Why Marissa Mayer Is Betting Big On Consumer Tech

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2024-04-15

YouTube video id: HpFagSqkhTU

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpFagSqkhTU

let's talk with Marissa Meyer the longtime Google 
executive and former Yahoo CEO about whether new
consumer technology stands a chance and where 
the AI race goes next that's coming up right
after this welcome to Big technology podcast a 
show for cool-headed nuance conversation of the
tech world and Beyond Marissa Meyer is here she's 
the co-founder and CEO of sunshine and before that
was Google employee number 20 holding an array 
of executive positions there for 13 years before
becoming the president and CEO of Yahoo now at 
sunshine she has a new contacts app a new photo
sharing app and more and she's here to talk all 
about that and plenty more with us today Marissa
welcome to the show thank you so much for having 
me thanks for being here you know you're making a
bold bet introducing apps in the consumer space 
where so many Venture capitalists and Founders
seem to have written off the space entirely let me 
just read you uh what mg seagler who's a venture
partner at GV which is formerly Google Ventures 
and one of my must-reads says about consumer
products today and I think the Folly of starting 
them and I would love to get you to respond to
that um so mg says it really just boils down to 
time we all have the apps and services we use on
a daily basis once one is lodged in that cycle 
EXT it's extremely hard to dislodge both because
of habits and for social apps Network effects and 
whereas 10 to 15 years ago everyone was gunko to
try new apps to see what might stick we're all now 
stuck with what we have what do you think about
that well I do think mg is right about one thing 
which is that consumer apps tend to be stickier
Than People realize yes there's low switching 
costs you can try new things but people do have
their routines they have their habits and they 
and they do tend to stick with them that said I
do think people are really dismissive of the 
consumer space people feel like everything's
been done we already have our stuff as mg says 
and I feel like when I've watched the pattern
of consumer technology over time people tend to 
say that and then something new comes along and
they say well everything was done except for that 
and then right you know and then then they say now
now everything's been done and then it continues 
for a while like that and then and something new
comes along they say well well well that that 
hadn't been done before you're right and that's
actually really useful and so I think that there 
is actually more opportunity in the consumer space
than people realize that's one of the reasons 
why we're very focused on it at sunshine and I
think that at the core of consumer what you really 
need to do is focus on the user needs what is what
user problem are you trying to solve and you do 
need to aim at problems that are pervasive that
affect a lot of users every day where you feel 
you can add a lot of value I think that's really
the key um and so you know a lot of times these 
are spaces that might be very crowded you might
have to do some disruption um and they're they're 
bigger bets uh bigger bets in smaller bets right
because it's bigger in terms of the overall 
target audience uh and the amount of time and
and attention you're trying to capture smaller in 
that sometimes because they're pervasive they're
just a little bit amount of time every single day 
from the user um and have they're a smaller touch
point but I think that that's really the key 
is to not discount the consumer space as done
because I think there's a lot of things that have 
yet to be invented that are incredibly useful and
instead to focus on those user problems and 
those user pain points you're trying to solve
for and make sure that it's something that's 
really relatable to a lot of people yeah I'm
with you and I personally would love to see more 
innovation in the consumer space these apps are
just fun to use and anyone who says that we're 
at like you know the maturation point for what
consumer app should be is totally wrong because 
there is so much more to do and we're going to
talk about your specific apps uh in a moment 
but the the interesting thing is you know you
talk about smaller bets right just a little bit of 
time and actually mg's post was about uh be real
which like was this great antidote to the sort of 
polished photo sharing that we do and takes like
what like 30 seconds a day to use and he talked 
about how that was this big hit and then went away
and he continues his post and talks about like 
you know yes you can do it like and gives tiktock
as as an example and and here's uh here's what he 
says he goes but but but Tik Tock yes you two can
build Tik Tock all it takes is algorithms trained 
over time on millions of users in China acquiring
another company which was already operating in 
the US market and then spell spending billions of
dollars to Market it on meta properties to siphon 
off users to your network and even then it won't
work unless your product is actually great those 
millions of users will just turn so do you think
that he's he's overhyping the challenge I mean 
it's I don't think that he's right in saying that
this stuff is baked but the challenge is great 
right because if you think about the consumer
apps that have broken through let's say since I 
don't know Instagram uh Tik Tock is is Tik Tok
the only big one what's your thought on this uh I 
think that there are in theory that you know there
are more apps that of broken out in my mind I do 
think that he's right there's a big barrier to
entry in some of these cases especially when you 
talk about video because video is you know it's
expensive to move around it's expensive in terms 
of user time uh in terms of how people consume
it it's seral as opposed to parallel so you know 
the way you have to engineer the stream and things
like that just to make sure that you really hold 
attention uh is more intense so I think he's got
some good points uh in terms of Tik Tok and Video 
in particular that said I think that again if you
look at that core of what people are doing in 
consumer what are you helping them do and if
you're helping them do something that they need to 
do anyway and you're helping them do it better and
with new innovation I think that that is really 
green field uh because I think people are always
looking for ways to be more efficient they like 
trying things new right we are creatures that love
novelty and so I think that those types of things 
have a real chance of of of breaking through and
if there's something that helped you handle your 
everyday tasks again something that we really like
to focus on here at sunshine I think the odds that 
becomes part of your routine and a critical part
of your routine is is is there so and that's where 
you've decided to focus uh contacts birthdays
event planning photo sharing uh I'm a new user of 
your apps I just downloaded uh shine and sunshine
context shine is for the photo sharing and it's 
autogenerating albums for me already just like
shortly after downloading which is uh pretty cool 
now I noticed that Sunshine's been around for a
while like about six years and I think was it Lumi 
Labs beforehand or U but anyway um I'd love to
hear your you you obviously went through a journey 
you know between founding the company and deciding
this is where you wanted to focus so can you talk 
a little bit about that sure well when we first
started the company we knew the broad space we 
were interested in we loved consumer applications
and we wanted things that were useful every 
day but that's a really broad space so we did
a lot of experimentation to really think through 
where do we want to start where could we add value
uh and we were really interested in people's 
relationships how are groups formed you know
the soccer team the class at your child's school 
you know your friends from college how are groups
formed what makes them cohesive how do they get 
together how do you have those shared experiences
so we got very interested in groups and events 
but we realized to do groups and events well we
really needed to help people stay in touch so we 
started with contacts because for us those were
foundational we learned a lot about contacts 
Sunshine contacts today is the highest rated
app in the app store for contact management and 
we think it's the best uh obviously but it does
a great job taking your contacts duplicating 
them updating them enriching them so we find
your contacts um in the White Pages we find them 
on Facebook we find them on LinkedIn and we also
connect them with your email which is really key 
because we can get a lot of information out of
signatures and out of emails that can really make 
your address book that much more useful so we're
really proud of of sunshine contacts but as I 
said for us that was a foundational portion of
what we wanted to build in that overall pursuit of 
of that everyday utility around groups and events
and so what we launched last week shine is our 
photo sharing for groups app it takes basically
a time and a place and lets people join an album 
and share in Full Resolution their photos and it's
AI powered and that it understands and tries 
to present photos that are sharew worthy for
automatic upload uh and it also does things like 
reduces duplicates the same thing we were doing in
contacts we're doing in photos uh and it makes 
it easier to share photos uh across people who
might not have each other's contacts it might be 
a friend of a friend at an event that you're at
that brings me to events at the same time that we 
launch shine uh the app we also launch shine on
the web which helps you with event organization 
and so there you can set up your event we have
fast fluid communication around our VPS and we 
also have breathtakingly gorgeous invitations
made by generative AI uh and so overall we think 
that these two work really well together you can
use them separately of course but they basically 
overall help you capture special moments when
you're together with friends right and so I'm 
putting all these uh different areas that you're
working in together and I'm looking at okay so 
it's photos contacts events um to me it seems like
it's almost breaking down what Facebook used to do 
well and trying to build it back in in a different
maybe more of a utility versus a social network 
what do you think about that thought you know as
I said for us we're very focused on what we think 
people need every day what we think we Delight
them what we think will make their relationship 
stronger and I do think that there were things and
are things that that Facebook does really well for 
us we're not so much following that template as
opposed to just looking at people's everyday tasks 
and overall what's getting in the way and I think
we can all agree today photo sharing is really 
broken the number of times you might say oh let me
take that on my phone too or you know don't forget 
to send me that photo uh when you're parting you
know at the end of of time together you know those 
types of things and the odd that you get the photo
is probably pretty low um maybe for some people 
it's higher but I think that is overall pretty low
and so we wanted to say look if a photo really 
belongs to the time and a place and the people
who were there it should be easy especially among 
friends and people who are connected even through
other people to seamlessly share those photos 
and at the end you know right now ai is working
on things like Global facial recognition or for a 
lot of us we spend a lot of our time pinching and
zooming and trying to make sure that we have the 
the T the the shot that has the right expression
the eyes open all of those types of things and 
those are all things that shine can do easily
and well right and you know I won't press the 
issue too much but it does seem like you know
the one thing that really set me off on this path 
was uh seeing birthdays there it's like well photo
sharing it actually used to be that you would 
share that in your newsfeed birthdays you would
see it on the right rail like there really is 
this uh opportunity for an unbundling of some of
the bigger you know social utilities that we've 
had for a while and that's kind of where where
this might come in and then it sort of leads to my 
next question to you which is that this is there's
there's a huge AI uh portion to what you're trying 
to to do you I think you talked about it a little
bit whether it's like finding the right photo you 
know figuring out who who to share D duplicating
like these are all something you need something 
that's artificially intelligent to do I imagine
and it's interesting because if you're starting 
these new consumer apps the other question is is
Big Tech just going to do what you do um and so 
I I'd love to talk to you a little bit about that
the first big question you know having set that up 
to you is do you think this AI moment is going to
make big Tech even stronger than it is or do you 
think it will give startups like yours a chance to
like really fill in some of the gaps that they 
haven't tended to for a while now that they've
gotten bigger and slower uh I think that overall 
it's a great opportunity a great moment for uh for
startups I think that yes big Tech is providing 
an amazing platform the AI models and the llms
that we have today enable us to do things that you 
know we could only dream of just a few years ago
but I think that in terms of the fact that we can 
access apis for these things we can apply them to
specific domains and specific problems I think it 
really allows the uh a startup to build that much
more quickly build that much more intelligently 
and the type of focus that comes with being in
a smaller company and much more strategically 
focus on something um is a great opportunity for
startups so yes I do think this is a moment when 
big Tech Will Thrive for obvious reasons related
to AI but I also think it's a great moment 
to be in the startup World building something
that's really relentlessly focused on a specific 
domain are there any other ways that AI work in
your products that I didn't touch on sure uh we 
have a few uh so we uh use AI in shine on our
photos app to uh to do things like d duplicate to 
overall uh understand um and and understand when
you might be doing something that's share worthy 
either on a photo level or on an album level you
mentioned earlier the suggested albums it's one 
of my favorite features the fact that the AI can
figure out where I tend to take interesting group 
photos and where I don't and make those kinds of
suggestions to me is something that relies on 
AI in our Events app we're using generative AI
so different type um to make beautiful invitations 
and we do have gotten reviews for imitations they
are my view is they are the the best out there in 
terms of really helping build a mood and a theme
and anticipation for your event uh and in things 
like sunshine contacts we're deploying uh text
recognition and pattern recognition to overall do 
extraction around signatures so we can figure out
which of your contacts is this person and we can 
ultimately pull in their professional information
phone numbers uh and all of those pieces to really 
make your contact that much more up to-date uh and
enriched and I think this gets to a really good 
point which is that a lot of people say don't even
bother trying to compete in AI because it takes 
so much compute and the models are so expensive
to train but there are applications it seems like 
you're saying that you can build on top of these
very expensive models and actually do things that 
are unique and differentiated without having to
spend let's say hundred million on trading your 
own llm or you know text recognition model yes I
think that foundational AI has a huge barrier 
to entry but I think applied AI taking these
models and applying them in a specific space and 
a specific way uh is a really terrific opportunity
right now and I also think that the fact that 
you that there's lots of different types of AI
being developed by big Tech is is helpful and 
what's nice is I personally don't necessarily
think that the winner in llms will necessarily be 
the winner in visual creation and so as a startup
the fact that you can pick whichever model or 
whichever offering and API you feel fits your
needs best is great where in some cases the big 
tech companies are going to end up using just
their own models and not necessarily being able 
to use um what they see as as best of Industry
I think overall could be limiting for them 
and so I like the fact that we're able to to
shop different models and ultimately find the one 
that fits our needs best right and so you've been
uh within Google um there's this like perspective 
out there that like a second the second like some
startup does something right Google or Facebook 
or you know you name it we'll copy it and or yeah
we'll copy it and bake it into their products 
so like Google obviously does photo sharing
with Google photos contact management I mean like 
as you open up sunshine contacts you're like the
first two things that you're plugging into are 
email and Google contacts um is there something
that having been inside the company that gives 
you confidence that they just aren't able to or
won't end up taking the features that you've built 
and then baking them into their own apps uh I mean
I think there's always a concern that you could 
have someone who fast follows or copies something
that you're successful in but I think that the 
type of focus that a startup can bring is really
valuable um being really relentlessly focused 
on that that's how of course Google got it start
being really relentlessly focused on search even 
Gmail that launched 20 years ago uh this week like
ultimately was really it was a search-based lens 
on email which it turns out is really useful and
and people hadn't thought of email that way uh in 
the past but taking that lens where you have a lot
of deep learnings and insights about your users 
and applying that to a problem I think ultimately
is how you stay ahead uh even if you have a much 
larger company competing with you right and so you
know looking at this type of startup um if someone 
didn't know the context here they would be like
oh this is like a pretty like pretty easy to see 
the path that this startup takes off and then gets
acquired within Google um is this are you going 
to stay the course alone or if you know let's say
suar calls up and says we want to acquire this and 
come in and run some of our consumer products is
that something you're open to uh you know for me 
this adventure obviously what I'm mostly focused
on is impact I want to have a large group of users 
a large user base that's using the products and
finding value in it every day and I think if 
we're successful in that there's all kinds of
opportunities but for me what really intrigued me 
and and brought me to being an entrepreneur was
the act of building a company not necessarily be 
building a feature um or building a team I really
love the design problem of working on a company as 
a whole right having a product a business model A
Team a culture that all works together to build 
something that can provide a lot of value and
stay on the test of time so our hope would be to 
be able to continue independently um I've learned
in business you should never say never uh but our 
goal is to really build and design something that
has that type of strength okay so let's talk a 
little bit about some of these models that you
may or may not be building on top of um beginning 
with opening AI uh what's your view of the state
of open AI right now obviously there's been some 
turbulence um but it seems like that's potentially
behind it um but the technology thing really 
becomes interesting now because you have this
gp4 model that's out there they might be on their 
way to releasing GPT 5 sometime this year but the
competition's really good so what would you uh say 
is the state of the company right now uh I think
that open AI at least in my view at the moment 
has the lead both in text generation uh chat
gbt as well as with Dolly uh but obviously it's a 
fiercely competitive space and I think that those
um those things can be won and lost quickly 
and there's a lot of really able competitors
obviously I've been close to Google and have a 
real fondness for it but I think in terms of the
stable of talent they have as well as the type of 
data they have to run on uh I think that you know
you can't count them out yeah and so I've heard 
you talk a little bit about which model will win
and you did draw a parallel between what's going 
on with AI Bots now or AI models and search and
I I was like kind of surprised to hear you talk 
about search how you talked about how search was
effectively commoditized but every now and again 
there would be one answer that Google might give
that was better than the others and that helped 
build Google's like long-term trust and right now
we're in this moment where these models these AI 
models are on their way to commoditization so I'm
curious like what you think will enable these 
models to differentiate themselves is it that
better answer every 30 tries or something or is it 
something else I think that that brings me back to
the first question you asked in the podcast around 
the stickiness of consumer apps I think that one
of the things we learned as we built Google and 
it grew is that yes there was a lot there was
kind of aead of queries the queries that people 
do all the time and it didn't matter what search
engine you used for those they were all pretty 
much the same it's the long tale of queries deep
research queries queries that people had never 
done before where Google's flexibility and depth
and comprehensiveness and speed really set us 
apart we you get much better answers there that
said you know when we saw it like the difference 
between us and even the second best search engine
was sometimes pretty narrow 3% 5% as you said at 
which point in time you're saying well look you're
really only getting a better answer with Google 
once out of every one out of every 20 tries or
one out of every 30 tries and two things we saw 
one once you become part of someone's routine
the odds they keep turning to you as their search 
engine is really high so as I said consumer apps
are stickier Than People realize the other 
is that people are so grateful when they get
a novel insightful answer or result that they it 
builds a huge amount of Allegiance the fact that
you can just really nail someone's query you know 
one in 30 times one in 20 times that stands out in
their mind Google brought them something that no 
one else was able to bring them and the type of
Allegiance and loyalty that builds among consumers 
and users is is really quite profound and I think
in many ways underestimated and I think we're 
going to see the same thing happen uh in some
of these chat interfaces if you start to realize 
wait I just like the types of answers I get better
here I get better insights I get answers that 
speak to me more that you know Express themselves
more in language that I can use if I'm asking the 
model to write something for me things like that
I think that those are you know those can be quite 
profound I noticed that even in in Gmail you know
we'll do the autoc compose and uh I was talking 
with um a friend of mine and we were talking
about the fact that like we would never write yeah 
in an email you know yeah comma as an answer but
it frequently composes that and you're like look 
it's little things like that where if over time
the time savings and just knowing you well enough 
to know that you would always write yes comma as
opposed to yeah comma those types of little things 
make a big difference in terms of how at home you
feel with the technology how much you feel like 
you can rely on the technology the type of Time
Savings it gives you how well it understands 
you and so sometimes it's those little things
around the edges the 3% of queries where you're 
much better the little things that you say well
look I might speak that way but I would never 
write that way um having technology that really
understands that and brings that to bear ultim 
Ely can make the difference especially in a very
competitive space like this yeah and those Gmail 
Auto uh replies or Auto auto um complet they're
unfailingly polite I feel like they've taught 
me to become a more polite email emailer which I
appreciate um and maybe it's boring fruit because 
here we are talking after a cold email so thank
you Gmail on that front um another thing that that 
you brought up which is uh a way that these Bots
can differentiate themselves is personality and 
it does seem like all these Bots right now have
the same personality it's I don't know it's kind 
of boring they're all pretty boring they're very
helpful but they're they're not like someone 
you're like someone I'm already anthropomorph
anthropomorphizing these things but you know 
they're they're not someone you're excited to
talk to you're like oh okay let's see if this 
is useful like the one that's taken a shot at
doing a personality is grock from Elon Musk and 
it's pretty cringe so um talk a little bit about
that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on like is 
the lager here just going to open up and try to
make a more personable bot or um kind of like a 
psychobot that doesn't have any guard rails like
I'm personally I maybe I'm alone but I'd love to 
have one that like we'll just talk about anything
with you and use this intelligence that it has 
baked in to like really do some of the wacky stuff
it did for instance when Kevin ruse was talking 
with Sydney and the Sydney B tried to break up
his marriage mm um you know I think that it's 
interesting in the early days of Google I talked
to a Hollywood producer uh who was doing some some 
side collaboration with Google and he felt really
strongly that search engines were going to have 
to develop a personality that people were going
to say oh I'm choosing between Google or Yahoo or 
you know Microsoft um and that there's going to
have to be flavors the same way there is on like 
CBS ABC NBC right in terms of like what shows
they would carry and you know there's something 
about what he said that made sense to me but in
my view it didn't play out that way at all and I 
think it's because you know for you when you're
you know a search engine is fundamentally almost 
like a teacher right it's bringing you information
you need to trust it needs to have a personality 
that has integrity that's trustworthy but a lot
of times you don't necessarily want it to be 
super personality Rich you really want it to
be efficient and and pretty much to the point 
and I think that there the fact that it was
somewhat you know Google in his presentation 
did sort of Fade Into the background right it
might be something that you was know more bland 
than a Hollywood producer might have actually in
envisioned was actually helpful and I also think 
that put the focus on the quality of the answers
we were providing I think there's a couple of 
things that are going to happen in the AI space
if I had to guess um I think that we will will see 
that when you're doing work and really conversing
one-on-one with the uh with the AI I think you're 
ultimately going to want to have low personality
not necessarily objectionable personality you 
want to feel understood but you don't want that
necessarily to get in the way and be distracting 
because it overall it makes you less efficient
I think if you're asking AI to write on your 
behalf is going to become very important that
it understands how you like to express yourself 
it'll you know if if it does it will result in
fewer edits um and a better you know first draft 
of a product things like that and so I think that
that you'll see a few different places in terms 
of how the AI is deployed by different people and
it may be that they're one and the same that the 
chat bot you're conversing with to teach yourself
is the same as the chatbot you're using to write 
as it is today uh and that there's one that kind
of has the right type of of interface and the way 
right way of expressing that's very comfortable in
both regards but my guess is it's that latter 
task where you're asking the AI to act more
like an agent on your behalf really representing 
you uh I think it's going to be really important
for people that in that world that they have a 
they are able to have that a presence that isn't
cringe that feels very comfortable to them and 
so I think they are the personality piece would
be more important and I definitely want to talk 
about agents as well as Google uh you were the
person that hired Sundar Pai so why don't we do 
that right after the break and we're back here on
big technology podcast with Marissa Meer uh CEO 
of sunshine uh Marissa let's just talk quickly
about Google what what do you think the state of 
Google is because I mean I guess this every time
we talk about the company it needs this preface 
it seems like it's in a weird position with AI uh
it's business model of course like doesn't really 
want us to run to these bods so quickly but then
again on the stock market uh we're F Monday and 
of this week and just hit all-time highs today
so it's an interesting position for Google to be 
in uh I think that this is an interesting moment
for Google uh I personally am very bullish on 
the company they have an amazing team they have
incredible Talent particularly in the AI space and 
the data they have in Gmail in order to understand
who you are what you like who you communicate how 
you communicate you know if I had to say you know
look I trust one company to take this data and 
really be able to make sense of it and understand
how to deploy it um to do things efficiently for 
me my money would be on Google because there's
just so much of that that's in in email um and so 
many other things that Google has even things from
like Maps navigations where you go how you get 
there all of those types of things you know they
have so much data both on each of us all of us 
personally but also collectively that I think that
there's a real opportunity that we're going to see 
major breakthroughs and some of the best in class
uh work being done by Google at the same time they 
have a huge business and there's just no question
in my mind that the current search interface right 
typing something into the box and getting ads back
is going to be disrupted and that transition is 
going to be very tricky just given the overall
size of the business that's can Embrace I think 
if they can Embrace that change and you know at
the end of my time at Google we were working on 
something that we called contextual search the
idea that a query should be more than just the 
words it should be you know it should be your
whole present state right you know who you are 
where you are the conversation you just had we
have this notion it's kind of counterintuitive 
think about like what if you were the query what
if you could feed not just your question but all 
of you into the search box um I think that we're
going to see something like that and I think 
it does need an interface breakthrough today we
don't have an interface that works well enough 
in that regard I think the chat box Bots that
sometimes are are too chatty I think the search 
interface is too limited and I think there will
be an interface breakthrough that allows you the 
search engine to gather either through things like
email or or history um or other inputs basically 
gather more of a contextual picture for you to be
able to provide even better results but I think 
it's where we start to see the power of llms meet
personal information I think that's ultimately 
um that personal information and context that's
ultimately where we're going to see a real 
breakout in terms of how search advances and
as I said that takes an both an interface and an 
input mechanism Improvement um but I think it's
clear that that's where it's going and it will be 
disruptive to the Google business model that said
I still am bullish that they can do handle the 
transition well uh and and come out a winner in
the space that's fascinating I hadn't thought 
that like all of our emailing and Gmail might
be eventually used to train a more personalized 
bot for us or more personalized agent for us but
it makes a lot of sense anecdotally we did a a 
fun thing at Yahoo we wanted to look at people's
we looked at the receipts that were coming into 
people's emails and the funny thing was we could
tell and I this didn't totally make sense to me 
but I guess it does make sense in retrospect we
could tell how based on where people were buying 
socks where it was particularly rainy I've never
had this thought pattern but I think apparently 
when it rains people start to think a lot about
their feet getting wet and they tend to buy socks 
but you could actually T you could actually tie
together Yahoo weather so obviously we had the 
weather patterns with when people when and where
people bought socks and so there were lots of 
strange correlations like that when especially
when you look at a large body of data Yahoo male 
um Google Mail where you can find all kinds of
fascinating correlations that really Point more 
to context being a big piece context and personal
information being a big piece of what it is people 
need and what they need to know can you talk us
through a little bit about how Google thinks 
about how it will make product changes in this
moment because from the people I speak with on the 
inside of that company and there are a lot of them
it seems like Google's really going to weigh like 
is this product change going to even cause like a
1% decrease in search advertising and therefore 
we won't do it is that really the way that this
company thinks about products and if it's the 
case how do you expect them then to go to um
that that shift and format uh interface uh it's 
going to take a pretty bold decision right just
like a very bold gutsy product choice that seems 
like it's the only way uh I think that there is
a tension uh obviously when you have something 
as big and valuable as the Google sech business
which I ran for around a decade there is this 
tendency towards incrementalism right you want
to just try and make things you have a pretty good 
product and a pretty good business already and you
just want to try and keep chipping away it and 
making it better and better there is that kind of
progress that comes but I think there's also uh a 
boldness inside of Google uh and I think it's been
there since the core of saying wait what if we did 
email what if we do maps right what if we go into
driverless cars and I think this is one of these 
moments where they're going to have to be bold uh
and interestingly when I left Google for Yahoo my 
last conversation as a formal Google employee was
with Sergey himself and um uh I asked Sergey if 
he had any advice for me and he gave me a lot of
different advice and um we had worked together 
for a long time and and uh uh and as I went to
leave um it was time for me to go I had my hand on 
the door handle and I remember Sergey stopped and
said Mera wait don't forget to be bold MH he's 
like you know if you just continuing to try and
make you know Yahoo incrementally better isn't 
going to get you where you wanted to go he just
said he just said don't forget to be bold and left 
it at that but that was it was huge for me because
I do think it it reminded me that you know in our 
attempt to make Yahoo great again we were going to
have to make bold decisions and I do think there's 
at the heart of Google in terms of the way the
founders have set up the company the culture there 
is this desired for bold unbridled Innovation and
I think this is a moment when the company has to 
lean into that and you can't be Reckless about it
you obviously have users employees shareholders a 
lot of of stakeholders that need to be considered
but I don't think that that can get in the way 
of the you know overarching narrative that AI
is coming is going to change search in a really 
profound way and Google still is in my view the
company that's best position to be the leader in 
search at the end of this wave as it is right now
um but it's going to mean leaning back into that 
that original uh creative impulse but I do wonder
about the boldness thing because you know in the 
notes that I put down before this conversation I
wrote you know you had just tweeted about 
Gmail's 20th anniversary you mentioned it
here and I wrote a not could that happen today 
like where is that today within Google we don't
see the same experimental Pro projects coming 
out of the company that we used to at least as
far as I can tell so what makes you think the 
boldness is still there I have to say even when
we started gmail which Gmail launched in 2004 but 
started in 2002 took a lot of effort I remember
when they first said like we're going to build 
an email client we were all like no like we're
building a search engine like what part of email 
is interesting it was actually hard to get off the
ground and it had to start kind of a Skunk Works 
project that was kicked off uh by Larry uh and
you know over time we started to see the value in 
it and we started to see what search and some of
the profoundness of the size of storage and the 
our cost of storage could really bring to bear
on email and that was all very exciting uh and 
so but in the beginning it took a it took a lot
of energy right to to start something new even in 
a little company um you know breaking out of that
status quo takes a lot of energy um and it takes 
courage but I think Google has both that energy
and that courage and I think as I said this this 
space is something that they've been been working
in and preparing and this moment is something one 
they've been preparing for for a very long time uh
you know everything from a lot of the underlying 
advances lot of the underlying insights um there
was a great article last week uh the Transformers 
talking about the eight people whove really shaped
modern AI all of whom worked at at Google uh you 
know this has been been building for for for quite
a long time and I think that they clearly have 
the team and the data to do it and I do think they
have the impulse to really Embrace this change and 
and be the powerful player within it so you you
hired Sundar as a product manager within Google 
I I can't take credit for that Susan wsky hired
Sundar she was the head of ads I was the head of 
search uh and product management you put you put
him work on his first project he started we kind 
of collectively hired search uh product managers
across uh the product management organization and 
then when they came assigned them so so Susan um
sourced him we hired him through the product 
management uh hiring Committee of which I ran
and then when he came in we realized that we had a 
real need in the client space so Sundar uh one of
started off and realized that we didn't have a PM 
uh product manager on Google Toolbar and Google to
toolbar had like 200 million users or something 
like embarrassingly large like that and I said
well you know I told you there was more work than 
people here so there's no shortage of things to
do so if you'd like to be the PM on toolbar you 
can and so he became our pm on toolbar and then
ultimately we realized we didn't just want a 
toolbar inside of a browser we wanted actually
the browser the browser launched to Great Fanfare 
and and um was really well received and then we
realized we could actually use the browser as an 
operating system Paradigm so it became Chrome OS
uh and things you know took off from there but um 
right soon is as an extraordinary individual um I
think turned up fully formed yeah I think the 
toolbar story is one of the coolest stories in
Google history uh just a a product that needed to 
be there to protect the company against the real
anti-competitive stuff that Microsoft was doing I 
mean Microsoft eventually made its browser worse
so the web would go slower it's like almost you 
think Google's in the same position now right
but it's not doing the same things but it made 
the browser worse so web would go slower to hold
off Google which challenged everything within 
Microsoft from office to the operating system
but that we could talk about that for hours uh 
one question about Sundar for you is you know
knowing Sundar back then um are there things that 
he would do or is there uh something that you saw
in him then that make you believe that he's the 
right leader for now uh Sundar uh is incredible
in a number of ways one he's incredibly 
intelligent he's able to synthesize many
different viewpoints extremely quickly and he's 
also a very independent thinker so he's able to
take in all those viewpoints be it from users from 
Executives Etc and synthesize them in a way that
also brings his own lens and his own judgment 
to Bear uh and so I do think that he and he's
not afraid of betting big right it was I remember 
uh I remember getting yelled at in the first time
we went in to propose that we should do a browser 
um because obviously at the time Eric Schmidt one
of my longtime mentors who I just love had been 
deeply embedded in the wars with Microsoft and
he was like you know what we don't need to do 
we don't need to build a browser and we were
like actually we really want to build a browser 
and here's how we think we can have a browser
that's differentiate and here's how we think it's 
going to be better and yes it's going to be a lot
of work and there's a of technical decisions that 
we have to get right in order to actually compete
in this space um but you know it was a really 
fraught debate inside the company to actually
uh decide to pursue and build Chrome uh and it 
was controversial and Sundar wasn't afraid of
that um and there were certainly people around him 
that supported him and guided him um but you know
overall it was really he wasn't afraid to take the 
charge and say look we need to do something that's
com counterintuitive and controversial and place 
this big bet and I think it's really going to be
foundational in the long run for the company and 
he was absolutely right uh let me ask you a couple
Yahoo questions before we wrap uh if if I can our 
audience is kind of obsessed with Yahoo um they're
fun like that um we're talking I mean just in the 
context of consumer products um what do you think
the lesson is to be learned from Tumblr uh and why 
do you think that it ended up declining the way
that it did uh I think that the ultimate lesson 
to learn um from Tumblr is there are times when
a company should be really you know held aside 
right I I you you say you you know Google did
that really successfully with YouTube um Facebook 
did that really successfully with Instagram right
there's times when something's just a rocket ship 
and it needs to be kept separately separate from
the mothership because the mothership might 
just love it to death that was really what we
were worried about it YouTube and I know from 
Instagram they were had similar concerns there
I think that for Tumblr you know we felt that it 
was that kind of rocket ship and there were a lot
of great attributes at the same time I think that 
it could have used a little bit more support from
Yahoo in terms of overall what's working some 
of the technical infrastructure and decisions
certainly some of the marketing and positioning 
of the platform and also just in terms of the
becoming a you know a platform that was hospitable 
to ads and really had the type of viewership and
followership um that would monetize well with 
ads and so I think that if I had it to do over
again I still would do the Tumblr acquisition but 
I would have integrated it more and I would have
loaned more Talent from Yahoo Yahoo to Tumblr 
and it may have ultimately changed Tumblr in
terms of what it uh what it became in the long 
run but I think it would have ultimately been
been more successful full yeah you also you 
acquired suly um which which was kind of way
ahead of its time it summarized the web use AI 
to do this stuff I've been thinking about it
a lot when it comes to generative stuff because 
a lot of companies are trying to do that now um
knowing that this is the direction and with that 
context do you think there's a bright future for
the web I mean there's there are browsers now that 
you'll go to the web page and it just instead of
having you read the article will summarize uh 
it for you so I guess I'm curious if you think
that this is the future and if it is what it means 
for the web uh I think that summarization is going
to be really important that's why I bought suly I 
think It ultimately makes you a lot more efficient
in your daily routines it helps you consume a lot 
more content and also ultimately understand where
do I want just a surface level summary and where 
do I want to do a deep dive uh so I think that
summarization technology is incredibly helpful and 
I also think we you know one of the big reasons we
bought it was to apply it on video because there's 
definitely time s where you can't watch a video
um or you know you can't listen to a podcast 
but if you can basically take all that content
and summarize it down uh is ultimately really 
useful uh I do think that one of the concerns I
have about the web in the long run is with machine 
generated content I'm not confident that the web
improves maybe it stays the same maybe it declines 
slightly but for a lot of these Technologies we
need the web and we need this base of knowledge 
and data that everything's learning off of to
continue to get better and I do think that's 
going to be one of the challenges in the future
as we continue to train models and Advance these 
Technologies is how do we make sure that we're
training on things where the quality is actually 
monotonically increasing as opposed to staying
the same or decreasing okay yeah and not no worry 
about like the fact that I almost feel like it's
this cycle where like you have ai generated 
stuff it gets fed into these chat Bots people
don't visit websites anymore websites go away and 
you just end up in this death spiral is that am I
overly concerned about that or even legitimate I 
think that there is I think that originality and
newness is is a is a real thing and I think 
that there's a lot that people can bring to
bear I think that some of what you're saying will 
happen but I I don't think it's going to overall
be the the overarching trend okay great and then 
just to sum up first-time founder um after holding
some very interesting positions over time um you 
don't really have to work anymore so I'm curious
and being a Founder is a very tough job uh what 
continues to drive you and how's the experience
been so far um it's been terrific as I said I 
love working on design problems um and you know
building a company is a tremendous design problem 
and I have to say launching products last week it
was so fun I love the exhilaration of bringing 
something new in the market you know it's never
going to be perfect the first time out you're 
always going to get a lot of feedback and when
you get that feedback you have to decide is that 
defeating feedback or does that just make you want
to make your product even better uh and so for me 
I love building things and I love the team that I
get to do it with uh and I'm just really excited 
about what types of things we can build in the
future especially now that we have feedback from 
real users in terms of what they like and what
works for them is there anything you're to show 
the tech world or show yourself like starting from
zero as opposed to trying to incubate something 
within a larger company I mean you started Google
when it was pretty early but I'm curious if 
there's any of that that comes into play I think
that you know my interaction with entrepreneurs 
has defined my whole career obviously from Larry
and Sergey and then Pho and yang who I got to work 
with at at Yahoo Pho more closely than Yang but
both of them and then you over the course of my 
career I've acquired somewhere on the order of 80
companies around 50 at Yahoo around 30 at Google 
and I've gotten to work with some of the best and
um you know everyone from like Tim and Nina zat 
to David KP from Tumblr there's so many different
personalities that come and I started to realize 
that you know so much of my career was you know
based around Milestones of different Founders and 
their traits and their insights that you know that
that that respect for entrepreneurs was something 
that really carried with me I'm very grateful for
all those experiences and it was something that I 
did want to have for myself cool stuff all right
so if people want to download the apps where do 
they go uh you can go to sunshine.com uh or you
can go to bit.ly shine by Sunshine uh and download 
it on the App Store and it'll be coming to Android
soon all right well as one of the newest users 
I'm definitely looking forward to uh to use them
and and uh hopefully there's more that come 
because uh we don't want consumer to be said
and done for so I appreciate you taking this s 
gear totally thank you so much thank you Marissa
thank you everybody for listening we'll be back 
on Friday Rona and Roy is returning we're going
to talk about the week's news we also have 
a special guest Zeke Fox who's here to talk
uh with us all about the state of crypto after 
the spbf sentencing and plenty more so tune on
tune in on Friday and thanks again for listening 
we'll see you next time on big technology podcast