Google's leadership shakeup puts Pichai in the driver's seat (The Daily Charge, 12/4/2019)

Sundyar Pachi is the new top dog at Google's parent Alphabet. We'll discuss what this means for Google, Youtube, and the rest of the tech world. Stick around for your daily charge. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to the Daily Charge. It's Wednesday, December 4th. I'm Ben Fox Rubin. Alfred Ng. I'm Roger Cheng. And let's get to today's headlines. Late on Tuesday, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they were stepping down from day to day management of their massive tech conglomerate, Sundar Pichai, who was installed as Google's chief in 2015. Is taking over the entire business. Which includes long shot projects like driverless cars and delivery drones. So is does this change anything with Google alphabet? You name it? I wouldn't think so right away. Because if you look at how Google is how Google's been managed since which has been there since 2015. It hasn't changed like tremendously other than the fact that page and brain could actually reorganize the whole company. Now that Got pachai in charge, I could see him kinda flattening the company out a little bit if you wanted to. But then again, you got page and Brin and a whole bunch of other guys on the board of directors to determine what actually happens to all the other companies. Yeah,>> I would say culturally speaking, they're gonna be a lot of questions about it cuz Sergey Brin and Larry Page were famous for bringing this kind of almost chaotic culture of basically do whatever you want kind of experiment on different projects. And you know, the whole Don't be evil thing that was that was clearly from them and your copies kind of set their culture based on their founders right and so with them leaving It's kind of a tenuous time right now, right? There are Google employees that are constantly threatening to unionize. There are a lot of morale issues over there. So there are a lot of issues with them leaving. I think some Googlers expected Sergei [UNKNOWN] and Larry Pace to come in and fix it. But instead it seems like they're kind of jumping ship. Do you think that this is the sign of the times? I mean obviously we've been talking a lot about the tech backlash. These two founders have not been the face of the company for at least the past couple of years now it's been pachai. So do you think they kinda saw the writing on the wall? So that's kinda my reading said that they said, We don't really wanna fix those problems that you were talking about Roger. Instead, we'd rather just step away and I don't know hug our billions and billions of dollars that we've made. Two times this point like I don't think a lot is going to change because Larry Page Has stepped away from daily operations for a long time at this point. I think it's pretty well known that he's I don't know if checked out is the right word, and we'll just say checked out. But that's why you know what because of the Dinars had such an active hand in running Google. I don't think it's going to change when he elevates alphabet. Yeah. Is Do you think that pachai is going to get rid of some of these moonshot projects? I don't think so. I mean, those are essentially like pages, babies. And the fact that he's gonna be running X as well or managing overseeing X. That's the one with the Project Loon that has Internet on balloon, the energy kites and bizarrest things you could think of. I could see [UNKNOWN] keeping that going for a while to see how long Something is profitable, because so far, X is not, and [UNKNOWN] has not done great. None of it's profitable, right. Right, so that's all crazy stuff, but you never know what's gonna come out of it that works, so that's why you have these ridiculous kinds of things. Cuz who would have thought Thought yes, self driving cars. The search company is gonna make that one. Mm. And they did. Well, also still not profitable though. Either way next stop. Qualcomm reveiled a new phone fingerprints sensor that's seventeen times bigger than the current interaction in the Samsung galaxy S 10 and note 10 that should make it easier to use and potentially even more secure, allowing it to read two fingers at the same time instead of just one, it won't be any faster though. Roger. Yeah. iPhone rumors. The most interesting aspect of this is the rumor that the next iPhone will incorporate this technology. Qualcomm has hinted that they have suppliers you've committed to using this technology. So of course, they're not gonna say who it is, but we know it's pretty certain Samsung will use it. If Apple does it, it's an interesting wrinkle. I'm a little concerned though, cuz we've tried the fingerprint sensor from last year, the 3D sonic sensor. It wasn't great. It sometimes didn't read it was slow. And like the fact that they're saying that this isn't any faster continues to be concerned to me, Right. It also had security issues which are typically wrote about in her story today Exactly. Fix those, but it's still kind of raises some of the questions about this new tech. Qualcomm representative said something like We've test out like 99% of the covers because the way this flaw worked, the in screen fingerprint sensor was reading the actual screen protector and not the thumbprint yet, because I got fooled. They did patch that. So Qualcomm is very aware of this and a good point I'm trying to make sure it doesn't run to the same problem. I just remember because I got an early look at this fingerprint sensor at the beginning of last year. At the beginning of the year before actually and they talked about how it worked well with water. It was raining. It still worked. It's supposed to be more secure, faster than the optical technology being used elsewhere. The just fell on his face because like, it wasn't good at all. Yeah. And you have to be really on top of it actually. Yeah, yes.>> Why they made it so much better exactly making it bigger. I think that also the ideas you can use multiple fingers which makes it more secure. That's it's promising in terms of security aspect, but if they kick the speed down, I don't know if it's really worth using. I think they'll probably get to that. Obviously the best fingerprint sensor would be one that takes up the entire screen. Yeah. Unless they bring back- Palm reading? Yeah, you could do palm reading but you know I would like to see the button come back in some iteration on the front Yeah. I still have an iPhone eight. So Yeah. I don't know, it is easy to use. Now that I'm on like 10 and above, I'm like I'm done with the button. All right, lastly, Cyber Monday became the biggest online sales date in US history, reaching nine .4 billion dollars with a B. At the day's peak people were spending $12 million a minute. What did you guys buy? I bought something but I can't tell you what it is because it's a Gift for you. Thank you. But I don't wanna ruin the surprise. It's not. My stars. I'm sorry. [LAUGH] It's a gift for my kid and I know he watches the show every day and I know- He does? I don't want. No, he doesn't. [LAUGH] No, I just bought a bunch of random Christmas gifts. Nice. Yeah, I bought nothing on Monday. I bought anything I wanted on Friday, which is like two items. And then I was done. Same here. And then I bought stuff on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Cyber Monday I was basically top down. Yeah, I didn't really need anything in the first place. I'm like, I want to buy that thing for about three months. It's on sale now buy it. And that was it. Do we need any of this stuff? I don't know. No. I gotta Visio Soundbar, I'm pretty excited about that. Anyway, thanks everybody. I'm BFR.>>I'm [INAUDIBLE] .>>Thanks for joining us. Can't get enough? Check out the daily Supercharged. 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