Inside the Meta monopoly trial
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 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, 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 might be 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:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
How Europe Is Losing the Global Tech Race
The U.S. is pulling away from Europe in economic growth—and one big reason is the continent's inability to create new big tech firms the size of Apple, Meta or Google. Europe is generating far fewer unicorns—new, privately held companies that are worth more than $1 billion—than China and the U.S. Unicorns are a good measure of capitalist innovation; they are almost always fast-growing firms that have found a new way of doing something and are shaking up an existing industry.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump is breaking up with the tech bros, here's why
As Elon Musk steps down from his role at the White House, there are signs Donald Trump's love affair with Silicon Valley could be on the rocks. The president sailed to election victory in November buoyed up by a wave of support from tech billionaires. But as his America First measures on immigration, university funding, tariffs and energy begin to bite, a tech bro break-up looms. 'There's definitely some buyer's remorse on the right,' said Nu Wexler, a former policy communications executive at Google. Having previously blocked the president from all Meta platforms, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg sought to make amends first by dining with Mr Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, and then by donating $1 million to his inauguration fund. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, caused outrage in February when he shook up The Washington Post's opinion section, ordering the paper to support 'personal liberties and free markets', in a move widely interpreted as a courtesy to Mr Trump. He also made overtures to the first lady, paying $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary – nearly three times the next highest bid. Meanwhile, Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, was hailed as tech's Trump whisperer after he donated $1 million and is said to have sweetened the deal with promises to start manufacturing products in the US. Their support for Mr Trump was not without reason. During the election campaign, the president promised to unleash innovation by stripping back regulations he said hindered the development of artificial intelligence (AI) under the Biden administration. Mr Trump is currently also making good on promises to make permanent the cuts to corporate tax rates, which he slashed from 35 per cent to 21 per cent in his first term. And he has set about implementing a bold programme of financial services deregulation, particularly around cryptocurrency. But the flattery of Mr Trump has not had the anticipated effect. It was widely expected that antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Amazon would soon disappear. Yet Mr Trump has so far declined to intervene. Meanwhile, his relationship with Mr Cook appears to have soured after Mr Trump criticised the Apple billionaire for building factories in India. At the same time, the knock-on effects of Mr Trump's broader policy agenda have sent Silicon Valley reeling. Mr Musk said this week he was 'disappointed' with the president's 'big, beautiful' spending bill, warning that it 'undermines' the work of the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) to bring down the deficit. Despite Mr Musk's comment, the pair apparently remain great friends, with the president presenting the billionaire with a golden key to the White House during a farewell press conference on Friday. However, Mr Musk's concerns were echoed by Chamath Palihapita, a former Facebook senior executive and host of the All In podcast, who warned that the financial markets would 'punish' the Trump administration for driving up national debt. Immigration, too, has proved a dividing line between Mr Trump's Maga base and his Silicon Valley allies, with Mr Musk pledging to 'go to war' over visas for skilled immigrants. Around 70 per cent of H-1B visa holders in the US are employed in the tech industry, and the SpaceX founder has likened the need to attract engineering talent from overseas to a professional sports team bringing in foreign players. The president's repeated attacks on universities have also set pulses racing in Silicon Valley, with the scientific research programmes that transformed America into a technology superpower facing billions of dollars in cuts. For decades, the US has stood unrivalled as the world's leader in scientific discovery and technological innovation thanks to government-backed projects that have created everything from the internet to mRNA vaccines. However, the amount of money disbursed in grants by the National Science Foundation, which funds much of the scientific research at American universities, has plummeted by 51 per cent this year so far, compared to the average over the past 10 years. 'There are a lot of people in Silicon Valley who worry this is going to kill the golden goose,' said Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings Institution. 'A lot of America's competitive advantage has been in digital technologies, and we're now making it difficult to finance the next generation.' Mr Trump's tariffs agenda has triggered widespread alarm in the tech sector as well. Having successfully won an exemption from a 145 per cent tariff on iPhones assembled in China, Apple was caught off guard last week by Mr Trump threatening 25 per cent tariffs on all iPhones made outside the US. 'I don't want you building in India,' the president warned Mr Cook during his recent Middle East tour. Moreover, Mr Trump's moratorium on new clean energy projects risks driving up energy prices in California, where renewables account for 54 per cent of the state's total electricity generation. Data centres – sprawling warehouses full of computer servers that power AI – are reliant on cheap electricity to keep them running, with experts warning that even small increases in energy prices could have 'catastrophic' consequences. His plan to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act also spells bad news for California's world-leading energy storage industry by removing tax cuts that spurred investment in the technology. From the moment Mr Musk pranced on stage at a Trump rally in October wearing an 'Occupy Mars' T-shirt, some critics said the president and Silicon Valley made strange bedfellows. A far cry from the casual-dressing tech bros of San Francisco, whom Mr Trump recently called 'these internet people', the president is rarely seen without a suit and tie (when he's not on the golf course). 'Tech investors are not a logical fit for the grassroots Maga movement. It is more a relationship of convenience right now,' said Mr Wexler. A loveless marriage it may be. But a messy divorce could have devastating consequences for the future of Mr Trump's coalition. 'He's tacked his administration to tech billionaires. They're a very powerful group and very well connected,' said Mr West. 'If they start to turn on him, that's a political nightmare.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Android Authority
3 hours ago
- Android Authority
Pocket is shutting down, so I switched to a self-hosted alternative
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority I've used Pocket every single day for over a decade. From quick-hit reads to long-term storage of, well, my own articles, interviews, and hundreds of interesting longreads I didn't have time for in the moment — everything went into Pocket. Over time, it became my cross-platform inbox for the web. I'd save articles on my phone while commuting, then dive into them later on my laptop. See something interesting, hit save, move on. I even built up a tagging system, using it to collect research, writing ideas, weekend reads, and other bits I wanted to come back to. Later, when I had the time and mental space, I'd go back through my queue and catch up, sometimes on an eBook reader, but lately, more often on a tablet or a foldable phone. It became such an integral part of how I consumed the web that Pocket was always one of the first Chrome extensions I'd install on a new laptop or browser. Pocket was so deeply embedded in my daily routine, I didn't realize how much I relied on it — until it was too late. So when Mozilla announced it was killing off Pocket, the feeling wasn't annoyance, it was despair. I won't pretend I didn't see it coming. Mozilla had been quiet about Pocket for a while, and its shift toward AI-curated content felt like a soft pivot away from the original idea of saving and reading later. Still, I clung to Pocket out of habit, out of convenience, and because it just worked. Pocket was the kind of utility I didn't have to think about — until now. I get it. Priorities change. Products evolve. Companies pivot toward things that seem shiny or scalable. But Pocket was too deeply embedded in my daily routine to just let it go without finding a worthy replacement. That's when I started looking for alternatives. As someone who's slowly been moving toward self-hosted tools to avoid the short lifespans of commercial services, my first instinct was to look for an open-source option. Not another startup with a subscription model and a roadmap shaped by market trends, but something I could actually own. Something that wouldn't suddenly disappear. And that's how I found Karakeep. Karakeep, and why it works Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority I first came across Karakeep back when it was still called Hoarder. It was clunky and unstable, so I shelved it. But when Mozilla announced Pocket's shutdown, I revisited it — and found a dramatically improved, thoughtfully built Pocket clone, minus the fluff and with some smart additions. The core idea is simple. Save links, archive full pages, and read them later. Karakeep stores a clean reader view as well as a screenshot for context. There's tagging support, search, and no algorithm trying to guess what I should read next. It didn't ask for my interests or suggest things 'based on your activity.' It just saves what I tell it to, then gets out of the way. Installing it was straightforward. Karakeep uses Docker, and the instructions on GitHub are easy to follow. I had it running on a Docker container on my Synology NAS within an hour. There's a browser extension, too, that mimics the Pocket flow almost exactly. See something, click save. That's it. Articles show up instantly, formatted with a clean, readable layout. Mobile apps are available too, and while they're not as refined as Pocket's were, they work well enough. Offline reading is still missing, which might be a dealbreaker for some, but it hasn't been a big issue for me yet. Plus, it's on the roadmap. What surprised me was how much Karakeep builds on Pocket's legacy with thoughtful additions. One of my favorite features is the optional RSS integration. It's not meant to replace your RSS reader, but you can use it to auto-save posts from specific feeds. It works great for niche blogs or Substack feeds that might otherwise get lost in your inbox. Stick to low-volume feeds, though, or your archive will get out of control fast. Optional AI-integration simplifies tasks like article summarization and automatic tagging. Another neat addition is AI-powered tagging and summarization. If you hook it up to an OpenAI API key, Karakeep can auto-tag and even generate a short summary of each article. I personally prefer to do this manually as I enjoy the process of tagging and curating my own archive, but it's a nice fallback when I'm in a rush or archiving in bulk. Like most open-source projects, Karakeep isn't perfect. Occasionally, it struggles with edge-case layouts or fails to remove certain elements cleanly. Some dynamic web pages trip it up. But unlike Pocket, when something breaks here, I can poke around and actually understand what's going on. I can fix it or at least file an issue and see what's being worked on. I'm not stuck waiting for a product update or a vague support reply. That transparency and control make a difference. Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority What I didn't expect was how this shift to Karakeep would change the way I read. For the first time in a while, I'm curating my queue again, not just dumping links into a black hole. I'm tagging more intentionally. I'm reading more slowly. I'm archiving more carefully because I know the content is staying put, not disappearing the moment someone decides it's no longer worth maintaining. The whole experience feels less transactional and more deliberate. Karakeep can keep a full offline copy of a web-page to protect against dead links. It's also turned into a great tool for light research. I'll save blog posts, technical docs, newsletter threads, anything I know I'll need later. And because Karakeep stores a full snapshot, I don't worry about dead links. That's been surprisingly helpful during long writing projects, where I'll need to pull up a quote or reference something that may have changed since I first found it. Looking ahead Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority Losing Pocket felt like the end of an era. Not because it was irreplaceable, but because it had quietly become part of my digital habits as a holdover from an older, calmer internet. One that wasn't constantly trying to predict or monetize my attention. One where bookmarking something meant I'd come back to it, not that it would disappear under an algorithmic feed. Pocket represented a kind of intentionality that's rare in today's attention economy. But in a way, Pocket's demise also forced me to reassess how fragile those habits can be when they rely on services I don't control. Karakeep continues that legacy with full ownership this time. It's not flashy, but it's stable, capable, and self-hosted. While the core experience is still all about tagging and saving articles, notes, or images, I like that the developers leave the door open for you to extend it. Want AI features? It's up to you. Prefer plain and minimal? That's fine too. If you're staring at your Pocket archive and wondering what's next, Karakeep is a solid option. It takes a bit of effort to get going — but the payoff is worth it. You don't just get a replacement for Pocket. You get a reminder that the tools you rely on every day don't have to be disposable.
