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The Verge
7 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
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@ 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:
The Verge
20-05-2025
- The Verge
The Razr Ultra proves flip phones are almost ready
Phones that flip and fold have been The Next Big Thing so long it almost seems like they might never happen. Even as they've gotten better, faster, and more durable, devices from Google, Samsung, and others have just had too many compromises. (They also cost way too much.) But bit by bit, year by year, it seems we might be getting closer to truly great flips and folds. On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge 's Allison Johnson joins the show to talk about her review of Motorola's new Razr Ultra, one of the most compelling (and best-looking) flip phones we've yet tested. Allison explains what Motorola got right, what's not quite ready, and why she's not quite ready to sell everyone on a flip phone. She also talks about Motorola's approach to AI, which is sometimes very clever and sometimes just flat out bad. After that, The Verge 's Alex Heath talks us through the recent history of Snap, and why the company still seems unable to find its footing as a business. Snapchat is more popular than ever, especially among young users, but hasn't managed to turn that into the perpetual money machine it needs in order to fund its ambitious augmented reality projects. That, plus some of the information we're hearing about WhatsApp in the ongoing Meta trial, makes us wonder: is there a business in chat? What does it mean that nobody can figure out how to make money from helping people talk to each other? And what happens when companies start sticking ads in our chats? Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@ about another possibility for Google Chrome. The US government wants to make Google sell its massively popular browser; what if Google just shut it down instead? If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
The Verge
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
A buggy Sonos mystery
Product design requires considering lots of different things. How things look; how they work; how people will understand how to use them. Here's one probably not on a lot of designers' lists, though: the insect enticement factor. Maybe that needs to change, because as The Verge 's Will Poor discovered, the way your gadgets are designed and made could have serious implications for what might decide to live inside them. On this episode of The Vergecast, Will tells us about his post-vacation Sonos discovery, how he discovered he's not the only person on the internet trying to get the ants out of his speakers, and what he ultimately learned about insects and electronics. Some of the wild conspiracy theories are just that — but some might be for real. After that, The Verge 's Andru Marino joins the show to talk about the boom in AI-generated podcasts. Andru has spent weeks listening to the jovial NotebookLM bot-hosts talk about everything from news to recipes to esoteric gadget instructions, and has learned a lot about why this medium works so well for people. And what it takes for a human to make a good podcast. Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@ about smart lights, with help from The Verge 's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. She explains that there are smart bulbs, and there are smart switches, and there's often not much way to do both. If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
