be a big mistake.

Gina: It would be catastrophic from a PR perspective for sure.

Jeff: And a morale perspective, I think is inside, they were all told “plus, plus, plus, plus, never mind.” Would not go over well.

Leo: Well that’s what right, last year your bonus was dependent on social.

Jeff: It would be one hell of a platter of crow. I don’t see it, but I don’t think they’ve handled the PR here well. Because they should have predicted this would be the case and should have been out- I mean yeah you’ll fine issues and statements of denials, but they should do some tangible things to bolster Plus.

Leo: Add a feature. Now. STAT. so do you think Vic left because he saw the writing on the wall and said he was disappointed, they took a bunch of people away from me, moved it over to Android, and Sundar.

Gina: Did Vic leave? I mean, I don’t know. It sounds like this was a re-org and him, his departure was part of that re-org. I don’t know. I don’t know, that’s what it sounded like.

Leo: What happened? He’s not there anymore. Is it like in Silicon Valley, is he up on the roof with the rest of the guys who don’t have a job and he’s having a BBQ? Hey you want to walk to Arby’s for lunch, is that what he’s doing?

Gina: He wouldn’t have that. And I’m sure that he’s vested. I’m sure that he can leave and do very well.

Jeff: He derives a Tesla, I’m sure that he’s fine.

Gina. I’m sure he’s doing fine.

Jeff: Well, the other actual thing was, he’s replaced by someone who’s keeping his day job, important job of engineering. And that person is also not promoted to Senior VP, so now Google+ is, reports to something down a rank.

Leo: Yeah, Dave Besbris seems almost like a place holder. Like, okay, you’re already director of engineering, here’s another thing.

Jeff: Well respected, but he’s still the director of engineering.

Leo: And what about Bradly Horowitz who must feel like crap right about now.

Jeff: I think so, but one story that I read about Besbris, could be that he just wasn’t as visible, that he really was Vic’s right hand. And Bradly’s wise sog, because Bradly’s the product guy.

Leo: Right.

Jeff: But who is, you know, it’s like working in a publishing house, the only way to rise is because you sell ads, Google, the only way to rise is if you’re an engineer.

Leo: I like Bradly, Bradly, we love you man. Don’t ever change.

Jeff: Bradly’s great, we love Bradly.

Leo: He was the product manager and, outside, I guess, widely considered the logical replacement for Vic. But as you say, maybe not, maybe Dave was always there. Just we didn’t know about it. Larry Page said nice things about Vic, of course. But when somebody leaves, and leaves like right away. Like “I’m gone now, you can have my office.”

Gina: Right, not like “I’m transitioning out, and my last days in four weeks, and I’ll be…” right, I mean, normally when these things are planned, it’s a little bit more…

Jeff: Well, usually that means a competitor.

Leo: Well, like what’s his name, who left to go to China.

Jeff: Hugo.

Leo: Hugo Ibarra, who just like, he just like, said I’m going to Chaw Meing, see ya. This wasn’t that. I mean, Vic’s vested right, maybe he wants to rest. But it’s like that memo “he wants to spend more time with his family”, memo. Which is always like the, smoking gun. If you ever get a memo that Leo wants to spend more time with his family, you know I was fired, okay.

Gina: I don’t know what that says about your family Leo.

Leo: That’s the last thing I’d want to do. What? Spend time with you or spend time with my family? No, no, no. no choice.

Jeff: We are your family. We are your children.

Leo: You are my family. You’re my people. I don’t know, I will miss Vic, yeah, apparently he had a “pugnacious” approach, according to ReCode, with Google+ and maybe his employees.

Jeff: Well if Google listens to us, not that it matters, don’t kill Plus, it’s a nice place.

Leo: I would really prefer that nobody used it, just, the few of us in the know, and lets just keep it for that. In fact it’s kind of, a little bit too, like, real world for me. Get the norms out of Google+. No more normies in Google+

Jeff: I don’t have too many of those. Let me go back to the question I asked earlier. Rewrite API?

Leo: That’s a great question. If you say that Google+ is more, maybe not dead, but walking dead, would a right API would have helped? If people have been following this, you have a read API, so apps can read it, but they can’t post to it. So for instance, there’s no Google+ app on Windows phone, but there is an app that lets me read my Google+, I just can’t post to it. Because it uses the API. Would it be better? If they had allowed third party apps. I don’t think so.

Gina: Well, a lot more people would have piped their content from Twitter or Facebook.

Leo: It would have made it like Buzz, that’s what killed the Buzz right?

Gina: Automatically into, right, into Google+, which would have meant that they could probably claim a lot more active users that are not really active, right. I mean, Google was pretty staunch from the beginning that that’s not what they wanted. They didn’t want that.

Leo: I think that was the right thing. I was angry. But I have come around. By the way, there are normies, and I can’t avoid the normies, because, this was a mistake, they started putting the hot stuff in my stream. It’s crap.

Gina: And it’s always a picture of a rose with some inspirational quote or something. Right. Yeah.

Leo: Its Facebook crap.

Jeff: Those posters you buy in malls, right, with the sunsets. Which also says a very bad thing, well, in my view I …….. But we all are right now. It doesn’t send a great branding message about what Google+ is and the people really are. And why do I want to get mass crap there? I get enough of that in media. What’s hot is just not very smart and it’s not tailored to me, I’ve always found that irritating. And I constantly kill it and get angry at it. But then it goes away for a while. Like I haven’t seen it on top for probably a week or two. Well they do things. That’s the thing about Google+, there were things that I complained about, you know, day one, we all complained about day one, and quietly, slowly, they get through the list and they fix things. And you know, the first thing of course, was the Scoville problem.

Leo: He’s still on there, though.

Jeff: Well hasn’t he declared that’s dead like everything he’s declared was dead.

Leo: Yeah everything’s dead. He doesn’t like Glass anymore. You know what, I don’t see the what’s hot, maybe they did start taking that out. Yeah.

Jeff: Maybe they did, maybe that’s what Vic liked and they got rid of it and that, was, “that’s it! No what’s hot, I’m out of here!”

Leo: Right.

Jeff: “I want those posters.”

Gina: He stormed out. He stormed out.

Jeff: Well, Vic, we also like you, I think Vic’s a very smart guy, and when he gets bored of being home in two weeks, I’ll be eager to see what he does next.

Leo: Vic, there’s always a show waiting here at the twit network for you. It’s time for the Vic Conductor show. Yeah, don’t kill Google+, that would be a mistake. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go online. I’d have to find something else. I noticed there’s not a lot of Twitter clones. Popping up anymore. This might be an old and in the way idea, this idea of sharing on a network. Do people create new stuff like this anymore?

Gina: You mean whole different social networks?

Leo: Yeah. No they create apps right?

Gina: Right, right. Yeah.

Leo: There’s lots of those. It’s interesting. Maybe this is an old fashioned idea. It’s like the portal. We had a long conversation on the twit show on Sunday on the proposed FCC rules, the lying sack of filth that is the chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, cable…

Jeff: Who, by the way finally talks about it in public, guess where he does that? A cable show. A cable show.

Leo: Yeah, of course. He’s the one who said “oh, pay no attention to this thing, …….. “ I love Alexis though.  Ohanian, we’re going to try to get, are we going to have, did he respond to my request to get him on twit? Is he going to be on?

Chad: Yeah, yeah his people got in contact, I had no idea that was happening, so I was very confused.

Leo: Good, I’m sorry. We’d love to get the Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian on. He’s the guy who did the SOPA PIPA protest that was so successful in killing SOPA PIPA.

Jeff: Mark my words he’ll be president one day.

Leo: I love Alexis, I love him. So now his latest plan is he wants to buy a billboard outside the FCC, saying “Save Our Net”. Now he hasn’t determined what it’s going to be called yet but he’s got a crowd, Crowdtilt is one of his startups, a Crowdtilt campaign to raise money for the billboard. They’re up to 10,000 dollars, they’ve got 15 days left to raise the next 10,000. I put 1,000 in because I think this is a good idea.

Jeff: You did?

Gina: Wow. Wow, Leo. That’s, good for you.

Leo: Yeah. Hey, for me, this is a hot button topic because…

Jeff: And I’m very upset there isn’t a lot more heat in the discussion about it.

Leo: It’s hard to understand. And I knew that and I’ve talked about it on the radio, I’ve talked about it as many places as I can. Alexis does a very good job of explaining it so real people can understand it. But it’s hard, it’s really hard to get people to care about it. And the sad thing is, they won’t care until it’s way too late. So the FCC, and by the way, no one sees these proposed rules yet. But they said, Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, said that the FCC would circulate them on Thursday, still waiting to see them.

Leo: What are you afraid of Wheeler? And what about this stuff, Leo, that the argument made in some quarters is that he has no choice because of the way the legislation is written on section 720 or whatever.

Leo: 706, I keep telling …

Jeff: The whole choice is, they could just declare a utility and be done with it.

Leo: You remember Verizon sued the FCC over their open internet rules, their proposed rules. And lost in court, and the court was very clear. They said “under the telecommunication act, specifically 706, section 706, you cannot do this. You don’t have the right to do it. Unless you say broadband providers re common carriers. They are utilities. Then you do have the right.” The court was very clear. The court even said the opinion of the court even said “we understand, you have to protect the open internet. It’s an important thing. But you can’t do it, you know, the way that congress has set up the FCC, you can’t do it unless you declare these broadband providers common carriers.” Now I’m not, we talked at length about this with Denise Howell, who’s an attorney. She’s talked about it on This Week in Law, I’m not sure why the FCC would be hesitant to do that, maybe there are unintended consequences, but it is a simple, clear path to preserving an open internet is to …

Jeff: I’ll tell you the unintended consequences, it’s a reduction in campaign contributions. Like crazy.

Leo: How’s Tom Wheeler going to get a job with a cable industry after his chairmanships over?

Jeff: Just like Powell, a prior chairman.

Leo: Michael Powell now runs the NCTA, the National Cable Television Association. That by the way, is Tom Wheeler’s old job Tom Wheeler is in the…

Jeff: That revolving door is hitting us in the ass people.

Leo: Tom Wheeler is, besides being the chairman of the FCC, he also is in the cable hall of fame, and the wireless hall of fame. For service to the cable and wireless industries. So I mean, it’s so corrupt. It’s so obviously corrupt.

Jeff: Obama, how dare you. How dare you.

Leo: I’m really disappointed, I really feel like he has let us down in a great many ways and this is one of the worst.

Jeff: For our tribe this is the worst.

Leo: Well, for my business this is the worst because I have a very dog in this hunt. Now twit wouldn’t exist if I had to pay extra to get to you at a reasonable speed. There would be no streaming video from us. As so many has said, and by the way, and I retweeted her, in fact, I think Elizabeth Warren is running for President. But she had some really good, both, two of my favorite people, members of congress have excoriated Wheeler over this. One is Al Frankin, senator from MN, the other is Elizabeth Warren from NJ, she said “we don’t know…”

Jeff: No, no, from …

Leo: From MA, sorry. “We don’t know who’s going to have the next big idea in this country, but were pretty sure they’re going to need to get online to do it. Enough said.”

Gina: Great quote.

Leo: Isn’t that great?

Gina: Yeah, that nails it.

Leo: Enough said.

Jeff: So here’s a question Leo, my fear is that, and there’s a story in the Wall Street Journal just an hour ago that says that Google and Netflix and Yahoo are considering a campaign, a public campaign against Wheeler on this. My fear though, is that if they wanted to be evil, they’d say “well, you know what, we have the money to pay, we’re now the big old guys, lets pull the ladder up behind us. We don’t want any of these upstarts killing us.”

Leo: No, they totally could.

Jeff: So they could really do that, and I think there’s a real moment of moral test here for them. That if Netflix and Google and co. do come out against Wheeler on this, yeah they’re not crazy about paying and they’re not crazy about the tel-cos but, they are the ones in the position to pay. And so they’ve got to be teetering. Right now. Some lawyer, there’s always got to be a lawyer in these companies, has to be saying “well you knowwwww…… to consider.”

Leo: “Not a bad idea, pull up that ladder.”

Jeff: They’re the ones who could fight on behalf of the net. And they need to. It’s the SOPA PIPA fight all over again. But the last one was “hey they’re going to stop you from watching movies”.

Leo: savetheinternet.com, what can I do. Just go to save the internet.com. You can get lots of information there. I don’t think you need give money to Alexis to build a billboard but certainly call FCC, call Congress, there will be a day of action May 15^th, and I’m not sure what our participation will be in that. Last time on SOPA PIPA day we went black and white. Which I thought was a really perfect way to both raise interest but also to continue our mission, which is to inform people about this stuff. Contact your congress critter. Unfortunately the only people who really understand this are geeks. And geeks are notoriously inactive in politics.

Jeff: Yes, because on the bridge, they just go ahead and connect the wood to the metal and don’t worry about it.

Leo: Exactly, exactly. But you do have to say, where are Google, where is Netflix in all of this? I mean why aren’t they yelling bloody murder? Because they’re already, they’ve got the money. They’ll pay Comcast…

Jeff: But that’s what the Wall Street Journal just said, that Google, Yahoo and Netflix are considering a campaign.

Leo: Considering is not campaigning.

Jeff: Well, well, exactly, that’s why we’ve got to keep the pressure on them.

Leo: Yeah. Let’s see, I want to get through this pretty quick here. What’s new with Glass? Explore nearby? Fieldtrip, you mentioned that. One Plus One, you guys talked about that extensively last night on All About Android.

Gina: We did, we did. And we talked about the Android Silver program as well.

Leo: Oh yeah, silver.  So let’s do one plus one first. So these are former OPPO guys, OPPO makes a phone that makes a phone that’s pretty nice, pretty sweet. Although nobody I know has it. Android phone. And now they’ve gone off to form a company, OPO, One Plus One, one less P.

Gina: And they’re associated with OPPO, they’re bankrolled by OPPO, which people were upset about for stupid reasons which I don’t get.

Leo: And they want to make the ultimate phone with Cyanogen Mod running on it.

Gina: Uh-huh, yeah.

Leo: They’re saying in June but have we seen, some people have one, right.

Gina: Well they did this crazy marketing thing where you had to enter a lottery and agree to smash your phone if you were picked, you had to destroy your current smartphone to get a One Plus One for a dollar. Which we agreed on, all us at Android, was just dumb. But otherwise, the phone itself looks pretty cool. I mean, it’s a really nice handset.

Leo: And cheap, $299, it’ll be like a Nexus. Except running Cyanogen Mod.

Gina: Think about that, yeah.

Jeff: Gina, as I recall, you said last week, doesn’t it run either Cyanogen Mod or the current Google Android official, or is it just Cyanogen Mod?

Gina: I thought it was just but I could be wrong.

Jeff: Oh, okay. I thought you said, maybe, my mistake for hearing you wrong last week.

Leo: Anyway, June availability, doesn’t, I mean, that rendering looks beautiful. But it is, in fact, just an artist’s rendering. I wouldn’t rush, there’s a lot of slip betwixt the tongue and the lip, I would wait. And see. I’ve been burned so many times by phones that looked great on paper.

Jeff: There are a few people who have them in the wild.

Leo: Yeah, there’s like review units out there somewhere. Who has one that we know?

Chad: MKBHD has one.

Leo: Of course Marcus has one.

Chad: Yeah.

Leo: Marcus Brownly, yeah.

Chad: Getting through a 30 second ad before they show it.

Leo: Aw man, Marcus is raking it in. I would never allow a 30 second pre roll, I really wouldn’t. That’s just, there’s no skip.

Chad: Nope. This has been an option for some content creators, that they can have a full 30 second pre roll ad.

Leo: Ironically for Microsoft.

Chad: Right.

Leo: Alright, let’s see it. He’s got it, where is it? There it is.

Leo: Oh, he doesn’t have it.

Chad: I thought he had one.

Leo: Yeah, teased, that’s the word, teased. Yeah I can make up a phone with really nice specs too. This is, you could do this in your sleep. See that’s the problem, I … I’m not, I’m skeptical, I certainly wouldn’t smash a phone, although I’ve got plenty lying around that I could smash.

Gina: That’s such a bad idea, I don’t know. Of course its attention grabbing, but it’s just wasteful. There’s better things to do.

Leo: Yeah, no recovering it. Yeah.

Gina: Anyway, June, $299.

Leo: Tony Wang has just texted, he’s our editor. He says “I entered to destroy my phone, I hope they don’t pick me.” So you don’t have to destroy it until they pick you?

Chad: Yeah, I’m on the page and I’m considering it too, but it just seems like such a first world, like…

Jeff: Yeah, somebody could use that phone.

Chad: Absolutely absurd to destroy a perfectly good phone, it’s incredibly offensive, it’s disgusting.

Jeff: It’s wasteful and bad for the environment when you throw it out.

Leo: Yeah. It’s like can I give it to a homeless person instead? But I’m going to enter just in case. Because if I win, ill smash, I have to tell them what I’m going to smash. Wow. Destruction method, what should I do.  Hammer, baseball bat, screwdriver, fire, blender? Drop it from the top of a very tall building. Now that’s going to hit somebody.

Jeff: Now Leo, what phone would you destroy?

Leo: I said the HTC 1M7.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Leo: In a deserted area. By the way.

Gina: Not the M8.

Leo: No, the M8, that’s why I can do the M7. I don’t need it, I got the M8.

Gina: That’s right, I actually have a dead M7 I could smash.

Leo: My point exactly.

Chad: My Nexus 5’s screens a little cracked already. So I mean, it’s going out the door anyways.

Jeff: Don’t you dare, don’t you dare young Chad. Not a Nexus 5, no.

Chad: I need a screen replacement.

Leo: I could give them so many old phones. A Galaxy S1, 2, 3, 4.

Jeff: You should just give your phones to 20 friends and they could all get $1 phones.

Leo: Yeah, I do give these away. You know what I do? I like to surprise people. I just put them under a chair. And then I just wait.

Jeff: Like Oprah.

Leo: Yeah, like Oprah. You get an old phone, and you get and old phone. So is Tw- He’s looking. Is Twitter dead? The Atlantic says the Twitter is dead. Robinson Meyer and Adrienne Lafrance.

Jeff: Idiocy.

Leo: Twitters not dead

Gina: I’m on Twitter every day.

Leo: Nothing is wrong with Twitter. But Twitter did have to report that their growth rate has slowed. So what?

Jeff: Which set stock down quite a tumble. But… as happens.

Leo: Twitter is not what it used to be, but you know what, we were talking before the show about my methodology which is intimately connected with Twitter, for gathering news. I love twitter. Tony just says “you should look at the TOS, the terms of service before you enter.” Oh no, what have I done. “I agree to the terms and conditions. You may apply to break or damage your current phone. If selected you will submit a video of yourself breaking your phone.” Alright.” Contest entry successful… all submitted videos must be shot in one frame with no cutting or editing. The applicant must show that their phone does turn on and use the phone that was chosen by the applicant in their initial application. The phone must suffer significant and visible damage to qualify for the One Plus One purchase code. The applicant must show evidence of the damage in the video following the smash.” This was such a bad idea. Really. Terrible promotion. But then there’s the blender company right? Will it blend? Blend Tec blends everything.

Gina: Yeah, that’s true.

Leo: Those are destroyed. Every time. Did you see Acer’s Liquid Leap? Their new watch when you were at the Acer event?

Jeff: Yeah, I, they went past this very quickly, but I think they pulled a Samsung and I think that I think that it is connected to their phone. Which I don’t fully understand why that seems to be the case because my, my fit bit works across all kinds of things and it’s wonderful and if you’re, yeah I understand you want to pump your phone, but if you’re going to come up with a new product, then come out with a new product. Because that’s where the growth could be. If you tether it to just your own device, why bother?

Leo: The Chinese government has decided, and courts asked the question “why, China, are you censoring The Big Bang Theory, but not Game of Thrones?” to which I answer, “because they have good taste.”

Jeff: Oh here he goes again.

Gina: OOH, snap. Here we go, here we go, alright. Are you really going to argue the Chinese government has taste in television?

Leo: No.

Gina: Okay.

Leo: They say they’ve banned four American television shows because they’re offensive. But Game of Thrones is not offensive? It’s violent and sexy. Everything I look for.

Gina: Game of Thrones is not offensive…

Jeff: It’s everything they want their government to be.

Leo: They banged, they banned The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, NCIS and The Practice.

Jeff: I guess those show American decadence.

Leo: Yeah. Maybe because its medieval times, they don’t.

Gina: The Good Wife… okay. Alright.

Leo: The Onions going to- is this true? I hope it’s true. The Onion is going to create a new website in June, called ClickHole.com. It’s a website that’s putting content and sponsored posts side by side with barely any distinction between them. People will climb into this click hole, and find the content so interesting that they won’t be able to keep it to themselves. Every post is engineered to be as shareable as possible so it spreads like a deadly wildfire on social media.

Gina: You won’t believe what happens next.

Leo: You won’t believe how rich they get. Apparently items will be like quizzes, like “what pizza should I have for dinner tonight?” sponsored by Pizza Hut. Or “uplifting personal tales in list forms, seven jerks that defied the odds and didn’t go into finance.” I don’t know. Is this site up? Not yet, it won’t be until June. Is this real? You never know with the Onion.

Jeff: I can’t tell. I can’t tell, it’s one of those great Onion moments. “I’m not ashamed to admit me to check with The Onion PR to find out if ClickHole was satirical or not, I don’t want to end up on literallyunbelive.org.”

Leo: So here’s ClickHole.com. “Coming this summer, an all-new internet experience, filled with content so shareable, snack able, and clickable, it will rob you of all logic and reason. Until then, use the guide below to learn the proper method of clicking.”

Gina: Snack able.

Leo: Snack able content. Hey, that’s the secret. How could I have been so wrong?

Gina: You’re just not snack able enough.

Leo: Step one: use your pointer, locate a link to a piece of content that you want to explore. Step two: locate the part of your mouse or track pad that enables you to click. Step three: Click your content. Practice clicking the button below between 800,000 and 12 million times in preparation for our launch in June.

Gina: This is clearly…. Keep clicking!

Leo: Faster, faster, click faster! Wow you’re doing great! Nice reinforcement every few clicks. Seriously awesome. You’re almost there. That last one was great. But where’s the slideshow? Apparently there is going to be a slideshow without any captioning of 17 different kinds of hay. Would be one of the… one of the... I can’t wait. This better be real. Don’t mess with us Onion.

Jeff: That’s why I put it in there. I want it to be real. I want it to make fun of those types of….

Leo: Merissa Meyer, 200 million dollar pay last year. Good for you Merissa, we’re happy for you. We’re going to take a break, when we come back, our tip, our tool, our number of the week as we wrap up this edition of This Week in Google. Jeff Jarvis, Gina Trapani and moi. Our show today brought to you by our friends at Personal Capital. We love Personal Capital. I gotta give you this, this is free. You go to this site and what it does, it collates al your financial information, it gives you easy to understand, real time graphs. Just the, you know, it’s like a selfie for your money. So just the fun of looking at it. Ooh it’s going up, it’s down. But there actually is a serious purpose for this too because not only are you keeping track of your money, but you’re going to save money, if you’re paying too much to manage it, or on fees, or you’re actually paying somebody for advice. Hey you can stop doing that. Personal capital will help you, it’ll show you how much you’re overpaying in fees, how to reduce those fees. You’ll get advice on how to optimize your investments, it’s tailored to your assets, to your goals, to how you’re doing now and how you’d like to be doing. It’s on desktop, it’s on IPad, it’s on Android, and it’s on IPhone. So why wait, it takes just a minute and it will pay big dividends. Personal Capital. Gives you total clarity and transparency to make your investment decisions better. Right away. And best of all its free. Visit personalcapital.com/twig. Personalcaptial.com/twig. Time for Gina’s tip of the week.

Gina: I have TTT is on Android. And I’m really sorry to anyone who watched AA last night, because this is the app that I put in the arena, but I’m excited about it.

Leo: Did it win?

Gina: We don’t know, I would ask for votes, you know, that wouldn’t fair, but if you wanted to vote for me. I have TTT is If Than That. Its IFTTT.com it lets you kind of chain together actions online. And the Android app that came out, I don’t know, last week, lets you do things like access your phones wallpaper and location and phone calls. So you can say things like, hey set my devices wallpaper to my latest Instagram photo. Or mute my phone when I’m in the office. It’s kind of like, it sort of gives you Tasker like abilities, but much easier to implement using IFTTTs recipes, or its shared powers and its recipes, it’s got these social recipes and this community, people sharing recipes and it’s a really, a nicely done app. If you like IFTTT you can now have it on your Android device.

Leo: By the way they came out with the IPad version first and that was a pick, great minds, made it a pick on IPad Today, but because you can do so much more on Android it really is much more useful on Android. Cause, I mean, changing your wallpaper, wow. I mean, things, this is really cool. Yeah.

Gina: You can get push notifications, if it’s going to rain tomorrow, it’s nice.

Leo: If This Than That, IFTTT on Android. Jeff Jarvis has many numbers.

Jeff: I don’t like any of them actually, but I, so I, we could do the old, NSA has hundreds of billions of entries, but that’s… we know that. We already talked about Twitter. I guess I’ll do this. People like to save money. The Sony Z Ultra Play edition. Is $200 off? Now $249. I almost get tempted. It’s gigantic. How big is it compared is it compared to a Samsung Note?

Leo: It’s bigger. Its 6.4in, the Note is 6in I think, or is it... Note 3, maybe it’s a little, yeah it’s a little bigger. It’s a half inch bigger.

Jeff: Which matters. It’s impressive.

Leo: It’s not a phone though. Or is it?

Chad: It is a phone. I really wanted this phone, but it wasn’t available, otherwise I would have bought this. It’s a fablet, I mean. It’s gigantic, and it’s also water resistant and it does the, it has an FC, and I believe it has wireless charges.

Leo: These phones are like purses. Tell me this is true Gina. Women, if you get in this cycle you’re dead. You need a bigger purse. And then you get a bigger purse. And then you need a bigger purse and then you get a bigger purse and then you need a bigger purse. Right? And I’ve seen women literally carrying purses the size of suitcases. Dragging them behind them. And that’s what’s happening with these phones. Because now I have a 6in phone. And I’m going oooh its 6.4?

Jeff: Leo? You’re making fun of women? Men just like something to be bigger and bigger and bigger, I mean, we’ve got the same problem going on.

Leo: Yeah, but you don’t have the same options.  There’s really not much you can do Jeff…

Jeff: Well in my case that’s certainly true Leo.

Leo: You’re pretty much stuck with what you’ve got if I’m not mistaken. And on the purse or phone side, however, and watches too. Big watches.

Jeff: I don’t understand that at all. Gigantic ones.

Leo: Yeah, you can hardly lift your arm because you have such a heavy…

Jeff: You can’t get your shirt around it.

Leo: That’s status. 6.4, so you think, really Chad?

Chad: If I had the money I would get this so fast.

Leo: Its 200 bucks less.

Chad: It’s still 500 dollars, their unsubsidized price is 650 dollars. Which is another reason I didn’t get it. Because the Nexus 5 was so…

Jeff: It’s a good price now I would say.

Chad: Yeah, now I would say it’s competitive but …

Leo: Snapdragon 800.

Chad: Yeah, this is a …

Leo: I like it that it’s Google Experience.

Chad: It came out a little bit before the Nexus 5.

Leo: This is almost. So this is somewhere between the Nexus 7 and the Nexus 5. 1920 by 1080.

Jeff: So my question is, could I, I mean I carry the Nexus 7, I carry the Nexus 5, would that replace both of them?

Leo: Sure. I have to say, this is 6, this is the Windows phone, the Nokia 1520 that I was talking about. And it’s great. It’s small enough that you can still put it in your pocket or your giant purse.

Jeff: And look ridiculous.

Leo: No I don’t think so I think were gone beyond the days where that looks stupid.

Jeff: No, it’s the pocket park.

Leo: That doesn’t look dumb it looks, it almost looks like a pocket square. Like I’m Dapper Dan. Hey hobo man, hey dapper Dan, you’re always…

Gina: For me it’s being able to use it in one hand though. Especially now with the baby.

Leo: you can use this with one hand.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s my son’s, Jake’s, point. Even my Nexus 5 he says is too big for the hand.

Leo: Moto X is, and presumably the new IPhone which is 4.7in, is actually the sweet spot I think. Any smaller any bigger…

Jeff: I find the IPhone to be dainty now.

Leo: Dainty.

Gina: Yeah, it is. It’s really, it feels really small.

Leo: It feels really small, it’s ridiculous. Sony Z Ultra, Google Play edition. It’s got 8 megapixels camera. Well I’m fascinated, I didn’t realize they were even offering this.

Jeff: Yeah.

Chad: Sony did a really bad job with releasing this in the American market. They did a horrible job. They had no carrier partnerships.

Leo: So I could us this with T Mobile right? It would work with LTE…

Chad: Yeah. The funny thing is that it could, it could work on most of the carriers, but they just didn’t make it happen fast enough.

Leo: It’s compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile on there, LTE.

Jeff: So how’s the screen resolution verses...

Chad: Ten eighty. So about the same.

Leo: That’s good.

Jeff: It’s only 16G.

Leo: The reason it’s cheap is because it’s maybe superannuated. It’s old. Why use one syllable when six will do? Su-per-an-nu-at-ed.

Jeff: Do you guys thing they’ll be a play edition announced at the IO?

Leo: Well, now that, we didn’t do this story, but apparently the Silver editions are what they’re calling the Nexus’ for future. This is by the way, if anybody’s paying any attention at Google, what Microsoft thought they’d do with Windows. They did Windows Signature PCs, with none of the crapware, and this is a real problem in the Windows world. You buy a HP and it’d be loaded with gigs of junk, trial ware, crap you had to remove. Microsoft thought, well, we want to give people a better Windows experience, we’ll make a signature edition, no manufacture made one, no one bought one, you can barely find them. It was a complete flop. Even though, it’s apparent, it’s obvious this is what people would want. So I warn you Google, this is dangerous.

Gina: You think this is going to happen with Google Play editions already kind of underway?

Leo: They don’t sell that big do they? I wonder, the Play editions?

Gina: They don’t, I think that’s what Silvers about. I think that Silvers about bringing, getting consumers to buy what’s essential on the Play edition or the Nexus Now.

Leo: So what’s different about this is that it’s not sold on play.google.com, but it’s sold everywhere.

Gina: Sold in stores, its got associates doing the data transfer, doing the like, onboarding. Creating your Google account for you again, getting you set up. If they market it right, and they get it to the right stores and they really make it kind of the premium Android experience I think that would be good for everybody right. Because right now there’s a Samsung Android experience, right. There’s an Amazon Fire OS, right. And Amazon, who knows, I don’t think we’ve covered this story either, but if Amazon has a phone, if there’s a Prime contract, whatever. There’s going to be some sort of Amazon flavor of Android, there is one and probably that’ll continue to go on handsets. I mean Google kind of needs to say, the Google experience is the superior Android experience and here’s how you get it. And it can’t be nerds like us.

Jeff: Here’s my fear Gina, is that what’s going to happen is that we’re going to, don’t forget the other thing Google did was make reasonably priced phones. And probably the manufactures didn’t like that, like the price pressure on them. So now yeah, the deal is, we’ll stop competing with you and showing you up if you use our software, okay, but that means you can price the stuff through the roof again and charge $700, $800 for it.

Leo: I just think the real problem is that you can’t compete with Samsung’s massive marketing budgets. I think it’s provable that no one should buy a Samsung phone of any kind. It’s just, they’re horrible. They’re horrible. Even the Play edition. They’re horrible.

Gina: You’re going to get emailed about this are you not?

Leo: They’re both, they’re wrong, they’re crazy, they’re nuts.

Gina: I’m with you brother but…

Leo: They’re nuts. I like the Galaxy S2 was very good, after that, downhill. And really, just now, the stuff is crapware. But because they spend literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars in marketing and its going up all the time because it’s directly tied to the profits made by the division, so the more they make, the more they advertise, the more they advertise, the more they make. You just can’t compete and that’s why the demonstrably superior HTC1 right, doesn’t sell for beans. I think the Silver will be very similar.

Gina: Google can’t compete with Samsung advertising… I m- they could…

Leo: They could but they’re not going to spend 400 million dollars to promote the Silver edition. Are they?

Gina: They’re running Chrome commercials.

Leo: Yeah, but eh, it’s a Samsung.

Gina: I hear you. I hear you. That would be weird. I would notice.

Leo: It’s hard to compete. It’s really hard to compete.

Gina: If an Android Silver commercial came on I would be on my TV, I would stop and notice.

Leo: Are you ready for a number? Here’s a number Jeff. Samsung’s 2013 marketing budget. What do you think?

Jeff: God knows.

Leo: Fourteen billion dollars. Good luck Google.

Jeff: I know some people who work there. If Samsung decides to do something, the boss decides to do something, and four weeks later they have a watch.

Leo: Yeah. Good luck Google.

Gina: Fourteen billion.

Leo: Yeah, that’s what it says here, maybe that includes refrigerators, I don’t know.

Gina: I guess that’s why, I don’t know, I’m pulling dots I see an ad for a Galaxy.

Leo: They’re everywhere. You can’t get away from it.

Gina: It’s everywhere.

Leo: This is a, this is from Boy Genius Report. According to royters, Samsung’s marketing death star has spent an estimated fourteen billion dollars in 2013. An amount greater than the entire gross domestic product of Iceland. That’s triple the 4 billion it spent in 2012 and its because Samsung is set up the more you make the more, you know, the budget is tied directly to the sales.

Gina: Poor Iceland.

Leo: Here’s a chart. This is out of date. This is Apple advertising, HP advertising, Dell advertising, Microsoft advertising, Coke, Samsung electronics, Samsung marketing expenses dwarfs all of them. Combined. More than Coke. Like by a lot.

Jeff: I wish they’d put some of that into better products.

Leo: The purple one is 2012, so it’s quadruple this. That’s why people buy Samsung phones. I’m convinced, there’s no other reason. Alright, my pick of the week is a screensaver. I want to thank my good friend Mike Yalgen, from whom I get all of the information that I know. Everything I learn I learn from Mike Yalgen. You know there’s a great Google trends website where you can see the search trends. Google.com/trends/hot trends/visualize. Well, if you go there, now you’ll be able to download a Macintosh screensaver which if you configure, I’ve got it configured, to show Google search trends in the United States in a 4x4 grid. Constantly updated. Now this is a screensaver. Now you know what people are searching for.

Gina: That’s neat.

Leo: Isn’t that great?

Jeff: Looks very Windows-y.

Leo: Yes, it’s not available on Windows by the way. Or Linux. Yeah, I like it though. Amanda Knox, very popular right now. Mean Girls, see you can see what people are talking about. This is the 10^th anniversary of Mean Girls. Bob Hoskins just passed away, Tony nominations, Mean Girls quotes, I wonder, if I click on a- now it’s put it to sleep. I guess I’ll never be able to tell whether if I click on it, it will…

Jeff: This is the Point Cache problem.

Leo: Yeah, Point Cache, you see a story, you click on it and you couldn’t- yeah. But even if you don’t- this is a fun site to go to the Google trends. And then what you do is you have a, you can select how big a grid it is, someone’s searching for George Clooney right now.  This is the all-region search. It’s more interesting if you pick your region. And so, hey, the number one search, Google Chrome. Right now. Its kind of fun. A lot of people search for...

Gina: I like grid a lot.

Leo: Isn’t that great?

Gina: A lot of people looking for Beyoncé.

Leo: Yeah, well, who isn’t? A new video came out. Ladies and gentlemen we do This Week in Google on Wednesdays 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern time, 2000 UTC. On twit.tv. But you don’t have to watch it live if you don’t want to. Look at that, that’s primary colors.

Gina: Surprising lack of logos in that.

Leo: I like that though.

Gina: Yeah, but I was thinking, oh this will be kind of a neat bumper for the show, but it’s no indication that it’s Google. You don’t know what it is.

Leo: It’s a good screensaver I think.

Gina: Yeah, it is a good screensaver.

Leo: Not that it saves your screen, but who cares about that. If you want on demand versions of this show, just go to twit.tv/twig or you know, there’s lots of podcast apps and so forth you can download. Subscribe there. We have apps by the way, on all the major platforms, including Roku, thank you to ShiftKey Software. Android, IOS and Windows phone. So get those apps, start watching today. Thank you Jeff Jarvis. City University of New York. Author of Public Parts. Buzzmachine.com is his blog or just follow him on Google+, he’s still there. So is Gina Trapani, she’s at thinkup.com and you can now get your own thinkup. Think up for yourself.

Gina: Yeah, and you should.

Leo: See, that’s a good slogan. I just made up a good slogan. Think up for yourself. Yeah.

Gina: I like it, I like it.

Leo: You can see your analytics for Facebook and Twitter, the, what your most valuable tweet was, how much you’re tweeting, who’s following you. 5 times, you know what, Elizabeth Warren you can thank me, I increased the number of people seeing her tweet by 500%. I want the number though, Gina, bring it back, bring back the number.

Gina: …. Five times the people that she reached, that’s pretty good Leo, you’re helping her out. I like that.

Leo: I’m helping her out. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, she’s got to get a better twitter handle than @Elizabethforma. I guess there wasn’t enough room for the whole state. Look at that tweet. That’s my rants against Tom Wheeler. Did very well this week.

Gina: Yeah, using a network for good here, l like this.

Leo: Only 15% of my status updates contain “I, me, mine, or myself”.

Gina: Nice.

Leo: This is good stuff to learn. Isn’t this great. The Times editor and writer followed me. That’s good. She’s the Chief Encouragement Officer. The LA Times.

Gina: Cheesy titles.

Leo: Cheesy title. Thinkup.com. thank you everybody for being here! We’ll see you next time, on TWiG! Bye bye.