You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
From KFI AM six forty Handle here. It is a Tuesday morning, April twenty two. The big news we are covering. Pope Francis is still dead and they are going to be bringing him right He's probably on his way to the Basilica, the courtyard in front Saint Peter Square, as opposed to inside the Basilica where he is going to be in front of the basilica, lying in state, which
is the other way of saying. They're parking him right there in the basilica, where are in front of the basilica where people are going to be passing his coffin and looking at the Pope as he continues his death. Okay, now it is time for Tech Tuesday with Mike Busky, who is the ABC News technology reporter who joins us.
Mike is always thank you so much for joining us.
Now some enormously huge news which somehow has not gotten well we know why it has not gotten the attention that it should get because of the issue with tariffs and now the Pope, et cetera. But that is the trial of Google and the judge looking at it already viewed Google.
As a monopoly. What is going on and what is going to happen?
This, of course, is the Google search engine monopoly case decided last year by a judge who ruled that Google was operating an illegal monopoly in the world of online search engines, that it wasn't just creating a product that people liked to use and therefore was popular as a result, but rather was using its market power, it's billions of dollars, it's troves of data with regards to how people search online to muscle out competitors and make for an anti
competitive environment and therefore a less good competitive market for consumers.
Okay, with that being said, let me interrupt for a moment.
If the judge has already ruled that's the case, what is this trial about.
This trial is.
About what to do about it. Essentially, this is how we figure out what the remedy of that monopoly is going to be. This is expected to be a three week hearing. It kicked off yesterday in Washington, d c. And there are many potential remedies on the table here. The Department of Justice is going pretty big in this case. One of those remedies would be to force Google to sell off Google Chrome, which is their very popular web browser, also the driver of a lot of Google search traffic,
about thirty five percent according to the federal government. They are also targeting some of the deals Hello hello.
Oh there you go. I'm sorry, we're we're glitching up there. So at the.
Tech Tuesday, you know that's gonna come.
That's part of Yeah, I know, I know.
It's a great time for this thing to fall apart is on Tech Tuesday. So I think you had just said that some of the remedies Chrome may go by the wayside, and what.
Else Chrome could go by the wayside? Also, Google has spent many billions of dollars striking deals with Apple and Samsung and others to be the default search engine on devices. Right, so if you go to the Safari web browser on your iPhone, you need to type something in, not a web dress or anything like that. You just type in a term, You're going to do a Google search, right.
And Google spends many billions of dollars for that privilege, according to the government, and according to a court, is anti competitive because it doesn't give consumers the choice of what search engine to use in that scenario. So the government is asking a judge to force Google to unwind some of those deals, and Google says that they're open to that possibility of potentially renegotiating some of those deals, despite the fact that they're a huge part of their business.
But they say that going any further than that, forcing them to break up the company by selling off Google Chrome and to crack down on some other aspects of their business, would be going too far. So that's what they have to decide in court this week. It's not the only anti trust trial that Google is facing. Just a few days ago, they were ruled to be operating an illegal monopoly in the world of online advertising as well.
It's the second week of the Facebook anti trust trial, and the DOJ is also leveraging cases against Apple, the FTC against Amazon Bill. What this means it's a tough time to be a tech executive in twenty twenty five.
Except there, Let's say they spin off these various companies. Now they're competing against those companies, and obviously if they are spinning off and getting cash, they're going to be so cash rich it's ridiculous.
They're going to be able to buy entire countries.
But do you foresee legitimate competition well, and will they stay and will they stay in the business.
It's a good question, right. We don't really know what a future without a dominant Google search looks like.
Right.
And Google has been making the argument in court that spinning off Google Chrome would kill Google Chrome, right, that it just needs to be a part of Google in order to operate. There's also the question of who would buy it, right. Google is a one point eight trillion dollar company. A lot of that valuation comes from it's cadra of services like Google Chrome. Who could afford a company like Google Chrome if they were to sell it off?
And would that attract the attention of antitrust regulators? Again, So those are the questions that are facing the government right now. That's kind of what they have to prove in court to this judge saying that this is the actual only remedy. It's actually really difficult to break up a company. That's not the way our system usually does things.
The plaintiffs in this case need to prove that that's the only option, right, They need to take every other possibility off the table before a judge would ultimately side in that case. But even still the government is going after them in that regard. Another big part of this is search engine data. Right every time you Google something, Google learns a little bit about you and learns about
the search engine habits of Americans. The Department of Justice is also asking a judge to make Google make that information freely available. Right now, it's proprietary to Google. One of the reasons they say that Google has become dominant is because other competitors don't have access to as wide a trove of information as as ar Eagle does.
Mike Weird new truck out there that de Bezos is backing, What is this about? Because I love new you know, we have not had years where nothing new. We have had years where nothing new has come up, and then the last few years it has exploded with new companies, new products, new vehicles.
So what's this one about?
Yeah, speaks to just how hard it is to build cars in the industry. But thanks to flush you know, VC cash, there are now you know, a whole lot of new startups kind of floating around out there. The latest one is Slate Auto and this is one to keep an eye on this week. This is a new automaker that's promising a small, all electric pickup truck for just twenty five thousand dollars. There's really nothing else out there that is a pickup truck that is twenty five
thousand dollars that runs on battery power. There are vanishingly few cars out there for twenty five thousand dollars anymore, and this is a pretty big promise. Tesla for a long time was promising a thirty five thousand dollars electric vehicle, but they were never quite able to get that over the line. So this is a pretty ambitious project. But even still, speaking of that VC cash, this company has been able to raise over one hundred and ten million
dollars in Series A funding. One of those major investors is Jeff Bezos, so some big names attached to this and throwing their name behind this new company. What we know about the truck is kind of sparse at this point. There have been a couple prototypes, a couple mock ups cropping up around particularly like trendy neighborhoods in Los Angeles for people to take pictures of, but there's no details
on it. In fact, one we're was able to climb under one of those models and discover that there's actually not an engine in it. It's just kind of a model that they've put there for people to look at. We are expected to get more details on this thing when it is officially unveiled later this week on Thursday, So.
We don't know when it is coming out. Any idea or the range or the actual price. Is that a We hope to be able to do it for twenty five thousand dollars.
I think we're going to get more information on all of those fronts on Thursday when it is officially unveiled. The target seems to be twenty five thousand dollars, and they seem to be pretty committed to, if not exactly that number, somewhere.
Close to it.
In fact, one of the early reports here indicates that the car will have optional air conditioning, which when was the last time that you remembered optional air conditioning in a vehicle? That seems to be a tactic that they are using to get this thing under that twenty five thousand dollars mark. It's really difficult, right, mass producing a car at scale, especially when you're a startup, is an
expensive proposition. Right. You have to contact suppliers, you have to spin up factories, hire workers, do marketing and all that sort of thing that costs a lot of money that's eventually transferred onto the cost of the car. Does seem like there's some pretty deep pocketed investors behind this company that might be able to absorb some of that cost. But will this be a going concern will this be something that lasts? I think that remains to be seen.
It's also going to be interesting for me to just look at, you know, who is this targeted at?
Right?
Is this an everyday person's car. Is this designed to be a commuter vehicle for people who you know might need a small pickup truck like this, or is this for work?
Right?
Is this for small businesses? Some of the mockups that have been cropping up have had little attachments to the back of them to go over the bed of the pickup truck, a little sort of coverings, or they kind of make it look a little bit different. So it seems to be aimed kind of at small businesses and people who use the vehicle for that purpose, But again we just don't know for sure yet.
How about those other companies that have come out. You've got Rivian on, you have I'm trying to think about AID.
Yeah. Lucid, Yeah, I haven't even seen a Lucid vehicle out there. I've seen some Rivians.
Yeah, how are they? How are they doing? Is there anybody succeeding other than Tesla.
Well, there's it's kind of an open question whether Tesla is still succeeding really. I mean, they have good point to a point, but we are expected to get information on their latest quarterly earnings later today. That's going to be kind of our clearest look yet into the actions of Elon Musk and whether that's having an impact on his his electric vehicle business. With regards to Rivian and Lucid, those kind of seem to be the most prominent electric
vehicle startups out there as opposed to Tesla. Rivian makes electric trucks, Lucid makes an electric sedan. They are about to bring an electric suv to market. I actually got a chance to drive it last week at the New York International Auto Show. It's a really interesting new product. They are backed by the Saudi Investment Fund, which is a hugely you know, wealthy investment fund out there, so they have some some backing behind them. But again they're
not really making money just yet. Rivian, on the other hand, has major partnerships with the likes of Ford and used to be with Amazon as well. So it's really not even about settling a car and making you know, a margin on each individual vehicle. It's kind of about what relationships that you're able to strike. So that's kind of where they find themselves right now.
All right, Uh, Mike, thank you always great information. You have a good day. You do too, take care all right.
I want to tell you about Milan Milon Pandy, who is a business person and.
This has to do with drones. Now.
You know, drones are we're originally used for uh you know, observation. They would be used for, you know, photographing for example of photographing real estate projects houses. I use the drone at my wedding to uh video part of the wedding, and so they're used kind of it for everything. Here's one that you probably haven't heard of. Milan Pandy has a company that is using drone at Mount drones at Mount.
Everest and how does that work.
He's a drone pilot and what he's doing is probably going to change things forever on Everest and other high very high mountains, Ladders, ropes, oxygen cylinder cylinders can be transported via drone to aid the sherpas. The sherpa is helping the climbers on Mount Everest. You can't do it without a sherpa. The most famous sherpa real quickly neil do do do do do?
Do do do do do the.
First man to actually the first man to actually go on top of Mount Everest.
Everybody says it's Edmund Hillary. It was not. It was the sherpa. His name is Tensig Norgay. In case you ever get.
It up with the no sherpa, no shoes, no service.
Very good, very strong. In any case, keep me off like nope, yep, nope. The Sherpas live up there in the regions of Nepal and they are the guides.
They navigate.
They set the trial for climbers half for seven decades and dozens have lost their lives. So pande Is company is airlift Technology. He starts uh the local drone mapping startup, and he says that using drones combined with the sherpas decades of mountaineering knowledge, makes it safer to climb Everest. Have you seen picture of Mount Everest during the season. Right now, it's the season for climbing. It is at the top of the mountain. There are hundreds of people
waiting to climb the mountain. It's like a new ride at Disneyland. The lines go on forever and it's dangerous because people wait for hours to get up there. So base camp is located at about seventeen thy five hundred feet above sea level. Camp one is at about twenty thousand feet. The distance between the two points and you have to go to base camp and then up to Camp one, and then you go to Camp two going up the hill. Of course, the hill going up the mountain.
The difference between the two points is one point eight miles. It takes sherpas six to seven hours to make that one point eight journey one point eight mile journey. It takes a drone six to seven minutes.
To make that distance.
So if you think of drones delivering food, medical supplies, oxygen, all of a sudden, you have a much safer way to climb mount efforts. Have you seen pictures of these climbers and videos documentaries, They go past all these dead bodies that litter the trails on Mount Everest.
It's really weird.
And they don't bring the dead bodies down because they are dead weight, so to speak.
It's super dangerous.
All of it is super dangerous. I mean, there's so much garbage. There is so much garbage going up the mountain.
They people, I think they found a body that they believe might have been somebody who reached the summit before Hillary.
George Mallory, British, and they did find him, and they didn't know whether or not he actually reached the summit. The last known sighting of George Mallory was seven hundred feet below the summit and at that point they don't know. And then he got fogged in and they don't know whether he actually reached the summit.
And then he fell with his.
Climbing partner, Irving, and he fell and they found they did find his body, and it was and think about this, this was in the twenties, Brits.
These guys are crazy.
All the BRIT's early explorers to the or the Arctic and the Antarctic were all Brits and they were out of their minds. So here goes George Mallory up the mountain and he's wearing wool woolen clothing, hobnail boots, big hemp, the hemp ropes.
It was they had oxygen, but it leaked.
It was almost a waste of time because the early technology on the oxygen tanks, and that's how they used to climb up the mountain. Today, of course it is the various parkas that are made out of artificial material and they're warm as hell, and.
You have the proper boots, and you have the ropes that are.
Very very thin made out of nylon, and then the grandpas that they hammer into the rock and its or the crampons. That's it, and it's just a whole different world in any case. So technology in terms of gear that they used to climb up the mountain today is a million miles ahead of what happened, what was around in the twenties when George Mallory was climbing, And now they're adding drones to it to deliver emergency supplies, deliver food, also grab garbage from.
The mountain, bring down used oxygen tanks.
Every drone can go up there and bring down sixty six pounds of trash and they already have brought down eleven eleven they've already brought down how many eleven hundred pounds I believe, which is just a drop in the bucket. But now it's going to happen more and more, the use of drones. By the way, that George Mallory story, I watched Jeopardy.
That's how I knew that.
I don't know how you do it. You forget the most basic things. You bring your your iPhone to me all the time. How do I answer email?
Again? You ask I can't charge my car.
There's so much you can't do, and then you have these dumb ass facts in your head from the twenties.
Okay, that's theirst plot. Well there you go, yes, you lose the yes. All right.
We're going to end the show with the Education Department, soon to be the non Education Department. And this has to do with what the Trump administration is doing.
Two students who are in default.
There are more than five million borrowers in this country who are in default and owe money to the Feds, because these are federal student loans that have not been paid back to the point where already indeed at default, which is.
This defined as two hundred and seventy days without payment.
Now pandemic hits and a moratorium is put into place. Biden puts in a moratorium, saying everything is on hold. Interest is on hold, payments are on hold. And now the government is saying, okay, we're done with that. It's time to start paying back. And if you don't pay back, we're gonna garnish wages. We're gonna take money from your tax refund, which is what they do. And of course there's an uproar. How dare you do that, you government.
Of the United States?
You Trump administration? Well, how long does a moratorium continue?
That's my question? Forever? So you don't have to pay back your loan.
Boy, wouldn't you like to borrow money under those terms where you don't have to pay it back?
Where do I sign up for that one? Because when I borrowed money to go to school.
Damn it, they asked me and they forced me to pay it back with interest.
And so here's the argument.
You've got those people in favor of the students, former students who say it's a different world today.
The mount of money you have to borrow.
To have an education, to get an education is astronomical. The chances of getting a job are minimal compared to what it used to be. It used to be you borrowed money, you went to school, you graduated college, you got a job. It used to be when I went to law school, you graduated, you generally got a job, except I couldn't get one.
So therefore I went out on my own.
And because I'm a hustler, it's because I couldn't get a job in any law firm.
And fine, that is the argument.
You have, too bad, what do you expect then don't borrow the money. Figure out another way of doing it, because allowing you to not pay or to extend, let me tell you how crazy it was under the Biden administration. If you paid your loan, if you made your payments over ten years, the rest of it was forgiven.
How do I sign up for that one?
So what the Trumpet administration is saying, hey, welcome to reality.
Welcome to the.
Real world where you actually have to pay back your loans and if you're in default, we're going to go after the money. So I completely agree with what's going on. The Education department, well, it's not going to be an education department very long. Well, what used to be the Education department whose services will be absorbed by other agencies.
Is ending the pandemic area pause that began roughly five years ago, and they're going to start the Treasury Offset program, collecting debts by gardnishing federal and state payments, tax retures, social Security benefits. Yeah, you know, pay your money, you know, you know. There are programs that extend for years and years. Fine, and there are programs that are set up based on what your income is. Take advantage of that. But it's still a payback. It makes all the sense in the world. Okay,
we're done, guys, coming up Gary and Shannon. Tomorrow morning we start all over again. Wake Up Call with Amy and Will Neil and I come aboard and of course with the extraordinary and marginal help from Kono and Ann. This is KFI. Oh, by the way, Pope francis still dead. KFI AM six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.