Meta has a well-earned reputation as the fastest follower in tech. Did your startup launch a cool feature that people like? Before you can say “Series B,” Meta will have built something eerily similar, embedded it into its vastly more popular platforms, and eaten your lunch. This probably isn’t how CEO Mark Zuckerberg would like to see his empire, but it’s genuinely an asset; few companies have done as good a job of identifying and jumping on trends.
Sometimes, though, jumping on trends means spending billions to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. And sometimes that lands you in an antitrust trial against the FTC. Over the last several weeks, in a courtroom in DC, executives and experts have been asked whether Meta bought those companies and helped them achieve greatness, or bought them to prevent them from doing so. Which argument Judge James Boasberg ultimately believes will have huge ramifications for the whole industry.
On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Lauren Feiner takes us through what we’ve learned so far in the trial. (Lauren has been in the courthouse for virtually every day of testimony — we finally caught her on a day off.) She explains why WhatsApp is such a tricky company to understand, why TikTok has been a wrench in the case on all sides, and why there’s been so much talk about “friends and family.” It’ll be a while before we know who won this case, and even longer before we know what that means, but Lauren has a sense of where the wind might be blowing now.
After that, The Verge’s Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her latest experience with Google’s Android XR smart glasses. She compares this month’s demos to the ones she saw a few months ago, and explains why Google’s partnership with Gentle Monster could be a big deal. She also has some thoughts about what Jony Ive and OpenAI are building together — if it’s not smart glasses, what might it look like?
Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about what you should do now that Mozilla is killing the Pocket read-later app. Pocket had a lot of users, with a lot of links saved, but luckily there are some other good options out there.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
