00:00SPEAKERWe talked about Wordle here yet?
00:01SPEAKERAh, yes, yes, we talked about starters, we talked about opening gambits.
00:05SPEAKERCan we talk about Letteral yet?
00:07SPEAKERI've moved to... wait, I'm sorry, what?
00:09SPEAKERLetteral.
00:09SPEAKERLetteral?
00:10SPEAKERIt's one letter each day.
00:12SPEAKEROh no, oh yes, you told me about the concept, but not the name.
00:15SPEAKERThat's a great name on top of a great concept.
00:17SPEAKERI'm gonna go play right now.
00:18SPEAKERMy first day, 26 out of 26.
00:21SPEAKERIt took me all 100% of the chances.
00:23SPEAKERThe odds of that are basically one in 10 billion.
00:26SPEAKERSo you should do the opposite of playing the lottery.
00:31SPEAKERW.
00:33SPEAKERNope, R, T.
00:34SPEAKERIt was L the day I did it.
00:36SPEAKERI am about halfway through the alphabet as of right now.
00:39SPEAKERWow, that's fast.
00:40SPEAKERDude.
00:40SPEAKERZ, C, phi.
00:43SPEAKEROh my god, it took me 25 tries.
00:46SPEAKERYep, there you go.
00:48SPEAKERMy least favorite thing about Wordle is the people who are like,
00:53SPEAKER"Man, this is just a local application, just runs on your phone."
00:55SPEAKER"The answers are all in the HTML, man."
00:57SPEAKEROh, cool, yeah, that sounds great.
00:59SPEAKERWhy don't you just go ahead and dig in there and ruin the game.
01:01SPEAKERYou'd sound like fun.
01:04SPEAKERDo you cheat at Solitaire?
01:05SPEAKERDo you understand the concept of enjoying yourself?
01:09SPEAKERAll I was gonna say about Wordle is
01:11SPEAKERthat I have moved to the adieu method.
01:14SPEAKERAnd it feels like cheating.
01:15SPEAKERI used adieu for a long time.
01:17SPEAKERIt turns out the vowels don't help me.
01:19SPEAKERI need consonants.
01:20SPEAKERConsonants are important for me.
01:21SPEAKERI did have a little bit of a hard time today.
01:24SPEAKERIt took me like four tries with adieu.
01:26SPEAKERBut the first three days I used it,
01:28SPEAKERI solved it in less than 60 seconds.
01:29SPEAKERLike it really, knocking out four of the five vowels
01:32SPEAKERright off the bat is just.
01:34SPEAKER- Well, so adieu is great if you're not doing hard mode.
01:36SPEAKERWhen you switch to hard mode,
01:37SPEAKERwhere you can't use letters that you've already eliminated
01:40SPEAKERor have to use letters that you've already locked in,
01:44SPEAKERadieu makes it really, really hard
01:45SPEAKER'cause it really reduces the number
01:47SPEAKERof consonant opportunities you have in the follow-up words.
01:50SPEAKER- This was on hard mode.
01:51SPEAKER- Nevermind then.
01:53SPEAKERAm I being that guy by saying this was on hard mode?
01:55SPEAKER- Wow.
01:56SPEAKER- Let's talk about the New York Times crossword puzzle.
01:59SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about it a few weeks ago
02:00SPEAKERwhen we talked about Wordle, I guess, the last time.
02:05SPEAKER- And Chris Remo's amazing YouTube channel.
02:07SPEAKER- Yes.
02:08SPEAKER- Here we are.
02:09SPEAKERHe reached out to thank us for the shout out
02:10SPEAKERand now here we are giving him another one.
02:12SPEAKER- Look, man, if we flog your channel once,
02:14SPEAKERwe're gonna come back again.
02:15SPEAKERThat's just the threat of the tech pod.
02:17SPEAKER- My favorite thing about his channel is the thumbnails.
02:19SPEAKERI mean, like the content is fine,
02:21SPEAKERbut the thumbnails.
02:23SPEAKER- He looks so thoughtful.
02:24SPEAKER- Are the best on YouTube.
02:26SPEAKER- Yes, it is.
02:27SPEAKERI always smile when I see them, which is.
02:29SPEAKER- They are such like subtly knowing parody
02:32SPEAKERof actual YouTube thumbnails
02:34SPEAKERwhile also working as legitimate YouTube thumbnails.
02:37SPEAKER- I do find that the best YouTube thumbnails
02:39SPEAKERare a meta commentary on the state of YouTube thumbnails.
02:41SPEAKER- That's exactly what they are.
02:43SPEAKEREvery single element of the image works in concert
02:47SPEAKERto produce sublime magic anyway.
02:49SPEAKER- So we were talking about crosswords.
02:51SPEAKERI've done the crossword for years, but I'm not good at it.
02:53SPEAKERI usually like make it to like the Wednesday.
02:56SPEAKERI'm reliable on Wednesdays.
02:58SPEAKERThursdays are a little bit iffy for me sometimes.
03:00SPEAKERAnd Remo's videos have helped me get better
03:02SPEAKERat doing the Thursday and Friday puzzles.
03:04SPEAKER- Okay, so this conversation came about
03:06SPEAKERbecause we were talking about Wordle the other day
03:07SPEAKERbecause I do it first thing in the morning
03:08SPEAKERwith a cup of coffee and you like a lunatic,
03:10SPEAKERdo it like last thing before you go to bed?
03:13SPEAKER- I wanna feel it.
03:14SPEAKER- You brought up that you play Wordle at night
03:17SPEAKERbecause you do the crossword in the morning.
03:18SPEAKERAnd I was like, wait, you do the crossword every morning?
03:21SPEAKER- Like Monday through Wednesday,
03:23SPEAKERoften on Saturday, almost always on Sunday.
03:26SPEAKER- And so, yeah, then you kind of introduced this idea
03:28SPEAKERthat I guess the difficulty gets progressively harder
03:30SPEAKERthroughout the week.
03:31SPEAKERIs that by design?
03:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's 100%,
03:33SPEAKERor at least for the New York Times crossword puzzle,
03:35SPEAKERit's 100% by design.
03:36SPEAKERSo Monday is the easiest.
03:38SPEAKERI think Saturday is the most difficult maybe,
03:41SPEAKERor actually Saturday might be an in-between difficulty.
03:44SPEAKERI feel like it's maybe like a Wednesday or a Thursday.
03:46SPEAKERFriday is always hard.
03:48SPEAKERAnd it's like the difficulty of the clues and the words
03:50SPEAKERand then the kind of meta narrative of the puzzle.
03:52SPEAKER'Cause a good crossword has a meta,
03:55SPEAKERoften has a meta layer to it as well.
03:59SPEAKERSo yeah, that's it, that's it.
04:01SPEAKERThe Wednesday ones I can do really reliably.
04:04SPEAKERI've been doing them since I was in college.
04:06SPEAKERThursday I do off and on.
04:08SPEAKERUsually Friday I stall out about halfway through.
04:10SPEAKERI'm like, ah, I'm not gonna finish this one
04:12SPEAKERand I just don't finish it.
04:13SPEAKER- Who wants to put themselves through the ringer
04:14SPEAKERright before the weekend?
04:15SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's more that I have
04:17SPEAKERa specific amount of time in the morning.
04:20SPEAKERLike if I can bang it out in the 10 minutes
04:22SPEAKERwhile I'm drinking a cup of coffee, it's gonna get done.
04:24SPEAKERAnd if I get stuck after that,
04:25SPEAKERI probably won't get back to it by the end of the day.
04:28SPEAKER- What do I need to know here?
04:28SPEAKERDo I need to sign up?
04:29SPEAKERDo I have to subscribe to the New York Times?
04:31SPEAKER- You gotta pay for the New York Times
04:32SPEAKERcrossword puzzle in the 21st century.
04:34SPEAKER- Okay.
04:35SPEAKER- I used to print it out from the website.
04:38SPEAKERAnd honestly, if we wanna tie this all back into tech,
04:42SPEAKERprobably the second app I put on the first Palm Pilot
04:45SPEAKERI ever got was a thing that downloaded the crossword puzzle
04:50SPEAKERlike I paid actual money
04:51SPEAKERthat I probably had to like PayPal to somebody in 2008
04:55SPEAKERor sorry, 1998 that let me buy an app
05:00SPEAKERthat downloaded the crossword puzzle
05:01SPEAKERto my computer every day.
05:03SPEAKERAnd then I would sync up the Palm Pilot
05:05SPEAKERand instead of just printing it out
05:07SPEAKERon the printer next to my desk,
05:08SPEAKERI would download it and play it on my Palm Pilot.
05:10SPEAKER- I emailed someone about buying a product from them
05:13SPEAKERor to be more specific,
05:14SPEAKERI emailed them to submit a print order request this morning
05:18SPEAKERand they had me PayPal money to a PayPal address
05:21SPEAKERor to an email address.
05:22SPEAKER- So what'd you buy Brad, some sort of homebrew electronics
05:25SPEAKERor you know, illicit reading material?
05:30SPEAKER- No, it was a Mr. Doohickey.
05:33SPEAKERBut like, look, there was something wholesome
05:36SPEAKERabout just emailing somebody about selling me a product
05:39SPEAKERand having them tell me to virtually hand them $25.
05:43SPEAKER- Aw.
05:44SPEAKER- Look, we're regressing as an internet society, okay?
05:48SPEAKERAnd I couldn't be happier about it.
05:50SPEAKER(upbeat music)
06:17SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
06:20SPEAKERI'm Will.
06:21SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
06:22SPEAKER- Hey Brad.
06:23SPEAKER- Hi, how's it going?
06:24SPEAKER- How much do I have to pay for the crossword?
06:25SPEAKERLike I'm kind of intrigued.
06:26SPEAKER- It's kind of expensive.
06:28SPEAKER- Is it?
06:29SPEAKER- It costs more than the newspaper.
06:30SPEAKER- Oh, is it a separate fee?
06:31SPEAKERIt's a separate subscription?
06:32SPEAKER- I think if you get the paper, like, look,
06:36SPEAKERI've considered getting the paper newspaper on weekends.
06:40SPEAKERIf I could get the Sunday New York Times only in paper,
06:43SPEAKERit would be cheaper to do that than to get the crossword
06:47SPEAKERand the digital New York Times,
06:49SPEAKERwhich is what we get right now in the house.
06:50SPEAKERNow, my partner, who I love dearly,
06:54SPEAKERhas said if I start bringing papers into the house,
06:58SPEAKERwe're gonna have an issue, which like, look, she's right.
07:01SPEAKERSo I pay an extra five bucks a year
07:03SPEAKERto get the crossword on top.
07:05SPEAKERIt's like 35 bucks a year for the crossword.
07:07SPEAKER- Listen, you tell her, you know what's useful?
07:10SPEAKERNewsprint.
07:11SPEAKERNewsprint.
07:12SPEAKERYou know what's really hard to come by these days,
07:14SPEAKERlike surprisingly hard?
07:15SPEAKER- Newsprint.
07:16SPEAKER- Newsprint.
07:17SPEAKER- Can you not just buy rolls of it at the art supply store?
07:19SPEAKER- Oh, I guess maybe, but that's not, it's not the same.
07:22SPEAKER- I mean, that's what we always,
07:23SPEAKERit has to go through the printer to get the coating,
07:27SPEAKERthe coating just round off of it.
07:29SPEAKER- You know, if you're trying to pack dishes
07:31SPEAKERto move or something, like if the paper you're packing with
07:34SPEAKERdoesn't have like, you know, it's not a circular
07:35SPEAKERfor like $5 ham or like a massage parlor,
07:38SPEAKERit's just not the same.
07:40SPEAKER- I always, well, okay, first off,
07:43SPEAKERif you go to the alt weekly and you're just stealing
07:47SPEAKERa bunch of the alt weeklies from the box
07:49SPEAKERto use to pack your dishes, not okay, dude.
07:52SPEAKER- That's terrible, I didn't do that.
07:55SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the massage parlor ads
07:56SPEAKERaren't in the regular newspaper,
07:57SPEAKERthey're just in the alt weekly.
07:59SPEAKER- Look, I was just making something up, all right?
08:02SPEAKERAlso, I haven't moved in 12 years, so.
08:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's been 13 years since I moved.
08:07SPEAKERFrankly, I think I've, if it comes to that,
08:09SPEAKERI'm just gonna burn the house down
08:11SPEAKERand buy new wherever I end up.
08:14SPEAKER- That was a joke, that was a joke.
08:17SPEAKER- Just like Microsoft burned down Activision
08:21SPEAKERin order to remake it as part of that.
08:24SPEAKER- This segue really doesn't work at all.
08:26SPEAKER- No, that's a bad segue.
08:28SPEAKER- Like there was only kind of one thing,
08:30SPEAKERwe were gonna talk about something else this week,
08:31SPEAKERwe'll do it next week or the week after now.
08:35SPEAKERLike we had to talk about this Activision thing
08:37SPEAKER'cause it's like Microsoft buying Activision
08:39SPEAKERfor an enormous amount of money made us start thinking
08:45SPEAKERabout what seemed like big mergers,
08:48SPEAKER15, 10, 15, two, eight, any number of years ago,
08:53SPEAKERand now seem like chump change in comparison.
08:56SPEAKER- Yeah, like obviously it has massive profound impacts
08:59SPEAKERon the video game business, but even outside of that,
09:02SPEAKERlike historically it is the largest acquisition
09:04SPEAKERof a company in American history.
09:06SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a really interesting like,
09:13SPEAKERI mean, you talked about the Activision stuff
09:15SPEAKERon Nextlander this week, so I don't think
09:16SPEAKERwe're gonna spend a ton of time going into it,
09:18SPEAKERwe're gonna go more into the historical context
09:20SPEAKERand stuff like that.
09:20SPEAKER- Yeah, not so much the video game stuff at least, but yeah.
09:23SPEAKER- But like for me personally, it's a really,
09:27SPEAKERI have really mixed feelings about it
09:28SPEAKER'cause on one hand consolidation,
09:30SPEAKERlike the biggest publisher and one of the platform holders
09:33SPEAKERemerging at this point is a dangerous consolidation
09:37SPEAKERin the production of and playing of games.
09:41SPEAKERYou know, that industry just got smaller
09:43SPEAKERin an important way, assuming that the deal goes through.
09:47SPEAKERAt the same time, Activision has been really poorly managed
09:49SPEAKERfor a long time, they have a lot of really serious
09:52SPEAKERcultural problems and both the board and the executives
09:56SPEAKERin charge of the company seem to have no interest at all
09:58SPEAKERin fixing that, so Microsoft being in charge of that,
10:01SPEAKERwho has been thoughtful and seemingly done pretty well
10:06SPEAKERon like, you know, basic stuff like not having employees
10:11SPEAKERharassed and making safe workplaces and all of that stuff,
10:15SPEAKERit seems like a net positive.
10:18SPEAKERAnd also, Microsoft has kind of done okay
10:22SPEAKERby the other video game acquisitions they've done
10:24SPEAKERover the last 15 years.
10:25SPEAKER- Yeah, at least recently.
10:27SPEAKER- Well like Minecraft is better off under Microsoft
10:31SPEAKERthan it was before, I think.
10:32SPEAKER- I think that's another easy case to argue
10:34SPEAKERthat anything would have been improved.
10:36SPEAKER- I mean, but also like Minecraft is accessible
10:40SPEAKERto a much broader audience now than it was prior
10:43SPEAKERin the console versions being unified and all that.
10:46SPEAKERLike Minecraft is a large reason that we've cross played now,
10:49SPEAKERI think, sort of across the game industry,
10:52SPEAKERwhich is important.
10:54SPEAKERSo, and the ZeniMax thing seems to be going okay, I guess?
10:58SPEAKERI don't know?
11:00SPEAKER- I think it's too soon to say.
11:01SPEAKERI mean, most of the projects that were in progress
11:03SPEAKERwhen the acquisition began are still in progress.
11:05SPEAKERLike they haven't shipped a ton.
11:07SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:08SPEAKER- Actually, they're about to ship Ghostwire Tokyo probably
11:11SPEAKERin the next few months, it sounds like.
11:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I guess Deathloop shipped,
11:14SPEAKERbut that was probably mostly done by the time
11:16SPEAKERthat acquisition was in progress.
11:19SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, those were both PlayStation exclusives
11:21SPEAKERthat they already had existing contracts for
11:23SPEAKERthat they had to do right by.
11:25SPEAKER- It is too soon to say for sure, like, you know,
11:28SPEAKERwhat cultural shifts might take place there or changes
11:30SPEAKERin product strategy and stuff, but...
11:33SPEAKER- I'm still like, this is, taking off my daytime job hat
11:40SPEAKERwhere I work at a game studio that just released a game
11:42SPEAKERon Game Pass at launch.
11:45SPEAKERLike I still have profound questions about the impact
11:49SPEAKERof that kind of subscriber business on games.
11:53SPEAKERYou know, on how games continue to work.
11:55SPEAKERAnd like, it's unequivocally great for people
11:59SPEAKERwho play games right now.
12:01SPEAKERI don't, I'm really interested to see how sustainable
12:04SPEAKERthat is and how those deals change over time
12:05SPEAKERand stuff like that, so.
12:07SPEAKER- And how consumer friendly it continues to be, right?
12:09SPEAKERLike it's, it is a great deal right now, but like there,
12:11SPEAKERyou know, people are justifiably very skittish
12:13SPEAKERabout media consolidation and what constitutes ownership
12:16SPEAKERof media going forward, right?
12:18SPEAKER- But I mean, at the same time, if we end up with Game Pass
12:20SPEAKERon PlayStation and Nintendo platforms and Nintendo
12:24SPEAKERand Sony both have their own versions of the same thing
12:26SPEAKERor publishers have their own version of the same thing,
12:28SPEAKERmaybe that is a more sustainable way for people
12:31SPEAKERto make games and like, I don't know.
12:36SPEAKER- There could be upsides for sure.
12:37SPEAKERBut I mean, there, you know, there is some dystopian future
12:40SPEAKERwhere Game Pass gets so big that maybe you can't buy
12:42SPEAKERthose games on physical disks anymore.
12:44SPEAKERYou know, like maybe you have to sign up for Game Pass
12:47SPEAKERto play the games and you can never even truly,
12:49SPEAKERnot only can you never truly own them physically,
12:51SPEAKERbut you maybe can't even like maintain access to them
12:54SPEAKERin perpetuity without continuing to pay that money, right?
12:56SPEAKER- Well, and there's also a shift in general from,
13:00SPEAKERlike we'd seen a shift toward indies where you didn't,
13:03SPEAKERaway from publishing, away from publishers
13:06SPEAKERand toward indies over the last, you know, 10, 15 years
13:09SPEAKERin that industry and consolidating all of that,
13:12SPEAKERthose indie games back under publisher run services,
13:16SPEAKERthen basically, you know, undoes a lot of that,
13:20SPEAKERyou know, that diversification.
13:22SPEAKERAnd like, it's just unknown.
13:26SPEAKERIt's like, it's been interesting watching that happen
13:30SPEAKERwith Netflix and the streaming services
13:31SPEAKERover the last 10 years.
13:33SPEAKERWe're starting to see the fallout from that now,
13:35SPEAKERlike the animation guild is about to strike
13:40SPEAKERon the video side, just because they like, you know,
13:44SPEAKERfrom a contract perspective, animators are getting paid
13:47SPEAKERas if Netflix is a small new media thing
13:50SPEAKERand animation isn't actually the driving force
13:53SPEAKERbetween behind most of the streaming services, right?
13:56SPEAKERSo like there'll be shakeouts
13:59SPEAKERand it'll probably be a bumpy ride for a little bit,
14:02SPEAKERbut for now it's definitely seems like good for players.
14:06SPEAKERI don't know, we'll see.
14:07SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, I guess this Activision news
14:10SPEAKERjust kind of got us thinking about like the recent history
14:13SPEAKERof forward acquisitions and mergers.
14:15SPEAKER- Yeah. - Or mergers and acquisitions
14:17SPEAKERas people generally like to say, but for me,
14:21SPEAKERI don't know why for me it brought to mind
14:22SPEAKERthe YouTube acquisition.
14:24SPEAKER- That was one of the first big ones, right?
14:27SPEAKER- Yes, but also, I mean, in context of when it happened,
14:31SPEAKERyes, in retrospect and in modern context
14:35SPEAKERand also in light of what YouTube has gone on to become.
14:39SPEAKER- Yeah. - Like the money
14:40SPEAKERthat Google paid for YouTube in 2006
14:42SPEAKERjust feels like a pittance.
14:44SPEAKERLike it feels like couch change.
14:48SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that's like a, I'm air quoting this,
14:52SPEAKERbut a good acquisition at this scale
14:55SPEAKERand like we're gonna basically talk about stuff
14:58SPEAKERthat's over a billion dollars here
14:59SPEAKERwith a few exceptions, I think.
15:01SPEAKERSo it's like we're talking
15:02SPEAKERabout like unimaginable amounts of money.
15:06SPEAKERGood acquisitions at that scale
15:09SPEAKERwith the benefit of hindsight look
15:11SPEAKERlike they would've been foolish to not, like they were
15:14SPEAKERno brainers, right?
15:14SPEAKERAnd YouTube definitely fits that mold.
15:17SPEAKERThe same time you've got Microsoft buying Yammer
15:19SPEAKERfor 1.2 billion in like 2011, 2012.
15:21SPEAKER- Wow, okay, I don't think we put the number on YouTube.
15:25SPEAKERIt was 1.65 billion?
15:27SPEAKER- Yeah, for what is in arguably
15:29SPEAKERlike the biggest video platform on the planet now
15:32SPEAKERversus almost the same amount of money for Yammer,
15:36SPEAKERwhich I get Yammer does still exist, right?
15:38SPEAKER- Yammer still exists.
15:39SPEAKERIt's part of, if you have Office 365
15:41SPEAKERI think you have access to Yammer.
15:43SPEAKER- Yes, they describe it as an enterprise social network
15:46SPEAKERwhich I guess is what it always was.
15:47SPEAKERWe used Yammer at Whiskey Media.
15:49SPEAKER- When it was, I think we paid five bucks a person
15:53SPEAKERper month for it, or per year, I can't remember.
15:56SPEAKERIt wasn't expensive, but--
15:57SPEAKER- God, that's, man, that is so quaint to think back on.
15:59SPEAKERThat is basically a wall for the company, right?
16:01SPEAKERIt was just a place for people to post--
16:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a way for us to share information.
16:06SPEAKER- It was kind of internal Twitter in a way, right?
16:08SPEAKER- It was, that is, all it was was internal Twitter, yes.
16:12SPEAKERAnd we mostly used it to tell jokes.
16:13SPEAKERAnd then we were like, "Why are we paying for this?
16:16SPEAKER"Let's go to the Salesforce one that's free."
16:17SPEAKERAnd nobody installed that on their phone.
16:19SPEAKERAnd then we were done with that experiment.
16:21SPEAKER- I remember that, man.
16:23SPEAKERI don't suppose that Yammer board got backed up anywhere.
16:25SPEAKER- It is gone forever, I hope.
16:29SPEAKER- How am I gonna find out
16:30SPEAKERwhat the best sandwich places in Sausalito are?
16:34SPEAKER- No, we used Yammer after we were out of Sausalito.
16:36SPEAKERIt was when we were talking about burgers in Front Street.
16:38SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
16:39SPEAKER- I could've sworn we,
16:39SPEAKERI feel like I remember being in that basement and Yammering.
16:44SPEAKER- Yammer kind of set the stage for Slack,
16:46SPEAKERlike if you think about it.
16:47SPEAKERLike in terms of, in terms of internal community,
16:50SPEAKERlike novel forms of internal communication for companies.
16:54SPEAKERThey didn't execute on it the same way that Slack did.
16:57SPEAKER- I was gonna say like it really kind of illustrates
16:58SPEAKERhow right place, right time a lot of this stuff is,
17:02SPEAKERbut also obviously, yes, executing.
17:04SPEAKERLike strategy or vision is one thing
17:05SPEAKERand like reality of how you actually make the product
17:08SPEAKERis another.
17:09SPEAKER- Well, so the other thing about the YouTube thing
17:10SPEAKERthat's interesting is had Google not,
17:12SPEAKERhad somebody not bought YouTube,
17:13SPEAKERI think that they're operating expenses
17:16SPEAKERfor hosting all of the video on the internet,
17:19SPEAKEReven in, I think at that time it was like five minute chunks
17:21SPEAKERthat were limited like 480p or something like that.
17:23SPEAKERThey were relatively small files in a modern video context,
17:27SPEAKERbut there were only a handful of companies
17:29SPEAKERthat could have afforded to buy them
17:31SPEAKERand had access to the bandwidth and hosting
17:35SPEAKERand stuff required to like,
17:37SPEAKERfor that service to grow into its next phase.
17:40SPEAKER- So do you think, is that the type of company
17:42SPEAKERthat like from the outset was designed to just burn capital
17:46SPEAKERand try to get bought as fast as possible?
17:48SPEAKERLike that, like, or to put it another way,
17:50SPEAKERdo you think that the founders of YouTube ever planned
17:53SPEAKERfor that to be a sustainable private or independent business
17:55SPEAKERor was that always the plan to just get scooped up
17:57SPEAKERas fast as possible?
17:59SPEAKER- So I don't know any of the YouTube founders.
18:00SPEAKERI know people who are definitely relatively early
18:02SPEAKERYouTube employees and I think they were kind of taking,
18:06SPEAKERI think like, so my feeling, and this is a feeling
18:12SPEAKERnot based on data or conversations or anybody or anything,
18:14SPEAKERis that YouTube was the thing that set the model
18:16SPEAKERof like the modern tech unicorn,
18:18SPEAKERthe hey, we got to get a billion users
18:20SPEAKERkind of venture capital funded model
18:22SPEAKERthat has driven a lot of the web 2.0 companies.
18:26SPEAKERI don't feel like they,
18:29SPEAKERI think they were surprised by the scale
18:31SPEAKERat which they succeeded.
18:33SPEAKERAnd also had they not sold around the time that they did,
18:37SPEAKERthey would have had money and or like they,
18:39SPEAKERlike a lot of their success was because their service was,
18:42SPEAKERthe video was shitty looking, but it was reliable.
18:45SPEAKERWhereas the competitors had either performance problems
18:49SPEAKERor videos took a long time to load
18:51SPEAKERor whatever it happened to be.
18:53SPEAKERLike they identified the places
18:55SPEAKERthat other video startups had failed.
18:59SPEAKERYou know, like Vimeo is still around, Vimeo is the one
19:01SPEAKERthat the other one that held on and they held on
19:04SPEAKERby charging people money to host videos,
19:05SPEAKERwhich like was a like a sane way to run a business in 2005
19:10SPEAKERwhen those things were starting out.
19:12SPEAKERSo I don't know.
19:14SPEAKERI think YouTube is really an interesting one though,
19:17SPEAKER'cause 1.65 billion dollars, like you said,
19:18SPEAKERis a pittance compared to the money.
19:21SPEAKERLike Google basically, when they bought that,
19:23SPEAKERthey bought the ability to host all the video
19:25SPEAKERon the internet and thus sell all of the ads
19:27SPEAKERon all of the video on the internet in perpetuity.
19:29SPEAKER- Right, so that number sounds tiny now,
19:31SPEAKERbut I distinctly remember at the time going like,
19:34SPEAKERoh my God, a company sold for over a billion dollars, wow.
19:37SPEAKER- Well, so it's funny, 'cause like prior to that,
19:39SPEAKERthe billion dollar sales were kind of few and far between.
19:42SPEAKERMicrosoft had bought a couple of business tools like Vizzio
19:46SPEAKERand this Dynamics Nav thing,
19:47SPEAKERwhich was a business intelligence thing.
19:49SPEAKERBoth of those were for over a billion dollars
19:51SPEAKERin the early 2000s or 99 was Vizzio.
19:55SPEAKER- But I think that kind of is the distinguishing factor there.
19:58SPEAKERThose are both like B2B business oriented,
20:01SPEAKERlike things you've never heard of as a consumer, right?
20:03SPEAKERLike nobody cared, nobody knew or cared
20:05SPEAKERwhat Dynamics Nav was in 2002, right?
20:07SPEAKERBut like YouTube is a thing that you very likely
20:09SPEAKERhave like put your children's faces on.
20:12SPEAKER- Well, and Vizzio, like Vizzio is a thing
20:14SPEAKERpeople were familiar with, it's diagramming software,
20:17SPEAKERand it solved a whole and also gave them,
20:22SPEAKERmade them a competitor for certain categories with Adobe,
20:26SPEAKERwhich was the other kind of big office slash creative
20:29SPEAKERsoftware juggernaut at that time.
20:31SPEAKERThe big one prior to this was that Microsoft tried to buy
20:34SPEAKERinto it in the early mid 90s for like a billion
20:36SPEAKERand a half dollars, which was a, in 1995,
20:39SPEAKERwas a truly astounding amount of money.
20:41SPEAKER- Sure.
20:42SPEAKER- And then they called it off,
20:43SPEAKERseems like because of maybe regulatory stuff,
20:46SPEAKERit's unclear from the stories I was able to read about this.
20:50SPEAKER- So I'm of two minds about like kind of going googly eyed
20:54SPEAKERat the ballooning figures that are being thrown around
20:57SPEAKERon all these acquisitions.
20:58SPEAKERLike on the one hand, it's like, oh my God,
21:00SPEAKERthat's an 11 figure business transaction.
21:02SPEAKERLike that's insane, that's historically significant.
21:04SPEAKEROn the other hand, like, is that not just a downstream
21:07SPEAKERconsequence of more and more capital being concentrated
21:10SPEAKERin fewer and fewer hands?
21:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:13SPEAKER- Like the amount of money flowing into tech companies
21:15SPEAKERand not leaving is kind of alarming.
21:19SPEAKER- There's a reason that Microsoft,
21:21SPEAKERwhen we were going down and making the list
21:23SPEAKERof the acquisitions, we want to talk about
21:24SPEAKERthat Microsoft has more of them than anybody else.
21:26SPEAKERYou know, let's see, LinkedIn, Yammer, Mo Yang,
21:33SPEAKERSkype, ZeniMax, Nokia.
21:37SPEAKER- GitHub.
21:38SPEAKER- GitHub, Activision.
21:39SPEAKER- God, it's like half this list actually.
21:42SPEAKER- Yeah, like Microsoft has bought,
21:44SPEAKERand the reason Microsoft was in this position
21:46SPEAKERis 'cause they've been making,
21:48SPEAKERlike Google's only been making insane amounts of money
21:50SPEAKERfor the last 20 years.
21:51SPEAKERMicrosoft's been making insane amounts of money
21:53SPEAKERfor the last 35 years.
21:54SPEAKER- 40, 35, yeah, 40 almost, yeah.
21:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so like it's an interesting,
22:02SPEAKERlike there's an interesting thread
22:04SPEAKERthrough the Microsoft acquisitions.
22:07SPEAKERLike they bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011,
22:11SPEAKERwhich seemed like an astounding amount of money at the time,
22:13SPEAKERespecially given that Skype was waning by that point.
22:16SPEAKERLike that was, Skype was still the dominant thing,
22:19SPEAKERbut it was clearly a bad application,
22:21SPEAKERand then Microsoft bought it
22:22SPEAKERand made it consistently worse every year since then.
22:26SPEAKERIt seems like from a user perspective.
22:28SPEAKER- Not only made it worse,
22:29SPEAKERbut also forced it on every Windows user
22:32SPEAKERfor some period of time.
22:33SPEAKERAnd maybe still, is it still pre-installed in Windows 11?
22:35SPEAKER- I feel like you can click it.
22:36SPEAKERI think you'll feel like it's one of those things
22:38SPEAKERthat you click a link
22:39SPEAKERand it installs in the background silently now.
22:41SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
22:43SPEAKER- But yeah, like, but that plugged a communication hole
22:47SPEAKERfor them kind of in a way that like,
22:51SPEAKERlike if you think about, if you think about Skype in 2011,
22:53SPEAKERthey were probably looking at iMessage
22:55SPEAKERand FaceTime on the iPhone and were like,
22:56SPEAKER"Shit, we don't have that."
22:58SPEAKERAnd while Google was off on one hand
23:00SPEAKERbuilding 18 different competing products
23:01SPEAKERthat do the exact same thing
23:02SPEAKERand then killing them off one at a time,
23:05SPEAKERMicrosoft was just like,
23:06SPEAKER"Why don't we buy Skype and make it good?"
23:08SPEAKER- Like that's just, that's just buying a user base
23:10SPEAKERat that point, right?
23:11SPEAKER- I mean, kind of, I guess, I don't, I don't,
23:14SPEAKERlike it's, I think definitely acquiring users
23:18SPEAKERwas a thing that happened in the mid 2010s.
23:20SPEAKERAnd like, this is the point
23:21SPEAKERwhere we should disclaim some stuff.
23:23SPEAKERLike Brad and I aren't financial people.
23:25SPEAKER- No.
23:26SPEAKER- Like, like in my, our understanding
23:29SPEAKERof that side of acquisitions is much,
23:33SPEAKERis underdeveloped to the point
23:35SPEAKERthat I am hesitant to talk about it.
23:38SPEAKERWe are pretty good about the user impact
23:41SPEAKERand the consumer market impact of, you know,
23:44SPEAKERhow these applications have been perceived
23:46SPEAKERand stuff like that.
23:47SPEAKERSo, you know, with that in mind,
23:50SPEAKERmaybe buying Yammer was a really great,
23:51SPEAKERlike the interesting thing about the above billion dollars
23:54SPEAKERis you don't often see aqua hires,
23:56SPEAKERwhich is where, like if you see somebody is buying,
24:00SPEAKERif you see somebody is buying a startup
24:01SPEAKERthat's like a year old for $30 million,
24:03SPEAKERoften that is, "Hey, this team is building awesome stuff."
24:06SPEAKERLike this is what happened with the people who made,
24:11SPEAKERI can't remember the name of that Gmail client,
24:12SPEAKERbut it ended up, they ended up making it inbox for Gmail.
24:16SPEAKERAnd then they eventually rolled that team
24:17SPEAKERinto the main Gmail team.
24:19SPEAKERLike Google bought them for 30 or $40 million or something.
24:22SPEAKERAnd basically they wanted those engineers
24:24SPEAKERand those designers
24:25SPEAKER'cause they were making really good stuff
24:26SPEAKERand they wanted to apply that stuff
24:27SPEAKERto their existing mass market products, right?
24:30SPEAKER- I saw an example this last fall.
24:32SPEAKERSometime Facebook bought a social media startup
24:35SPEAKERand literally in the acquisition press release,
24:38SPEAKERit said they were shutting down the product.
24:41SPEAKERAnd like that is the very textbook definition
24:43SPEAKERof an aqua hire, right?
24:44SPEAKERIt's like they're buying the company
24:46SPEAKERand immediately discontinuing the product
24:48SPEAKERthat the company makes and integrating those people
24:51SPEAKERinto their existing structure.
24:53SPEAKER- Google has over the years bought
24:55SPEAKERa lot of internet of things, startups
24:57SPEAKERto roll into the Nest group in a similar way.
25:01SPEAKERAnd often they will announce that they're like,
25:04SPEAKER"Hey, this is a product that had 2000 users.
25:06SPEAKERWe're gonna kill the product
25:07SPEAKERand we're gonna bring all these people into the team.
25:09SPEAKERAnd then all of our products are gonna be better.
25:10SPEAKEREverybody who has a Nest product
25:11SPEAKERis gonna benefit from this thing."
25:13SPEAKER- Do you think, and this is something I'm fascinated in
25:16SPEAKERfrom like a people standpoint,
25:17SPEAKERlike the dynamics of negotiating a price
25:19SPEAKERfor something like that?
25:20SPEAKERLike there's a fantastic Twitter thread
25:22SPEAKERabout Steve Jobs that we'll probably get to a little bit.
25:26SPEAKERBut like in the calculation there in those negotiations,
25:29SPEAKERdo you think the acquiring company makes sure
25:31SPEAKERnot to pay them so much so that they can just walk away
25:33SPEAKERas soon as possible?
25:34SPEAKER- I mean-
25:35SPEAKER- Like if they want the talent,
25:36SPEAKERisn't it in their interest to make sure the talent
25:38SPEAKERis not paid so handsomely that they don't have to stay?
25:41SPEAKER- Well, so those deals usually have payout clauses
25:43SPEAKERover a period of time.
25:44SPEAKER- Right, I mean, I think that's pretty standard.
25:46SPEAKERIt's like usually between like two and four years
25:48SPEAKERthat they have to hang around to get all the money, right?
25:50SPEAKERBut like you still, even in that case,
25:51SPEAKERyou don't want them to leave after two to four years, right?
25:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so I mean,
25:56SPEAKERthis is why you don't see billion dollar acqui-hires, right?
25:59SPEAKER- Right.
26:00SPEAKER- Is you see $40 million,
26:02SPEAKERand then everybody who has a piece of that company
26:04SPEAKERgets a little bit of money upfront
26:05SPEAKERand they have a bigger payout after one year
26:07SPEAKERand another bigger payout after two years.
26:09SPEAKERAnd a lot of times people dip out of after the first year
26:12SPEAKERwhen they get the first balloon payment.
26:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I would assume you,
26:15SPEAKERcorrect me if I'm wrong,
26:16SPEAKERbut like 40 million sounds like a lot of money,
26:18SPEAKERbut I assume that if you're at the point
26:20SPEAKERwhere you're selling in that kind of situation,
26:22SPEAKERyou've probably taken enough investment already
26:25SPEAKERthat most of that money is going to venture capital firms,
26:27SPEAKERnot to the people who work at the company.
26:29SPEAKER- Well, it depends.
26:30SPEAKERYou see a lot of bootstrapped companies that do that.
26:33SPEAKERSo people who took like a relatively small amount of money
26:35SPEAKERto spin up the company,
26:37SPEAKERand then like hundreds of thousands of dollars
26:40SPEAKERup to like maybe a couple of million.
26:42SPEAKERSo they did like one small round, like a seed round,
26:46SPEAKERor maybe a small A round.
26:49SPEAKERAnd then what'll happen is on those types of businesses,
26:54SPEAKERmost of the initial funding is set up in such a way
26:57SPEAKERthat like the equity really kicks over
27:00SPEAKERon the second round of funding.
27:01SPEAKERSo the owners, I feel like Kickstarter
27:06SPEAKERis an example of this,
27:07SPEAKERwhere the founders ended up owning
27:08SPEAKERmore than half of the company,
27:10SPEAKEReven after they took initial funding,
27:11SPEAKERbecause they were making so much money in the early years
27:13SPEAKERthat like they didn't ever have to take more investment.
27:16SPEAKERSo that ends up in a situation where if Kickstarter sold,
27:22SPEAKERwhich I don't think that they ever would at this point.
27:27SPEAKER- Especially based on recent events.
27:28SPEAKER- I mean, look, we could do a whole episode
27:31SPEAKERabout Kickstarter probably.
27:33SPEAKERBut the upshot is they ended up having,
27:38SPEAKERthey ended up not having to diversify their equity
27:41SPEAKERto the point that investors owed a lot.
27:43SPEAKERAnd that happens a lot in these aqua hire situations.
27:45SPEAKERIt's like something that like,
27:46SPEAKERit's not like they don't have enough growth
27:50SPEAKERfrom a user revenue perspective to do a series A or B round
27:54SPEAKERwhere they can actually raise enough money to keep going.
27:56SPEAKERSo they are sitting here with a product that everybody,
27:59SPEAKERthat a small number of people really, really love
28:01SPEAKERand are amazed by, but they're not able to get,
28:03SPEAKERbut they're still burning more money than they're making.
28:05SPEAKERAnd they're not able to raise enough money
28:07SPEAKERto like accelerate through that dip.
28:10SPEAKERAnd then they end up getting bought by Google
28:12SPEAKERor Facebook or Microsoft or whoever.
28:14SPEAKER- That makes sense.
28:15SPEAKERSo it's more like the aqua hire is instead of going
28:18SPEAKERand seeking external funding rather
28:19SPEAKERthan after seeking external funding.
28:21SPEAKER- No, it's usually after you seek external funding
28:23SPEAKERand can't raise more money because everybody's like,
28:25SPEAKERI don't think this product that you're making
28:26SPEAKERis gonna take off.
28:27SPEAKER- That's what I mean.
28:28SPEAKERIt's like instead of going and getting a bunch of money
28:30SPEAKERfrom VCs, you sell.
28:32SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, so at that point,
28:34SPEAKERthe value isn't in your user base or your product,
28:37SPEAKERit's in your team.
28:39SPEAKERAnd like that still counts as value, right?
28:42SPEAKERIt's like you've put together a team
28:44SPEAKERthat can make something that's good.
28:45SPEAKERIt's just the thing you made wasn't, didn't land
28:48SPEAKERor whatever reason it failed.
28:51SPEAKERSo you sell to Facebook or Microsoft or whoever.
28:56SPEAKERSo like there's an interesting thing, phenomena around this.
28:59SPEAKERAnd this kind of spiked for me
29:01SPEAKERin the like late 2000s, early 2010s
29:05SPEAKERwhen watching this stuff became almost
29:07SPEAKERlike a spectator sport.
29:08SPEAKERLike it's like my, it is to me as gossip columns are
29:12SPEAKERto a lot of people, I think.
29:13SPEAKER- So that's kind of how I,
29:15SPEAKERthat's what I was getting at earlier
29:16SPEAKERwhen I talked about getting googly eyed
29:17SPEAKERat the size of these numbers.
29:19SPEAKERAnd like, obviously the tech crunches
29:20SPEAKERand valley wags of the world have like done pretty well
29:23SPEAKERas gossip rags for exactly this stuff, right?
29:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
29:27SPEAKER- Like it is fun as a spectator sport,
29:28SPEAKERbut that's what I meant about feeling a little uncomfortable
29:31SPEAKERabout spectating it, you know, like.
29:35SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it's never good for us.
29:37SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying.
29:37SPEAKERLike it is entertaining to watch on one level,
29:39SPEAKERbut on the other hand, when you look at the amounts
29:40SPEAKERof money being thrown around
29:41SPEAKERand think about what other purposes
29:43SPEAKERthat money could be put toward
29:45SPEAKERin a slightly different societal makeup,
29:48SPEAKERit starts getting a little uncomfortable, I guess.
29:50SPEAKER- But like not even that, it's like even
29:52SPEAKERlike the meta problems with capitalism aside,
29:55SPEAKERthe larger issue is that like when you have,
30:01SPEAKERthe last, you know, 200 years of,
30:04SPEAKERor 150 years of post-industrial revolution economy,
30:08SPEAKEReconomics have taught us that like consolidation
30:10SPEAKERin businesses is almost never good
30:12SPEAKERfor the people who are, you know,
30:15SPEAKERreliant on those businesses for income,
30:17SPEAKERwhether it's their job or for the people
30:20SPEAKERwho need to buy the products in order to live, you know,
30:22SPEAKERwhether it's in the food industry or the oil companies
30:26SPEAKERor whatever.
30:28SPEAKERSo like, yeah, it's kind of neat that hey,
30:31SPEAKERthis is a huge deal between Activision and Microsoft.
30:34SPEAKERAnd like at the end of the day,
30:35SPEAKERwe'd probably all be fine if we stopped playing video games
30:37SPEAKERor whatever, but like the consolidation ultimately
30:41SPEAKERis probably not going to be great for the markets,
30:43SPEAKERfor the people who, for anybody outside of the markets
30:46SPEAKERother than the investors who own Activision stock
30:48SPEAKERand Microsoft stock right now.
30:50SPEAKER- Right.
30:51SPEAKER- Anyway, so for me, I was gonna say that YouTube one
30:57SPEAKERin 2006 was one of the first big ones that I was like,
31:02SPEAKERoh wow, that is a buttload of money.
31:06SPEAKERInstagram in 2012 was a real like, oh man,
31:09SPEAKERmaybe social media is worth something.
31:10SPEAKER'Cause like at that point, Twitter was I think public,
31:13SPEAKERbut not worth very much money,
31:15SPEAKERlike struggling in the market and having problems.
31:19SPEAKERFacebook was, Facebook hadn't destroyed democracy yet.
31:24SPEAKERSo they had that going for them.
31:28SPEAKER- Sure, was Instagram really that cheap?
31:30SPEAKER- Instagram was a billion dollars and it seemed like,
31:33SPEAKERbut they didn't have very many users.
31:34SPEAKERSo the thing that was noteworthy about Instagram
31:36SPEAKERwas they were growing at a really good rate
31:38SPEAKERand they were growing in a market
31:40SPEAKERthat other social media networks
31:42SPEAKERhadn't kind of connected with yet.
31:44SPEAKERAnd I think, I mean, we talked about this a few months ago,
31:47SPEAKERlike the idea that like Twitter is the social network
31:50SPEAKERfor word people and Instagram is the social network
31:53SPEAKERfor video, for picture people and TikTok is for video people
31:58SPEAKERand Facebook is for like family and friends oriented people
32:01SPEAKERand like yada yada.
32:04SPEAKER- Mastodon is the social network for open source lunatics.
32:09SPEAKER- Yeah, and antisocial people, yeah, exactly.
32:11SPEAKER- Yes, it's close to my heart.
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, we can go on down the list.
32:14SPEAKERThere's social networks for fascists, there's everything.
32:16SPEAKER- Oh boy, yes.
32:18SPEAKER- But the point is at that point,
32:20SPEAKERFacebook looked at where they were growing
32:22SPEAKERand was like, oh, we can buy this for nothing right now.
32:27SPEAKERYou know, air quote, nothing on a Facebook scale.
32:31SPEAKERAnd they did and it turned out to be a pretty good choice
32:34SPEAKERfor that.
32:35SPEAKER- Okay, interesting.
32:36SPEAKERSo in my memory, I feel like Instagram was already huge
32:39SPEAKERat that time or maybe it just made a lot of news.
32:41SPEAKERLike it made a lot of waves when they made that purchase.
32:43SPEAKER- It was very popular with celebrities
32:44SPEAKERand like it was the bellwether for the rise
32:49SPEAKERof the influencer as like the famous, not famous person
32:55SPEAKERas somebody who could drive,
32:57SPEAKERlike who was actually a market force.
32:59SPEAKER- Sure, also that was only two years
33:02SPEAKERbefore another Facebook acquisition for quite a bit.
33:07SPEAKERWhatsApp went for 22 billion only two years after that.
33:10SPEAKER- Well, yeah, that one makes sense in retrospect now
33:12SPEAKER'cause WhatsApp has incredible penetration
33:14SPEAKERin markets where Facebook does not.
33:16SPEAKERLike Southeast Asia and India and Africa
33:19SPEAKERand around like WhatsApp, I think we talked about this
33:22SPEAKERwhen Facebook was down a few months ago.
33:25SPEAKERBut like WhatsApp being down essentially turned off
33:27SPEAKERtexting services for significant portions of the world.
33:29SPEAKER- Like it essentially was text messaging
33:31SPEAKERand still is for a huge chunk of the globe.
33:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I have friends who like their iMessage
33:38SPEAKERis their secondary text app and WhatsApp is the thing
33:41SPEAKERthat they talk to all their friends.
33:42SPEAKERAnd my dad uses WhatsApp to talk to family members
33:45SPEAKERin Australia all the time, like everybody uses WhatsApp.
33:48SPEAKERSo that was a good purchase for them, I guess.
33:51SPEAKERSame year they bought Oculus for $2 billion
33:53SPEAKERwhich was shocking 'cause at that point VR was kind of,
33:57SPEAKERlike it was before, this was before the first headsets
34:00SPEAKERshipped to consumers.
34:03SPEAKERIt was before, I wanna say we had seen,
34:06SPEAKERwe saw the Vive, the HTC/Valentine,
34:12SPEAKERValve developed headsets at GDC the next year in 2015.
34:18SPEAKERSo at that point it was just like a screen
34:20SPEAKERfor playing video games.
34:21SPEAKERWe hadn't seen any kind of hand tracking
34:23SPEAKERor anything like that.
34:24SPEAKERThat was all in the distant future.
34:26SPEAKERAnd when Facebook bought them for $2 billion
34:28SPEAKERafter that successful Kickstarter, it was pretty shocking.
34:31SPEAKERLike we were all surprised.
34:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, especially if you'd had your hands
34:36SPEAKERon a DK1 and seen how kind of rudimentary that thing was.
34:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, the pitch, the thing that Palmer Lucky
34:44SPEAKERsent to John Carmack was basically a pair of ski goggles
34:48SPEAKERwith some surplus VR goggles that he'd bought
34:53SPEAKERfrom military auctions and stuff like that,
34:55SPEAKERall kind of grafted together and hacked together
34:57SPEAKERwith software and a little bit of hardware.
34:58SPEAKERAnd when I saw that, I wanna say I saw that in 2013,
35:03SPEAKERI think friend of the show Steve Lynn was like,
35:05SPEAKER"Hey, I'm going to this VR thing at PAX, you should come."
35:09SPEAKERAnd I put it on, the lenses were too close for me
35:12SPEAKERto wear glasses inside the goggles.
35:15SPEAKERBut I was able to play like incredibly out of focus
35:18SPEAKERbecause my eyes are bad, Doom 3 on this VR headset
35:21SPEAKERin a little tiny closet at PAX someplace in Seattle.
35:24SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, holy shit, this is unbelievable."
35:29SPEAKERBut it seemed like a screen for video games,
35:32SPEAKERnot like a future, thinking about it as the future
35:35SPEAKERof the internet was far off at that point.
35:37SPEAKER- Do you think it's still an open question
35:39SPEAKERwhether say another 10 years from now,
35:41SPEAKERwe look back on that Oculus acquisition
35:42SPEAKERand say that was a steal or not?
35:45SPEAKER- I mean, Facebook just renamed themselves Meta
35:48SPEAKERpartly because they wanted to get out
35:49SPEAKERfrom under the bad vibes of the Facebook name
35:51SPEAKERand partly because they feel like
35:53SPEAKERthat's the future of the company, so.
35:54SPEAKER- I guess, yeah, I guess so.
35:55SPEAKERI mean, that's maybe a more general way to ask the question
35:57SPEAKERis like, is there still time for VR
35:59SPEAKERto actually become the biggest thing ever?
36:01SPEAKER- I think that VR is a foundational technology
36:04SPEAKERfor things that will be very important in the next 10 years.
36:06SPEAKER- Okay, except maybe we're not calling it VR by then.
36:10SPEAKERMaybe it's not recognizably VR by the time
36:12SPEAKERit actually becomes the biggest thing in the world.
36:14SPEAKER- Look, do I think that if you're asking me,
36:17SPEAKERdo I think we'll be wearing glasses that project screens
36:19SPEAKERor digital shit onto the world around us
36:22SPEAKERat some point in the future?
36:23SPEAKERYes, I think that is still the case.
36:25SPEAKERAnd in that sense, VR is a foundational technology.
36:29SPEAKERLike VR does what at the time seemed like the hard part,
36:32SPEAKERbut now is the easy part.
36:33SPEAKER'Cause it turns out putting stuff in no space is easy,
36:37SPEAKERbut measuring the world around you in a way
36:39SPEAKERthat you can put screens on walls and stuff like that
36:41SPEAKERis, you know, it's computationally expensive
36:44SPEAKERand complicated software, so.
36:47SPEAKER- Yeah, still takes a big old bulky headset.
36:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think we'll get there eventually.
36:53SPEAKERI don't know, like Amazon is weird
36:55SPEAKERin that they don't really buy a whole lot of expensive stuff.
36:57SPEAKER- Gosh, I guess you're right.
36:58SPEAKERLike if you said name an Amazon acquisition,
37:02SPEAKERlike I guess Whole Foods is the only one that comes to mind,
37:04SPEAKERlike they don't really.
37:06SPEAKER- Oh, they buy a lot of small stuff.
37:08SPEAKERThey've bought a bunch.
37:08SPEAKEROver the years, they've bought a bunch of kind of like
37:11SPEAKERpeople who've carved out Amazon-like businesses
37:14SPEAKERin other industries, like PillPack is one of them.
37:17SPEAKERThey're the people that do like single,
37:19SPEAKERbasically get a little pouch with all of your pills.
37:22SPEAKERLike if you have to take four different pills every day,
37:25SPEAKERyou order pills from them and they send you all four pills
37:27SPEAKERfor each day with a date on it and a time on it
37:30SPEAKERand you open the pouch and just take the pills.
37:32SPEAKERA little wasteful, but I mean, like whatever, it's fine.
37:37SPEAKERThey bought Ring, both of those were billion dollar plus,
37:39SPEAKERbut not like that much more than billion dollars.
37:44SPEAKERThey bought, they buy like warehouse stuff fairly regularly,
37:47SPEAKERlike logistics type stuff, which makes sense.
37:51SPEAKERFeel like they bought a robotics thing.
37:53SPEAKERYou know, one of the ones we don't have on here
37:54SPEAKERis Boston Digital or Boston Dynamics, which Google bought.
37:58SPEAKER- Oh, really?
37:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't see that on this list
38:01SPEAKERwhen I think about it.
38:02SPEAKER- I did not know that they were owned by anybody.
38:04SPEAKERI thought they were still some like weird skunkworks
38:06SPEAKERrobotics lab, often Massachusetts somewhere
38:09SPEAKERthat was working on the technology
38:12SPEAKERthat will end human life one day.
38:15SPEAKER- So let's see, Google acquired them in 2013
38:21SPEAKERfor maybe an undisclosed amount of money.
38:24SPEAKERUndisclosed amount of money means it's enough that,
38:27SPEAKERsmall enough that they don't have to put it
38:28SPEAKERon their annual reports.
38:30SPEAKER- Apparently Google, or excuse me,
38:32SPEAKERAlphabet has divested itself of Boston Dynamics.
38:35SPEAKER- Yep, as of 2020, they sold them to Hyundai
38:37SPEAKERfor a billion dollars.
38:39SPEAKER- Well, actually, yeah, so they went through SoftBank
38:40SPEAKERbefore that and now.
38:41SPEAKER- Yeah, SoftBank is a whole other,
38:45SPEAKERthat's a whole other ball of wax.
38:47SPEAKER- Boy, I just, I have to close this Wikipedia page.
38:50SPEAKERI can't look at these robots anymore.
38:53SPEAKER- Having spent a little bit of time with Adam's spot,
38:57SPEAKERit's, I'm much more confident in our ability
39:02SPEAKERto survive a robot apocalypse.
39:03SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
39:04SPEAKER- Every time we talk about this, somebody is just like,
39:07SPEAKERjust keep some, keep a bag of Fuller's Earth around.
39:09SPEAKERIf you chuck it at the robot, this joint will seize up
39:12SPEAKERand you can just run away from them.
39:13SPEAKER- That is the most video, like a life imitating
39:15SPEAKERvideo games thing I have ever heard anyone say.
39:17SPEAKER- I mean, like on the scale of Kojima insanity
39:22SPEAKERin a video game to something that actually ends up
39:24SPEAKERcoming true, I think that's the most real,
39:28SPEAKERis that like, oh yeah, just keep some dust around
39:30SPEAKERand huck it at the robots and it'll work itself out.
39:32SPEAKER- Well, if he saw that one coming, yes.
39:34SPEAKER- Yeah, let's see some other,
39:36SPEAKERlike I feel like we're kind of rambling here.
39:40SPEAKERThe Nest one is interesting,
39:42SPEAKER'cause that was like $3.2 billion in 2014,
39:45SPEAKERwhich was kind of a lot for internet of things stuff
39:47SPEAKERback then, and that ended up like,
39:50SPEAKERI think that ended up being a smart buy
39:53SPEAKERprobably in the long, long term.
39:56SPEAKERDoubleClick in 2008 was another one that I was like,
39:59SPEAKERoh wow, internet ads are really worth a lot of money, huh?
40:01SPEAKER- Were, worth a lot of money.
40:03SPEAKER- Yeah.
40:05SPEAKER- Who bought DoubleClick?
40:06SPEAKER- Google.
40:07SPEAKER- That was Google, okay.
40:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and thus they became one of two
40:11SPEAKERinternet advertising juggernauts today.
40:14SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a number the other day,
40:15SPEAKERI mean, I think it's like Facebook and Google
40:17SPEAKERare two thirds of the ads on the internet at this point,
40:19SPEAKERright?
40:20SPEAKER- Yeah, and the rest are like Microsoft and Amazon, right?
40:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I've heard of them, weird.
40:25SPEAKER- Funny, funny how the same like five or six names
40:27SPEAKERkeep coming up over and over.
40:29SPEAKER- There's a handful of big ones.
40:30SPEAKERGoogle, Google, it's funny, Google mostly buys small stuff.
40:34SPEAKERLike they bought a bunch of stuff
40:35SPEAKERin the $1 billion range, like Waze was a 1.2 bill,
40:40SPEAKERHTC, they bought patents, I think for $1.1 billion
40:43SPEAKERin the phone business.
40:46SPEAKERThey bought Fitbit for around a billion dollars in 2021,
40:50SPEAKERI think, 2020.
40:52SPEAKERThey bought the smartphone business unit from Intel
40:55SPEAKERfor $1 billion, the biggest one that Google has bought
41:01SPEAKERthat I saw was Motorola, which seemed like it was mostly
41:04SPEAKERabout patents, patents and engineers.
41:07SPEAKER- Does the Motorola brand even really exists
41:09SPEAKERexternally anymore?
41:12SPEAKER- Motorola is one of those companies that was huge
41:14SPEAKERand broke up into a bazillion little groups.
41:16SPEAKERLike Motorola still makes cable modems and stuff like that.
41:19SPEAKER- Oh sure, yeah, surfboard.
41:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and fiber nodes and all that kind of stuff.
41:24SPEAKERThe cell phone, I believe that the thing that Google bought
41:27SPEAKERfor $12.5 billion was a bunch of cell phone patents
41:30SPEAKERfor radios and stuff like that.
41:31SPEAKERSo that they had, and like some of this stuff
41:35SPEAKERis so amorphous, maybe they just bought the patents
41:37SPEAKERso they could have the, they bought the company
41:39SPEAKERso they would get the cross licensing agreement
41:41SPEAKERwith Qualcomm 'cause it was cheaper to do that
41:43SPEAKERthan it was to pay Qualcomm.
41:45SPEAKERI don't know, I'm not, this is where my understanding
41:48SPEAKERof business starts to get thin, so.
41:51SPEAKER- They remember the razor?
41:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:53SPEAKER- Remember that weird three or so year window
41:55SPEAKERwhen Motorola phones were actually like
41:57SPEAKERthe hottest shit out there?
41:58SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and then the Nokia and Sony Ericsson
42:00SPEAKERcandy bar phones came out.
42:02SPEAKERYou were like, oh these are so much better.
42:04SPEAKER- Speaking of which, I wanted to ask you,
42:05SPEAKERas someone who used to cover phones quite extensively,
42:09SPEAKERhow does that Nokia acquisition look to you in retrospect?
42:12SPEAKER- Well, I looked at where I put it,
42:14SPEAKERwhere we put it on the top of the list and I was like,
42:15SPEAKERmaybe this should go in the stinker category.
42:17SPEAKERI'm not entirely sure.
42:18SPEAKER- Yes, I meant to mention earlier,
42:19SPEAKERwe do have a stinkers header here
42:21SPEAKERthat we haven't gotten to yet.
42:22SPEAKER- Yeah, the other one we haven't talked about is Disney,
42:25SPEAKERwho bought a bunch of media properties
42:27SPEAKERin what was probably like the best media acquisition spree
42:29SPEAKERof the last hundred years.
42:31SPEAKER- I've just been sitting here waiting to say like Disney
42:33SPEAKERof all of these companies made out like a bandit
42:35SPEAKERon this stuff, especially on Marvel, like oh my God.
42:38SPEAKER- Marvel, Pixar, both are good.
42:41SPEAKERThe Star Wars stuff is gonna drive the Disney Plus business
42:45SPEAKERfor years, I think probably, 'cause they're making,
42:47SPEAKERlike the way they're making TV shows
42:50SPEAKERand the technology they've built
42:51SPEAKERto let them make those TV shows
42:52SPEAKERreally freaking fast is amazing.
42:55SPEAKER- Sure, did we say the numbers?
42:57SPEAKERI mean, Marvel was 4.25 billion.
42:59SPEAKER- Yeah, that's maybe, like the revenue on the box office
43:05SPEAKERon an average Marvel movie is like a billion and change.
43:09SPEAKER- Like that's the thing, any given release from that studio
43:12SPEAKERat this point is making them like a quarter of that.
43:14SPEAKERLike that's just hard to reckon with.
43:16SPEAKER- I thought that was cash in stock though,
43:17SPEAKERso that was probably an even better deal.
43:20SPEAKERThe Lucas thing was half,
43:21SPEAKERwhen they bought Star Wars from George Lucas,
43:23SPEAKERthat was half cash, half stock,
43:26SPEAKERwhich meant that George ended up making 10 bill
43:30SPEAKERoff that deal probably.
43:32SPEAKER- Was he the sole owner of Lucasfilm even then, I assume?
43:35SPEAKER- I think he and his ex-wife perhaps, I don't know.
43:37SPEAKER- Sure, but what I mean is there were no like
43:39SPEAKERother corporate interests that were involved, I assume.
43:41SPEAKER- I don't believe 20th Century Fox, yeah.
43:45SPEAKERI mean, and then Disney just bought 20th Century Fox
43:47SPEAKERto get the remainder of what they didn't get
43:49SPEAKERfrom Lucas, I guess, 'cause I feel like Star Wars,
43:51SPEAKERthe first Star Wars was partially owned by Fox in some way.
43:55SPEAKER- I think it was just rights.
43:56SPEAKERIt was just distribution rights or something, one with ones.
43:59SPEAKER- Yeah, and then the follow ups were all funded
44:04SPEAKERby the toys from the first movie.
44:06SPEAKER- That's my understanding, yes.
44:07SPEAKER- Yeah, and then Pixar, I mean, Pixar in 2006
44:11SPEAKERfor $7.4 billion was a lot of money prior.
44:15SPEAKERLike it's kind of bonkers now that you think
44:18SPEAKERthat they paid more for Pixar than they paid for Marvel.
44:22SPEAKER- Kind of, I don't know.
44:24SPEAKERI mean, you think about where Pixar was in 2006.
44:27SPEAKER- Well, you think about where Marvel was in 2009,
44:29SPEAKERlike the Iron Man and--
44:31SPEAKER- Iron Man only came out in '08, right?
44:32SPEAKERI wanna say. - '07 or '08, yeah.
44:34SPEAKER- I think it's '08, so like MCU as a concept
44:37SPEAKERhad not really coalesced by the time that acquisition,
44:39SPEAKERyeah, it was 2008.
44:41SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that's my point is like Pixar had had
44:44SPEAKER15 years of hit after hit after hit and "The Good Dinosaur"
44:49SPEAKERand in 2006.
44:50SPEAKER- Poor "Good Dinosaur".
44:53SPEAKER- Whereas Marvel had Iron Man and then two kind of snoozers
44:57SPEAKERwith the first "Captain America" movie and the "Thor" movie.
45:01SPEAKER- Sure.
45:01SPEAKER- And then out of nowhere, Marvel, Disney's like,
45:04SPEAKER"Yeah, we're gonna buy this.
45:06SPEAKER"We're gonna make Black Widow a Disney princess.
45:08SPEAKER"Let's make this happen."
45:09SPEAKER- We see some potential here.
45:10SPEAKERWe could probably turn this into something.
45:12SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so can we talk about stinkers, though?
45:15SPEAKERThis is where it gets good.
45:16SPEAKERThis is the juicy stuff. - Sure, sure, yeah.
45:19SPEAKERStill gotta talk about the Steve Jobs stuff, too.
45:20SPEAKERWe'll get there. - Oh, yeah, yeah.
45:22SPEAKERSo my favorite here, my favorite story is Michael Arrington
45:25SPEAKERwho started TechCrunch and is a kind of a noted asshole.
45:31SPEAKER- I mean, should I just note right ahead of time,
45:33SPEAKERlike you know enough people who are probably adjacent
45:35SPEAKERto that situation to like have at least heard first
45:39SPEAKERand secondhand stories about all this stuff?
45:41SPEAKER- I've heard really awful stories
45:43SPEAKERabout a lot of the people in this next section.
45:45SPEAKER- Okay.
45:45SPEAKER- That's all I'll say.
45:47SPEAKER- All right.
45:48SPEAKER- He sold TechCrunch to AOL for an undisclosed sum
45:51SPEAKERreported to be between 25 and 40 million dollars
45:53SPEAKERin the press at the time.
45:56SPEAKERThey didn't have to report the number to shareholders,
45:58SPEAKERso you knew it couldn't be, you know,
46:00SPEAKERit wasn't gonna be a percentage
46:01SPEAKERof the overall spend that year.
46:04SPEAKERThat was in September of 2010.
46:06SPEAKERHe was very pleased with himself,
46:07SPEAKERbasically walked away from TechCrunch,
46:08SPEAKERwas like, "I got everything I needed here.
46:09SPEAKER"I'm not gonna do this anymore."
46:10SPEAKERAnd then they hired, actually they hired
46:12SPEAKERreally good people to do that.
46:13SPEAKERSome really smart people ran TechCrunch
46:15SPEAKERfor the next, still run TechCrunch.
46:16SPEAKER- Yeah, still going.
46:19SPEAKER- And it became a much better site
46:20SPEAKERas a result of that, honestly.
46:22SPEAKERLike Matt Panzer over there is awesome.
46:26SPEAKERFebruary 2011, Arianna Huffington announced
46:29SPEAKERthat Huffington Post was gonna sell to AOL,
46:31SPEAKERthe same group at AOL, for 315 million dollars.
46:35SPEAKERBig enough number they had to disclose it,
46:37SPEAKERso that was delicious, I thought, really lovely.
46:40SPEAKER- I mean, I would assume Huffington Post
46:42SPEAKERwas quite a bit bigger than TechCrunch.
46:44SPEAKER- It wasn't.
46:45SPEAKER- It wasn't?
46:45SPEAKER- I mean, it was, yes, it was a lot bigger than TechCrunch,
46:47SPEAKERbut it was not 10 times larger than TechCrunch
46:50SPEAKERin terms of traffic.
46:51SPEAKER- Not 315 million dollars, but I mean,
46:53SPEAKERI remember it's time.
46:54SPEAKER- Oh no, I think she got the right price.
46:55SPEAKER- Oh yeah, okay.
46:56SPEAKER- I think having to post one for the right price,
46:57SPEAKERI think Errington went cheap.
46:59SPEAKER- Ah, I see.
47:00SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why I love, that's why this is great.
47:02SPEAKERHe could've gotten way more money
47:03SPEAKERif he had done a better job negotiating,
47:05SPEAKERprobably hadn't been such an asshole.
47:07SPEAKER- I detect a little shot in Freud here.
47:09SPEAKER- Oh look, it's my favorite story here for a reason.
47:14SPEAKERLet's see, the Yahoo Tumblr thing, this is a good one.
47:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:18SPEAKER- Yeah, 1.1.
47:20SPEAKER- Any story involving Tumblr at this point?
47:23SPEAKER- Well, I mean, look, Tumblr, I like Tumblr.
47:26SPEAKERTumblr was a regular part of my, like,
47:29SPEAKERgoing to watch weird shit happen on the internet,
47:31SPEAKERnot like-- - Well, definitely.
47:32SPEAKER- Yeah, it absolutely had its place.
47:34SPEAKERI'm just saying, like, what it's become at this point,
47:35SPEAKERlike how mismanaged it was under Yahoo is what I'm saying,
47:38SPEAKERlike how badly they ran it into the ground.
47:41SPEAKER- Honestly, I don't think Yahoo,
47:43SPEAKERI think Yahoo did a good job, like Yahoo bought it,
47:46SPEAKERbought Tumblr for a billion and change in 2013.
47:49SPEAKERThey sold it in 2017 for $4.5 billion
47:52SPEAKERwith the rest of Yahoo to Verizon.
47:54SPEAKER- Hang on a second.
47:55SPEAKER- And then Verizon said,
47:56SPEAKER"Hey, we're taking, we're banning pornography on Tumblr."
47:59SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay, that's the disconnect.
48:01SPEAKERI thought that it was Yahoo
48:02SPEAKERwho made the decision to ban adult material.
48:04SPEAKERLike, Yahoo, Yahoo, I mean, I don't think Yahoo
48:08SPEAKERwas a good steward of Flickr or Tumblr or Delicious
48:12SPEAKERor any of those services that they destroyed, but like--
48:14SPEAKER- Ah, Flickr's, I mean, I was looking at Flickr,
48:17SPEAKERsomebody's Flickr library this morning.
48:18SPEAKERLike, it's still there, people still use it.
48:20SPEAKER- You mean SmugMug?
48:21SPEAKER- Flickr brought to you by SmugMug?
48:23SPEAKER- Oh, is that?
48:24SPEAKER- Yeah, they sold Flickr to SmugMug.
48:25SPEAKER- Oh, really?
48:26SPEAKERI mean, it still looks like Flickr, though.
48:27SPEAKERThat's the thing. - Yeah, yeah.
48:28SPEAKER- It's fine.
48:29SPEAKER- I didn't eyeball the copyright,
48:30SPEAKERso kind of, you know, same logo and everything.
48:34SPEAKER- So, yeah, Verizon bought it with the rest of Yahoo
48:37SPEAKERfor $4.5 billion.
48:38SPEAKERThey have a family-friendly image.
48:39SPEAKERThey're like, we don't want any of this, okay.
48:42SPEAKERThey found child pornography on Tumblr,
48:44SPEAKERwhich happens on any user-generated content site,
48:47SPEAKERunfortunately.
48:50SPEAKERVerizon flipped out about the state of pornography
48:53SPEAKERin general on Tumblr and just turned off all adult content
48:57SPEAKERbecause they were getting kicked out of the App Store
48:59SPEAKERon iOS, as I recall.
49:01SPEAKERSo then, a couple years later in 2019,
49:05SPEAKERVerizon unloaded Tumblr onto Automattic,
49:10SPEAKERthe people who make WordPress,
49:12SPEAKERfor a reported few million dollars.
49:15SPEAKERLike, you could've run a Kickstarter
49:16SPEAKERand bought Tumblr for what they paid.
49:19SPEAKER- It's very, very How the Mighty Have Fallen kind of thing.
49:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and I don't know if the Tumblr
49:24SPEAKERever really recovered from that.
49:26SPEAKERWhat else we got?
49:27SPEAKERThe Carly Fiorina one that you found is a great one.
49:30SPEAKERI had forgotten about this.
49:31SPEAKER- So that's the anachronism here
49:33SPEAKERthat I almost brought up at the very top of the show
49:34SPEAKERbecause it is so out of place
49:37SPEAKERin the context of everything else
49:38SPEAKERwe've been talking about here,
49:40SPEAKERin terms of when it happened and how much it happened for.
49:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so what was the deal?
49:46SPEAKER- So HP bought Compaq in 2001 for $25 billion.
49:54SPEAKER- What month in 2001, do you know, do you remember?
49:56SPEAKER- H, hang on, let me pull that back up.
49:59SPEAKER'Cause if you remember, January of 2001
50:02SPEAKERwas the end of the dot-com bubble,
50:05SPEAKERand then it popped in late January, early February.
50:07SPEAKERSo if this was a deal that closed before then,
50:11SPEAKERlike, kind of bad luck.
50:14SPEAKER- I'm trying to find the date,
50:15SPEAKERSeptember 2001, it looks like.
50:17SPEAKER- Yeah, see, that's an insane thing to do
50:19SPEAKERafter the dot-com bubble burst.
50:21SPEAKER- Yes, also, that was September 3rd, 2001.
50:24SPEAKER- Well, that's a, yeah.
50:26SPEAKER- Historical context.
50:27SPEAKER- Whole other bad luck situation there.
50:30SPEAKER- That was kind of, that was the historical context
50:33SPEAKERI was reading everywhere I read about this thing, though,
50:35SPEAKERwas that like, A, the dot-com bubble
50:39SPEAKERhad all but burst at that point,
50:40SPEAKERbut B, also, like, a lot of PC makers
50:43SPEAKERwere like fleeing that industry.
50:45SPEAKERLike, that was a low margin business
50:47SPEAKERthat was not healthy at the time,
50:49SPEAKERand yet here they are buying a major PC maker.
50:51SPEAKER- Well, and they were a premium brand
50:54SPEAKERthat was buying a cheap brand also,
50:55SPEAKERwhich was like a, like, Compaq,
50:57SPEAKERit's funny 'cause 2001 was around the time Compaq
51:01SPEAKERstarted to actually make good computers.
51:03SPEAKER- Oh, okay, I was gonna say, like, at that point,
51:05SPEAKERCompaq was very much a, like, Packard Bell-esque,
51:08SPEAKERkind of like.
51:11SPEAKER- I would have, I would have rated them
51:12SPEAKERabove Packard Bell and eMachines,
51:14SPEAKERbut below, like, your Dells and Gateway,
51:17SPEAKERI think Gateway was gone by then,
51:18SPEAKERbut it was below the kind of premium mail order businesses.
51:21SPEAKERIt was, a Compaq was like, probably,
51:24SPEAKERif you knew what you were doing,
51:26SPEAKERyou could probably buy an okay Compaq at Best Buy
51:28SPEAKERor CompUSA or something like that, but it was risky.
51:31SPEAKER- It was no Gateway 2000.
51:32SPEAKER- It was no Gateway, it was no Dell,
51:34SPEAKERlike, it wasn't even as good as a Dell at that point.
51:38SPEAKERBut, like, that was the time that Compaq was sending us
51:41SPEAKERpre-configured machines that were testing,
51:44SPEAKERwe were testing at maximum PC and giving, like,
51:46SPEAKERnines and kick-ass awards and stuff like that, too.
51:48SPEAKER- Okay.
51:49SPEAKER- They were putting good graphics cards
51:51SPEAKERand good CPUs and good memory, like,
51:53SPEAKERthey weren't making big mistakes and their cases were okay.
51:55SPEAKER- Okay, so there was some value there.
51:57SPEAKER- That was around the time that Josh,
51:59SPEAKERNorm and I knocked a Compaq off the trolley
52:02SPEAKERon the way to the photo studio outside across the street.
52:04SPEAKER- Did it lose function?
52:07SPEAKER- Still worked, it was pretty dinged up,
52:08SPEAKERwe had to photograph it from a weird angle.
52:10SPEAKER- How do you feel when you drop something of that nature?
52:12SPEAKER- It's not great, it's not great.
52:14SPEAKER- Okay, look, okay, yes, that's why, yes,
52:16SPEAKERin the moment, of course, it's not great.
52:18SPEAKERI guess what I, let me refine the question, like,
52:21SPEAKERdo you ever trust that device again?
52:23SPEAKERLike, that's really what I'm trying to ask.
52:24SPEAKERLike, I bought an Xbox Series S a couple months ago
52:27SPEAKERfrom work and at one point it fell from a height of,
52:32SPEAKERI'm gonna say, about two feet.
52:35SPEAKERI had it standing vertical on top of my PC
52:39SPEAKERand somehow it got knocked over.
52:41SPEAKER- So, it fits.
52:42SPEAKER- It landed on the floor and it seemed to,
52:43SPEAKERit has seemed to work fine ever since,
52:46SPEAKERbut I can't help being a little skeptical about it.
52:48SPEAKER- I think that's probably, like, no,
52:50SPEAKERlike, the moving parts in that are fans and stuff
52:52SPEAKERthat's pretty robust, so I would say that's probably okay.
52:55SPEAKER- Okay.
52:56SPEAKER- Like, if I knocked an Xbox One with a spinning hard drive
53:00SPEAKERoff of something while it was on,
53:03SPEAKERI would assume it was short for the world.
53:05SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
53:07SPEAKER- But, so yeah, so she bought Compaq for $25 billion.
53:11SPEAKERHP bought Compaq for $25 billion in 2001
53:14SPEAKERand by 2005 the company had lost half of its market value.
53:18SPEAKERI don't, I mean, look, part of that is that we were
53:20SPEAKERin a pretty good, like, not quite recession,
53:22SPEAKERbut almost recession there.
53:24SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
53:25SPEAKER- But, like, $25 billion for Compaq was frickin' insane.
53:31SPEAKERThe other great HP one is spending $1.25 billion
53:34SPEAKERon Palm in 2010 when they were getting trounced
53:38SPEAKERby the iPhone and the first gen of Android phones
53:41SPEAKEReven by that point.
53:43SPEAKER- Oh god, 2010 is when the iPad came out, right?
53:45SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
53:46SPEAKER- Huh.
53:47SPEAKER- So, they rolled that out.
53:49SPEAKERThey converted, they liked webOS.
53:51SPEAKERSo, Palm had released the Palm Pre,
53:53SPEAKERwhich was a webOS-based phone
53:55SPEAKERand it looked like it could be kind of a third,
53:58SPEAKERthird or fourth run phone in that space.
54:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
54:03SPEAKERI mean, they were not the only ones who liked webOS.
54:04SPEAKERLike, it was quite popular.
54:06SPEAKERSo, that is, like, you still see glowing comments
54:09SPEAKEReven though that LG just shoves it into their TVs now, like.
54:12SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but, I mean, webOS was Palm's OS
54:15SPEAKERand it was pretty good.
54:16SPEAKERIt had multitasking, it had a bunch of stuff
54:18SPEAKERthat, like, iOS and Android added later
54:20SPEAKERor at around the same time.
54:24SPEAKERHP released the touchpad in July of 2010.
54:26SPEAKERSo, about a year after they acquired the company,
54:29SPEAKERwhich was a webOS-based tablet,
54:31SPEAKERthey'd released a couple of phones
54:32SPEAKERthat kind of didn't light the world on fire in the interim.
54:36SPEAKERAnd then a month after the touchpad came out,
54:38SPEAKERthey were, they shut down the production of those devices
54:41SPEAKERand looked, announced that they were looking
54:42SPEAKERfor someone to buy webOS.
54:45SPEAKERThey sold it to LG in 2013 for an undisclosed sum,
54:48SPEAKERwhich, again, strongly implies
54:50SPEAKERthat it was practically nothing significantly less
54:53SPEAKERthan the $1.2 billion that they paid on it.
54:55SPEAKER- Hey, I distinctly still remember the day
54:57SPEAKERthat my dad texted me about the touchpad fire sale.
55:00SPEAKER- Mm-hmm.
55:01SPEAKER- 'Cause, I mean, again, the iPad was, like,
55:03SPEAKERonly months old at that point.
55:05SPEAKERLike, if you wanted a tablet at that time,
55:07SPEAKERyou were paying through the nose for it
55:08SPEAKERand then all of a sudden, like, he was like,
55:09SPEAKER"Hey, there's this news about this tablet.
55:12SPEAKER"It's, like, $99, like, is this,
55:14SPEAKER"should I get one of these?"
55:15SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yes, also buy me one."
55:18SPEAKER- Well, so the iPad came out in March of 2010,
55:21SPEAKERso by the time it came out, by the time,
55:23SPEAKERlike, the thing that webOS had going for it
55:24SPEAKERwas it had multitasking on the tablet,
55:27SPEAKERwhich was pretty good.
55:30SPEAKERLike, it actually worked.
55:32SPEAKERI distinctly remember us getting one in,
55:36SPEAKERand the day, the week before they announced
55:38SPEAKERthat they were shutting down the webOS division
55:40SPEAKERand shutting down production of these devices
55:43SPEAKERand selling the tablets for $99,
55:45SPEAKERI think I famously said that HP was clearly
55:48SPEAKERin the webOS business for the long haul.
55:50SPEAKER(laughing)
55:52SPEAKER- You can't nail 'em all.
55:53SPEAKER- Look, man.
55:55SPEAKER- The amount of time we spend saying things
55:57SPEAKERon the internet, look.
55:58SPEAKER- Yeah, eventually you're gonna get something real wrong,
56:00SPEAKERI guess. - Anybody would be wrong
56:01SPEAKERwith that kind of exposure.
56:04SPEAKER- Yeah, so-- - Once in a while.
56:06SPEAKER- Yeah, that's it.
56:07SPEAKERBut yeah, it's in all the LGTBs now,
56:10SPEAKERas the OS for your smart televisions.
56:16SPEAKER- The cool thing about the touch pad
56:17SPEAKERwas you could also just install Android on it.
56:20SPEAKER- That's true. - Which I did.
56:21SPEAKER- That's true. - It was a decent piece
56:22SPEAKERof hardware for the era that you could just straight up
56:24SPEAKERslap a vanilla Android image on.
56:27SPEAKER- A little slow and plasticky,
56:28SPEAKERbut it was way cheap. - Yeah.
56:30SPEAKER- 99 bucks was $400 less than the cheapest iPad,
56:33SPEAKERas I recall. - Yes, yes.
56:34SPEAKERIt was for the price, it was pretty cool.
56:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:37SPEAKERAnd then, to put a little bit of the backroom stuff
56:40SPEAKERthat happens on all of this in context,
56:42SPEAKERthere's this thread I sent you before we started this.
56:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I have not seen that.
56:45SPEAKERI guess this person posted this, what,
56:47SPEAKERon the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs' death?
56:50SPEAKER- I feel like I saw it, it pops up around
56:52SPEAKERthe anniversary of Steve Jobs' death every year.
56:54SPEAKER- I think that was the occasion last October.
56:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:57SPEAKER- This thread went out where he talks about.
57:00SPEAKER- Do you wanna?
57:01SPEAKER- I mean, basically--
57:03SPEAKER- Talks about getting a meeting with Steve Jobs
57:04SPEAKERto sell their company to Apple,
57:05SPEAKERwhich Steve Jobs agrees to do in the meeting.
57:09SPEAKER- Yeah, and then--
57:10SPEAKER- And then starts to exit the meeting.
57:12SPEAKEREssentially says, "Hey, Eddie Q here will take care of you."
57:16SPEAKERSettles up.
57:17SPEAKER- And then he says, then he overstretches
57:22SPEAKERand says, "You know what?
57:24SPEAKER"I think this company's worth more than your,"
57:26SPEAKERhe asks what range we're talking about.
57:28SPEAKER- He was like, "Yeah, what kind of range
57:30SPEAKER"are you thinking about?"
57:31SPEAKERIt was like, "Dude, Steve Jobs just said
57:32SPEAKER"he's gonna buy your company and he's now walking
57:34SPEAKER"out of the room, maybe just let it go."
57:36SPEAKERMaybe follow up with his--
57:37SPEAKER- Yeah, have this conversation with somebody else,
57:41SPEAKERnot with Steve.
57:42SPEAKER- Have this conversation with people
57:43SPEAKERwho are less famously prickly.
57:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so Steve gives a range and he says,
57:51SPEAKER"I think, no wait, I know we're worth three times that."
57:57SPEAKERAnd Steve senses weakness.
57:59SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the thing.
58:02SPEAKER- He's like, "Why do you, if you know it, prove it."
58:05SPEAKERAnd the deal calls off, I think he said
58:08SPEAKERthey shut down the company eventually, I can't remember.
58:10SPEAKER- They ended up selling it at a loss.
58:12SPEAKER- Yeah, they ended up selling the company at a loss
58:14SPEAKERinstead of to Apple, just because he didn't know
58:17SPEAKERwhen to leave well enough alone.
58:20SPEAKER- You hear a lot of those stories about,
58:22SPEAKERespecially Steve Jobs, but other people as well.
58:26SPEAKERThe lesson there is if you are in a situation
58:31SPEAKERwhere you're trying to sell your company
58:32SPEAKERfor a lot of money to somebody, it's not a good time
58:36SPEAKERto bullshit, I guess.
58:37SPEAKER- Or you have to be a legendary bullshitter.
58:39SPEAKER- Yeah.
58:40SPEAKER- If you're gonna do it.
58:41SPEAKER- No, I think that's the wrong takeaway from this story.
58:45SPEAKERI think if you are not prepared to back up
58:47SPEAKERwhat you're saying in that situation,
58:49SPEAKERyou should not overstretch, you will find yourself.
58:52SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying, you have to be,
58:53SPEAKERyou have to have the spirit of a huckster
58:55SPEAKERto be able to pull that off.
58:56SPEAKERYou have to be able to talk a bunch of complete bullshit
59:00SPEAKERto come out the other end of that situation
59:03SPEAKERin a positive posture.
59:05SPEAKER- I mean, but the thing is, any kind of deal
59:08SPEAKERthat's worth any significant amount of money
59:10SPEAKERis gonna involve disclosure and you open your books,
59:14SPEAKERyou open everything that you have
59:16SPEAKERas part of the disclosure process.
59:18SPEAKERYour bullshit's not gonna stand up, is the thing.
59:21SPEAKER- Yes, no.
59:22SPEAKER- Anyway, that's it.
59:24SPEAKERThis is us talking about mergers and acquisitions.
59:27SPEAKERI think it's kind of fucked up that Activision,
59:29SPEAKERafter mismanaging their employees
59:34SPEAKERand abusing their employees for a long time,
59:36SPEAKERis gonna get the people who allowed that to happen
59:39SPEAKERare gonna get enormous payouts, but what do I know?
59:41SPEAKER- I mean, it is fucked up,
59:42SPEAKERbut it's also the system working as intended,
59:44SPEAKERso the fault lies with the very structure of the system.
59:51SPEAKERWhat I mean is, any other company that pulled this,
59:54SPEAKERthe executives or the people at the top,
59:56SPEAKERwould benefit in exactly the same way.
59:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:58SPEAKER- I think it's not a uniquely Activision problem,
1:00:00SPEAKERit is a systemic problem.
1:00:01SPEAKER- Well, now I'm just sad.
1:00:04SPEAKER- Anyway.
1:00:05SPEAKER- But you know what I'm grateful for
1:00:06SPEAKERand thankful for every week, Brad?
1:00:08SPEAKER- What's that?
1:00:08SPEAKER- Our patrons.
1:00:09SPEAKER- Oh, yes.
1:00:11SPEAKER- This is the part of the show where we thank them,
1:00:12SPEAKERso thank you, patrons.
1:00:13SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.
1:00:15SPEAKER- And as always, if you would like to help support
1:00:17SPEAKERthe 100% listeners supported "Brad and Will Made a TechPod,"
1:00:21SPEAKERthis podcast that you're listening to right now,
1:00:23SPEAKERyou can by going to patreon.com/techpod.
1:00:27SPEAKERAgain, that's patreon.com/techpod,
1:00:29SPEAKERwhere for as little as $2 a month,
1:00:31SPEAKERyou can sign up to join the fabulous tech pod community
1:00:35SPEAKERover in our Discord.
1:00:37SPEAKERYou can get things like patron-exclusive episodes
1:00:40SPEAKERevery month.
1:00:41SPEAKERWhat did we talk about last month, do you remember?
1:00:43SPEAKER- We did that kind of live walkthrough
1:00:45SPEAKERof that Mr. 486 core.
1:00:46SPEAKER- Ooh, yeah, that was fun.
1:00:49SPEAKER- We then streamed some of that on Nextlander.
1:00:52SPEAKER- Yep.
1:00:52SPEAKER- And I tried to install FreeBSD on it.
1:00:54SPEAKER- How did that go?
1:00:55SPEAKER- It did not go at all, it turns out.
1:00:58SPEAKERActually, I did a little digging for people who were curious.
1:01:00SPEAKERIn fact, people on the Discord helped me uncover this fact.
1:01:04SPEAKERI guess the virtual IDE stack in that thing
1:01:07SPEAKERis just bare bones enough to make DOS function,
1:01:10SPEAKERand that's about it.
1:01:12SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:01:12SPEAKER- Pretty much anything else,
1:01:14SPEAKERany other OS with greater needs than DOS
1:01:16SPEAKERis not gonna go on that thing.
1:01:18SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:01:19SPEAKER- Which is a bummer, 'cause I've,
1:01:22SPEAKERI sense a weird OS/2 rabbit hole coming on.
1:01:25SPEAKER- I would love to see if you get OS/2 running on that thing.
1:01:28SPEAKER- I don't think it will, I mean, for that same reason,
1:01:29SPEAKERI don't think that it'll function there,
1:01:31SPEAKERbut I mean, there's plenty of PC-based solutions.
1:01:33SPEAKERI mean, you can just throw it in a VM if you want,
1:01:34SPEAKERbut I don't know why YouTube was serving me
1:01:37SPEAKERsome OS/2-based videos the other day.
1:01:40SPEAKER- OS/2 runs on DOS.
1:01:41SPEAKER- I found a, are you sure about that?
1:01:44SPEAKER- Depends on which version you're talking about.
1:01:45SPEAKER- I'm thinking three and four, like,
1:01:47SPEAKERwarp or nothing, please.
1:01:48SPEAKER- Warp, I feel like you could shell to DOS from warp,
1:01:52SPEAKERbut I don't remember.
1:01:53SPEAKER- Okay, but that might've been DOS running inside OS/2
1:01:56SPEAKERrather than OS/2 running on DOS.
1:01:58SPEAKERLike, remember, one of IBM's big pitches for that thing
1:02:00SPEAKERwas like, ah, it runs Windows apps faster than Windows.
1:02:03SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:04SPEAKER- Remember, it had that Windows 3.1 compatibility layer?
1:02:07SPEAKER- I mean, if it ran Windows app,
1:02:08SPEAKERit ran Windows apps faster than Windows was the key there.
1:02:11SPEAKERYou should put BOS on that thing and just see how that does.
1:02:14SPEAKER- I would love to.
1:02:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:16SPEAKER- I mean, that's a weird one, 'cause, you know,
1:02:16SPEAKERlike, Haiku still exists.
1:02:17SPEAKERLike, that's essentially is BOS, like, that's still out there.
1:02:20SPEAKER- That's true, that's true.
1:02:22SPEAKERBut anyway, I landed on a video of Kate Mulgrew
1:02:25SPEAKERand Leonard Nimoy introducing OS/2 warp 4, I think it was.
1:02:31SPEAKER- Look, we gotta appeal to the nerds.
1:02:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:34SPEAKER- Who do we get?
1:02:35SPEAKER- Clearly.
1:02:36SPEAKER- Let's get that woman from Voyager and Spock.
1:02:38SPEAKER- Clearly some marketing synergy here.
1:02:40SPEAKER- But yeah, if you wanna join the Discord,
1:02:42SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:02:45SPEAKERAnd as always, we wanna thank everyone
1:02:48SPEAKERwho supports the tech pod,
1:02:50SPEAKERbut especially our executive producer tier patrons,
1:02:52SPEAKERincluding Paddle Creek Games makers of Fractured Vale,
1:02:55SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, #bunnycrimes.
1:02:58SPEAKERI'm gonna start calling him Octothorpe Bunnycrimes, I think.
1:03:01SPEAKER- We'll revisit this topic later.
1:03:03SPEAKER- That's the name of the hashtag sign.
1:03:05SPEAKER- I did not know that.
1:03:06SPEAKER- It's an Octothorpe.
1:03:07SPEAKER- I'm looking it up right now.
1:03:09SPEAKERI'm looking it up right now.
1:03:11SPEAKER- Jacob, Octothorpe Bunnycrimes.
1:03:15SPEAKER- Completely thrown you off your patron-thinking game.
1:03:18SPEAKERI've done this like a hundred times
1:03:20SPEAKERand now I've jacked it all up.
1:03:23SPEAKEROctothorpe Bunnycrimes, Jacob Chappell, Joel Krauska,
1:03:26SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, and James Kamik.
1:03:28SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:03:29SPEAKERWe really appreciate it.
1:03:30SPEAKER- Yes, thank you very much.
1:03:32SPEAKER- And that'll do it for us this week.
1:03:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:35SPEAKER- Next week we have something special.
1:03:36SPEAKER- We do.
1:03:37SPEAKER- Maybe.
1:03:38SPEAKER- Have.
1:03:39SPEAKER- Probably. - Probably.
1:03:39SPEAKER- Maybe. - Yes.
1:03:40SPEAKER- Optimistically yours.
1:03:42SPEAKER- Okay.
1:03:43SPEAKER- I'm sitting here thinking, shall we commit to this or not?
1:03:45SPEAKER- I think we should tease it.
1:03:48SPEAKER- Soon.
1:03:49SPEAKER- In a non-committal way.
1:03:50SPEAKER- In a non-temporal way.
1:03:52SPEAKER- Yes, and maybe I actually,
1:03:53SPEAKERit may be the week after when I think about it.
1:03:56SPEAKERI can't remember what the exact timing is.
1:03:58SPEAKERIn the next two weeks, we have something exciting for you.
1:04:00SPEAKER- Yes, we have some new stuff for a week.
1:04:02SPEAKER- Yeah, next week might just be a Q and A episode.
1:04:04SPEAKERSo get your questions into the Discord channel
1:04:06SPEAKERor send them to techpod@content.town
1:04:09SPEAKERand we will turn them into A's for you.
1:04:10SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.
1:04:12SPEAKER- And on that note, I guess we will see you all next week.
1:04:16SPEAKER(upbeat music)