April 22, 2025 • 23 mins
(April 22,2025)
ABC News tech reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Today, Mike talks about Google’s monopoly in the search engine market, FTC prepping an antitrust case against Amazon, and the weird new truck that Bezos is backing. Drones can deliver supplies on Mount Everest this season and it may change climbing forever. Education Department to resume collecting loans in default.
ABC News tech reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Today, Mike talks about Google’s monopoly in the search engine market, FTC prepping an antitrust case against Amazon, and the weird new truck that Bezos is backing. Drones can deliver supplies on Mount Everest this season and it may change climbing forever. Education Department to resume collecting loans in default.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
From KFI AM six forty Handle here. It is a
Tuesday morning, April twenty two. The big news we are covering.
Pope Francis is still dead and they are going to
be bringing him right He's probably on his way to
the Basilica, the courtyard in front Saint Peter Square, as
(00:30):
opposed to inside the Basilica where he is going to
be in front of the basilica, lying in state, which
is the other way of saying. They're parking him right
there in the basilica, where are in front of the
basilica where people are going to be passing his coffin
and looking at the Pope as he continues his death. Okay,
(00:56):
now it is time for Tech Tuesday with Mike Busky,
who is the ABC News technology reporter who joins us.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Mike is always thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now some enormously huge news which somehow has not gotten
well we know why it has not gotten the attention
that it should get because of the issue with tariffs
and now the Pope, et cetera. But that is the
trial of Google and the judge looking at it already
(01:28):
viewed Google.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
As a monopoly. What is going on and what is
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
This, of course, is the Google search engine monopoly case
decided last year by a judge who ruled that Google
was operating an illegal monopoly in the world of online
search engines, that it wasn't just creating a product that
people liked to use and therefore was popular as a result,
but rather was using its market power, it's billions of dollars,
it's troves of data with regards to how people search
(01:56):
online to muscle out competitors and make for an anti
competitive environment and therefore a less good competitive market for consumers.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, with that being said, let me interrupt for a moment.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
If the judge has already ruled that's the case, what
is this trial about.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This trial is.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
About what to do about it. Essentially, this is how
we figure out what the remedy of that monopoly is
going to be. This is expected to be a three
week hearing. It kicked off yesterday in Washington, d c.
And there are many potential remedies on the table here.
The Department of Justice is going pretty big in this case.
One of those remedies would be to force Google to
(02:34):
sell off Google Chrome, which is their very popular web browser,
also the driver of a lot of Google search traffic,
about thirty five percent according to the federal government. They
are also targeting some of the deals Hello hello.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh there you go. I'm sorry, we're we're glitching up there.
So at the.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Tech Tuesday, you know that's gonna come.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That's part of Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's a great time for this thing to fall apart
is on Tech Tuesday. So I think you had just
said that some of the remedies Chrome may go by
the wayside, and what.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Else Chrome could go by the wayside? Also, Google has
spent many billions of dollars striking deals with Apple and
Samsung and others to be the default search engine on devices. Right,
so if you go to the Safari web browser on
your iPhone, you need to type something in, not a
web dress or anything like that. You just type in
a term, You're going to do a Google search, right.
And Google spends many billions of dollars for that privilege,
(03:29):
according to the government, and according to a court, is
anti competitive because it doesn't give consumers the choice of
what search engine to use in that scenario. So the
government is asking a judge to force Google to unwind
some of those deals, and Google says that they're open
to that possibility of potentially renegotiating some of those deals,
(03:50):
despite the fact that they're a huge part of their business.
But they say that going any further than that, forcing
them to break up the company by selling off Google
Chrome and to crack down on some other aspects of
their business, would be going too far. So that's what
they have to decide in court this week. It's not
the only anti trust trial that Google is facing. Just
a few days ago, they were ruled to be operating
(04:11):
an illegal monopoly in the world of online advertising as well.
It's the second week of the Facebook anti trust trial,
and the DOJ is also leveraging cases against Apple, the
FTC against Amazon Bill. What this means it's a tough
time to be a tech executive in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Except there, Let's say they spin off these various companies.
Now they're competing against those companies, and obviously if they
are spinning off and getting cash, they're going to be
so cash rich it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
They're going to be able to buy entire countries.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
But do you foresee legitimate competition well, and will they
stay and will they stay in the business.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's a good question, right. We don't really know what
a future without a dominant Google search looks like.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Google has been making the argument in court that
spinning off Google Chrome would kill Google Chrome, right, that
it just needs to be a part of Google in
order to operate. There's also the question of who would
buy it, right. Google is a one point eight trillion
dollar company. A lot of that valuation comes from it's
cadra of services like Google Chrome. Who could afford a
(05:20):
company like Google Chrome if they were to sell it off?
And would that attract the attention of antitrust regulators? Again,
So those are the questions that are facing the government
right now. That's kind of what they have to prove
in court to this judge saying that this is the
actual only remedy. It's actually really difficult to break up
a company. That's not the way our system usually does things.
(05:41):
The plaintiffs in this case need to prove that that's
the only option, right, They need to take every other
possibility off the table before a judge would ultimately side
in that case. But even still the government is going
after them in that regard. Another big part of this
is search engine data. Right every time you Google something,
Google learns a little bit about you and learns about
(06:02):
the search engine habits of Americans. The Department of Justice
is also asking a judge to make Google make that
information freely available. Right now, it's proprietary to Google. One
of the reasons they say that Google has become dominant
is because other competitors don't have access to as wide
a trove of information as as ar Eagle does.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Mike Weird new truck out there that de Bezos is backing,
What is this about? Because I love new you know,
we have not had years where nothing new. We have
had years where nothing new has come up, and then
the last few years it has exploded with new companies,
new products, new vehicles.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So what's this one about?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, speaks to just how hard it is to build
cars in the industry. But thanks to flush you know,
VC cash, there are now you know, a whole lot
of new startups kind of floating around out there. The
latest one is Slate Auto and this is one to
keep an eye on this week. This is a new
automaker that's promising a small, all electric pickup truck for
just twenty five thousand dollars. There's really nothing else out
(07:06):
there that is a pickup truck that is twenty five
thousand dollars that runs on battery power. There are vanishingly
few cars out there for twenty five thousand dollars anymore,
and this is a pretty big promise. Tesla for a
long time was promising a thirty five thousand dollars electric vehicle,
but they were never quite able to get that over
the line. So this is a pretty ambitious project. But
(07:28):
even still, speaking of that VC cash, this company has
been able to raise over one hundred and ten million
dollars in Series A funding. One of those major investors
is Jeff Bezos, so some big names attached to this
and throwing their name behind this new company. What we
know about the truck is kind of sparse at this point.
There have been a couple prototypes, a couple mock ups
(07:51):
cropping up around particularly like trendy neighborhoods in Los Angeles
for people to take pictures of, but there's no details
on it. In fact, one we're was able to climb
under one of those models and discover that there's actually
not an engine in it. It's just kind of a
model that they've put there for people to look at.
We are expected to get more details on this thing
when it is officially unveiled later this week on Thursday, So.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
We don't know when it is coming out. Any idea
or the range or the actual price. Is that a
We hope to be able to do it for twenty
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I think we're going to get more information on all
of those fronts on Thursday when it is officially unveiled.
The target seems to be twenty five thousand dollars, and
they seem to be pretty committed to, if not exactly
that number, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Close to it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
In fact, one of the early reports here indicates that
the car will have optional air conditioning, which when was
the last time that you remembered optional air conditioning in
a vehicle? That seems to be a tactic that they
are using to get this thing under that twenty five
thousand dollars mark. It's really difficult, right, mass producing a
car at scale, especially when you're a startup, is an
(08:57):
expensive proposition. Right. You have to contact suppliers, you have
to spin up factories, hire workers, do marketing and all
that sort of thing that costs a lot of money
that's eventually transferred onto the cost of the car. Does
seem like there's some pretty deep pocketed investors behind this
company that might be able to absorb some of that cost.
But will this be a going concern will this be
(09:18):
something that lasts? I think that remains to be seen.
It's also going to be interesting for me to just
look at, you know, who is this targeted at?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Is this an everyday person's car. Is this designed to
be a commuter vehicle for people who you know might
need a small pickup truck like this, or is this
for work?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Is this for small businesses? Some of the mockups that
have been cropping up have had little attachments to the
back of them to go over the bed of the
pickup truck, a little sort of coverings, or they kind
of make it look a little bit different. So it
seems to be aimed kind of at small businesses and
people who use the vehicle for that purpose, But again
we just don't know for sure yet.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
How about those other companies that have come out. You've
got Rivian on, you have I'm trying to think about AID.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah. Lucid, Yeah, I haven't even seen a Lucid vehicle
out there. I've seen some Rivians.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, how are they? How are they doing? Is there
anybody succeeding other than Tesla.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well, there's it's kind of an open question whether Tesla
is still succeeding really. I mean, they have good point
to a point, but we are expected to get information
on their latest quarterly earnings later today. That's going to
be kind of our clearest look yet into the actions
of Elon Musk and whether that's having an impact on
his his electric vehicle business. With regards to Rivian and Lucid,
(10:34):
those kind of seem to be the most prominent electric
vehicle startups out there as opposed to Tesla. Rivian makes
electric trucks, Lucid makes an electric sedan. They are about
to bring an electric suv to market. I actually got
a chance to drive it last week at the New
York International Auto Show. It's a really interesting new product.
They are backed by the Saudi Investment Fund, which is
(10:55):
a hugely you know, wealthy investment fund out there, so
they have some some backing behind them. But again they're
not really making money just yet. Rivian, on the other hand,
has major partnerships with the likes of Ford and used
to be with Amazon as well. So it's really not
even about settling a car and making you know, a
margin on each individual vehicle. It's kind of about what
(11:18):
relationships that you're able to strike. So that's kind of
where they find themselves right now.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
All right, Uh, Mike, thank you always great information. You
have a good day. You do too, take care all right.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I want to tell you about Milan Milon Pandy, who
is a business person and.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
This has to do with drones. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
You know, drones are we're originally used for uh you know, observation.
They would be used for, you know, photographing for example
of photographing real estate projects houses. I use the drone
at my wedding to uh video part of the wedding,
(12:00):
and so they're used kind of it for everything. Here's
one that you probably haven't heard of. Milan Pandy has
a company that is using drone at Mount drones at Mount.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Everest and how does that work.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
He's a drone pilot and what he's doing is probably
going to change things forever on Everest and other high
very high mountains, Ladders, ropes, oxygen cylinder cylinders can be
transported via drone to aid the sherpas. The sherpa is
helping the climbers on Mount Everest. You can't do it
(12:42):
without a sherpa. The most famous sherpa real quickly neil
do do do do do?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Do do do do do the.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
First man to actually the first man to actually go
on top of Mount Everest.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Everybody says it's Edmund Hillary. It was not. It was
the sherpa. His name is Tensig Norgay. In case you
ever get.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
It up with the no sherpa, no shoes, no service.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Very good, very strong. In any case, keep me off
like nope, yep, nope. The Sherpas live up there in
the regions of Nepal and they are the guides.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
They navigate.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
They set the trial for climbers half for seven decades
and dozens have lost their lives. So pande Is company
is airlift Technology. He starts uh the local drone mapping startup,
and he says that using drones combined with the sherpas
(13:53):
decades of mountaineering knowledge, makes it safer to climb Everest.
Have you seen picture of Mount Everest during the season.
Right now, it's the season for climbing. It is at
the top of the mountain. There are hundreds of people
waiting to climb the mountain. It's like a new ride
(14:16):
at Disneyland. The lines go on forever and it's dangerous
because people wait for hours to get up there. So
base camp is located at about seventeen thy five hundred
feet above sea level. Camp one is at about twenty
thousand feet. The distance between the two points and you
(14:37):
have to go to base camp and then up to
Camp one, and then you go to Camp two going
up the hill. Of course, the hill going up the mountain.
The difference between the two points is one point eight miles.
It takes sherpas six to seven hours to make that
one point eight journey one point eight mile journey. It
(14:57):
takes a drone six to seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
To make that distance.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So if you think of drones delivering food, medical supplies, oxygen,
all of a sudden, you have a much safer way
to climb mount efforts. Have you seen pictures of these
climbers and videos documentaries, They go past all these dead
bodies that litter the trails on Mount Everest.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's really weird.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And they don't bring the dead bodies down because they
are dead weight, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
It's super dangerous.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
All of it is super dangerous. I mean, there's so
much garbage. There is so much garbage going up the mountain.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
They people, I think they found a body that they
believe might have been somebody who reached the summit before Hillary.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
George Mallory, British, and they did find him, and they
didn't know whether or not he actually reached the summit.
The last known sighting of George Mallory was seven hundred
feet below the summit and at that point they don't know.
And then he got fogged in and they don't know
whether he actually reached the summit.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And then he fell with his.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Climbing partner, Irving, and he fell and they found they
did find his body, and it was and think about this,
this was in the twenties, Brits.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
These guys are crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
All the BRIT's early explorers to the or the Arctic
and the Antarctic were all Brits and they were out
of their minds. So here goes George Mallory up the
mountain and he's wearing wool woolen clothing, hobnail boots, big hemp,
the hemp ropes.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It was they had oxygen, but it leaked.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It was almost a waste of time because the early
technology on the oxygen tanks, and that's how they used
to climb up the mountain. Today, of course it is
the various parkas that are made out of artificial material
and they're warm as hell, and.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You have the proper boots, and you have the ropes
that are.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Very very thin made out of nylon, and then the
grandpas that they hammer into the rock and its or
the crampons. That's it, and it's just a whole different
world in any case. So technology in terms of gear
that they used to climb up the mountain today is
(17:45):
a million miles ahead of what happened, what was around
in the twenties when George Mallory was climbing, And now
they're adding drones to it to deliver emergency supplies, deliver food,
also grab garbage from.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
The mountain, bring down used oxygen tanks.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Every drone can go up there and bring down sixty
six pounds of trash and they already have brought down
eleven eleven they've already brought down how many eleven hundred
pounds I believe, which is just a drop in the bucket.
But now it's going to happen more and more, the
use of drones. By the way, that George Mallory story,
(18:31):
I watched Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
That's how I knew that.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
I don't know how you do it. You forget the
most basic things. You bring your your iPhone to me
all the time. How do I answer email?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Again? You ask I can't charge my car.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
There's so much you can't do, and then you have
these dumb ass facts in your head from the twenties.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Okay, that's theirst plot. Well there you go, yes, you
lose the yes. All right.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We're going to end the show with the Education Department,
soon to be the non Education Department. And this has
to do with what the Trump administration is doing.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Two students who are in default.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
There are more than five million borrowers in this country
who are in default and owe money to the Feds,
because these are federal student loans that have not been
paid back to the point where already indeed at default,
which is.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
This defined as two hundred and seventy days without payment.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Now pandemic hits and a moratorium is put into place.
Biden puts in a moratorium, saying everything is on hold.
Interest is on hold, payments are on hold. And now
the government is saying, okay, we're done with that. It's
time to start paying back. And if you don't pay back,
(20:09):
we're gonna garnish wages. We're gonna take money from your
tax refund, which is what they do. And of course
there's an uproar. How dare you do that, you government.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Of the United States?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You Trump administration? Well, how long does a moratorium continue?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That's my question? Forever? So you don't have to pay
back your loan.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Boy, wouldn't you like to borrow money under those terms
where you don't have to pay it back?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Where do I sign up for that one? Because when
I borrowed money to go to school.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Damn it, they asked me and they forced me to
pay it back with interest.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And so here's the argument.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
You've got those people in favor of the students, former
students who say it's a different world today.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The mount of money you have to borrow.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
To have an education, to get an education is astronomical.
The chances of getting a job are minimal compared to
what it used to be. It used to be you
borrowed money, you went to school, you graduated college, you
got a job. It used to be when I went
to law school, you graduated, you generally got a job,
(21:22):
except I couldn't get one.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So therefore I went out on my own.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And because I'm a hustler, it's because I couldn't get
a job in any law firm.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And fine, that is the argument.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You have, too bad, what do you expect then don't
borrow the money. Figure out another way of doing it,
because allowing you to not pay or to extend, let
me tell you how crazy it was under the Biden administration.
If you paid your loan, if you made your payments
(21:56):
over ten years, the rest of it was forgiven.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
How do I sign up for that one?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So what the Trumpet administration is saying, hey, welcome to reality.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Real world where you actually have to pay back your
loans and if you're in default, we're going to go
after the money. So I completely agree with what's going on.
The Education department, well, it's not going to be an
education department very long. Well, what used to be the
Education department whose services will be absorbed by other agencies.
(22:34):
Is ending the pandemic area pause that began roughly five
years ago, and they're going to start the Treasury Offset program,
collecting debts by gardnishing federal and state payments, tax retures,
social Security benefits. Yeah, you know, pay your money, you know,
(22:57):
you know. There are programs that extend for years and years. Fine,
and there are programs that are set up based on
what your income is. Take advantage of that. But it's
still a payback. It makes all the sense in the world. Okay,
we're done, guys, coming up Gary and Shannon. Tomorrow morning
we start all over again. Wake Up Call with Amy
(23:19):
and Will Neil and I come aboard and of course
with the extraordinary and marginal help from Kono and Ann.
This is KFI. Oh, by the way, Pope francis still dead.
KFI AM six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
(23:42):
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
From KFI AM six forty Handle here. It is a
Tuesday morning, April twenty two. The big news we are covering.
Pope Francis is still dead and they are going to
be bringing him right He's probably on his way to
the Basilica, the courtyard in front Saint Peter Square, as
(00:30):
opposed to inside the Basilica where he is going to
be in front of the basilica, lying in state, which
is the other way of saying. They're parking him right
there in the basilica, where are in front of the
basilica where people are going to be passing his coffin
and looking at the Pope as he continues his death. Okay,
(00:56):
now it is time for Tech Tuesday with Mike Busky,
who is the ABC News technology reporter who joins us.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Mike is always thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now some enormously huge news which somehow has not gotten
well we know why it has not gotten the attention
that it should get because of the issue with tariffs
and now the Pope, et cetera. But that is the
trial of Google and the judge looking at it already
(01:28):
viewed Google.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
As a monopoly. What is going on and what is
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
This, of course, is the Google search engine monopoly case
decided last year by a judge who ruled that Google
was operating an illegal monopoly in the world of online
search engines, that it wasn't just creating a product that
people liked to use and therefore was popular as a result,
but rather was using its market power, it's billions of dollars,
it's troves of data with regards to how people search
(01:56):
online to muscle out competitors and make for an anti
competitive environment and therefore a less good competitive market for consumers.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, with that being said, let me interrupt for a moment.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
If the judge has already ruled that's the case, what
is this trial about.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This trial is.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
About what to do about it. Essentially, this is how
we figure out what the remedy of that monopoly is
going to be. This is expected to be a three
week hearing. It kicked off yesterday in Washington, d c.
And there are many potential remedies on the table here.
The Department of Justice is going pretty big in this case.
One of those remedies would be to force Google to
(02:34):
sell off Google Chrome, which is their very popular web browser,
also the driver of a lot of Google search traffic,
about thirty five percent according to the federal government. They
are also targeting some of the deals Hello hello.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh there you go. I'm sorry, we're we're glitching up there.
So at the.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Tech Tuesday, you know that's gonna come.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That's part of Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's a great time for this thing to fall apart
is on Tech Tuesday. So I think you had just
said that some of the remedies Chrome may go by
the wayside, and what.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Else Chrome could go by the wayside? Also, Google has
spent many billions of dollars striking deals with Apple and
Samsung and others to be the default search engine on devices. Right,
so if you go to the Safari web browser on
your iPhone, you need to type something in, not a
web dress or anything like that. You just type in
a term, You're going to do a Google search, right.
And Google spends many billions of dollars for that privilege,
(03:29):
according to the government, and according to a court, is
anti competitive because it doesn't give consumers the choice of
what search engine to use in that scenario. So the
government is asking a judge to force Google to unwind
some of those deals, and Google says that they're open
to that possibility of potentially renegotiating some of those deals,
(03:50):
despite the fact that they're a huge part of their business.
But they say that going any further than that, forcing
them to break up the company by selling off Google
Chrome and to crack down on some other aspects of
their business, would be going too far. So that's what
they have to decide in court this week. It's not
the only anti trust trial that Google is facing. Just
a few days ago, they were ruled to be operating
(04:11):
an illegal monopoly in the world of online advertising as well.
It's the second week of the Facebook anti trust trial,
and the DOJ is also leveraging cases against Apple, the
FTC against Amazon Bill. What this means it's a tough
time to be a tech executive in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Except there, Let's say they spin off these various companies.
Now they're competing against those companies, and obviously if they
are spinning off and getting cash, they're going to be
so cash rich it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
They're going to be able to buy entire countries.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
But do you foresee legitimate competition well, and will they
stay and will they stay in the business.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's a good question, right. We don't really know what
a future without a dominant Google search looks like.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Google has been making the argument in court that
spinning off Google Chrome would kill Google Chrome, right, that
it just needs to be a part of Google in
order to operate. There's also the question of who would
buy it, right. Google is a one point eight trillion
dollar company. A lot of that valuation comes from it's
cadra of services like Google Chrome. Who could afford a
(05:20):
company like Google Chrome if they were to sell it off?
And would that attract the attention of antitrust regulators? Again,
So those are the questions that are facing the government
right now. That's kind of what they have to prove
in court to this judge saying that this is the
actual only remedy. It's actually really difficult to break up
a company. That's not the way our system usually does things.
(05:41):
The plaintiffs in this case need to prove that that's
the only option, right, They need to take every other
possibility off the table before a judge would ultimately side
in that case. But even still the government is going
after them in that regard. Another big part of this
is search engine data. Right every time you Google something,
Google learns a little bit about you and learns about
(06:02):
the search engine habits of Americans. The Department of Justice
is also asking a judge to make Google make that
information freely available. Right now, it's proprietary to Google. One
of the reasons they say that Google has become dominant
is because other competitors don't have access to as wide
a trove of information as as ar Eagle does.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Mike Weird new truck out there that de Bezos is backing,
What is this about? Because I love new you know,
we have not had years where nothing new. We have
had years where nothing new has come up, and then
the last few years it has exploded with new companies,
new products, new vehicles.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So what's this one about?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, speaks to just how hard it is to build
cars in the industry. But thanks to flush you know,
VC cash, there are now you know, a whole lot
of new startups kind of floating around out there. The
latest one is Slate Auto and this is one to
keep an eye on this week. This is a new
automaker that's promising a small, all electric pickup truck for
just twenty five thousand dollars. There's really nothing else out
(07:06):
there that is a pickup truck that is twenty five
thousand dollars that runs on battery power. There are vanishingly
few cars out there for twenty five thousand dollars anymore,
and this is a pretty big promise. Tesla for a
long time was promising a thirty five thousand dollars electric vehicle,
but they were never quite able to get that over
the line. So this is a pretty ambitious project. But
(07:28):
even still, speaking of that VC cash, this company has
been able to raise over one hundred and ten million
dollars in Series A funding. One of those major investors
is Jeff Bezos, so some big names attached to this
and throwing their name behind this new company. What we
know about the truck is kind of sparse at this point.
There have been a couple prototypes, a couple mock ups
(07:51):
cropping up around particularly like trendy neighborhoods in Los Angeles
for people to take pictures of, but there's no details
on it. In fact, one we're was able to climb
under one of those models and discover that there's actually
not an engine in it. It's just kind of a
model that they've put there for people to look at.
We are expected to get more details on this thing
when it is officially unveiled later this week on Thursday, So.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
We don't know when it is coming out. Any idea
or the range or the actual price. Is that a
We hope to be able to do it for twenty
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I think we're going to get more information on all
of those fronts on Thursday when it is officially unveiled.
The target seems to be twenty five thousand dollars, and
they seem to be pretty committed to, if not exactly
that number, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Close to it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
In fact, one of the early reports here indicates that
the car will have optional air conditioning, which when was
the last time that you remembered optional air conditioning in
a vehicle? That seems to be a tactic that they
are using to get this thing under that twenty five
thousand dollars mark. It's really difficult, right, mass producing a
car at scale, especially when you're a startup, is an
(08:57):
expensive proposition. Right. You have to contact suppliers, you have
to spin up factories, hire workers, do marketing and all
that sort of thing that costs a lot of money
that's eventually transferred onto the cost of the car. Does
seem like there's some pretty deep pocketed investors behind this
company that might be able to absorb some of that cost.
But will this be a going concern will this be
(09:18):
something that lasts? I think that remains to be seen.
It's also going to be interesting for me to just
look at, you know, who is this targeted at?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Is this an everyday person's car. Is this designed to
be a commuter vehicle for people who you know might
need a small pickup truck like this, or is this
for work?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Is this for small businesses? Some of the mockups that
have been cropping up have had little attachments to the
back of them to go over the bed of the
pickup truck, a little sort of coverings, or they kind
of make it look a little bit different. So it
seems to be aimed kind of at small businesses and
people who use the vehicle for that purpose, But again
we just don't know for sure yet.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
How about those other companies that have come out. You've
got Rivian on, you have I'm trying to think about AID.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah. Lucid, Yeah, I haven't even seen a Lucid vehicle
out there. I've seen some Rivians.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, how are they? How are they doing? Is there
anybody succeeding other than Tesla.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well, there's it's kind of an open question whether Tesla
is still succeeding really. I mean, they have good point
to a point, but we are expected to get information
on their latest quarterly earnings later today. That's going to
be kind of our clearest look yet into the actions
of Elon Musk and whether that's having an impact on
his his electric vehicle business. With regards to Rivian and Lucid,
(10:34):
those kind of seem to be the most prominent electric
vehicle startups out there as opposed to Tesla. Rivian makes
electric trucks, Lucid makes an electric sedan. They are about
to bring an electric suv to market. I actually got
a chance to drive it last week at the New
York International Auto Show. It's a really interesting new product.
They are backed by the Saudi Investment Fund, which is
(10:55):
a hugely you know, wealthy investment fund out there, so
they have some some backing behind them. But again they're
not really making money just yet. Rivian, on the other hand,
has major partnerships with the likes of Ford and used
to be with Amazon as well. So it's really not
even about settling a car and making you know, a
margin on each individual vehicle. It's kind of about what
(11:18):
relationships that you're able to strike. So that's kind of
where they find themselves right now.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
All right, Uh, Mike, thank you always great information. You
have a good day. You do too, take care all right.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I want to tell you about Milan Milon Pandy, who
is a business person and.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
This has to do with drones. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
You know, drones are we're originally used for uh you know, observation.
They would be used for, you know, photographing for example
of photographing real estate projects houses. I use the drone
at my wedding to uh video part of the wedding,
(12:00):
and so they're used kind of it for everything. Here's
one that you probably haven't heard of. Milan Pandy has
a company that is using drone at Mount drones at Mount.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Everest and how does that work.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
He's a drone pilot and what he's doing is probably
going to change things forever on Everest and other high
very high mountains, Ladders, ropes, oxygen cylinder cylinders can be
transported via drone to aid the sherpas. The sherpa is
helping the climbers on Mount Everest. You can't do it
(12:42):
without a sherpa. The most famous sherpa real quickly neil
do do do do do?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Do do do do do the.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
First man to actually the first man to actually go
on top of Mount Everest.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Everybody says it's Edmund Hillary. It was not. It was
the sherpa. His name is Tensig Norgay. In case you
ever get.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
It up with the no sherpa, no shoes, no service.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Very good, very strong. In any case, keep me off
like nope, yep, nope. The Sherpas live up there in
the regions of Nepal and they are the guides.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
They navigate.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
They set the trial for climbers half for seven decades
and dozens have lost their lives. So pande Is company
is airlift Technology. He starts uh the local drone mapping startup,
and he says that using drones combined with the sherpas
(13:53):
decades of mountaineering knowledge, makes it safer to climb Everest.
Have you seen picture of Mount Everest during the season.
Right now, it's the season for climbing. It is at
the top of the mountain. There are hundreds of people
waiting to climb the mountain. It's like a new ride
(14:16):
at Disneyland. The lines go on forever and it's dangerous
because people wait for hours to get up there. So
base camp is located at about seventeen thy five hundred
feet above sea level. Camp one is at about twenty
thousand feet. The distance between the two points and you
(14:37):
have to go to base camp and then up to
Camp one, and then you go to Camp two going
up the hill. Of course, the hill going up the mountain.
The difference between the two points is one point eight miles.
It takes sherpas six to seven hours to make that
one point eight journey one point eight mile journey. It
(14:57):
takes a drone six to seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
To make that distance.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So if you think of drones delivering food, medical supplies, oxygen,
all of a sudden, you have a much safer way
to climb mount efforts. Have you seen pictures of these
climbers and videos documentaries, They go past all these dead
bodies that litter the trails on Mount Everest.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's really weird.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And they don't bring the dead bodies down because they
are dead weight, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
It's super dangerous.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
All of it is super dangerous. I mean, there's so
much garbage. There is so much garbage going up the mountain.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
They people, I think they found a body that they
believe might have been somebody who reached the summit before Hillary.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
George Mallory, British, and they did find him, and they
didn't know whether or not he actually reached the summit.
The last known sighting of George Mallory was seven hundred
feet below the summit and at that point they don't know.
And then he got fogged in and they don't know
whether he actually reached the summit.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And then he fell with his.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Climbing partner, Irving, and he fell and they found they
did find his body, and it was and think about this,
this was in the twenties, Brits.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
These guys are crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
All the BRIT's early explorers to the or the Arctic
and the Antarctic were all Brits and they were out
of their minds. So here goes George Mallory up the
mountain and he's wearing wool woolen clothing, hobnail boots, big hemp,
the hemp ropes.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It was they had oxygen, but it leaked.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It was almost a waste of time because the early
technology on the oxygen tanks, and that's how they used
to climb up the mountain. Today, of course it is
the various parkas that are made out of artificial material
and they're warm as hell, and.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You have the proper boots, and you have the ropes
that are.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Very very thin made out of nylon, and then the
grandpas that they hammer into the rock and its or
the crampons. That's it, and it's just a whole different
world in any case. So technology in terms of gear
that they used to climb up the mountain today is
(17:45):
a million miles ahead of what happened, what was around
in the twenties when George Mallory was climbing, And now
they're adding drones to it to deliver emergency supplies, deliver food,
also grab garbage from.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
The mountain, bring down used oxygen tanks.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Every drone can go up there and bring down sixty
six pounds of trash and they already have brought down
eleven eleven they've already brought down how many eleven hundred
pounds I believe, which is just a drop in the bucket.
But now it's going to happen more and more, the
use of drones. By the way, that George Mallory story,
(18:31):
I watched Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
That's how I knew that.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
I don't know how you do it. You forget the
most basic things. You bring your your iPhone to me
all the time. How do I answer email?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Again? You ask I can't charge my car.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
There's so much you can't do, and then you have
these dumb ass facts in your head from the twenties.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Okay, that's theirst plot. Well there you go, yes, you
lose the yes. All right.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We're going to end the show with the Education Department,
soon to be the non Education Department. And this has
to do with what the Trump administration is doing.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Two students who are in default.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
There are more than five million borrowers in this country
who are in default and owe money to the Feds,
because these are federal student loans that have not been
paid back to the point where already indeed at default,
which is.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
This defined as two hundred and seventy days without payment.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Now pandemic hits and a moratorium is put into place.
Biden puts in a moratorium, saying everything is on hold.
Interest is on hold, payments are on hold. And now
the government is saying, okay, we're done with that. It's
time to start paying back. And if you don't pay back,
(20:09):
we're gonna garnish wages. We're gonna take money from your
tax refund, which is what they do. And of course
there's an uproar. How dare you do that, you government.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Of the United States?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You Trump administration? Well, how long does a moratorium continue?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That's my question? Forever? So you don't have to pay
back your loan.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Boy, wouldn't you like to borrow money under those terms
where you don't have to pay it back?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Where do I sign up for that one? Because when
I borrowed money to go to school.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Damn it, they asked me and they forced me to
pay it back with interest.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And so here's the argument.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
You've got those people in favor of the students, former
students who say it's a different world today.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The mount of money you have to borrow.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
To have an education, to get an education is astronomical.
The chances of getting a job are minimal compared to
what it used to be. It used to be you
borrowed money, you went to school, you graduated college, you
got a job. It used to be when I went
to law school, you graduated, you generally got a job,
(21:22):
except I couldn't get one.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So therefore I went out on my own.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And because I'm a hustler, it's because I couldn't get
a job in any law firm.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And fine, that is the argument.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You have, too bad, what do you expect then don't
borrow the money. Figure out another way of doing it,
because allowing you to not pay or to extend, let
me tell you how crazy it was under the Biden administration.
If you paid your loan, if you made your payments
(21:56):
over ten years, the rest of it was forgiven.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
How do I sign up for that one?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So what the Trumpet administration is saying, hey, welcome to reality.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Real world where you actually have to pay back your
loans and if you're in default, we're going to go
after the money. So I completely agree with what's going on.
The Education department, well, it's not going to be an
education department very long. Well, what used to be the
Education department whose services will be absorbed by other agencies.
(22:34):
Is ending the pandemic area pause that began roughly five
years ago, and they're going to start the Treasury Offset program,
collecting debts by gardnishing federal and state payments, tax retures,
social Security benefits. Yeah, you know, pay your money, you know,
(22:57):
you know. There are programs that extend for years and years. Fine,
and there are programs that are set up based on
what your income is. Take advantage of that. But it's
still a payback. It makes all the sense in the world. Okay,
we're done, guys, coming up Gary and Shannon. Tomorrow morning
we start all over again. Wake Up Call with Amy
(23:19):
and Will Neil and I come aboard and of course
with the extraordinary and marginal help from Kono and Ann.
This is KFI. Oh, by the way, Pope francis still dead.
KFI AM six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
(23:42):
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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