Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Wednesday, October 9, 2024, I'm Brian McCulloch today. The government says it does, in fact, want to break up Google. The Nobel Prize short does love AI this year could sub-stack win by becoming the default way for creators to monetize and listen to the end of the show today for a big announcement from me. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. I said yesterday that we might look back on yesterday as the first day in a new paradigm
for Google, well, in a filing, the U.S. Department of Justice has laid out, quote, behavioral and structural remedies, including a breakup for the federal judge to consider in the Google search antitrust case. Quoting Bloomberg. Antitrust enforcers are weighing a breakup to mitigate the alphabet business's dominance in search, the agency said, in a court filing on Tuesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg news report.
Judge Amit Mehta could also order Google to provide access to the underlying data it uses to build its search results and artificial intelligence products, it said. The Justice Department, quote, is considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to Advantage Google search and Google search related products and features.
The agency said, the 32 page document lays out a framework of potential options for the judge to consider as the case moves to the remedy phase. The agency said it will provide a fuller proposal on remedies next month. The Justice Department also said it may seek a requirement that Google allow websites more ability to opt out of its artificial intelligence products.
The agency said it's considering proposals related to Google's dominance over search text ads such as requirements that the company provide more information and control to advertisers over where their ads appear. The Department may also request that Google be restricted from investing in search competitors or potential rivals.
Google criticized the Justice Department's filing as, quote, radical, saying it would have quote, significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness. The DOJ's proposals go, quote, well beyond the legal scope of the court's decision about search distribution contracts, Leanne Mohulland, Google's Vice President of Regulatory Affairs wrote in a blog post, antitrust pressure from multiple cases is building against Google.
Metta who ruled the summer that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets plans to hold a trial on the proposed remedy next spring and issue a decision by August of 2025. Google has already said it plans to appeal Metta's decision, but must wait until he finalizes a remedy before doing so. European Union watchdogs similarly touted the option of a breakup of Google's business in order to appease antitrust concerns last year.
The block's competition chief, Margaret Vestiger, said that, divestiger is the only way to settle worries over how the company favors its own services to the detriment of ad tech rivals, advertisers, and online publishers. That EU case, which could come to a final decision by the end of this year marked the latest escalation in a long running saga that's already led to a trio of EU penalties totaling more than 8 billion euro or 8.8 billion dollars for abuses across other Google services.
Google shares fell 1% in pre-market trading in New York on Wednesday. A breakup of the company quote is unlikely at this point despite the antitrust swirls, said Daniel ives managing director and senior equity analyst at wed bush securities quote, Google will battle this in the courts for years.
Somebody's taking another run at the whole Satoshi Nakamoto identity mystery, a new documentary on HBO called Money Electric, the Bitcoin mystery, says that Satoshi is was Peter Todd, a man known for his Bitcoin code based contributions. In the final scene of the new documentary, co-lyn Hoback confronts Todd with the theory that he is Satoshi, in a previous work Hoback on mask the figure behind QAnon. Here he tries to repeat the trick with Bitcoin.
I will admit you're pretty creative, you come up with some crazy theories, Todd tells Hoback before rejecting the idea as ludicrous. I warn you this is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary. The film stops short of claiming to have conclusively unmasked the creator of Bitcoin absent incontrovertible proof. For the record I am not Satoshi, Todd says in an email it is a useless question because Satoshi would simply deny it.
The hunt for Bitcoins creator has yielded a broadcast of Satoshi's over the years among them how finny recipient of the first ever Bitcoin transaction. Adam Beck, designer of a precursor technology cited in the Bitcoin white paper and cryptographer Nick Zabo to name just a few. The finger is pointed at some and others elect themselves but those Satoshi has had many faces, a consensus has formed around none of them.
People have suspected basically everyone of being Satoshi Todd points out early in the documentary. The problem with this kind of stuff is that people play all these crazy games. Wired has its own place in the history of the hunt for Satoshi.
On the same day in December 2015 Wired and Gizmoa separately nominated Australian computer scientist Craig Wright as a potential Satoshi, the original story based on a trove of leaked documents proposed that Wright had quote, either invented Bitcoin or as a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did. A few days later, Wired published a second story pointing to discrepancies in the evidence that supported the latter interpretation.
In March, a judge in the UK high court ruled categorically that Wright is not Satoshi, closing a case brought by a group of crypto firms to prevent the Australian from bringing nuisance legal claims. During the two months I spent covering the right trial, multiple Satoshi's appeared in my inbox too. The world is not ready to learn about Satoshi Nakamoto and they never will unless certain conditions are met wrote one of them in a garbled message.
Hell, I even met a would be Satoshi in person in the waiting area outside the courtroom. The man who had introduced himself as Satoshi sat down in the public gallery to hear closing arguments. Before long he nodded off, chin slumped against his chest. One of the other onlookers anointed him, sleeptoshi, and quote. Well weirdly it has happened again. Nobel Prize is related to AI. Although I guess this is slightly different than yesterday.
Quoting Bloomberg. Two Google Deep Mind scientists shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry with a US professor for their breakthrough research into proteins, half of the 11 million Krona, 1.1 million dollar award will be split by Deep Mind Chief Executive Officer Dmitri Hasebus and John M. Jumper, a senior research scientist at the company, a unit of Alphabet's Google, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said in a statement Wednesday.
Hassabis and Jumper, quote, developed an AI model to solve a 50 year old problem, predicting proteins complex structures from their amino acid sequences the Academy said. The remainder will go to David Baker, a professor at the University of Washington who built entirely new kinds of proteins, termed by the Academy as an almost impossible feat. Hasebus 48 was a young chess prodigy who studied neuroscience before co-founding Deep Mind in London in 2010.
Google acquired the AI lab in 2014 and poured resources into the unit. Deep Mind was renowned for massive advances in machine intelligence, such as its AI model that defeated champions in the game Go. The scientist has long pushed his researchers to pursue AI applications in chemistry and biology.
His lab published key research on Alphabet in 2020, demonstrating algorithms that could predict the structure of proteins a breakthrough with major implications for drug discovery and understanding disease. Jumper, who was born in 1985 in Little Rock, Arkansas, is a senior research scientist at Deep Mind, he was the lead researcher on some of the company's published works on Alphabet.
Together, Hasebus and Jumper have managed to predict the structure of almost all 200 million known proteins the Academy said. That work has improved understanding of antibiotic resistance and allowed the creation of images of enzymes that can decompose plastic. In 2021, Alphabet formed isomorphic labs, a new subsidiary spun out of Deep Mind focused on using AI for pharmaceuticals. Hasebus also runs that company and last year, the executive was named to run all of Google's AI efforts.
He has previously told colleagues that he aspired to win a Nobel Prize Bloomberg News reported earlier. Baker, a Seattle native, has developed computerized methods for creating proteins that did not previously exist and many of which have entirely new functions. Those can be used, for example, as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors.
Brazil's Supreme Court has authorized the return of X to that country after the company complied with its demands, including taking down some accounts and appointing a legal representative in the country, quoting Bloomberg. The company has met, quote, all the requirements necessary for the immediate return of activities in Brazil, Supreme Court Justice Alexandra Day Morayas wrote in an order issued Tuesday, I decree the end of the suspension, end quote.
The authorization brings an end to a months-long feud between the billionaire owner and Morayas that culminated with the judge blocking the social network, formerly known as Twitter, at the end of August after Musk flouted Brazilian regulations. It amounts to a significant capitulation from the world's richest man who has used his clash with Morayas as a free speech crusade against the South American nation's efforts to police online content.
The about-face follows threats of a $5 million race, or $903,000 daily fine, on X, if it skirted the ban after a software update allowed it to temporarily evade restrictions. The company paid $10.3 million, race after having become accessible after the ban order. In September, Brazil withdrew $18.35 million from local bank accounts of X and Starlink to pay for fines imposed by the Supreme Court.
While Musk engaged in a personal campaign against Brazilian regulations, his social network has previously heated demands from other governments, such as Turkey and India, to censor certain posts. The billionaire also attempted to use the episode to rally his conservative leaning allies around the globe. How do you make a password that's strong enough? No one will be able to guess it, but also impossible to forget. And how can you do that for 100 different websites?
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Finally today's sub-stack. We haven't discussed them in a while. They're still not profitable. But they have added over a million paid subscribers just in the last year. And what is interesting is the way they seem to be pivoting to an attempt to become the ultimate monetization tool for creators, sort of top of the top of the funnel, if you will. Quoting semaphore. Seven years since its launch, the newsletter platform sub-stack has consolidated its dominance of the independent news business.
Now it's trying to position itself as something more. A central platform for paying creators of all kinds untethered to the news cycle and beyond the tough to monetize medium of text. The company's accomplishments are remarkable. Its recommendation network is responsible for 50% of all subscriptions and 30% of paid subscriptions offering a strong argument for why writers should use sub-stack rather than technically similar but smaller competitors like Ghost and Beehive.
The company told semaphore that live coverage on sub-stack of major news events such as President Joe Biden leaving the presidential race and the presidential debates have spiked subscription revenue by millions for its publishers.
And while it's lost a few high profile creators over its refusal to kick fringe or offensive voices off the platform, it has added more and now dominates the attention of media elites and political junkies with top channel spanning Barry Weiss's free press and many his sons, Zeteo, the Never Trump site, the Bullwark, and the anti-establishment leftist outlet drop site news. When top journalists left the Washington Post and the Guardian in recent weeks, sub-stack was their obvious destination.
The company still isn't profitable on an annual basis and declined to say how much revenue has grown since it was reported to be a modest $9 million in 2022. But sub-stack has added more than a million paid subscribers over the last year. News content continues to account for the company's largest segment of subscribers and it has more in the pipeline.
To avoid fizzling the way competitors like medium have, sub-stack is trying to become less a journalism platform and more a payment system for creators. In recent months, the company has been reaching out to influencers, video creators and podcasters to convince them to join the platform. It doesn't need beauty influencers say to all of the sudden become bloggers, but it does want to be the primary vehicle for paying creators regardless of the medium. The pitch is simple.
YouTube and other platforms do not generate meaningful revenue for the vast majority of creators and other ways of making money like brand deals can become inconsistent and subject to volatile ad market trends. This repositioning has put sub-stack in more direct competition with crowdfunding services like Patreon, which largely still brands itself more as a way to financially support artists and musicians than the foundations of a subscription business.
Sub-stack recently convinced the popular men's fashion and lifestyle podcast throwing fits to migrate from Patreon to sub-stack. Higher feed and Patreon, which takes 8%. But it also allows sub-stackers to walk away with their email lists, which offers flexibility to creators who want to dip into offering paid memberships without getting stuck on any specific platform. The future of that business probably isn't news.
Instead, the new model sub-stacker may be more like Violet Wichel of Violet Cooks, a food and recipe influencer, sub-stack convinced Wichel to join in January. She was able to convince more than 100,000 subscribers to follow her from Instagram to sub-stack, signing up tens of thousands and converting them to paid subscribers.
And Wichel's revenue from sub-stack this year is triple her earnings from brand deals across her other social platforms, the company told SEMIFOR, a number it touts to YouTube and TikTok creators it is trying to lure to the platform. The notion that it's a platform for supporting creators in general, rather than merely for news, could help justify its valuation.
The company was reportedly valued at $650 million in a 2021 funding round and opened the door to a possible acquisition by someone other than media companies which can't afford it and social platforms which don't want to get deeper into content. A sub-stack that emerges as a central hub for paying independent creators by contrast could be interesting to payment platforms like Stripe and Square. But there are risks to this strategy as well.
TikTok doesn't offer the slickest video and audio features in the business. The popular podcast search engine launched on sub-stack but eventually took its membership program to a membership platform that offered friendlier tools for podcasters. Meanwhile some of its core newsletter writers have found the shift grading. In August Emily Sundberg observed in her business and culture newsletter feed me that sub-stack had become flooded with bad diary-like blog posts attempting to monetize noise.
Stack may not want its feed to be clogged with bad writing but its business now depends on a lot more people who aren't necessarily good writers bringing themselves and their audiences to sub-stack. Another risk is that sub-stack continues to serve as a way station for people between better gigs, contributing to subscriber churn.
A few prominent sub-stackers told SEMIFOR that while they were happy with the platform for now, at some point giving up 10% of their revenue every month probably won't make sense. Alright, here's the big news. I have a new podcast. It's called Rad 80s 90s History. If you're a fan of me at all, please listen to this announcement and then go into the podcast app you're listening to me on right now and subscribe to or follow the podcast. Again it's Rad 80s 90s History.
Links in the show notes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Overcast hopefully. Please, even if you never listened to an episode, go subscribe. I'll tell you why in a second. Now I'm sure you've got some questions. Questions like, are you quitting the tech meme ride home? No I am not. More on the why. I'm doing this show, this new show in a second. You also might be wondering, Brian, do you have time to do a second podcast? No I do not. But here's the thing. Here's the why.
I've been covering tech every day for going on seven years now between continuing to do the show, which is approaching 2,000 episodes and running the ride home funds. I've been feeling on the edge of tech burnout tech as a topic. So after Chris and I deployed all of our funds with the AI fund, I really felt the need to do something different to stave off that burnout on all things tech. I wanted to do something not tech related just to recharge my batteries. And here's the thing.
After I wrote my book on the history of the internet back in 2018, the plan was to do more books, more history. My dream was to do a history of the 1980s, followed by a history of the 1990s. I didn't end up doing those books because I ended up doing this show instead. So it occurred to me, what if I could in a limited way do that 80s 90s thing? Search that history itch without going to the trouble of actually doing whole books. So I just did it. I just started researching and recording episodes.
The first two are out now. One is on the history of the Golden Girls and one is on the rise and fall of Blockbuster video.
Other episodes to come soon include the history of the answering machine, the challenger disaster, the making of the original top gun, Calvin and Hobbes, Goldnye64, the movie Labyrinth, the history of the minivan, you'll hear friends of this show on rad 80s 90s history, Christina Warren, MG Seagler, Farhad Manjoo, the actress Tony Trucks, Stephen Colbert writer Daniel Kibblesmith, hopefully soon John Gruber, Baratunde Thurston, Chris Mims from the Wall Street Journal, lots more.
The plan is to do these in distinct seasons. So I'm going to do 10 episodes through the end of this year. Take a break and do more episodes when I feel like it. But I want you to subscribe now because this is silly, but I've never had a show hit the top of a category in Apple Podcast before. I've come close. I've had shows as high as number two in various categories. I've been in the top 30 of all podcasts at some points in time, but I've never hit number one.
So that's what I want to do for selfish reasons just for ego. So go subscribe or follow rad 80s 90s history right now in your podcast app because that's how I get to number one and people find out about the show. And I said subscribe even if you don't listen, but you know, give it a listen. I think these are fun and chill and interesting. I really want to do more of them. They feel really, really good to do like going to a happy place sort of.
I want it to be sort of like a Frankenstein combination of podcasts like acquired and the rest is history and the watchables all rolled into one, but just about 80s 90s stuff. So interesting history, but nostalgia too. So check out the show notes for links. Follow and subscribe. Again, it's called rad 80s 90s history rad exclamation point 80s 90s all one word and then history.
Do me a favor and make this little side project a success so I can recharge my proverbial batteries and hopefully keep doing the tech meme ride home for years to come. I just need a side project, a side hustle to make sure I don't burn out on the topic of tech. I love tech. I want to continue to love it. So please rad 80s 90s history, subscribe, follow, listen. Thanks in advance.