Unveiling Deception

Hey, Ryan, welcome back to the Blind Data Podcast. How are you doing? It's been a couple of weeks since we recorded.

Hey there.

Yeah, it's been great. How about you?

Good, really good. Just kind of wrapping up the summer and I feel like we shot out of a cannon here post-Labor Day for the fall. Well, great. So in the last episode, we did more of a technical breakdown on how the specifics of Safari and Google changes, as well as some of these other like shopper, you know, behaviors and storefronts.

and how those things are basically changing like in the industry. And then in this episode, we're gonna cover the motivation behind big players. So today we're gonna talk specifically about Apple, Google, marketplaces like Shopify, and then also just touch on what's going on with the sentiments around Facebook. And so without further ado, like let's get into it.

So the first thing we're going to talk about is Apple. And this is for me like really timely because I was just driving down the 405 in LA the other day. And I started to see these big billboards, right? And I had started texting some of my friends that are also in sort of like the data AI space and started collecting all of these different pictures of Apple's new billboard campaign, which is all about

putting themselves out there as the advocate, right? For your data health and privacy and different things like that. So my question to you is, you know, what are some of your initial thoughts on Apple's positioning through these advertising campaigns and how they're emphasizing, you know, them being the sort of helpers or purveyors of your, you know,

your privacy and your data protection. So just give me your initial thoughts here.

Yeah, there's, there's a thousand different ways I could take this conversation. So I got to think about this specifically to on the topic of privacy. You know, Apple has for quite a long time been the device of choice for even like government and things like that. Governments don't usually jump to Android very easily. They'll jump to iPhone a lot sooner. Um, when they made the transition from Blackbird iPhone, that was really rough, but now iPhone is kind of the standard in government these days.

And the reasoning for that is that the closed ecosystem that they've built, the privacy and security ecosystem has been one of the factors they've been working on to kind of win those contracts. And they've been pushing that out along with their other, you know, to all their consumer related devices as well. That's been a story of their business for a very long time, trying to project that image of that's who they are and that's what they're achieving. So that's, it's actually quite in line with their general DNA. The.

There are advantages to it though, that give them monopolistic powers in their own spaces, that I think are part of why that's their DNA. But that is, that has been always been Apple's DNA.

Interesting. So top of mind for you is maybe sort of this. I mean, we're all sort of familiar with that story from like a couple of years ago, where it was like, you know, there was a government, you know, governmental agency that wanted them to unlock certain people's phones. And like, they were just like, this is against this is against what we believe in. Right. So I think you're right from a DNA perspective.

And if anybody's not familiar with what we're talking about right now, like let's say you don't live in a major city and haven't necessarily seen these billboards, you can definitely look them up online. The message that Apple is sort of portraying is, you know, your data health in your control, right? And I think some of the ways in which we've seen that, seen that...

Apple is giving this information to users. I remember reading a press release around this But I would say to me the most prevalent is now when I go to download an app from the app store There's a section. I think somewhere underneath like ratings and reviews where it says like, okay This app is essentially going to request This level of information from you and then I think in your settings now you have

this place where you can actually toggle on where apps can ask you.

In that initial pop-up or when you open the app again, I've noticed this where it's saying you've got this one-time opportunity, similar to push notifications, which are those messages to essentially opt-in to the data that the app is looking for. Then it can say, and you as the user can say, no, I ask not to track, or you can essentially adjust your different settings. They're doing that in a couple of different ways. They're doing that to manage your expectations up front,

Yeah.

within the app store. And then there's sort of a deliberate toggle on within settings that you have to then allow someone to even ask you. And then you're getting sort of this third layer of, okay, now what are you willing to share with this application? And I think that's quite a lot of barriers actually for these third party apps to be able to get your information. What's interesting about this is that

Apple has all this data, right? So, you know, here, you know, here we are, a software company, right? Thinking about how data that we can collect on our customers or potential customers is literally our lifeblood. But we're getting less and less access to that and all of that power, right?

Correct.

data is power, is basically getting directly funneled still into the manufacturer, Apple, and what we were talking about before, which is the browser creators, you know, as well. So I would say the next question is a little bit more in the irony of this approach. Do you believe that Apple's portrayal of data production in your ads really matches

Correct.

where their practice and policies are going now that we're sort of highlighting this idea that they're really the ones that have all the data, you know? Or is this essentially like smoke and mirrors? What's your opinion on that?

Well, so the, there is a very positive side to Apple's doing when Apple announced some of their privacy changes. Many times when they do, I get, I'm actually like, I feel positive about those moments, like, Hey, yes, sweet more, like not as many individuals are going to be able to control, you know, monitor me and control information around me and that kind of stuff. That that's a win in a lot of ways for me. And so all these privacy features aren't necessarily a bad thing.

But they do create a unique opportunity for Apple here because while app A and app B and app C don't have a lot of visibility in the data, your device always does. There's nothing the device can do to not know what you're doing. And the question is, how much advantage does that give Apple if they decide to use that knowledge that no one else has? And that advantage really does boil down financially for Apple in what they can sell, right?

Mm-hmm.

So Apple now has like an advertising system and that system is educated on what your interests are and what you wanna do. But now if you want to say advertise an iPhone app to users who use the App Store, Apple becomes effectively the only possible seller in that space. And so at the same time that they're doing things that I consider wins for the user, they're also creating a monopoly for themselves in my attention and what is known about me. And that has a...

Yeah.

You know, there's a trade off, right? There's for every action, there's a, there's a reaction that happens in the world. The action of privacy necessitates the creation of a monopoly of my information.

Yeah, I have a really quick sort of, you know, tangent question here, right? And because you and I both worked at Snapchat. And so when it comes to like sensitive material, right? That you're sending like through your phone. Um, I often browse in private mode just because I would say, because I know, you know, I kind of probably know more than the average consumer. Sometimes I'm like, I, you know, my.

Yeah.

my sister and I have had a conversation and we're talking about something that may be like a sensitive search, right? And but like we're both, you know, wanting to have this conversation or, you know, and this is everything from like what you search to pictures to everything else. So I agree with you in this idea that you have to have a lot of trust in that phone manufacturer because essentially your entire private life and all the skeletons in your closet are essentially there.

Yeah.

100%, yeah.

And so I think the question is, you know, on one side, it is important for Apple to maintain this trust building exercise. Yes, it puts them in a place of having all of this data and all of this power.

But my question is more from an engineering perspective. Are there any stories that you can share about where is this data actually going? How safe is this really? How safe are my photos? How safe are my searches? Ultimately, where would that end up? And how is it really protected and not protected, I think, as an average consumer, I would like to know.

Yeah, there's, I mean, every, every layer of the phone, the answer is a little bit different, right? So one of the, for instance, in iMessage, a lot of your communication when you're talking to another iPhone user is 100% encrypted, right? And theoretically, that's the advertised benefit, right? And there's been a number of stories where a government agency wants to go after an individual, wants to be able to read their iMessage and Apple's like, I'm sorry.

that is information that we don't even have access to. We can't help you get it because you can't get it, because we can't even get it. And those stories were public and they came out and best we know, Apple has not been giving up iMessage messages that way for a long time. Now, has the government found a back door that can piggyback into your phone and read messages anyway? That might be possible. That's something that we can't confirm. But there are places where I think companies are incentivized.

to be as private as possible because they don't want to be responsible for being the one who can open a door that can get, you know, they don't want to get involved. There's.

Got it.

It's almost like a legal protection, right? Like you can't have it because we don't have it and can't get it, right? Like it's sort of that message, okay.

Yeah, if the lawyers are involved, that's the biggest motivation to not have the data, right? So if lawyers are like, hey, if you have this information at all on your computers, that could be a big threat to your business, then that's when the businesses are gonna be pretty pro-grat-tective about blocking it. In addition, there's certain kinds of data that have, that's messaging, but also, so at some point, your pictures have to be, a lot of people use cloud, emit, photograph.

Yeah.

So that's messaging, right? What about pictures and searches?

Yeah.

Software is right. So all your photos get uploaded to the cloud. All those images are not like encrypted in a way that only you can read Usually they're there. They're being indexed by You know computer vision technology to try out whose faces are whose and where are you located and all that kind of stuff? It's getting heavily indexed So if Google or Apple or whoever your device maker is wanted to get into that data and make use of it they really can likely there's number of protections in place to prevent like

random employee at company X from looking at your specific photos, but as a general use case, if Google wanted to use every photo on Google Photos to create a machine learning algorithm that can better detect people's faces, that is entirely likely inside of what they're allowed to do as long as their privacy policies and things don't say that they can't.

What usually ends up coming out here is that the privacy policies posted online are looked at by the lawyers and the whole legal system as like the standard for helping you understand what they are and are not using. So if you really want to get a better picture of what Google is allowed to do, you read their privacy policy, which is very boring and very long and very annoying. But it is how you kind of get a picture as to what they're using with their data. And you'll usually find that they're using your data more than you'd like them to. But

Yeah.

In exchange, a number of services are given back to you that you might like. For instance, find me every picture of my daughter since she was born until now is a search that I can do in my photos album. And it will find her at any age through the history of her life and that they couldn't do without the access to this kind of data. And so you're kind of trading some privacy in any given moment for features that you want.

Yeah.

That's really interesting. And I think that really starts to sort of illuminate like, what are these topics around your data health, your data, you know, your privacy, right? Like what sort of, where are machine learning algorithms applied so that no one can ever access that data, right? Or it's the sort of maybe default hidden or default deleted, right? And we've been having a lot of these conversations, you and I just about like, what if you could push a button? It's like a magical button and literally a race, right? Like.

sort of everything about you, like on the internet or every, you know, sort of every one of those things where you wouldn't want someone else getting access to or finding it or another company and the entity. And it's like, I think we all have this feeling like the toothpaste is out of the tube, right? And so what is, what does data health really actually mean? What does privacy really mean? And where does it start to sort of like land with us? And I think it's more in like the sensitive material. And then there's kind of like a utility layer, like which entities

Oh yeah. Yep.

even have my information, right? Like, where is my information? What do they know about me? What is correct? What's incorrect? And what's something that I probably don't want just these generic entities kind of out there on the internet knowing? And it's, unfortunately, way more entities know you, know about you than...

And then you actually realize I use a tool called save mine, which connects to my email inbox. And I think that it's fascinating to see that the number of times that I've ever signed up for something or that entity has turned around and sold my information over years, which is now a bad practice. It's pretty interesting to see the number of people that actually have that. The last thing I just wanna touch on with Apple is that, this competitive advantage in data, it kind of reminds me,

Yeah.

a lot of different types of competitive advantages, but I think a lot of times what we see with big data, whether it's, we're talking today about some of the big thing companies, but even smaller companies, they see data as a competitive advantage. Whatever data they actually have, this has essentially become a new currency. I think that's how a lot of these companies is like, they're conflicted in...

really where we're going and where we should be going in the future, which is sharing that data back with users, right? Like entities should be completely transparent about the information that they have on you. Sometimes that's actually more of an infrastructure question, right? And like, how do we surface to users what we know about them, right? That's an entire department just in itself thinking about how do we get data back to users? Because we first have to be able

No, yeah.

So I think this idea of competitive advantage as it pertains to data, obviously, you know, Apple and Google are now some of the, the lot, you know, they know the most about us. And as we move forward, it's going to be interesting to see like what other players in the market not only have that data, but are now starting to make efforts to reveal that data or essentially pull back this transparency layer and help users understand what they actually know about them.

Yeah, I'd love to see a world where we have more access to the data coming from the inside, knowing how the cake is made. As I said, I am aware of just how hard it would be for a company to really tell you everything they know about you because they almost don't even know what they know yet until they need to know it. They're aggregating data in a number of different buckets, but they're not usually...

Yeah.

completely aware of what that data actually says to them until someone says, hey, can we use this data to answer question A? So then someone writes a query against the data set and keeps on playing with that query until they come up with an answer that might answer the question you're asking. And only then do you go, oh, yeah, that's useful. But I actually just realized I can ask a different question and you keep on going. You don't even know what your data says or what its value is until you ask a lot of questions against it.

Yes.

that can lead to all sorts of interesting outcomes that we would never have projected outside of ourselves in this space.

I think that's a really interesting point. Yeah, I was just gonna ask you one more question on this topic, Ryan, which is.

You know, there's like a raw set of data. And in a lot of cases that could just be like very mundane, very, very utility. You know, like it's like a table and I'm an ID and it's like, I'm associated with these things and like, here's, you know, maybe here's some of my billing and chipping information. But like, like you said, if there's not, if there's not like an intelligence layer there where you're like, how could this actually be valuable to a user that we give them their data? This exact thing happened to me. Um, I was really curious. I did this, like take back my data.

from Target and I had to wait like six months and I was like waiting I was like oh man this dossier on me is gonna just be so juicy you know like I can't wait to find out what Target knows about me and they sent me this PDF after six months they did send me like an update or something like we're trying and I was like wow this is you know this is very labor-intensive so I'm thinking this is gonna be like oh you know hundreds of pages on me of like all the products I've ever looked at

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I was like, oh, I'm really going to learn something about myself here. It was the most boring PDF that they could have ever sent me. It made, it might, you know, it was like gobbledygook. Like it might as well just have been, like it was such a waste of time. And so that's like this other interesting thing is like, as we think about getting all of our data, my question for you is, what do you think Apple's approach is going to be to giving you a visualization layer?

Oh yeah.

on that data so that there is a picture there that you could potentially analyze. What can we imagine based on maybe what Apple has already done? I have one thought, but I'm really curious to hear yours Ryan on how will Apple choose to, in their very Apple-y way, surface this information to users in a way that it can actually be valuable and useful?

So some data they already surfaced to you, right? Like photographs that you've uploaded into the cloud that you then can search, their machine learning algorithms have classified those images in various ways. You can say, show me every picture of my daughter kind of question, right? And that's how they're revealing that what they've learned about you to you by just letting you search their system for what their system knows about what they found in your photos and those kinds of things. In iMessages, those are more protected usually

but your calendars, your emails, things like that, they're different and your experience using that software will kind of reveal a little bit about what they know about you. But when we're talking about what they know about you related to your browsing activity, your cross website activity, your inter app activity, your app installation activity, all that kind of stuff, they really don't provide any kind of report to you about what they know there.

They don't really give anybody a report on that information. The only people who really can query that information is their internal organizations. And those organizations are creating products with that data that are primarily probably just used for them, helping them decide what products to surface to you inside the app store when you're browsing around. In addition, there's gonna be some sort of advertising components so that companies who want to get in front of more users can pay Apple to surface more frequently to you because you're a likely buyer.

So these but that the idea that Apple has any motivation or reason to give that data up to you in any Meaningful picture is very small. There's no driver for Transparency and data there's a lot of driver going on regular regulation and other places and just overall sentiment in the broader Conversational sphere of the internet around privacy. So there's a lot of motivation to constantly come up with new privacy stories

Mm-hmm.

There's not a lot of motivation for transparency stories that are driving them to produce reports of any kind.

Yeah. Or like creating a picture of like essentially what the internet knows about you or what your phone knows about you or something like that. That's really interesting though. So it's, it's interesting to think about the search bar sort of being this access is a UI component to all of, you know, all of the data within a particular, let's say, you know, department on your phone, whether it's your photos or your iMessage or the content somewhere else. So I think that search bar is, is really important.

Yeah.

As I started to look at Apple, I was talking to some of our advisors and I kind of thought of a couple things. Number one is what they've tried to do around your health data.

There's actually a pretty robust picture of your health now, based on what they know. Where it really lacks is you have to invest in these integrations, and connecting your watch, and really wearing your watch every day, and all of these other sort of connections and integrations. And so for me, the picture isn't very compelling. And I feel like this is an initiative that Apple has been working on forever. So...

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

That's sort of one sort of visual picture layer that I can imagine for data or would maybe be my blue sky desire, essentially, to be able to see my data in that way. But I actually realized that it would take a lot of investment as well. Unless Apple was incentivized to essentially make all those connections for me, I could see that happening a lot more with my single sign on Google, actually. That would make a lot more sense.

Yeah.

And then the, uh, I would say, you know, between the search bar, that picture of, you know, of that data health, like those are kind of the, the last thing was actually Apple pay. So I think if there was a world maybe outside of advertising, Apple pay is such a huge initiative. That's where I can see Apple going. Okay. Helping you see your ad interest or curating this picture of who you are on the internet and how you.

things because that's such a huge initiative within Apple. That's one more motivation that I can see being a driver of this. And so those are my guesses as far as what I think this might look like in the future. So to just wrap up Apple, we're going to now move into talking about maybe Apple versus Google and their approach and talking more specifically

Google, do you have any other thoughts on Apple before we move on?

I think Apple alone independently of themselves. There's there's a broader story among all these organizations. I will talk about so Apple would definitely be back in the story, but we can go ahead and move on from Apple from here.

Got it. Okay. So the dynamic between Apple and Google, that's most fascinating right now is Apple's essentially forced Google's hand, right? And that's something that we recently just talked about, specifically with the browser. And Google doesn't want to be hanging out there as sort of like the bad brother or not brother because they're not related. But this idea of like they don't want to be the bad guy, right? In the industry.

Yeah.

There's now some really interesting news that's come out, specifically aimed at Google. And we may even dedicate like a mini-soad next to talking about that. So we'll just kind of touch on it today. But Google is the other power sort of in this space right now. And it has to do with the changes. It has to do the access that they have within the browser. So, you know.

looking at all this and we're seeing these two distinct models, you know, Apple and Google, can you talk a little bit about the differences in the approach from Apple to Google? And, you know, and also I would say maybe touch on the motivation behind why you think that they're making these kind of two different approaches to the two different models.

Yeah, I think browsers not the only story, right? Like Apple and Google both make browsers, but they also make devices. And it's privacy in both spaces is a competition where the story, that's one of the big stories, privacy, the quote unquote privacy word. If you can put that in your marketing materials, that tends to win you some love from the audience you're trying to sell to. So every time.

Apple comes up with a privacy solution. Google is going to come up with something competitive because they don't want to be left behind as like the not private browser, which is what you were just talking to or private device. Same thing goes with the browsers. I actually think that the driver for both of these companies probably started with regulations. I think regulations around privacy in their devices were becoming intense and hard to manage given the number of countries that could potentially put different kinds of regulations on you.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

So I think it was highly motivated to get ahead of regulatory bodies before regulatory bodies started getting ahead of them and making decisions they didn't want them to make. Um, I think that in addition to that privacy browsers launched some time ago, like the brave browser and their distinct call was we are a privacy browser. Now, basically every browser by the end of this year will be a privacy browser. That as far as what we're seeing right now in the world. Exactly.

Mm hmm. Because that's in vogue, right? It's in vogue to be this, you know, to be building trust and transparency through privacy, and security. But that's also in direct conflict with the fact that the data that you own is your currency, right? And so it's like, this is a this is a very

Yeah.

This is a very interesting story to try to like stitch together, right? So it's, uh, so continue on sort of these models, the approach and like the motivation. So the initial motivation is maybe regulatory. Um, now how do we see that kind of playing out between the business models and their motive and the, you know, motivations, even just within the top level of the companies.

Yeah, I think we touched on this bit in the past podcast, but the, uh, you know, Apple very quickly jumped on the privacy bandwagon, just shut down third party cookies like years ago. They tried to roll it out slowly by like creating this machine learning version that would turn off cookies randomly and no one could predict how it would actually do it and when it would do it. And then over the years, they've been kind of turning the screws on tighter and tighter ultimately getting to a place where basically just all cookie, all third party cookies are gone. Um, that is a win for privacy.

by default, okay? So it is by definition more private. And Google kind of knows they need to do that too if they're gonna stay competitive and avoid regulation and all those kinds of things. So they've been working on it. Google though had to take a much slower role to the whole game because they were making a ton of money off of the lack of privacy. And until they could figure out a model in which they could still make that same amount of money and not lose major sections of their business, they weren't gonna just...

roll over and turn the app into a privacy browser immediately. So it's taken them years and years and years to come up with solutions that allow them to keep their business model in check. And at the same time, Apple has been like, you know, this is what we're going to do. We're not going to deal with anybody else about this. We're just not going to ask anybody any questions. We're not going to consult the industry. They just, Apple just made the change. Google's at least publicly trying to make it look like they're working with industry bodies to create solutions that don't just serve Google, but serve...

other businesses as well. I think the ultimate outcome of all this though, is as you boil down, what this really means, what it means is that the only system that is aware of the data that we actually need to do a lot of these advertising technologies and those kinds of things is just becoming centralized onto the device and onto the browser. And there's only two makers that really matter in the world when it comes to that and that's Google and Apple. And if that's the only place that information exists.

and they have an unusual amount of control or how that information is thus released again or used in the world. And even if it looks like they're being very open about it, at the end of the day, they have the ability to turn off and turn on whatever they want. So this is really a big centralization of power in the name of privacy. I'm not sure if that was the original intention of where they went when they started down this road.

but it's most definitely the outcome of what will happen. Whether they were searching for it or not, that is what they arrived at, is this ability for them to be the only players in the space that have the knowledge that they need to sell this kind of data.

Yeah.

I think the fascinating thing about Google is the amount of times I use Google per day that I feel like I'm confronted with these experiences, right? So from an Apple perspective, I talked a little bit about like, okay, I see it in the app store. When I maybe open an app for the first time, it happens one time where I'm confronted with a privacy choice. It's not very obvious, right? But now I've noticed like with Google, and I want to talk a little bit about

Yeah.

how this is really impacting, like users are really gonna feel this with Google for a lot of reasons. And the second thing is, I wanna talk about how you think this is gonna impact just the world of browsing on both desktop and mobile. So the experience that I've had lately with Google, just in the past month, have been every time I use my Chrome browser on my, well actually,

I think even on Safari, when I'm using Google to search, it says, it pops up at the bottom and says, do you want to log in? And this now happens every time I search. It's requiring me or prompting me at least to log in, just to search. And I'm not logged in on my Safari and I don't know how often those cookies are dumping out, if it's session-based, but it is every time now.

Yeah. Yep.

And every time I open a new tab or do a new search, so that's happening multiple times a day for me, at least. And then when I think about this suite of Google tools I use, right, all of my email is over there, right? So all of that data Google has, they have all my search, everything that I search for, because I'm using Google to search as well. And...

Yep.

And then I just recently noticed that they, especially on desktop, have had this new pop-up for ad preferences, right? Which is also feeling like a lot, like every website I go to, it's like accept all, denial, change your preferences. Again, it's just this like laundry list of privacy things. It's such, you know, no one's gonna do that when they're trying to like look at a pair of shoes, right? And so, you know,

Yeah, yeah.

It's, I think I'm really curious to hear, and like, what is going to be this tipping point where users start to say, okay, this is going beyond just this annoyance, right? Of accept all, denial on every site, right? Okay. Log in every time I search. Okay. Uh, now I have to adjust my ad. Now I have to tell you my ad preferences manually. Who's doing this? Right. Like, so where are we going to start to feel?

Yep.

the major like pain of this versus it just being, wow, this is really annoying. And I think the one thing that we can all resonate that, wow, this is really annoying is that these ad interests for banner ads that we see or search results that we see, a lot of times they're not super relevant, right? I do hear from a lot of users that retargeting is relevant to them. Like they feel like they see

They're almost like expecting to see those things over and over and over again until they buy. But a lot of those banner ads and targeting have become kind of just like irrelevant. Let's hope not like offensive. Some of them can be offensive. If they get, you know, the machines guess wrong on you based on like a search, you can kind of get into that. So my question is where is that tipping point for pain with users?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think the answer to your question is probably the thing you were going to ask me next. So you already know where I'm going here. But the...

Okay.

The change in the browsers, and by the way, anybody who's listening to this podcast, this is probably the moment that you, this is the piece of information you'll probably wanna share to your friends. So like pause it here, share this location forward. What's gonna really change about your browsers that you will detect as a user, it's gonna really cause you pain, is that, and you're already seeing this by the way, on a lot of websites, if you think about it now, you will find this everywhere. Every website you're visiting now is asking you to log in.

The reason they're asking you to log in is because before Apple killed their party cookies and before Google is about to kill their right cookies, we were able to watch what you did from website to website to website, as long as each website you visited partnered with the watching party. So if, if Google wanted to watch you, they'd have every website that they work with install Google analytics. And then Google analytics, when you went to website one and then went to website two would know that's the same person.

And they just went from looking at board shorts on this website to looking at wedding stuff on this website They're apparently a surfer who like who's about to get married right like that those connections they could make because they could watch you everywhere They go in This new world where third-party cookies are deleted Every time you arrive at a new website They don't know that you are the same person who was on another website just minutes before and more importantly It's very likely that if you come back to the same website

in a short period of time, they won't know that you're the same person who was here previously, unless you're logged in. And so in order for them to at least know that you're the same Kelly who came back a week ago, they want you logged in as quickly as possible. So it used to be that you'd go visit like a news article website and those news articles make money off of subscriptions, so they would charge you, you know, $4 a month or $4 a year, whatever it was to read their articles.

But the first three articles you read on a given day or a given week, you get for free. And then when you open the fourth article, they would say, hey, why don't you sign up for subscription to read the next article?

I definitely am still having that experience, especially on sites like Forbes.

But nowadays, what you're actually getting is before you can even read the first article, they're asking you to log in. And some of them are saying, and pay, or you get nothing. Some of them are saying, log in just to read this article, pay to read more than four. The reason they need you to log in is because they don't know that the Kelly who came back five minutes ago is you. If you came back four days ago, seven days ago, 10 days ago, then you return.

Yeah.

Right.

they don't know that's the same person. And so if they learned last time you were here that you clicked on ads of this topic or that you read articles of this topic and they wanna show you an ad related to that topic, they can't because when you returned, you look like a completely faceless, unknown individual to them now. And that means, yep.

And just to connect those dots to, right, the they in this scenario, to just sort of like break down the they's, the browser, meaning owned by Google, they have a way to use machine learning to connect those pieces together. But the entity, and this is, I'm going to ask a clarifying question. So the they's in this scenario that are in a problem of not having any advantage,

Yeah.

Oh.

Yeah.

content, you know, hosters, whether it's like a Wall Street Journal or Forbes, basically any entity out there that is, that needs this first party information, right, like from the user in order to do their job or continue to provide free content or, you know, something along these lines, right? And so,

Yep.

Can you talk a little bit about like, those are all the days in the bucket and they don't have this information anymore because they don't have pixel trackers. And they can't, you know, they can't essentially help stitch that information back together. And then, you know, the browsers are kind of saying like, you know, this, this they're telling this other story. But I think what we're learning about that is that they're applying some machine learning to be better guessers. Right. And let me know like what I have right about that. And when I don't.

Right.

Yeah, we'll need to pause on that one a little bit too. So, Google as an entity has systems that operate in different spaces of your life, right? There's the phone, there's the browser, and then there's like the Google Analytics and advertising information stack. And then these publishers like Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and all those guys and advertisers, they all come at you.

who you are, they interact with you directly from the website of the conversation. So they're not on your device by default. They come with the website and they try to learn about you from that side. So any system, even Google systems that come to try to learn about you from the website of the conversation is now blind to who you are unless you are logged in. And 100% blind already in Apple and very quickly on its way out to being blind.

Night.

on anybody using the Chrome browser. And already, and then there's some mixed blindness going on in Firefox and Microsoft Edge browser, but the two big players we're talking about are Chrome and Apple. So anybody, even Google, trying to learn about you from the website is now blind due to the physics of how this data works across the browser. The browser's not giving up information anymore. And so the they that I meant to talk about here is any advertiser, any publisher, anybody watching you,

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

from a third party on the internet context, not on your device directly. They, due to this blindness, need to know who you are in order for them to service you sufficiently. And so they will be demanding that you log in. That's why you can Google search engine on an Apple device. So they're not controlling the device, they're not controlling the browser, they're not controlling anything, but you're still searching on Google. It's still asking you to log in so that it knows, hey, Kelly was the person that made this search and it's...

Related to searches she made three weeks ago as long as she's not logged in. I can't make that link I know about the search she made right now, but as soon as she leaves and comes back I've lost that context unless she's logged in so you're being asked to log in a lot more You're being asked to accept cookies on every website you visit. That's more due to a regulatory situation But it's the same situation You have to agree to let them know who you are before they can do anything with you If the tracking is coming from the website

On the browser side, the browser is the entity, the tool, the mechanism, the technology that's enforcing that rule. It's the only part of the device that can. And so the browser by definition has access to the information. It's choosing to never give it up to anybody outside of itself, but we don't exactly know for certain that it's not still using it for something.

Google actually has publicly produced documents called the privacy sandbox that says this is how we're going to use it, but we're never going to let it give up data that's going to expose your identity. We're going to give up versions of data that let third parties know a little bit about you but not enough to identify you. And so the browser technically is the custodian of this secret. The question is...

Got it.

What is the browser doing with that data that we don't know it's doing? And that is where a lot of controversy is coming up in the industry right now, because when you mentioned machine learning earlier, Google is saying, hey, we are gonna solve this blindness problem with machine learning. We're gonna let this machine learning program that's really, really smart make educated guesses about who you are as you visit different websites. We're talking about the part of Google that's watching you from the web.

not watching you from the browser. And that part of Google is gonna use some magic box that we call machine learning to say, hey, this is still Kelly. And then they're gonna use that magic box to identify you and track you. But advertisers are saying, Google, how did you train that magic box? Because in order for the magic box to know who Kelly is, the magic box had to know who Kelly was.

Got it, yeah.

and then get trained on that and then go blind. It can't go blind first and then still know, right? It has to know and then go blind. And more importantly, let's say you're training on data only that's happened up until now, the longer you move away from the data that data is no longer available, the more that machine learning algorithm should be wrong because it's no longer using relevant recent information. So from the advertiser's point of view, that information or that machine learning

Ha ha.

Yeah.

Magic Box must have a secret knowledge source that they don't have in order for it to even work. Because without that secret knowledge source, this machine learning algorithm is just as useless as me randomly guessing if this is Kelly or not. And that's where the advertisers are making a good point. You can't, like just because you called it a Magic Box machine learning program.

Right.

Yeah.

doesn't mean we don't know what's going on here. At least we don't believe, we have a pretty good idea that program must be educated by something. And that something is likely secret knowledge only Google has.

Yes.

Got it. And that's sort of maybe where we'll touch on in the next mini so a little bit more on what's going on with this conversation around Google. Google at least being sort of there's folks looking at Google and saying there is a monopolistic potential story here. And so that's something that we'll talk about a little bit more.

Yeah.

Last question on Google really quick is, you know, how do you see this affecting the overall browser landscape, right? So just some really quick statistics. Safari is from a mobile perspective. Safari is now 25% of global mobile browser use. And we could talk about us specifically, but Chrome is 64, Samsung is four.

Yeah.

And then on desktop, Safari has 13%, Chrome has 63%. So 63 and 64%. And then Edge has 10 or like about 10 or 11% and Firefox is like right in the 6%. So how do you see, you just said, you said one really powerful statement earlier, which is like, by the end of the year, everyone is gonna be having to have some kind of marketing story and product story around.

privacy, right, and data health. What are some of the other, if you had a crystal ball, what are some of the other additional impacts that we're gonna see within browsers? Are we gonna see experimentation? Are we gonna see a rise of new types of browsers? Like, what do you predict?

Well, historically, most of the browsers that were spin-offs, that were independent from Google and Apple, the biggest story they would tell is we're a privacy browser. Now being a privacy browser is de facto. It's what everyone does. So by definition, their market share under that definition...

Yeah.

If that's your differentiating factor is just that I'm a privacy browser, that is no longer sufficient. So you're going to have to find differentiation if you're an alternative browser in a different way. Firefox is constantly working on that model. We've heard of Opera working on models like that, but not nearly as effectively. Brave browsers, I want to be watching the most because they were by definition the privacy browser. And now basically every feature they support.

Mm-hmm.

so does do the other browsers. And so they'll be very fascinating to see if they survive this or how they pivot to survive this. And then other browsers coming out, we've seen some interesting browsers kind of playing in the space. Haven't seen anything that I'm like, yeah, I'm switching to this browser tomorrow. There's nothing like that just yet. I have some ideas about browsers that we might wanna talk about here.

But really, this is a very young moment to kind of predict what the outcome here will be. But if you are a browser that's not a Safari, that is not Google, that is not Microsoft, you will need to find a new way to differentiate if your definition was privacy.

Yeah, I think, I think the one thing I've been thinking about in this space, and then we're going to move on to Facebook, but, or probably like a little bit more of a rapid fire round, um, on the other companies we want to touch on today, but I think one thing that we talked about earlier is that, you know, that search bar is really this access to, uh, you know, a backend wealth data somewhere, right? So when we talk about a browser, we're talking about

you know, accessing the entire Internet's worth of data. But I think if we look at other types of experiences, you know, one fascinating thing that I found is I use ChatJPT a lot. And to me, that just feels like another way to access the Internet. But obviously not in this like real time. Well, it depends on like, you know, three to five and four. But like the point is like, this is for me a different way to access the Internet.

but still be able to query a lot of the type of information that I'm looking for. And sometimes I find with much better results, right? Or the ability, it feels like a lot of searches are just like junk drawers, right? Like it's just like, this is more, this is the idea of, this is like, this is my analogy, right? So when I travel,

Yeah.

I don't like looking at Yelp reviews because inevitably, like the TGI Fridays in whatever city gets like four to five stars, you know? And I'm not hating on like TGI Fridays, but I'm just saying like, this is a terrible way to find a great restaurant, you know? Like if you're looking for an experience. And so I feel like that's like kind of what the internet has become. It's just become this like,

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

the most popular, right? Or someone that's spending the most. It's the most popular, someone that's spending the most money, but it's really appealing to the masses. And so for me, it doesn't feel like I'm touching the corners of the internet anymore. If I'm really getting down to the answers, it's also kind of this joke around WebMD. This is another example of this. Google any symptom you have and you're going to die. It's just this idea that like,

Yep.

Hahaha

whatever, you know, there's just, it seems like so generic, right? And just not, like you really, you know, have to kind of poke around and search around to feel like you maybe have found some unique information that is relevant to you. And so I think these other experiences where you can access the internet in a different way and start to think creatively, like through a chat DPT, or if I think.

even if we go over to something like a Pinterest, like a very visual browser, like that's a lot of information over there. Maybe not the internet's worth of visual information, but I think there are different ways in which we're gonna think about this window through which we're trying to access the internet's information. And hopefully that means that we're gonna have other experiences that can come out of that, that can start to create more clarity.

Um, or, you know, better practices around our data. One tool I'm using right now is also Arc, the Arc browser. And if someone asks me, what is the Arc browser? I would probably say it's a way to paint the internet, right? Or it's a way to like rearrange the internet in a way that suits you. You know, so I think they're a creative approach to really restructuring the internet the way that you see it. Um,

Yeah.

which I think there's a lot of manual work over there. It's very intuitive, but at the same time, it's a really interesting sort of canvas or sandbox to be playing in. And so I think we're gonna start to see more of those types of experiences from a consumer perspective, which I think will be interesting, you know. Okay, great, so we're gonna move on to Facebook, unless you have anything else to say about Google.

Yeah.

Well, just to bring up, just to kind of wrap up that story around chat GPT and these other things, this privacy change that's happening in the context of this AI space that's happening right now is extremely fascinating because AI is going to accelerate the deterioration of the internet's content.

Hmm.

I feel like privacy-focused browsers were already going to kill some of the best parts of the internet. And now with the addition of AI in the picture, I think that's going to accelerate even faster. And what I mean by that is the majority of the content of the internet is not housed inside of Amazon's website, not housed inside of Walmart's website, it's not housed inside of... A lot of people have made a lot of money and built a lot of followings online.

being bloggers or being news article writers or just creating content that you'd have to kind of search to find, but it would exist on these disparate websites. And there's a lot of brands who've gone out there trying to sell direct to consumer rather than have to go through a retailer to sell. And as privacy browsers came on board, a lot of these companies who were small, you would come read an article.

they would never ask you to log in and then you would leave was like totally fine. And the way they paid for is that this ad would pop up and that ad was relevant, at least reasonably relevant because it knew who you were because you came from another website a minute ago. And now those websites aren't going to know who you are. So those ads are going to become almost infinitely irrelevant unless those websites ask you to log in. But how many websites are you going to log into? Before.

Yeah.

You just stop trying, you know, you're just going to give up. And so a lot of these edges of the internet are actually going to probably die off because they can't fund themselves anymore if they don't know who anybody is and they can't produce proper advertising paid for all of that. And now advertising will be kneecapped really, uh, from being able to do that going into the future. But then you, you add that, you add that into the context of AI and you're hearing these stories of companies like Reddit.

It's gonna be... yeah.

who used to be like, hey, we want every written Reddit article ever written to be searchable by Google. So anytime someone types into Google a search request of any kind, they will find Reddit as the answer. And that was great until AI started answering the questions and not sending you to Reddit by knowing what Reddit knew without giving Reddit the credit or the money for the value.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's a great example.

Ha ha!

So then Reddit says, you know what? If AI is just gonna answer the questions that I taught it, and it's gonna take all the credit and take all the money and take all the value, then why would I give AI the answers? So now they've shut down their website to be visible from the search engines and visible from these AI programs. So AI right now, as we have it today, is about as good as it's ever gonna get. It's gonna get worse from here because all these shops are gonna close up their doors to AI's knowledge tree.

Yes.

and say we're not gonna give you any new knowledge, but that also means search engines are gonna find less data, and that means that overall, the number of things that you're gonna be able to find online are gonna get smaller and smaller because they won't be able to survive if they're public. And that's gonna make things very complicated.

Hmm.

You know, it's, this is fascinating, right? Cause it sounds like what you're saying is that this thing that made the internet free and prolific, right? Through this commercialization, right? Like we needed a way to initially fund the internet in order for the internet to even be a thing. Like that's how technology works, right? And so it sounds like it's becoming less free and less private in the name.

of privacy, right? And it almost sounds like you're saying the internet is going to shut down in sort of the version maybe of it that we currently know it as, or maybe the window through which for 30 years we've been used to looking at it through, which is the series of like, it's really the Google search bar with a listicle, right? Like a list of...

Yeah.

text and links and other things. And so it may be that we're about to see a bunch of specialized windows with search bars, right? That are dedicated to really streamlining the experiences that consumers or users are kind of looking for. So this is gonna be fascinating, I think.

Yeah, very much. We're 100% going to see a lot of the public part of the internet go away and the internet's going to become instead a login only experience. And so in the name of privacy, we have created an internet that is less private but more siloed. And that is, it's a fascinating outcome to what seemed like a good idea at the time.

Mm-hmm.

and has now shown its true fruit, which is going to change the fundamental DNA of everything we've ever done in this platform. So yeah, I can't wait to see how this ultimately pans out.

Well, this definitely seems like kind of the, the apex of the, of this episode, but I want to do a little bit of like a rapid fire round with you now, just to talk about a couple of other sort of entities in the mix. Um, so I'll talk really quickly. So I want to get your thoughts on Facebook really fast. So Facebook, you know, we're all really familiar with basically just, I think we can all feel kind of bad PR, right? It's just.

Yeah.

Sure.

The juju is not good. And now that we're starting to see, some of these reports coming out and basically saying, this is the lowest level of trust that consumers have in Facebook, basically like of all time, right? Trusting them with their personal data, how it's gonna be used, people deleting their accounts, they're just not using it, and things like that. So, kind of with this history of like data breach and misuse of user data,

Yep.

Where is, where do you see Facebook's future from like a commercialization standpoint or what do they have to start to get really good at in order to be successful or to try to rebuild trust, you know, with the maybe the next generation? What are your thoughts on Facebook really quick?

Yeah, well, I think it's quite evident that Facebook knows, let me rephrase that, that Metta knows that Facebook as a platform is on the decline in some form. And the reason's evident is because they renamed themselves to Metta and then started opening up all sorts of other divisions of their company, trying to create new products to be the new revenue source as this other revenue source dies out.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it's pretty well established in the world that something that was really cool in this timeframe usually fades out over time because something better that replaces it and then something better comes after that and something better comes like we don't tend as a society to continue to ride horses to work every day. We don't continue as a society to fight with swords or that kind of stuff. Right. Like we've, we've moved on from those what's in vogue today will not be in vogue in 10, 20 years. So it's smart for me to.

distance themselves from Facebook as a platform, which was huge in my generation and won't be huge in Gen Z and definitely won't be huge in the generation after that. And so you'll see other platforms coming out. That said, they still hold a pretty big market share of user attention for a massive audience out there. So there's a lot of revenue to be made still here. The big challenge that they will face on all of their products, that everyone will face on all of their products is that they used to use visibility outside of their platform.

to make their inside of their platform more valuable. And now they won't have a lot of that visibility. So any value they create will have to stay, will have to come from in-house and stay in-house. And so.

Kelly (01:00:15.43)

Yeah. And are you talking specifically about ATT, like the app tracking initiative, or are you talking about some additional like news or dynamics?

Ryan Hornberger (01:00:27.255)

So let's say that, let's say 10 years ago, Facebook, YouTube, platforms like that, wouldn't just decide what video to show you next or which image to show you next or whatever, based upon your activity inside the platform. Google might know, for instance, that you were searching about cars recently, even though all the videos you've been watching have been about football, and we'll show you a car video.

based upon this exterior knowledge and bring car videos into your feed for the very first time based on the fact that they know that you were searching for car information outside of the platform. And Facebook was able to do the same thing. They were able to say, hey, here's the feed of all of Ryan's friends and here's some other things that are kind of flying into the feed. But we are also seeing activity in these spaces outside of our platform. So we're gonna introduce content from inside of our platform based on what we know. And...

Kelly (01:01:05.845)

Yes.

Kelly (01:01:22.75)

And you're saying that this was a collaborative experience based on the browser, correct? Yes.

Ryan Hornberger (01:01:28.841)

browser activity was used to do that was used to inform a lot of this and that will be taken away from you now.

Kelly (01:01:32.198)

Got it. Got it. And do you think that Facebook will be able to, you know, make any progress in repairing the sentiment that maybe today's consumers have around...

you know, how they feel about privacy and data, or is it just kind of like, you know, what, what's done is done, chalk it up and we'll just focus on the next generation. Um, I know for me, my son's using his Oculus every day to play guerrilla tag. So, you know, I can see a world in which meta really thrives if that's the trajectory and essentially generating that relationship, resetting.

resetting the bar, right? Like with the next generation and maybe really leaning into digital goods and services or things that they can sell in a digital and virtual environment, right? I mean, especially around gaming, but you know, any other thoughts on is there a band-aid where there'll be repair or will they just essentially move on and focus on the next generation?

Ryan Hornberger (01:02:45.767)

I think that Facebook isn't fading because they weren't private enough. I think that there is a lot of bad press around them. I think Facebook probably faded because my kids know that my generation's on Facebook and my kids don't want to be seen doing what they're doing online by us, so they go somewhere else. Even if Facebook was sufficient, they're gonna find another platform so that mom and dad aren't there. And as the next generation comes up,

Kelly (01:02:55.058)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Hornberger (01:03:15.691)

Same story will happen. The next generation will come and the same story will happen. So if Facebook has any chance of returning, it's not with Gen Z. It's going to be with Gen Z's kids because Gen Z's kids might find their way back to Facebook to get away from mom and dad who hate Facebook. Right. And so it's really less about privacy and it's more about the branding of the moment and what platforms people are interested in and excited about. So we're seeing a lot of activity at TikTok right now.

Kelly (01:03:24.141)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:03:44.331)

they're going to face the same challenges that Facebook is facing with their inability to see what's going on outside the platform. So they have to just get really good about what's inside the platform.

Kelly (01:03:45.077)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:03:51.402)

It's not good. Yeah, it's not good. It's it's there. There are ever times, I mean, it reminds me of similar when, when snap charted started putting in a, in, in ads. I will never, I mean, there's like a whole other story I could tell about this right now and I just won't, but it's, it's so bad when you initially put those ads in, you have to have like groups of categories. So you know how to serve, which ads do which people at the right time. And.

Sometimes the advertisers that you get on the platform don't line up with those ad interests, right? And it's just such a poor experience. And right now, I mean, it is terrible in TikTok. It's starting to feel very much like how bad Pinterest was or is still, where it's sort of like one-off sort of Alibaba products. It's like, okay, there's some kind of weird...

Ryan Hornberger (01:04:21.309)

Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:04:35.882)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:04:45.014)

you know, drop ship products or something that I need to know about. I don't know. It's, it's really lame and, and I don't know how they're going to fund it with that, but that's, it's a poor experience. I'm sure they know that we definitely saw it at Snapchat as well initially. And so yeah, they're going to lose that visibility. And so I think, you know, consumers again, are the really the ones who are paying for all of this with just poor non-personalized experiences.

Ryan Hornberger (01:04:52.095)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:05:09.864)

Yeah, 100%.

Kelly (01:05:14.558)

You know, again, hopefully the ads are just annoying and not offensive. Although I've had that a lot lately, like, you know, do a search all of a sudden you're in a category of, you know, uh, need to lose weight, need birth control. You know, and it's like, none of those things are true. It's just like, maybe I was talking to my friend or, you know, my sisters or something about, you know, it's just like, now I'm in this category. And that's, that's where machine learning really fails us because it's just trying to make that direct association. It's a computer. It doesn't know.

Ryan Hornberger (01:05:27.316)

Hahaha

Ryan Hornberger (01:05:31.05)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:05:43.422)

And we as the consumers have no way to give inputs, right? Like we have no way to go erase that, right? Or just get rid of that. So it's gonna be a bad experience here. I mean, I don't know. We'll have to figure out in the next episode to talk about what are these solutions. Okay, so the last one, I think, the last two we're gonna touch on just really fast, Shopify. Right, so Shopify does have this ability to stitch together cross-domain data. They could be sitting on a goldmine of

Ryan Hornberger (01:05:49.383)

Right? Yep.

Kelly (01:06:13.078)

goldmine of consumer data, brand data, cross domain data. What are your predictions on how they're thinking about this and what they might do to be successful?

Ryan Hornberger (01:06:24.851)

So Shopify is a unique story because unlike Amazon, they built a pseudo Amazon that is served up on hundreds of different websites across the internet, or thousands, sorry, not hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of websites across the internet. I don't know how many websites they host. It's like, it's probably in the millions actually. But their Amazon they built is actually...

you know, an innumerable number of distinct destinations. And if you're on Amazon and you jump from product to product to product, you're in Amazon's house the whole time, Amazon can watch whatever they wanna watch and they can do whatever they wanna do with that knowledge. And no one can say a word because you're not browsing across the internet. Shopify built their model where all these websites were out there and for a long time it worked because the data they could get collect across those domains.

was still just about as useful as information that Amazon can get inside house. But now that this third-party cookie thing has happened, there is no longer a way even for a company like Shopify to know that Kelly who visited Shopify store one is the same Kelly who visited Shopify store two or even that Kelly returning to the same store is the same Kelly. They can't know that just as much as anybody else can't know that.

Kelly (01:07:47.914)

they log in or make a purchase, which I think is that sort of brilliant frictionless six code, you know, shop pay like thing or, you know, that's probably why they've made such massive initiatives. And now a big junk their revenue is their payment products, right? And it's, this is the life. This is like kind of a lifeblood right now.

Ryan Hornberger (01:07:50.099)

Unless they lock in or make a purchase. Yes.

Ryan Hornberger (01:08:04.361)

Yep.

Ryan Hornberger (01:08:08.319)

So login, credit card situations, and of big note, the Shop app are all mechanisms by which Shopify can unify their stores to get to a point where they can have the ability to get enough information about you to have meaningful experiences that are cross-merchant. But what that means is that the Shop app is likely to become an Amazon.

Kelly (01:08:16.405)

Yes.

Ryan Hornberger (01:08:37.715)

of some kind, right? It's gonna be another place where you go, all these products are kind of compiled into one spot. It's gonna basically be another new online retailer. And the advantage of that online retailer is that they're gonna be able to see which aisles of the store you browsed around and which products you took from each of those aisles. And no one else can be able to see that because the shop app is gonna be that retail space. And then if you're not in the shop app and you're visiting website to website, you'll likely be invited.

Kelly (01:08:38.234)

Mm-hmm.

Kelly (01:08:59.816)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:09:06.711)

to log in with your Shopify credentials so that Shopify can observe you and offer you services, but have enough observation that they can provide meaningful insights into what you might be interested in and point you the right products. So they have a very big challenge ahead of them in order to achieve this. But the only solution currently available by any browser to them right now is that they have to build a world that is more siloed, that is more Shopify exclusive.

If they want in that they have to create a walled garden in order for them to stay alive And so you're gonna see them continue to fight in that direction To the detriment of what we used to know them as and what we loved them as They're going to have to evolve their entire story to be more siloed just to stay alive in this new internet

Kelly (01:09:36.881)

in their walled garden. Yeah.

Kelly (01:09:42.711)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:09:57.622)

Super interesting. I was just in the shop app the other day because I think one of the utility mechanisms that they used for their MVP was the tracking, right? Like that's sort of their, that's how they get you. That's like their product-led growth to get you to download the app, which is brilliant, right? And I think Apple sort of saw that and was like, oh, we can do that too. You know, we can do the tracking and now they're doing the tracking. And it's interesting too, because I think Apple Pay has now become so prolific.

Ryan Hornberger (01:10:07.327)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:10:27.382)

That's in the, you know, Shopify is getting that data, but they still like, they're not suppressing that button. Right. So you have to either look for it. There's been times where it hasn't been there. You have to look for it on purpose, or you have to really do the drop down. Because they're just really pushing like shop pay upfront, which is essentially their way of getting that data faster. Right. Or earlier, if you happen not to check out or you know, whatever that is getting you to log in is the point. Um,

but I'm still using Apple Pay. I'm still using Apple Pay. And in that case, actually, Shopify still gets the data once I purchase, because they're gonna have the order history. And so from it...

when they're looking in the backend, right? When they say me, Kelly, they're able to stitch me together based on my order history, but probably not on my intent data, right? Which is sort of what we've been talking about with advertisers, which is all about finding new customers or selling new products that you haven't purchased or considered or discovered yet.

Right. So I think that's kind of interesting. That being said, their marketplace, like I was in there the other day. I'm just so disappointed by the majority of marketplaces right now in general. I mean, Amazon obviously does an amazing job, but. But the first picture, and I don't know if it was just because it's like Halloween coming up, but it was the first three products were weird. And I was like, what have I projected of myself? I'm getting these like.

Ryan Hornberger (01:11:45.16)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:11:56.963)

Hahaha

Yeah.

Kelly (01:12:02.33)

weird products and you know, it's just as consumers, we have that experience and we immediately know that someone has not personalized something for us. And then we have no ability to participate. You know, there's no invitation. It's just like, here's something we thought you liked. And you're like, wow, what version of me have I shown you that you think that is the thing that I want, you know, is nothing to do with what I want or my maybe my values or how I shop or anything like that. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's just

Ryan Hornberger (01:12:12.33)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:12:24.99)

Right, yeah.

Kelly (01:12:32.244)

the pointing. That being said, just to wrap up with Shopify, they did actually, and it was within the last one to two years, but they have what they're considering this new like CDP, right? So initially I thought this consumer data platform was something where you could get access to new customers, but for brands is actually only a way to see what's going on with like kind of current

with the data that you already know. So I'm sure there's like a lot of privacy in terms of like what they can actually share. But it's interesting to see that might be, you know, I would say the shop app is really the one area that we're seeing of like advertising, right? Of products really, you know, it's just recommended products. Okay, so last piece, which you've already touched on a little bit is Amazon. So...

Ryan Hornberger (01:13:17.117)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:13:28.998)

Amazon has an internal advertising platform that they've built up. It's actually, I think, pretty sophisticated because when I was working with them, you know, over the past like 10 to 15 years as a brand, we would have to actually buy advertising as a part of just working with them in a retail capacity. So,

So yeah, I think that's kind of interesting. And, you know, we, we now are seeing like, they have a lot of data on what we might want to buy, what we're likely to buy along with something, what we might buy next. Um, so my question is, you know, this is one of these walled gardens that we've been talking about, although I realized that when I'm using the, the web app.

Because when I'm on my desktop, I have to use my web app. And so I realized that Google is somehow getting, there's a transfer of that information, at least right now from like a retargeting perspective. And so, can you talk a little bit about how you see this rolling out, these different impacts that we've been talking about specifically for Amazon? Like where are they at an advantage and where would they also be at a disadvantage?

Ryan Hornberger (01:14:52.875)

So Amazon is probably uniquely, not necessarily 100% uniquely, but definitely is in a well-placed position to react to the changes that are currently happening right now because their entire business has been one big walled garden for as long as we can remember. And so...

Kelly (01:15:16.234)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Hornberger (01:15:18.167)

They've made little ventures into like installing checkout with Amazon and merchant website, something like that. But we haven't seen a lot of traction in that space. You still have a few merchants who do it, but nothing, it's not like you visit a lot of websites these days and see a checkout with Amazon button. I don't at least see that happening a ton. They try, but they're not pushing out there. So the business they've created, the money value they created has all been very much inside their walled garden.

Kelly (01:15:34.727)

Mm-hmm. They've been trying.

Ryan Hornberger (01:15:46.663)

and the search engines they've accomplished, and the vertical shipping solutions, and the tax incentive relationships, and all those kind of things that they've put together, all of that has been very much in-house. So the privacy move on the internet doesn't affect them terribly, because you never leave Amazon to interact with Amazon. You're in Amazon, you stay in Amazon, you're always in Amazon. There would have always been value for Amazon to know about your activity outside of the platform, and they never really took advantage of it.

Kelly (01:16:06.891)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:16:15.487)

It might have been a smart move on their part to be like, you know what, we're going to do everything we can to only use our own information to give our best services. That was probably some decision made early on that probably had a number of people who didn't like it that just went along with it because that's what the guy wanted, the boss wanted. And that ended up probably being a very good decision for them because the impact on their business is so small in this moment.

Kelly (01:16:15.553)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Hornberger (01:16:44.563)

So they're actually gonna survive quite well in this space. It's very much, the internet's gonna become a lot more like Amazon's. There's gonna be more companies trying to create the Amazon model now because it's the only way the internet will be able to operate, unless an alternative comes to market that allows the internet to continue to operate the way it used to. And so...

Kelly (01:16:52.385)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:17:04.442)

And I would say, Ryan, as we talk about these walled gardens, too, you know, can you describe that as if I was like five? You know, like, what is, like, if someone doesn't know what a walled garden is, what does that really mean?

Ryan Hornberger (01:17:17.267)

Yeah, it just means that once you hit amazon.com, you never leave it for all of your activity related to what Amazon's interested in you. And more importantly, you're more likely to log in because you know, you're going to do more than one action there. So historically on Amazon, pretty much anyone who uses Amazon buys like 500 products a year or more, something like that. So let's imagine that's the number, right?

Kelly (01:17:35.053)

Mm-hmm.

Kelly (01:17:43.482)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:17:45.999)

somewhere between 100 and 500 products a year is purchased by the same person on Amazon. So because you're logged, so you're gonna log in because that's just more convenient for you to be logged in. You probably have a Prime account so that you get free shipping. So you're very much locked into this space and you never leave amazon.com. So as long as you're there and you're logged in, Amazon can basically do whatever they want to do with your information. They can learn about you however they wanna learn. As long as their privacy policy says it's okay, it's okay.

and they can create a whole picture of their value to you through their own space. It's when you leave that things become messy for them. And when you think about other merchants that you've bought from like direct to consumer merchants, when you go to those websites, you oftentimes encounter this merchant probably for a very specific reason, you buy a very specific product and you probably leave and don't come back ever again. Maybe you come back for the...

Kelly (01:18:25.026)

Yeah.

Ryan Hornberger (01:18:42.483)

companion product or you come back for like a to rebuy the thing you bought before but you don't usually buy 500 distinct products from that merchant because they're not Amazon and So it's a lot. It's all these DTC companies who are really gonna struggle Because they are the ones that are having They're going they're being turned to blindness, right? And they're gonna have a hard time advertising and they're gonna have time being out there putting advertisements on their own site So just not gonna know who you are

But Amazon independently will be strong because if you're inside, you're inside their space. It's just like when you open the Netflix app, as long as you're in the Netflix app, you're inside the Netflix app and Netflix can do whatever they want. When you're inside the Amazon app, they can do whatever they want. When you're inside of Walmart's app, or you know, once you're in their space, you're in their space. And so the internet's becoming more and more like that. More and more like your apps on your phone. They're gonna be distinct.

Kelly (01:19:14.79)

inside of its own. Yeah. Yes.

Kelly (01:19:37.846)

And that's definitely something that we have seen too. And this is probably where we'll wrap up today, Ryan, but as kind of this app tracking fell out through Facebook and Facebook's ad efficiency, you know, just really started to deteriorate. And now we've seen this kind of in third party advertisers, question marks around, you know, Google, they feel like they figured out, you know, search based on your...

more immediate needs for lack of a better term and then like retargeting is like still kind of working. So that might change in January a little bit more as we start to see the full expression of these changes right, become implemented. But

Ryan Hornberger (01:20:17.588)

Yep.

Kelly (01:20:22.15)

We started to hear from brands that they were turning to platforms like Amazon, like Instacart, partnering with Target, like partnering with these retailers, which I think became an advantage where they had these walled gardens. And maybe they don't have as much data as like a Google, but

the data that they do have was like very concentrated. So I know these companies made concerted efforts to really get that data in shape, like really fit so that they could take advantage of at least their brand partners, like coming to them, right? And there's that advantage of...

You know, if we're going to work with these brands anyway, we might as well just tack on another 5% and they have to spend that money on development, right? Or like marketing, right? Marketing distribution.

And like, oh, by the way, we have this really effective, you know, advertising or, or you also might like or recommendation, you know, sort of tools or features that you can take advantage of and then hopefully that gives back, right? Like it's a one plus one equals three, hopefully like scenario within these long gardens. And so I can see, I can see how that's also, you know,

Ryan Hornberger (01:21:36.746)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:21:41.818)

after everything that we've been talking about, also become like a really effective strategy for brands because it's maybe less data, but higher quality. And then hopefully, you know, that sort of gives back overall to the partnership in selling something as these brands have been thinking about it. So, so that's any other thoughts today, Ryan, on what our, you know, what our listeners should be thinking about, should they, you know, start doing?

or a final thought that you want to just kind of leave with our listeners and then we'll wrap up.

Ryan Hornberger (01:22:15.719)

No, I mean, there's not much you can do about it right now. It will be something that we should be all watching because I think it does impact how the internet will be for us into the future. I'm very excited to see once this pain is truly felt internet wide, just what kind of fallout happens, but more importantly, what new innovation springs up in the wake of the destruction. And so.

Very excited to see where this is going to head. Keep your eyes on the news. We're seeing some fascinating stories coming out every day right now. We'll probably talk about this in another episode, but Google just got sued for monopolistic practices by the United States government, and there's a lot of complaints going on around this privacy movement and how everyone's having to log in now, I have been hitting on the internet right now. So it's becoming a very relevant story, and I think it's going to become

Probably the story of the next year, assuming that the election doesn't consume all the oxygen.

Kelly (01:23:21.646)

I have some more questions, but now I have just a small question. So if you're a listener and you're going, okay, are they turning like, you know, are they making a mountain out of a molehill? Right? Like why isn't everybody talking about this? If literally like the fundamental pillars of the internet are changing, you know, why don't, so my question for you is like, why don't more people know about this or, you know, why isn't this being seen as a much bigger change as you and I are kind of

Ryan Hornberger (01:23:24.864)

Yeah.

Kelly (01:23:51.418)

diving into this research, making ourselves experts on this space. Like, you know, why aren't we feeling this yet? Or why do we why do we not know quite yet? Like, what are the barriers to understanding how big of an impact this really is?

Ryan Hornberger (01:24:08.363)

Well, I think prior to the pandemic and even prior to this year, the idea of the internet becoming more private was an idea. And Apple had made this move, but up to 60, 70% of the internet is still on Google and Google wasn't private yet. And Google kept on saying, we're gonna become private eventually. We're trying out these new ideas on how to keep the internet alive while still going to this privacy model.

But Google kept on pushing the data out, and pushing the data out, and pushing the data out. So it became this thing in our minds of like, hey, it's probably never gonna happen. Google can't solve this, they're not gonna solve it. Or more importantly, it's not a problem for this year because Google says it's two years away. And then Google keeps on saying it's two more years away, it's two more years away. So we kind of just, I think as a collective society, just kind of put this concern on a back burner in some form.

I think there were a few industries that found this to be an existential crisis. And so they've been trying to come up with solutions that solve it. Those industries who were for thinking the only solution they've come up with is make the user log in. And that's unfortunate, but that's really the best solution they could come up with. And the rest of us, I think we've just kind of been like, it hasn't hit me.

hard yet and I don't know when it will and I don't know what to do about it. A lot of people probably have no capacity to solve this problem on their own. We really do will need innovative technological thinkers to come up with the new answers that will be outside of these brands and outside of these organizations for it to even succeed. And so I think this has just been a storm that's always been on the horizon that was never going

Ryan Hornberger (01:26:00.195)

I think a lot of people are still just like praying it doesn't hit and my best guess is that it will. And it will start, it's already starting now. You can trial the situation right now with your Chrome browser today. So in January, I think they said that they're going to push it to 3% of users worldwide and see how it impacts the internet for those 3%, but their intention is to get it to 100% by the end of the year.

Kelly (01:26:02.894)

I'm gonna go.

Ryan Hornberger (01:26:28.715)

Um, and so we, uh, we were about to, the storm appears to be here and, um, you can see the clouds and the lightning and the wind all off shore and it's, it's going to be on land here soon. So, um, I think that's why this is becoming relevant now because the storms have got to get really real. And as the fallout hits, it's going to become, um, probably one of the biggest topics of our generation. So, um, very excited to see where it rolls out.

Kelly (01:26:56.846)

Well, I think that's one of the missions of the podcast is to, you know, educate people on what's coming. And I know there's a lot of like-minded individuals out there, probably a lot of startup founders thinking about, you know, which slice of this that, you know, or maybe just like a unique approach to how to solve some of these problems, you know, really digging into one or another like pinpoints around that.

So it's going to be exciting to see what solutions really emerge or as we talked about towards the beginning of the podcast, what windows we essentially, new windows that we need to access the internet.

For me, that's like the exciting part of any type of massive change like this. So I wanna thank you, Ryan, for coming on the podcast again. In our final episode, we are going to talk about some strategies to help brands rebuild shopper identity and talk a little bit about shopper identity and also how to create personalized experiences on site without relying on third party cookies.

Um, and so I'm just going to do a quick wrap up. So thank you for coming, Ryan. I really appreciate having one. And, um, for all of our listeners, thank you for tuning into our podcast and YouTube episode. Uh, we hope you enjoyed today's discussion so you can listen to us or find us on Apple podcasts and Spotify by subscribing to our podcast called blind. Data.

Ryan Hornberger (01:28:09.083)

Yeah. Great.

Kelly (01:28:30.022)

And on YouTube, you can find the blind data playlist under our YouTube channel at whimwallet.com. Also, if you'd like to stay updated on the new episodes and exciting new content, we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast newsletter by visiting whimwallet.com backslash blind data. And by subscribing, you'll be the first to know all of the new stuff.

And for inquiries, I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, suggestions via DM. You can send me a message on LinkedIn or reach out directly to Ryan and I at hello at whym.tech. And lastly, if you enjoyed this episode and find value in our content, we'd love for you to leave us a review. They definitely help us reach more people and continue to create more valuable content. So.

Once again, thank you for joining us today and stay connected, curious, and until next time. Bye.

Ryan Hornberger (01:29:27.735)

See you.