This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com/spartify. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. So we're about to see the return of Google Glass. Is that what you're saying? I think we learned a lot through the past. One of the things we learned, again, obvious in retrospect, is like they've got to be glasses that you really want to wear, first and foremost, you know, like as it turns out, as it turns out. Welcome to Access, part of the Vox Media podcast network. Alex Heath here with Ellis Hamburger, as always. Today, we've got some years some months, the King of Android at Google on the show. But first, Ellis, how's it going? Alex, I'm afraid I've been a bad boy. Really? I don't know if you could hear it in my voice, but I was in Hooligan mode at the Michigan game this past weekend. Hooligan mode. And I forgot that I'm a podcaster now, and I was yelling way too loudly, and my voice was actually gone. Yesterday, and I almost caused a legitimate problem. Wow. So, fortunately, I'm okay. What kind of tier are we working with to get the recovery that I'm hearing? You've got some-- Oh, it's always throw coat, maybe. Throw coat. And whatever the little pharmacy has here in Little Tokyo, I can't read the label. I think it's eucalyptus. Hopefully, my voice isn't too grating. I feel like can I get voice insurance? I'm sure that exists. I was the king of David Duchovny in Zoolander, where he's got that glass bulb over his hand, because he was a hand model. I don't know. I apologize that I was being stupid. That's okay. I'm not a sports guy. Is Michigan good this year? Depends who you ask. But, most importantly, they now serve beer at the stadium. That's new? It is. What? NCAA's cash and in, baby. Wow. You can pay the players now, you can get over-priced beer at the stadium. I just like the idea that it's like, you know, it's not like the cashers at the stadium when they're trying to get through a line of 100 people or the best ID checkers, but the beers are priced prohibitively, expensively so the students can't afford it anyway. That's called product design. Yes. Well, I'm glad you had a good weekend, even though it sounds like we almost didn't have a pod this week. So that's good. I had a good weekend. This is actually my 11 labs voice clone right now operating in 120 frames per second. You wouldn't even know. We should try to experiment with that and see if we can just do an AI pod of ourself. Think about the volume, the leverage we would have on the podcast ecosystem through AI. I mean, I bet you Riza's got some insights from her. I'm sure she does. Right? An episode ago. She knows some people for sure. An episode. If we ever find ourselves in a really tough spot, I think she could. She could help us. She's got us. Well, I'm glad you had a good weekend. Yeah, we went to Joshua Tree this weekend, saw the loam, fantastic instrumental band. It was a concert weekend and then came back to LA and saw no worries in Hollywood, which was really awesome. Anderson Pack in knowledge and was really fun. So yeah, it was an unusually eventful weekend, but it's a good to be back in the contact minds with you. Did you use any new tech this weekend, Alex? No, actually, I kind of went back to basics, you know, just looked up at the sun. So you've been a bad boy, too? No comment. But yeah, before we get into this chat with Samir, some news dropped that is very much in both of our worlds, me on the Sam Altman, you know, push notification alert in you and the browser world that we should touch on before we get into this interview. What just happened? Why don't we start recording? Yeah, I think they have started to learn when we record and started doing product drops during our recordings. Thanks, Sam. Thanks. They have announced Atlas, their new browser, long anticipated. It looks a lot like Dia from the browser company, my former employer, starting to look like they did the right thing by selling to Atlassian. I mean, we'll see there's an incredible team over there. And they've also built a lot of tools for Dia that allow them to iterate very quickly on the UI that I think are going to be harder for perplexity and open AI to copy, you know, with their interfaces that look more like straight Chrome wrappers. But they certainly have a lot more distribution at open AI for the concept of a new browser, I would say. Yeah, although it's a new app, Mac only for now, it seems like it's gated. So one of the pro tiers, they'll be doing windows, web, mobile, in the coming months, they got to get those GPUs lit up. But yeah, what was your takeaway from this? I mean, it seems like chat to PT sitting on the side of your browser, which is kind of what is becoming the new standard. It's like, you know, comment, perplexities, browser does that, Dia, like you mentioned, this seems to be the new interface. Yeah, I think for a while, a lot of people thought that AI was going to primarily just be a sidebar for you to help you get answers to your questions about what website you're on. But I think it's been proven that I just like wasn't really enough, you know, like is I hate copying and pasting things into chat to PT, really a relatable problem statement. I think I've been believing more and more that the agentic piece is really where it's all going to be at, especially since the browser is where you're clicking all day. And so one of the things they seem to have done is brought operator into the mix and you could say, hey, add my usual beach grocery cart to my Instacart and then just let me one click by it. I think that's in there. We've also seen that a little bit from perplexity with comment. We've seen that from Strawberry Browser company I worked with that launched the other day. Strawberry. Has little. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's aimed after the, you know, how AI couldn't count the ours in Strawberry for a while. That's a good. That's good. Yeah. They have an interesting take. I mean, everybody's battling for like what's the right way to introduce this to people. Their approach is like they have little companions based on use case that you can ask questions to. But I mean, I really do believe that, you know, with the 800 million users, chat, GPT does have a pretty big advantage here, especially if they're bringing your existing memory into the new browser right out the bat, right? Yeah. Like, that to me is the biggest thing is that your browsing habits in the browser and Atlas build off your chat, GPT memory and vice versa. That to me seems to be the wedge, the moat, the whatever tech speak word you want to use that open an eye is really building towards, which is this profile of you that knows you better than any other company. And they still have work to do like I would say, you know, our guests today like Google has probably more data still because they have Gmail calendar, all these things. But open AI is very quickly speedrunning getting there as well with its own like full fledged, you know, app for anything you do with the internet approach that it's taking. And to me, the real interesting thing is that memory piece you mentioned and being able to bring your chat, GPT context in your browser and vice versa. That to me seems like if they can get that done at scale, there is going to be very, it's going to be very hard for anyone else to win the chat bot war, so to speak. Yeah, I think with all the folks I talk to every day in AI, there's definitely this agreement that whoever has the most context may win simply because you have the best onboarding experience. We all know onboarding for new products is very difficult, especially when you have to learn something new or as you have become the self-professed dog that is old and doesn't want to learn new tricks. I mean, I don't know if Chrome gets a button that says, let Gemini see my entire web history for the last 15 years and it starts proactively recommending the next concert that you want to go to or the next purple shirt you want to buy, I mean, that's going to be very, very powerful. Right. Because they on one hand do have a lot more context than even open AI has, right? Yeah. Yeah, they should. Are they using it yet? I don't think so. I have Gemini now in the corner of my Chrome window here and it can do some stuff but it's kind of limited. I think they're probably have all this regulatory red tape that these that open AI doesn't have or doesn't care about and they just can't move as fast because you know, it's a massive company. But you're right. That would be the move is just back log all of the data that Google already has and use it to super charge my Gemini and that alone would probably make Gemini more personalized on day one, just going back in time, not even needing to continue building data. Yeah. I think Samir.
alludes to some of that as well with the personalization. I mean, most people don't know what to ask AI for. Yeah. I think the next round of products and updates are going to be a lot more proactive. Just doing things for you. Not even like tasks, but like recommending things that you hadn't even thought of searching yet. Things you would know you could ask. I mean, as a user, I'm pretty excited for that honestly. No, yeah. That's what you want. You don't want to just have to think of how to prompt everything anymore. It feels, feels, uh, feels annoying. Yeah. It's going to be a challenge to fine-tune that, though, especially if you're a company that's trying to take a little chunk of everything. Like we get into a little bit Google shopping with Sameer. I mean, Gemini is in a place where I could say Alice, uh, we, we, we are very confident that you have a two-year-old and a four-year-old and have searched for children's books 18 times in the last few years. Here's a new one that came out that's just getting good reviews. But I have a lot of interests. Are they prompting me five times a day? 10 times a day? Once a week? It is going to be very, very relevant. I think as we've seen with things like Instagram ads, how relevant they can be. But what's the load that's going to feel acceptable for this proactive AI recommendations? I think that might be one of the big questions of the next five years. Yeah. Well, we should start getting this Convo with Sameer. He's a Google OGER. He's been there for like 17 years. He's currently the president of Android ecosystem, which we demestify. And Google had an announcement this week in the XR headset space. And we kind of start talking about glasses and where all this is headed after phones. Really fun Convo, a Google Aconvo, and I really enjoyed it. Let's kick it to Sameer. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter work flows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Learn more at Accenture.com/Spotify. That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally breakdown that long article you've had open for weeks. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. All right, Sameer, welcome to the show. You have been at Google for a long time, and we got a lot to talk about. You have your hands on a lot of things at Google. But first, I heard there's a pretty fun story about when you joined Google and how you joined Google. Can you take us back? This was what, like, 2008? Yeah, I joined Google in 2008, but the story, I think, predates that, actually. First of all, before we get into that, if I could just nice to see you guys. Congratulations. By the way, I'm pod. I think it's great. I've enjoyed every episode. Yeah, my story of getting to Google is a little bit round about. I started a company in college. I went to University of California, San Diego, and I started a company while I was still in college there. It actually started going really well, like way better than we expected. The initial idea was we built a search engine for source code back when that was like a novel thing to do. So you could find code that you could reuse and that kind of thing. We launched it. I think I was like a sophomore or junior in college. I don't really remember. I know I wasn't going to class anymore. I know that. I was going to midterms and finals. That was like a bad hit. We launched that. It started doing really well, actually. We had this bigger idea that we were really excited about using the technology that we used to build that, but for other problems. It's kind of like armed people with that technology. I was discussing this with my co-founders. That sounds like a great, bigger idea. We're trying to finish our grad school applications. What are you talking about? We have this company running this company. It's going well way better than we ever thought. You guys are leaving? We go to grad school. We had this fight. In particular, me and one of my other co-founders had this fight. We're still really good friends today, but we had this fight. I was really like kind of demoralized. I didn't really know what to do. I emailed in the middle of the night. It was 3 a.m. in the morning,
[email protected]. I did not know Sergei. This is like 99, maybe 2000. I did not know Sergei, but we were in the information retrieval space. He obviously was very big in the space. He was famous in the information retrieval space. We were just undergrads doing this random thing. We looked up to him and we had no idea who we were and emailed him. I didn't really expect to get a response. I just kind of like a desperation move. I asked him, I was like, "Hey, I'm sure you've faced this problem of what would you do? What's the value of that versus other things?" I got a response back at 3.01 a.m. It's like, "I know this problem well. Why don't you come see me?" I got on a plane the next morning and went up and saw him and I spent most of the day with Sergei. He talked to me, I did my first Sergei product review because he's like, "Show me your product." We went through it. He's like, "This part's terrible. This part's kind of okay. You really need to do better here." This is kind of a good experience. I think he was right about all the product feedback, by the way. He said, "Can you just wait here for a minute?" I'll wait here. Then one engineer after another came in the room and gave me the Google interview. At the end of that, he came back and he's like, "Hey, I was thinking maybe you should come work at Google." I was like, I'm flattered. I don't even know what to say. I'm really impressed that you would spend time with me and you'd invite me to join your company. I have this idea and I want to really go do it. I don't know if I can do that right now. He paused and he's like, "You know what? I really respect that. If you're going to do it, please can you do it right? You need to raise some money. You need to get your bigger idea out there. He gave me a bunch of advice. Then he introduced me to the first people that invested. They ended up investing. He didn't need to do any of that and that was awesome. We ran our company, which actually today would be called AI. We call it AI in the cloud. Back then, those words were not really really talking about it that way. It was machine learning as a service or something like that. Exactly. We did fine. The company was acquired by a public company a few years later. Long story short after working for them for a while, I was going to start another company as I moved up to the bay with my wife. Somebody convinced me you got to just talk to the Google folks. Just come by and chat with them. That in and of itself is a funny story. My first interviewer was at Google with Sundar. When I did decide to join Sergei, came by and said, "Hey, I knew you'd figure it out eventually. Well, you're welcome." Wait, so so many questions there. A) was Sergei wearing shoes when you first met him? I was going to ask the same thing, Alex. I was going to ask the exact same thing. This is why we're co-hosts. Really? Okay. That's a good question. I don't know if he was wearing shoes. I have in my mind that he was wearing crocs, but that could be hallucination. Also, give people a sense for people who don't remember this time. What phase was Google and this was this was pre-IPO? This is definitely pre-IPO. They were in their first building, so it wasn't like a huge company. I remember because Sergei and I went out and took a walk and we walked around the building. It wasn't like we walked around the Google campus. It was very small. I feel like it may have been pre-Revenue also. I don't think they had launched ads yet, I think. It was definitely at a moment where everyone was realizing that this was special. It used to be a skill where you knew how to use altavista and excite and northern light and all these different things. You used them for different things. People thought you were like how can you always figure out this stuff on the internet or whatever and it's like I come in good at using search engines and then Google showed up and it was just like you just have to use that. It was definitely at that moment where people were realizing that. Elson, we appreciate the hootspuff of a cold reach out. That's as media folks, we've done many of those, but where do you get the fortitude to cold email the co-founder of Google at three in the morning? Yeah. This goes back to I think the amazing, the amazing super power
you get when you know nothing. It's so interesting to me when especially I think it correlates with younger people but I think they're still older folks that that probably have that are fearless in this way you know and there's fearlessness because you're just fearless but but I was not fearless in that way. I was fearless because I didn't know anything you know like I I mean we did so many we made so many mistakes in our startup like oh my god I can't even I look back at some of it and I was just like we were so stupid but we learned a ton and we didn't know any better so you just go build things and do things. So talk about a little bit how you got to where you are now so you were there for a lot I'm sure you do a lot over the years you're now the president of Android ecosystem are you the only president at Google? Is that a common title? That's a good question I know a lot about that. I think you might be the only one. I might be. So this is like weird Google jargon right there's like SVPs and all these things but like Google is also like I think of Google as like a constellation of companies within a company Google has I forget how many you'll know how many products Google has that have a rebellion users is it five six seven I think it's more than that okay more than that so it's like and you run at least one of them Android. I run to the the thing that I just got told recently is that I that you know Android and Google play are two of our two billion plus user products which two billion club yeah so there's a two billion club now apparently okay cool so how do you go from starting when you did in '08 to running when I assume now is like thousands and thousands of people and these massive products was that just a natural thing that happened or that's a great question how did that happen I worked on I've worked on a number of different businesses at Google you know I actually started in the search team working on a little project called Google Health which this is before like Obamacare and before we had smartphones so you didn't have like Fitbit or digital health records or anything so it was before it's time let's this is what I'm trying to say and I think I made a decision with some other folks at Google like very early in me getting there in like the first six or seven months that like this wasn't going to work like we're too early we need to shut this down and maybe come back to it another time in you know and that was really scary because I just joined this company but you know this is the right product decision and then Marissa said you know like would you would you be interested in working on this thing that we were having some trouble finding people to work on which is called product search which is like when you type in a search into Google for product related stuff would that be interesting and yeah it seems kind of important and and so I worked on that we built we built the product search team that were like I don't know 10 or 15 of us and we built that team it became kind of a big business for Google it's not it's called Google shopping now we also built the travel business so flight search hotel search that was really amazing and I actually left Google for a year at a certain point and I came back when Sundar became CEO he called me and said you know hey I don't know if you saw the news but I'm CEO yeah yeah Sundar I saw the news that's kind of how he is and and and he said you know we could use some help on play in Android would you would you be interested in coming back and I thought to myself like I don't you don't really get that call from somebody like Sundar very often in life so it just seemed kind of obvious to me and he was my first interviewer I've been close to Sundar for a while so it was great to be able to go back and work around him going back to shopping and flights which I've used a lot over the years how did it feel that moment when open AI announced that the other day I feel like that was pretty heavily inspired by the work y'all y'all did in the old days a decade later yeah but you know I think they're doing great work I think they're it'll be really interesting to see where that goes I'm I'm part of the work we did we did on on those products I mean my one of my one of my favorite things that the shopping team is doing now is you know we at one point we had this really cool feature in shopping where we actually built this warehouse where we would go to people who were listing their products in Google shopping and we'd ask them to send us their product and we had built these 3d cameras that would like whiz around your product and take a 3d model of like the shoe or the dress or the whatever and then we'd like Google thing I've ever heard yeah and so and so by the way one of the biggest problems was what do you do with the product once you're done with it because we were like we'll just send it back and the interesting thing that I learned was like the manufacturers like I don't want that back like that was like I'm not it's not worth it for me to like you send it and you send it back and I put the shoe back in the box and sell it and so we had this like warehouse of stuff piling up and we're like where where do what do we do you know um with this stuff so that was an interesting side effect of that but like we were doing that one of the interesting things the shopping team is doing now with all the genai stuff is they're able to just generate those 3d views on like almost anything um and you can even do like try on you know you can you can take a picture of yourself and that blazer or whatever that you're interested in and see what it looks like on you um and so I just think it's like an awesome time for that for that team um they're just doing so much cool stuff and it's kind of obvious that you know shopping is a real area that'll benefit from all this new technology so it doesn't surprise me others are doing it too I think it's an interesting space because you guys were to some extent ahead of a game with kind of jumping in the middle using all of Google's powers to help you comparison shop or find the right product whether it was a flight or a shoe or a shirt or something like that what's your take on where companies are going to be okay with that uh in the age of AI or even agent to AI uh do they want to put all their products inside the engine or do they want you to come to their site instead is it worth it for them? Yeah that's a great question I mean I think this incentive question is a is a really big one in the shopping space for a long time you know I think it's been one that retailers and merchants have really wrestled with over time I mean it's not new as a as a problem they're wrestling with right if you thought about if you're a retailer they're you started dealing with this problem even before online you know like you were trying to figure out which channels you know do you only have your own stores or do you put your products in other people's stores you know and that that's the like the beginning of that question you know um and it's like well we can't totally afford to have all our own stores everywhere so I guess we have to use these other retail stores it's like okay what's our experience going to be how are we going to be represented who's going to be next to us you know um so it starts there in the online version of that I think the biggest question from long ago it was Amazon you know it's like when they started their third party marketplace which is like a genius move you know um and it's like do you want to be in that what I would call what a retailer I think would call like a normalized unbranded experience you know like it's not it's not your brand it's not your store it's the it's like it's Amazon site and you're you get to exist in it right and I think that's a really tough choice you know because um uh and I think it it breaks down on like lines of like what you think your long-term competitive advantages you know if you're if you're like look like we we think our brand is like super critical and a direct relationship is is is absolutely key like you've got to you know have the person interfacing with you and only you you know that's why you don't see a lot of high-end fashion brands that get put in that normalized experience because they're like oh that just compresses our brand down to just the skew and we're so much more than that we're like the way you feel when you when you engage with us here it's like the you know the the the the way that it makes you think about yourself relative to other people you know there's there's always this soundtrack when you go to these high-end stores you know like it's interesting like I think that soundtrack is like playing in the background like literally like I think it's like carefully engineered to make you feel in a certain way you know like Amazon's not going to start playing a soundtrack for you when you're shopping for you know I still have tonight us uh ringing in the ears from my early days at Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister so I know I know you know the smell too I remember the smell yeah there's like there's like all these details you know and so I think it's the same question but propelled into the modern you know like Jenny I world it's like you know what what is that trade what what is my experience going to be how much of it do I own how much of it is reduced down to least common denominator and and and and and am I you know the word disintermediation right is always the word that I heard retailers bring up is like am I disintermediated is it like am I going to be substituted by something else at the last minute the shopping cart you know um is it is it a cart that that is just me or is it a cart and you know I think like some people have trying to find a middle ground of this like I don't know if you've if you've used Instacart um but you know Instacart is like it's like a marketplace but it's it's got individual stores you shop at right and actually think they have limits on like you can't do a cross store cart you know and so all of this is speaking to the retailer of like should I rip a hole in the space time continuum if you did a cross store right I mean you'd be surprised like how sensitive you know retailers are about this because you know they worry like they're spending all this money building their brand building their store building their products and then like they want to make sure that it's represented in the right space so I think all this factors in and I think you're going to see those things to replay out again with all the Jennie I stuff. 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everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? That's new. Samir, I don't know if you know this, but an enduring question in the tech industry is what is Google's strategy with the Pixel? I think everyone understands Android. It's everywhere. It's the biggest operating system in the world. I don't think that's going to change any time soon. But, you know, the Pixel, you guys are doing some interesting things. I mean, the new phones are good. I've got the Pro 10 Fold. Do you like it? Do you like the Pro? Do you like the Fold? I like it. I do like it. I like the big screen. This is, I'm going to get into this. The issue for me is not the hardware, actually, at all. But it's this like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, which is this perennial problem I think you guys have with trying to get decade plus iOS users to switch, which I want to get into. But first, just like on the Pixel, you guys just signed, I think, Alex Cooper as an ambassador. You had that flashy event in New York recently. It seems like you're making a very concerted play for the premium market in the US. And you're really trying to win in the US. But I think like I was saying, and during question is, what is the goal of the Pixel? Because is it to actually compete with Apple in the premium market? Is it just to have a horse in the race, to experiment, to show OEMs what can be done with Android at its best? We're kind of can actually work closely with the hardware stack. So I'd love to hear from you. Like, what is the goal of Pixel? Are you all trying to be the dominant handset manufacturer as well as OS provider? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad you're enjoying your Pixel Fold. I like it a lot too. I use my laptop a lot less when I have the fold. I just feel like I can get a lot done on it that way. But your question about Pixel is a good one. Taking a quick step back, Android is an open-op parting system, as I think many of your listeners know, and we have a lot of partners. So my job and my role is like, we work with all of our partners. And we just had Carl pay from nothing on the show last week. Yeah. Carl's doing super interesting stuff. I think I listen to your talk with Carl. And what I love about what Carl is doing is it's like exactly the vision that we have for Android, where there are different players with different perspectives, building alternatives for consumers to choose. That's awesome. And I think he even says a lot like he's focused on a particular audience, like Gen Z and what have you. And like, that is so perfect from an Android vision standpoint. It's like, okay, you're actually going to build an OEM that goes after this segment. And you're going to do kind of, you know, like I have, well, first of all, you don't see my desk, but I have like one of everything on my desk. Like, I have one of his films here, you know? And I think that's really cool. It's like really different. And I think it's great. And so from an Android perspective, there's many different ways to to build great stuff. And when you talk about Pixel, I think Pixel is like Google's take on a phone and a phone ecosystem. And when I say that, it's like it's not to diminish anything that a partner is doing. Like, you know, like Samson's doing what OnePlus is doing, what nothing's doing. Like, these are all different takes on how computing should work. And Google as a company that first and foremost, I think, is is a lot about computing. Also, I think wants to have a way of expressing its view of what an awesome computing experience would be. And one thing that's great about that innovation is it can set a standard. You know, it can raise the bar for the whole industry on the Android side, but also beyond that. I mean, my great, my example of this that I love is that is computational photography, you know, even before Pixel had its new ID, you know, we've had this ID change with the with like, you know, the the visor and all that. Like Pixel, I think, was recognized as having the best camera. And a lot of that was not the optics. A lot of that was the software, you know, the computational photography. And so we like, I think we Google demonstrated that you can have amazing photography on these smartphones. And what that did is a lot of people started copying that. You know, it kind of set a new standard. And before that, I think the general impression was that the iPhone was better at photos. And that Android phones were not very good at photos. And I think Pixel changed that. And then other Android aliens figured out how to do a better job of that. And I think we've begun to change that impression. Certainly in other parts of the world in the US, I think people are are still realizing, you know, how how much better your photos can be. But I think it was like, we want to do something different. We want to reach a new audience. We want to reach the iPhone user. We want them to understand that there are other alternatives out there that are that are built and speak to their to their needs. And and if you look at where pixel, what pixels achieved in Japan, you know, it just as an example, I did and this kind of speaks to your next question of old dogs and new tricks, which I think I know where you're going, you know, if you're an iPhone user, can you really switch? And actually, we've taken pretty meaningful share in Japan. You know, of of of of of iPhone user back over to to Android/Pixel. And I think that's just like good product, good marketing, bringing down wild gardens, you know, and getting getting it right at retail. And so I do think it can be done. It's hard. There are still a lot of remaining challenges that need to be busted through. Not all of them are technology lock challenges. Some of them are, are, you know, wild garden challenges, but but all that are are things I think that are possible over time. Yeah, I mean, using the fold was a great example of this for me because the hardware is great. I mean, there's that tiny little crease, which I know you guys will get rid of in the fold, but you can't really notice it most of the time. I do like the bigger screen. The hardware around these phones feels like it's rapidly commodifying. They all start to look the same, similar weight, screen quality, camera quality. What's really different now is the software. And I'm really interested by all the Gemini integrations and AI stuff that Android is doing. It does feel like you guys are ahead of the curve there from Apple because you have, you know, the Gemini stack, which is very good. But man, yeah, it's just this like mental block of like, it's going to take me over an hour at least to just like, learn this thing because I've been so on iOS for so long. I just know it reflexively. And I feel like that barrier of just like, yeah, I think it's cool, but I just either don't have time or the will to learn it is maybe a harder barrier for you guys to break than anything else. Yeah, it's really interesting. Do you feel like it's the learning curve part or did you miss certain things more like airdrop and the green bubble blue bubble thing? To be honest, no, I think a lot of that stuff is you guys have parity with a lot of stuff. I mean, there is Apple ecosystem stuff with the Mac and all that and continuity. That's nice. But I don't really feel it to that. I just, for me, it's just like it's old dog new tricks, man. It's like interesting. Then I've been on OS for so long. And Ellis, I don't know if you sympathize with this, but like the idea of learning a new operating system is just like, yeah, if I have a whole Saturday afternoon one day, I'll do that. But I, it's just a very high bar. There has to be something very cool and very new and very different for me to want to do that. I do think one thing is like what I will agree with is the last thing you said, which is like I do think that like Apple does a good, like I don't think iPhones have changed that much over the last two years, but I do think Apple makes a good product, you know? And yeah, so you have to, you have to give them their credit for that. And I don't think there's a ton of people who are sitting there saying, you know, I hate this phone. I think there's a lot of folks that are, that are like I'm bored, you know, like I want more, you know, like I think there's more out there. Like, you know, and so I do think you have to innovate and you have to build really cool stuff that people understand, feel like addresses a real need. I can give you one small example of that, by the way, we launched this thing called Circle to Search last year with the Galaxy S25 and Pixel S24 and Pixel, sorry, and you know, it's just like really simple concept and retrospect, but it's like you you long press the the home button on your Android phone and then you can circle like with your finger any object or any image that's on the screen. You could be using whatever app you want, you know, and and you bring Google multimodal search to that thing that you've circled, right? So you can like circle the picture of the bow tie just to continue that, you know, on the on this person that's wearing it or or the watch or you can circle the waterfall and the picture and say, you know, where is that? And, you know, and you can and you get this like really cool search experience. So we launched that and you know, I was talking with a very big retailer in the US and their chief merchant and he was telling me like, you know, it was such a it's such a cool feature. It's obviously a ton of technology behind that, like a ton of AI and multimodal capabilities. You all did a good job of marketing it and that you didn't talk about
about those things. Like you didn't like geek out in the marketing. You just said like, here's how this is useful to you on a daily basis. Like you're shopping, you're trying to, you want to plan a trip, you want to do this, you want to do that. Like here's how it's super useful. People got it instantly. And he said, I have to tell you, I have people coming into my store asking for the phone that has circled the search. And I was like, okay, that's like really cool. And I think it's like when you get those pieces right, I have so many thoughts on this by the way, of like how to build products with AI and how to market them effectively, you know. But I think when you get that right, I do think it can move the needle. And I do think there is a moment here where we do have some advantages, I would say, on the AI side versus the other folks. And I think there's just an opportunity to change the interface like in a big, big way. And that's exciting as a builder of products in general, but as an OS maker and as experienced maker, like making that as smooth as possible because circle to search is actually possible without that integration. Like you could download the image. You could open up the lens app. You could upload your image. You could then crop. You could, you know, like you could have done those things, you know, but I think it's like, how do you actually make it seamless and make it easy? And when you do that, I think it really, it really takes off as the resident marketing and messaging fuck boy on the podcast. - Is that on your business card, or? - Yeah, that's all so exciting. - I just love this boredom insight so much about people being a little tired of their iPhones and the new vanilla campaign, I just absolutely love. - Do you like that? - I do, I mean, it just really hones in on this idea that like it's kind of fine. Everybody kind of likes it. But if you want something a little fresh and new that actually is gonna move you emotionally, try this new thing, and then you show it through the circle to search through some of the AI features. And I think that is the only way to break through to anybody, but phone holster guys. - Which I am, yeah. - You have a holster now? - Yeah, and I mean, the land you're at everything. You know, this is why I'm probably not the best example of someone who you need to be trying to convert somewhere. - Were you involved in that? - Yeah, and the vanilla at no. I mean, I was involved in so much as like early concept, what are the things that really resonate, but in terms of making that happen, like we have such an amazing marketing team. They're so talented. I think it's also willingness to be a little bit more direct about what we're trying to convey. And I think that's the benefit of having Pixel, you know? I mean, I think first and foremost, the product has to be really good. And you know, I think Pixel is one like best smartphone of the year, like a couple of years in a row, like the reviews have been pretty good, you know? And so the teams work super hard on the hardware, on the software. And so I think the marketing team felt, you know, hey, like we have a story to tell here, you know? And there's some real truth in the market around phone boredom, you know? And I think something new, something different was clearly a feeling that was resonating as they looked at it. So I think that campaign is great. I also like what they did with like best, what was it called again? Best phone, best friends forever. The, you know, where the Pixel and the iPhone have you all seen those? - Yeah. - This is like last year. I thought some of those are cute as well. But I think it's important that it be grounded in something that people really feel instinctively and emotionally, not something that's mean or, or doesn't, you know, doesn't really resonate. And I think sometimes when you just throw tons of features out, you know, you're speaking to a different part of the brain, right? Laundry less never works, right? And neither does the like your ivory tower elite and where are the ones who actually care about technology and features. And I think that's some of the stuff maybe Samsung has touched on in the past or, you know, that's why I love the vanilla is that it speaks to informity, but not in a way that's kind of insulting, maybe. Still like vanilla ice cream once in a while? - Yeah, vanilla ice cream is, I mean, I think that that's a really good point, you know, like I think one of the reasons maybe it does resonate is because like, there's something wrong with vanilla ice cream, you know? - It's fine. - I think that's fine. - I think that's how, yeah, that's how people feel. - Well, like any good podcast, we've saved the actual news and timing of why you came on this week for the last nine minutes we've got here. So let's try to get into it. You all announced this week that this is Android now where we're moving off of phones. Your first kind of headset VR, I don't know if you're calling it a VR mixed reality headset partner for Android with Samsung, this has been a long rumored, reported on, T's device is finally coming out. I have so many questions about this, Samir. I mean, I've been covering headsets for as long as I can remember and it really feels like, the timing of this right now is very curious to me because if you look at what's going on, like Apple seems to be walking back from the Vision Pro. I know they just did the chip bump, but like Vision Pro has been kind of-- - Chip bump? - Yeah, it's been kind of a dud for them. You can get them for half off on eBay. Meta, meanwhile, didn't do a quest upgrade. It seems like they're kind of giving up on quests. They won't say that, but that seems to be my read. They're more focused on the glasses. So why is Google doing headsets with people like Samsung? Other partners in the year 2025. Like is there a headset market? I'm just very skeptical that there actually is one. - It's a great question. I mean, I think there is a headset market for sure. I think the question is how big will that market be over time? Is what you're asking, right? And I mean, there are lots of different prognostications on this. My view on it is that the headset for us was important for a few different reasons. When we started the Android XR platform, we had a multi-year vision of a variety of different devices that people would want to build. That were used for different purposes, right? And I think the head, when people think about a headset, today what you see is a device that's pretty heavy, relative to other things that you would wear on your face, you probably wouldn't go out and public with it. I mean, I've seen some people use them on planes. I've never done that, but like you don't generally think of it as a device that you're going out and about with, right? But what it does, what it does have is it does, it is a first stop on a long-term vision to building this augmented reality future, right? Where you have a number of things you have to perfect on this device to really get that right. You have to get world blocking, right? You have to get, you have to figure out how to do digital and optical pass through, it done well. You have to deal with thermals. You have to deal with a whole bunch of things, weight in the dynamics of all that. You have front-facing cameras that you want to be able to do perception with. There's like a lot there that you can use as you build this future vision. So for many companies, it is their first stop along the way to that future vision. It's not like it's just for the, so it has many meanings for us, like the reason we're doing it is like we do think there's an opportunity in headsets, but we also think there's a lot of technology that we perfect for the future. That's gonna be really, really important to glasses. And so, and I think, and I don't think that's a unique strategy to Google. I think that's a lot of what, when you really get deep in the space, you start to realize that it's a great form factor to begin getting this stuff out there in that way. The other thing that was really exciting to us is to start to perfect a new human computer interface, which is, if one of the things that's really awesome about this headset is like when we were building it, kind of the AI, all the Gen/AI stuff happened early on. And so we still had time to stay like, well, we'll take a step back. And we actually delayed things a lot because of this. We said, well, we'll take a step back. Let's actually build Gemini into the UI, not as kind of like the UI is done, and then we're gonna add Gemini on the side, and we'll try to like integrate it in over time. But let's build it in there from the beginning in a way that's very different. And I think why this form factor allows for that, initially is like a few different things, like there is no dominant way of using a headset. The UI is not something that old dogs and new tricks, like you don't have 10 years of experience using a headset where you're like, oh, what is this thing? So you can start from scratch in some ways, right? And second, I think when you want the future vision of a personal AI assistant in something like glasses, you do need this notion of like it can see the world with you, it can hear the world with you, and you wanna start perfecting those models. One of the things that's great about the XR environment with the headset is that a lot of that environment is rendered, right? And so you can pass that entirely through to the model perfectly. So it can be the first place where it can see everything that you can see, it can hear everything that you can hear. And so we're gonna learn a lot about that, and you wanna start building experiences with that capability. We had this moment where we were looking at it, like what was possible with Gemini, and this is like very early Gemini. So we were like, what if this improves like 10X? Like Demis is saying this is gonna improve 10X. What if this is. improves 10x. We just sort of looked at each other and we said like, okay, like, remember the Iron Man movies, like where you put on this thing and then you have Jarvis with you? Like Jarvis isn't like this thing that you go to occasionally and you're like, "Hey, help me with this thing." It's like constantly with you. Seize what you can see. Can actually take actions for you in the UI. Can actually accomplish tasks for you while you're doing this. It can do that, right? And we're like, that's pretty awesome. Like, I bet that would be amazing to build and like, would be really relevant for glasses, would be really relevant for other form factors. Let's do that. I know what the killer use case is. Killer use case. I circle to search my wife and I say, "What did she tell me to move to the garage? I already forgot." Yeah, that's a good one. 500 million units sold. 500 million units. Yeah, we'll have to add that to the list. So when you and I were catching up recently some year, a thing you were telling me about was like, "You're really interested in this idea of like super memory," which I am to in glasses. Exactly. The idea of like perfect recall of faces, conversations, context, all that. And Google feels uniquely positioned to do that in a glasses form factor. Is that the killer app? I mean, you said Jarvis, but like, to me, that alone is a thing that will get people to buy something like that. I mean, super memory is definitely something that I haven't met a single person that tells me that that wouldn't be really helpful in their life, right? Tons of privacy issues there that we have to work through, right? So like, there's a lot to solve there. But as a vision for like how to help you in your daily life, I mean, just seems really, really useful. Another one that's maybe shorter term is something I was encountering the other day, which is like, you buy a piece of furniture, you have set of instructions, you know, God help you. And I'd love to just like glance at the instructions and then like start assembling the furniture and have something like tell me like, "No, no, no, no, it's that one. That's true. It's attached just to that." It's like, you know, and I think those kinds of things can be really helpful. And I think all this stuff is going to be possible, which is why it's super exciting. And I think that this form factor is really, is really, really interesting. We have a lot of history in this space. We're not new to it. I mean, you know, we're not new to XR, you know, we had Daydream before we had, you know, Google Glass for Glasses. I think one of the things, we learned a lot about both of these, which we've tried to incorporate. If you make it too hard for developers to build in this new environment, like it's just a really heavy lift and they have a lot to do, you know, which is so obvious. I mean, obviously, you know, but like I think this time around, we've really tried to make it like, if you're building for Android, then your app is already going to work in a 2D form in XR. And then we've tried to make it like you can add on parts of your app that are spatialized, you know, you don't have to like start for scratch. So like maps, like Google Maps is like, there's 2D maps, which are really important. But then there's like these 3D things they've added on, which are immersive. And so like when the 2D version of it updates, that just like pulls through, that's not like a different app, you know, so I think that's really helpful. We learned that the hard way and it's really key. On the glasses side, one of the things we learned, again, obvious in retrospect, is like they've got to be glasses that you really want to wear first and foremost, you know, like as it turns out, as it turns out, you need to want to learn that lesson at Snapchat as well. Yeah, like this is important and you need to want to put them on your face and you need to want. And not just like the fashion part, the fashion part is really important. The other part that's really important is like, does it support my prescription? You know, what if I wanted to have transition lenses? You know, like there's a 2 billion people who wear eyeglasses in the world and there's a whole industry built up around the customizations they want. You know, so you've got to support that stuff because there's a whole history behind it, you know. So I think that's really important, which is why we're, you know, we picked some great partners, Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to start with that are going to be working with us on on all of that. So yeah, but there's going to be, there's going to be Google first party glasses too. Well, we haven't announced anything. Yeah, but I mean, I think there's a very fair question to go like, what would you even call it? Because right, like Google Glass carries a lot with it, right? Like there was the whole glass hole stigma. It was a very early product. You know, it was the right direction, but just I think way too early. And you were there at the time, and I'm sure you remember the company kind of going through that reaction to that product. Definitely. How does that inform the how you would approach doing Google glasses in the future? I mean, I, I have a picture actually of myself like I, I didn't, I was able to, I wasn't working on Android at the time or Google Glass when it was back in the day, but I was around. And so I had a friend. I think he was working on it and he lent me one to use. And the main thing I wanted to do was actually go out in public somewhere with it to experience that element of it. You know, it just wants to see. So my family did a trip to Disneyland. And I was like, okay, like I can see taking really cool video or photos like on a roller coaster or something, you know, like with my kid, you know, like let's, let me, let me wear it. But I'm also going to get a lot of weird looks, you know, and I want to see how that feels, you know, and it didn't feel great, you know, didn't feel great. And, and, and I think a lot of it was cute. Like some people you could tell they were curious, like what is that? You know, like I would say that was the majority of it because I think people are generally pretty nice. And they were just like, Oh, curious. Like maybe, maybe he has trouble seeing or maybe, maybe that's just like some new gadget. Like what is that? I don't know what that is. But then there were definitely some people that were like, okay, you're one of that, those people, you know, and, and, yeah, it didn't feel great. So, you know, I think, I think it's really important that whatever he put out there, you, you, you, there's just as much a component here of technology, fashion, and also, you know, wearability, you know, and, and all those things together, besides the watch, there are very few things that, you know, you're going to wear on your body that are a piece of technology for that many hours a day, right? It's a combination of many different disciplines together and getting it right is super hard. It does feel like the world is more prime for that, though, if, so, like the, the success of the Metarebans recently, the last year or two, right, shows that maybe we're in an era now where people are more comfortable with this idea. I think people are used to being watched and cameras being everywhere, more so than they were when glass first came out, you know, all those years ago. So, maybe there's also like a societal timing element of this that is bigger than anything you could do. Well, I mean, first of all, I think, you know, credit to, to the metaphokes, I mean, they're, their initial glasses also don't look like, that mean they look like glasses, you know? Yeah. And so, I think, I think one of the things is like, if you didn't see the ring light up or read the side of it or whatever, you would just think that somebody had a pair of sunglasses on from a distance, you know? And, and so I think that just helps a lot, you know? I do think there will still be questions that everybody in the industry will have to wrestle with about, um, about data, you know, and where, what's being captured and when and how and, and all that. And I think there's two sides to that, right? There's one side of it is the bystander problem of, you know, what about this, that's going on amongst us right now is being piped somewhere, right? And then the other is for you yourself, you know, if you're walking around your house with them, um, you know, what is, where is that data going and what, where is it, you know, like, one of the examples that I, I give is like, you're walking around the house and at the end, right, before you go out the door, you don't know where your keys are. If you, if you've had the glasses on watching the whole time, which is not a mode that I think is, is by default, but like you've turned it on, you know, like you would be able to ask, like, Gemini, like, hey, where, where are my keys? Because it would have seen, you know, what, and, and, and let's say, oh, it's on your nightstand. Like, oh, okay, thank you. You know, that's, that's really helpful. But also, you know, it's seeing a lot of things, right? And so I think these are all things that we're really discussing intently internally and making sure that, you know, we have, we have answers to these things. And you're right. I think society is also evolving. Um, but I think privacy is still obviously really, really important. Definitely. And, and I think it is like, I don't think it's going away. And I, I, for us as product builders, we think it's important too. And so we're, we're going to have to get all that right. I know we're, uh, out of time here. So I have a very critical last question. What is your favorite Google internal corporate buzzword at the moment? We have a rise on and we were talking about orthogonal. Uh, we've had some Google episodes recently. Google has innovated so many words over the years. Okay. I'll give you, I'll give you a personal pet peeve, uh, maybe of a word that gets used sometimes. Um, I think the word aligned, um, is a pet peeve of mine. Um, and I'm not saying I haven't, I haven't, I've used it. Okay.
But like, I think aligned sometimes is a way of saying that we've talked to each other so much that we had now taken the average of what we're all saying and we can kind of pass it as something we all agree to, but we haven't really agreed. And sometimes in product building, like you really have to make starker, harder choices about stuff. So sometimes, sometimes, not always. The, you know, the quality of the thing you're creating is inversely proportional to how many times people have said we're totally aligned on this. - Well, luckily we're not totally aligned on everything, Samir. But I think this was a great conversation. I do feel generally aligned, maybe not totally aligned. I'm like, okay, that's good. That's good. It was a great talk to both of you. Congrats on all the progress with the pod and I'm glad I could. - Thanks so much, Samir. - You're a part of it. - Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. - Thanks again, guys. See you soon. - Thanks to Samir for coming on the show, the Android prize. - We're a new show, so please follow, like, subscribe, everywhere you get podcasts at AccessPod. We're also on YouTube with full video, so check that out. - If you'd like this episode, leave a five-star review or a thumbs up or ideally both. And share with a friend, it would mean a lot. - You can find my newsletter at sources.news. - And you can find me at hamburger on Twitter and at meaning.company. - Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, our producer is Saras Dume. - See you next week. - Bye. (laughing) - Booking.com is the easiest way from a day surrounded by noise. To a state surrounded by nature. - That's nice. Go on, book it. It's easy. Booking.com, booking.year. - Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at $50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more, whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder. The Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day Savings at the Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.
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