What weird truck is Jeff Bezos backing?

ABC's Mike Dobuski reports on the latest tech including a new electric truck at only $25,000

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, on the Legacy Retirement Group dot Com phone line.

(00:02):
Let's chicking with ABC News Technology reporter. It's Mike Debuski
and a lot of these anti trust cases. We'll talk
about the Facebook and Instagram one that is ongoing now
it's a trial, but the one that it's been around
that a judge has ruled last year about Google's monopoly
in the search engine market.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Where does that stand.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, we are getting underway with a hearing that is
ultimately aimed at deciding what to do about that illegal
monopoly that Google runs in the search engine market. This, again,
as you mentioned, is something that was decided by a
judge last year. Now that judge is presiding over the
remedies phase of this trial. Again, what do we do
about it? What is the remedy to this monopoly? Well,

(00:43):
the Department of Justice, which originally brought this case against
Google back in twenty twenty, is going big. They're advocating
for a breakup of this one point eight trillion dollar company.
Forcing Google to sell off huge products like Google Chrome,
which is their web browser. That's a huge driver of
Google search traffic and in the government's estimation, would be

(01:05):
a way to unwind some of this dominance in the
search engine market. They're also reserving the right to if
that doesn't actually solve the monopoly problem, to force Google
to sell off other things as well, things like Android,
which is their very popular operating system for smartphones. It's
the most popular operating system in the world for smartphones
as a matter of fact, again, would be a huge

(01:27):
hit to their business. Guys, this will not surprise you,
but Google is asking for some leniency in this regard.
They are saying, we don't need to be broken up. Rather,
we would be interested in potentially renegotiating some of these
deals that we have with Apple and Samsung and others
around being the default search engine. So if you go
on your iPhone, you open up the Safari web browser

(01:49):
and you just type something into the search bar, you're
going to do a Google search, right and Google pays
many billions of dollars for that privilege. That is part
of the government's argument here that in using those billions
of dollars, Google is essentially able to lock in people's
use of Google Search and ultimately behave anti competitively. Google

(02:10):
now says, hey, we can maybe rethink some of that strategy.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
In other words, please don't break us up. Does Google
owns YouTube? Do they not? They do?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, So that's a big one too, because you could
argue that when you're searching for something, that Google could
throttle up the results to favor pushing you towards going
to YouTube to get some solutions.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
To say nothing of the fact that they also operate
many other businesses, some of which are shopping hardware businesses. Right,
If I go to search for, you know, a smartphone
on social media on Google Search, am I going to
first see a Google pixel before I see some other
options out there? A lot of those questions really do
affect smaller businesses out there, right. This is again goes

(02:53):
back to kind of what our antitrust law is designed
at doing. If I am a startup, right and I
may a smartphone, it's just kind of difficult. But you know,
if I were to do that google search results, which
could cost billions of dollars, that is something that this
whole trial really hinges on. Is this fair to the
consumer or is Google behaving anti competitively just because it

(03:14):
is a multi trillion dollar company.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And the other one that's happening now.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I think we're in the second week the FTC's got
the case against Meta, which is of course Facebook, Instagram,
and a couple of other social media sites.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
What's this latest with that?

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, Week two for the Meta trial. As we said
last week, this is the trial that looks to see
whether the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp were anti competitive, right,
whether Meta was using its many billions of dollars to
take worthy competitors off the playing field as opposed to
making its own business more competitive. That is something that

(03:50):
is at the sort of seat of the judge right now.
We saw testimony from Mark Suckerberg last week where he
argued many different things, among them people using these products
because they like them, right, and that you know, having
these companies in their stable makes Meta more competitive against
potentially dangerous adversaries companies like TikTok, which sees its origins

(04:11):
and its headquarters in China, so that is part of
their argument. We also saw Sheryl Sandberg, a former executive
at Facebook Beck when it was called Facebook, make her
testimony in this trial as well. We're also expecting to
hear from leading lights across the tech industry, both from
Meta and from others as they look to do look

(04:31):
to figure out what to do about this company and
how they should approach it.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
So that is continuing.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
We expected to go on for you know, between six
and eight weeks or so, and after that potentially a
remedies phase there as well, if the judge sides with
the government's case.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
And in most of these anti trust or monopoly cases,
the defense is typically, you know, don't hate us because
we're beautiful, don't hate us because we're just simply good
at our job. We should not be penalized for that.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
People like us because because they like us, Right, people
use our products because they like using their products. And
you know that's evidence by the fact that Google is
a verb. Right, that's just something that people do by default.
But whether the real question is not whether they make
a good product or not, it's whether they were able
to use the Again, they're billions of dollars of market

(05:19):
dominance to muscle out competitors. Whether people use Google because
it's the best of many options, or whether they use
it because they don't really have a ton of realistic
competitors out there.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's at the key of this this particular case. ABC
News technology reporter Mike Debuski joining me. The other story
I wanted to get to there's a new truck that's
out there. This is not a cyber truck or an
Elon Musk venture. This is a Jeff Bezos venture. What's
the deal on the truck?

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
It's called Slate Auto is the company that makes it.
This is a new automaker that is promising a very
small electric pickup truck for just twenty five thousand dollars.
In many ways, it is the anti cyber truck in
the sense that it's very basic, it's very small, and
it doesn't look very striking, but it is a very
attractive price. It's notable that price point because it would

(06:06):
be if this comes to market, the only truck anywhere
near twenty five thousand dollars that runs on electric power.
Tesla actually long promised a thirty five thousand dollars electric vehicle,
but was never quite able to make that happen, So
twenty five thousand dollars is very ambitious here. The company
has already raised more than one hundred and ten million
dollars in funding, with some of that coming from Jeff Bezos,

(06:27):
so some pretty big names attached to this. There have
been a few early models of this truck running around
southern California and particularly particularly trendy neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
But there's not a ton to be gleaned from them, right.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
We don't have any specs, We can't really climb around
inside them. We kind of just know what it looks like,
and again, it looks very basic. It seems like one
of the strategies that this company used to get to
that twenty five thousand dollars price point is by making
it very basic.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
No radio.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
According to one report, Lenny it it well, it's optional,
it seems like. But we are going to get more
information on this on Thursday, on April twenty fourth, when
the official availing unappened