Conversational Commerce: Google I/O

Brian: [00:00:20] Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Commerce. This is Episode two, I'm Brian Lange, your co-host.

Phillip: [00:00:28] And I, Phillip Jackson, your other co-host. And we are talking today about all things conversational. We're going to dive into some of the new tech that's hitting conversational commerce. And we're going to talk a lot about some of those Google announcements that happened recently. But I think there's a whole lot of things we can talk about in the show. But we also want to hear back from you. Want to hear about what you would like us to talk about. So please hit the Disqus box at the episode below and tell us what you want to hear.

Brian: [00:01:02] Yeah, we want to know.

Phillip: [00:01:05] So without any ado whatsoever, I just wanted to kind of, I want to dive right in because the last episode was just so chock full. Our inaugural episode was so chock full of information about what we want this podcast to be that I don't want to waste any time. Let's just get right in it.

Brian: [00:01:27] Let's get right into it. I like it. Sweet, well, I mean, let's get back to, I think, Google's recent announcements, I think there's a probably a little bit more to cover there that we didn't even touch on.

Phillip: [00:01:40] Oh, yeah. For sure.

Brian: [00:01:43] First of all, we didn't really talk about the new video chat at all, although I don't want to spend too much time on that. But it is worth noting they did release a new video chat, and I think it looks pretty cool. The weirdest feature about it... Well, and I can see the benefit, but I think it's going to take some getting used to. And there's going to be some embarrassing moments for sure. The Knock Knock feature. Did you see that?

Phillip: [00:02:11] Yeah. This is so strange.

Brian: [00:02:13] I get the idea. Like, you kind of want to screen people that are calling you.

Phillip: [00:02:18] Sure.

Brian: [00:02:18] Just to get an idea of what's going on. But I foresee a lot of like, nose picking happening on camera. I didn't really explain what it was.

Phillip: [00:02:30] Sure. Yes, please. For the unaffiliated.

Brian: [00:02:32] Right. So Knock Knock is the feature where as soon as you hit the send button, as soon as you hit the the Knock Knock button, if you will, you get on camera even before the other party picks up. And so you'll be on screen, and they'll get to accept your call or not accept your call but they'll be seeing you the whole time.

Phillip: [00:02:56] But they see you.

Brian: [00:02:57] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:02:57] They see you.

Brian: [00:02:58] Yeah. Kind of cool. Kind of cool. Probably not worth spending much time on, like I said before, but...

Phillip: [00:03:05] You know, so this is part of a new app complement that they announced. So Google announced two new apps that, you know, they're like sixteenth generation of chat apps called Allo, which then one would assume that if they have an app called Allo, the other one would be called Vera. They would be completely wrong. It's Allo and Duo and so Duo is the video chat app or the video app that you're talking about with that Knock Knock feature. And neither of them are available yet. You know, they were announced back at Google I/O and so neither of them are available. But you can preregister now on the Google Play store to get them. But I think if you are familiar with the current breed of chat applications that exist in the world right now, then Google Allo is going to be very familiar for you.

Brian: [00:04:05] Yep, for sure. And I think, though, ok, so, you know, I did a little bit of reading since our last episode, and I think I kind of understand I think a lot of people are kind of disappointed that, and we even talked about this a little bit. Why do we need another chat app? I think what this is saying about Google is that they believe in chat, they're investing in it more and they're going to be working in Google assist, right?

Phillip: [00:04:36] Oh, yeah. I mean, that's huge. Right? So this is something that Amazon kind of pioneered.

Brian: [00:04:41] Right. With Alexa.

Phillip: [00:04:46] Right. Exactly. And it kind of even started before that. I don't know if you remember, but the Amazon Fire tablet was kind of repositioned a couple of years ago as like the device for your older generation parents or someone who may need additional assistance. And so they would have like these actual physical live people who would assist you via video.

Brian: [00:05:10] Yeah, it was not just the tablet. It was also their phone. Oh, it was called Mayday, and yeah, actually I used it. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:05:19] Did you have the phone? Did you really?

Brian: [00:05:21] Yeah actually. So we did get a Fire phone at one point.

Phillip: [00:05:25] Wow.

Brian: [00:05:25] They dropped to a ridiculously low price and they had some pretty sweet specs.

Phillip: [00:05:29] You're in Seattle.

Brian: [00:05:30] Yes, I'm in Seattle, you know. Gotta try it. Gotta try it.

Phillip: [00:05:34] Right. Right. It just makes sense.

Brian: [00:05:36] Had some trouble figuring out how to like delete pictures, not just one at a time, but like more than one at a time. And so we gave maybe a little call. And let me tell you, it was a sweet service.

Phillip: [00:05:49] Yeah, it's impressive, right?

Brian: [00:05:50] Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:05:52] I don't think anyone is going to... No one could pooh-pooh the fact that, you know, Google is trying very hard to make their services, especially the next gen services, compete not only with the other major juggernauts in the space, but also to assist, you know, people that might need personal one on one human connection, if you will.

Brian: [00:06:16] Yeah, well, and I think assist has also got a lot more capabilities than their current assistant would. You know, the OK, Google...

Phillip: [00:06:27] Well, so I like their assistant at the moment. I like the spoken word. What is it the Google Now features? No, no, no. That's a yeah, whatever that.

Brian: [00:06:38] That's right. Google Now.

Phillip: [00:06:39] I like it. I think it's always been very fast. But I think having the next generation of like that on demand, you know, pseudo human powered customer service sort of an aspect and then assist being actual AI that's available in all chat contexts, right?

Brian: [00:07:01] Exactly. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:07:02] This is crazy. So this is a big departure. If you take a walk down memory lane... I don't know if you if you could even remember far enough back, but Google has been trying to pioneer in the chat space for ages. And even before Google Wave, there was, you know, Google Buzz, which was like a quasi you know, AIM meet's Twitter meets a very strange social network. And then they like, I feel like they got sued for that at some point.

Brian: [00:07:33] I think you're right. And then they introduced Wave, which was like I had a couple of friends who were like {with enthusiasm} Google Wave.

Phillip: [00:07:39] And I had a Google Wave inviting a super excited about it when it happened. You know, what's interesting is the technologies that happened with Wave, which could be actually a whole episode of not Future Commerce, but like, you know, old school tech. But, you know, there are some really interesting things that Google pioneered with that that never really took off. And I think that's sort of the story here, too. Google continues to pioneer in spaces, but they're four or five years early.

Brian: [00:08:12] There's actually a huge issue right now. Let's talk about this for a second. I mean, since we are talking about future commerce. Right? I think, you know, this  is a cultural thing right now. If you watch the most recent episode of Silicon Valley or maybe the most recent episode, that was actually one of the big themes like hitting the market too soon, doing something that's too advanced for your average user, even if it is something that is better and should exist in the future. I can only imagine that some of these companies have a laundry list of stuff and they're just trying to figure out if the market is actually ready to absorb them.

Phillip: [00:08:56] Yeah, yeah, probably. I think a good example of that would be, you know, Google Wave had multiple people able to all participate in a wave or a stream of consciousness all at the same time. One could argue that Slack and Google Docs both embody those ideas.

Brian: [00:09:14] Right.

Phillip: [00:09:15] So it's interesting, I think from a commerce aspect, the continuation of having, I don't know, there's this new paradigm, it's as if I'm having a conversation with you, but there's always someone in the room with us.

Phillip: [00:09:36] And so I think that's what the whole Google assistant is about, is having somebody having this AI that's always available. that's extremely intelligent, but it interacts with you in the same way that Siri would. And you can ask it pretty much anything at all, and you can even get contextual results. It will understand the context of the conversation and make suggestions based on the context.

Brian: [00:10:04] Yes.

Phillip: [00:10:05] So it's really interesting.

Brian: [00:10:07] Because that kind of plays into a little bit into passive commerce. But actually, further, I think that there are some things that I'm sure that Google is thinking about, Amazon's thinking about related to commerce, related to how to really engage people and help them, which is voice push notifications.

Phillip: [00:10:34] Yes. Which is, I think, something we're dying for in other mediums right now.

Brian: [00:10:39] Yes, absolutely.

Phillip: [00:10:41] If the Echo could do voice push notifications it would be incredible.

Brian: [00:10:44] Right, exactly. And I mean, I imagine a future where you shop at Trader Joe's, and you can keep track of your inventory for your house, via the Trader Joe's inventory app. And all of a sudden, you know, you run out of something or you have an upcoming event like a birthday party. And Trader Joe's talks to Alexa and maybe Alexa pushes it to your house or it ends up working. In short, it lets you know, hey, you need to pick up birthday candles. I mean, you don't have to do that with voice. But I think, you know, as we get closer and closer to this new voice controlled world, that that will happen.

Phillip: [00:11:37] Well, so, I was thinking about... I love that we can do this because the show is just going to be so great. We have so many amazing technologies that are just from a home automation point of view that the Alexa complement of devices can all control. I think when you pair that with other things like beacons, I would love to have reminders for things that are proximity based, like when I walk out the door to my garage, it reminds me to grab my wallet, you know, and maybe there's a near field tag or some beacon component in my wallet to tell me that contextually when I don't have my wallet with me. So those are all kind of interesting things.

Brian: [00:12:24] Will you need a wallet though? I mean, that's the real question.

Phillip: [00:12:26] Well, yeah, yeah. Right now we're almost there. We're almost there from commerce component, there's so many things that, you know, if you did have some of those automation tools that were available to you, let's face it, if Alexa can run on a on a Raspberry Pi, there's no reason why it can't run in an app on your phone. And so I think we're very close to...

Brian: [00:12:50] Well it does, it's just not...

Phillip: [00:12:52] It's not voice service in there.

Brian: [00:12:53] Yeah. Right. That's I mean that's the nature of not having a phone anymore.

Phillip: [00:13:00] Well so I think there's these very different battlegrounds. The battlegrounds in the text, like chat text window space are being fought pretty heavily because again, these are juggernauts. You have Amazon, Google and basically Slackis sort of this really interesting...

Brian: [00:13:22] Apple.

Phillip: [00:13:22] Right. Apple. They're all well, I guess... Yes, actually, exactly. Apple just announced all of that stuff that we just talked about in the last episode.

Brian: [00:13:29] Yeah. It's huge. Huge.

Phillip: [00:13:31] Everybody is using this. They're bringing the personal assistant functionality into the chat space from a text point of view. But the thing is, is that Amazon just doesn't control any... They don't control the places where we're chatting, whether it's in social network or it's in business communication. They don't control any of that from a platform point of view. So they are owning a completely different area of the market. And I think because they're Amazon and because they are a marketplace that is fundamentally based around product purchasing, that's a core of their business. All that is all transactional, I think, because that's the core of their business. People understand that that is... When I get an Echo device, I understand because of who it comes from that I can buy things with this. And I don't think people have understood that all of these features from Allo to, you know, iMessage and all of these expansions of AI or personal assistants available in text, even Facebook Messenger has this same exact feature that's landing. And so I think that as businesses understand that this is where people are, people will they'll spend less time trying to to gain social page views and eyeballs via social and social ads. And they're going to look a lot more towards providing apps and contextual and relevant contextual information that exists within chat applications.

Brian: [00:15:09] Yes, I totally agree. Actually, let's just a quick aside. We talked about how Amazon could partner with someone to get Alexa into hardware. What about a partnership with Facebook? Now, that would be insane.

Phillip: [00:15:25] That would be insane, though. I mean, why would they ever do that? We can dream for a minute. We could dream for a minute.

Brian: [00:15:30] Let's dream for a minute. Yes.

Phillip: [00:15:38] One way that they could get there is a strategic acquisition of, and maybe it's ok, forget Facebook. There are other chat services that are up for grabs right now. I mean, they could acquire Slack. If they acquire Slack, they would have an instant, you know, market penetration even if they went after...

Brian: [00:16:05] Amazon traditionally has not acquired. They do not acquire. They build.

Phillip: [00:16:10] They build. Yeah, they build. Unless it's literally Alexa the page rank service.  There's small little strategic acquisitions I think.

Brian: [00:16:21] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:16:22] Yeah. It's interesting. I would like to see that because the thing is, is that Amazon is a shopping destination for people on the web. It's, from a consumer point of view, it's just not a place where people, I think, spend any time outside of trying to make a purchase decision. And so, yeah, if they want to compete in this area that they're locked down to the devices that are running Alexa service right now. And those are all human interaction that exists really outside of text. Right? And it's amazing. People spend more time in text message applications and in chat applications, both in business and their personal use. I think we quoted it in the last podcast. It's basically four to one.

Brian: [00:17:12] Right.

Phillip: [00:17:12] We spend four times as much time in the hip chats and the Slacks at work, and we spend four times as much time in Facebook Messenger and text messaging than anywhere else. So are you on Android now?

Brian: [00:17:30] Yeah, I am. Yeah, I use Google Fi.

Phillip: [00:17:33] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. How long have you been on Android?

Brian: [00:17:36] You are on Google Fi too, right?

Phillip: [00:17:37] Yeah, I am.

Brian: [00:17:38] Yeah. Yeah. I've been using it for what, probably three or four months now. I love it. I mean the coverage is fantastic. Billing is really transparent. And my phone is awesome. And I always have the latest updates right there at my fingertips. I mean, it's fantastic.

Phillip: [00:17:56] Are you using Hangouts or the built-in Android Messenger?

Brian: [00:18:03] You know, a little bit of both. My company uses Skype. And so yeah, I think I tend to head the Skype just because that's what I use all day for business messaging. And so I'd say I spend most of my time chatting there. I mean, I also use the built-in messenger, of course.

Phillip: [00:18:31] I think that so I went all in on Hangouts about a year ago, even before I went to the project Fi with Google.

Brian: [00:18:41] Good move.

Phillip: [00:18:41] And it's interesting because the Hangouts integration, I was previously a Google Voice customer for five, six years, love Google Voice. And then, you know, having being forced to opt into Hangouts for using Google Voice for accepting phone calls and making phone calls was a real big disappointment for me. So, you know, being forced into Hangouts has been a horrible move for me. I've not liked Hangouts for the longest time. Hangouts got better. I think they had a little product rev about a year ago where they sort of like all of a sudden one day, you know, linked images would appear inside of chat, and they had like little emoji things. And it's like all of a sudden it became a...

Brian: [00:19:28] It's very weak though.

Phillip: [00:19:29] It's still pretty weak.

Brian: [00:19:29] Yeah, Skype is better. Let's put it perspective.

Phillip: [00:19:32] I understand. So I guess what I'm trying to get to with Allo is I understand the whole throw it out and start over mentality. If anything, just to sort of like get rid of the bad vibes around Hangouts.

Brian: [00:19:46] Yeah. I totally agree.

Phillip: [00:19:47] Yeah. And plus you know, Hangouts has been so closely associated with Google Plus, which is a thing I haven't said out loud. I haven't said the word Google Plus in like maybe three years. So I think disassociating it from circles and all those things, I think that's a very smart move. Is there anything that you're hoping to see from a conversational commerce point of view, from Allo?

Brian: [00:20:13] Yeah, I'm excited to see how Google Assist play in. I definitely hope they allow integrations with commerce in general. I mean, obviously, like Facebook Messenger has some beautiful examples of this. There's already a native integration with Shopify. I would love to see that for Allo, and not just Shopify. I think the market is kind of showing this. This chat, you know, this conversational commerce thing is not going to go away. It's kind of the opposite. In fact, it's gaining ground.

Phillip: [00:20:54] I think it's replacing.

Brian: [00:20:55] Yeah. It's going to start replacing things. You already kind of mentioned this. But at this point, you know, I was just reading an article from Greylock Partners. Let me double check this. It was yeah, I think it's Greylock. They were talking about how this is really what we're moving into is actually the conversational economy, not just...

Speaker3: [00:21:18] Right. Yes.

Brian: [00:21:19] Not just a piece of what we're doing. It's it's own new kind of ecosystem, new set of players, new set of money, new set of everything.

Phillip: [00:21:32] Right.

Brian: [00:21:33] And so all of the big players are making investments in this. \And that's just, you know, whether or not it's the best possible way, you can make a case as to whether or not it's the best possible way to actually make purchases. And I certainly think it is. I think it's a great way to make purchases. I think, you know, you can make a case against that as well. It doesn't really matter. This is where investment is happening. It is going to be a battleground among giants.

Phillip: [00:22:07] And but it's, you had said, this amazing thing. It's a battleground because the Giants are choosing it to be a battleground.

Brian: [00:22:16] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:22:17] It's not necessarily because... Well, I think it's obvious that, yeah, there's a lot of eyeballs there, but they're going to innovate there because everybody's going to innovate there.

Brian: [00:22:26] I think, yeah, to quote that properly, first it was an article from, I think Sara Guo from Greylock and then the idea of it being a battleground because big players are making it a battleground. And that was Benedict Evans from the A16Z.

Phillip: [00:22:45] Got it. Got it.

Brian: [00:22:49] And, you know, I think he's right. I think that if you don't have a presence in the conversational economy, you are going to miss out on purchases.

Phillip: [00:23:00] Yes. Well, let's think for a minute about the other Google properties that exist. And the thing that to me is the most obvious for Allo and for Google's Assistant inside of Allo. Google Maps. Let me explain how.

Brian: [00:23:19] Ok yeah.

Phillip: [00:23:20] Google local business is a massive thing for me.

Brian: [00:23:25] For everyone.

Phillip: [00:23:25] I use Google Maps to look for local businesses all the time. Now, imagine as a local business when you, you know, the business might be registered and Google may understand that the business exists there. But if you want to have, you know, if it's a restaurant, well, they've probably figured out where your website is and you don't even have to claim it yet. They probably already figured out your menu. They've already figured all of these things out. Sometimes I go to a restaurant on Google Maps, or I'm sorry, I go to a restaurant in person. I'm standing in the restaurant, I opened my phone and it's suggesting the menu to me on Google.

Brian: [00:24:05] Yes.

Phillip: [00:24:06] On my Nexus phone, I don't know if every Google phone does this...

Brian: [00:24:10] No, I have that.

Phillip: [00:24:10] All right. So on my phone...

Brian: [00:24:14] Oh we both have Nexus phones. Right.

Phillip: [00:24:14] Yeah. So I don't know if all Android devices do this or not, but where I'm standing in the world, it can tell me what the menu is at this restaurant. So here's an interesting play. What if the conversational economy, as far as Google is concerned, would be businesses have already registered with Google. They're already being understood and their data has been scraped and people already understand the menu. They know where it's located. How hard, honestly, would it be for Google? Forget scale, but how hard would it be for them to also just put a little button there that is a little button to Allo, and all of a sudden you're chatting directly with your local business and all of a sudden directly right there, you can give them money. Right? You can you can have a conversation. Google can understand it contextually. Google can say to the business, "Oh, accounting for traffic, you're 18 minutes away from this customer," right? No longer do you have to have the weird, awkward conversation with the pizza restaurant of, like, am I in your service area or not? No longer do you have to have, you know, the long, drawn out conversation of, well, what's your menu? How much does that cost? Can you give me a total? Is it cash or card? Like none of those things would ever have to exist any more because every single thing can be done with Google Maps and Allo.

Brian: [00:25:34] That's a fantastic point. I mean, it's not just limited to restaurants.

Phillip: [00:25:39] No, I'm saying just there's your oil change. It could be literally anything.

Brian: [00:25:44] Anything. Yeah. Oil change. What about people coming to you? Not just you going to other people.

Phillip: [00:25:48] Oh yeah. Inbound services.

Brian: [00:25:50] Yeah, exactly.

Phillip: [00:25:52] I mean, how amazing would it be for Allo to understand if you are a mobile car detail service. How incredible would it be to have like push notifications in Allo like push notification, saying, "There's a mobile detail service that's near you. Would you like them to to come to your house to detail your car?"

Brian: [00:26:13] Yes. Or cut your grass.

Phillip: [00:26:18] There you go. Exactly.

Brian: [00:26:20] Yeah. The last your service for your grass was X date.

Phillip: [00:26:25] Yeah. Google knows. Google knows. Google knows right now that I've been looking for a lawn service because I've been using Google to find it. Yeah, I've been looking for a lawn service. I've been looking for True Green because I must have a problem in my backyard. I'm sure. I've been looking for pressure washing services. They know that I look for mobile detailer. These are all things that they understand about me as a consumer. They know what I'm looking for. Why wouldn't they be able to suggest it to me that there are businesses locally who could do that for me?

Brian: [00:26:54] Oh man, think about this. And I've had so much accountability to like for businesses where you have your cable guy who says he's going to be there between X time and X time.

Phillip: [00:27:06] Oh for sure.

Brian: [00:27:07] Just track it.

Phillip: [00:27:08] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, from I'm just even thinking from the business itself, you know, when you're as a business, you know, if you could just opt in to like from an advertising perspective, how hard is it, honestly, it's pretty difficult right now to set up an AdWords campaign if you don't know anything about it. If like if all you have is an Android device, good luck setting up AdWords and targeting for Google Local. But you know what if you inside of Allo could say it's like Uber, all of a sudden it becomes Uber for local services. And you're saying, I am here with a mobile dog grooming unit. I want to hit all the Android devices in a five mile radius, and I'll pay one hundred dollars to do that. Bang. Everybody gets a push notification in Allo for those people who are most who highly qualified because they've been looking for things like that.

Brian: [00:28:03] And talk about a new revenue stream for Google.

Phillip: [00:28:05] That's a completely new business. That's something nobody is doing right now.

Brian: [00:28:11] And it wouldn't be that difficult for them to implement. I mean, of course I go and say that, but yeah.

Phillip: [00:28:16] Yeah, no, it wouldn't be infeasible for them to be able to accomplish.

Brian: [00:28:20] Yes, exactly. This is something that's achievable with current technology.

Phillip: [00:28:24] And you know what's amazing about Google is they've made us they've made us understand that these life changing, life altering services come at a cost. And that cost is the advertising cost. We are so desensitized today to Google's contextual advertising, like everywhere we are. Google Maps, well Google search results, of course. But it happens in other places, too. Like all the Google lead back campaigns. It's on every website. you go to. Google Ad Services. Google's ad service is everywhere that you are on the Internet. And so for ads to be built-in, not ads like what we're used to where it's just spammy advertising, Not just banner ads, but actual contextual ads that are regional, location based, and understand the context of the conversations you're having right now. Mind blown. That's conversational commerce.

Brian: [00:29:21] That's conversation commerce. That's right. That's the conversational economy.

Phillip: [00:29:26] Yeah, it really is. So I think, Allo is huge. I think the fact that Google is in this space is huge. I think the possibility that they blow this big time is huge because they keep blowing it with chat applications.

Brian: [00:29:41] Let's put this in perspective, though. Like if they did go after this, what could their competitors really do about it? I mean, who's their biggest competitor? Apple.

Phillip: [00:29:52] Apple. But Apple has the exact same market advantage. Apple has dedicated devices that are everywhere. They're ubiquitous. Everybody has them. They have their own map application. They have their own advertising.

Brian: [00:30:05] They're not, like the way that they think about data is completely different than Google.

Phillip: [00:30:11] It's completely different. Yeah.

Brian: [00:30:12] Yeah. I mean, they're all about security and privacy. That's a big major platform for them. Are they going to have to sacrifice those principles in order to accomplish this? I don't know.

Phillip: [00:30:25] I mean, they just killed off the Thunderbolt display. So at this point, those monsters will do just about anything, I guess.

Brian: [00:30:31] That's a good point.

Phillip: [00:30:33] I'm still reeling from that quasi announcement. So, yeah, I think it's interesting. Let's talk about bots for a second, because I think bots are interesting. I think bots are less interesting to me now, having had this epiphany about what Google as a platform could do for business and for chat.

Brian: [00:30:58] Before we go down the road of them not being interesting, let's talk about what they can do really quickly, because there's a lot of stuff.

Phillip: [00:31:05] I know. All that other stuff sounds really sexy to me. And the bot thing is incredibly interesting. But as a developer, I have this preconceived notion of what bots do. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I've been using bots in IRC for twenty five years. Bots are not a new thing to me. I think mobile bots are interesting, but it just feels and it smacks more of like I have to it's something I still have to go in search of instead of something that's just ubiquitous and always there for me. That's my word of the day apparently. When I have to go and install, as impressed as I was with the Google, I'm sorry, with the Apple iMessage, Curry Up Now restaurant order app. The fact is you had to go to iMessage. You had to go into the iMessage App Store. It has its own app store.

Brian: [00:32:00] Which is frustrating.

Phillip: [00:32:01] It is extremely frustrating.

Brian: [00:32:02] That is where I think Google, that is actually one of the big differences between Apple and Google right now. With Google, it's not going to be going out and sort of integrating with all of these different services. It's going to be Google Assist right there in your face, providing you with what you need.

Phillip: [00:32:20] Exactly. And I think to some degree, the quasi Siri type integration in iMessage will be similar, but yeah, this whole idea of an iMessage App Store just infuriates me because it is exact... We're repeating the same paradigms that we have today in other platforms. And it's instead of people building B2C catalog sites with, you know, now they have another option. And I think that this is just the new branded app of the 2009s. We need to get beyond that.

Brian: [00:32:57] And again, I think I totally agree with you. And I say that, I say yes, I agree. At the same time, I think that there is absolutely a place for this.

Phillip: [00:33:10] Oh, for sure. And I'll be building them. {laughter} I'm not saying...

Brian: [00:33:14] Exactly. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:33:15] Yeah, I'm excited about them.

Brian: [00:33:16] Yeah. Yeah no doubt. No doubt. But yeah I guess all that to say...

Phillip: [00:33:22] What are some of the things besides a shopping cart to buy pizza as a group? What in the world could you accomplish with a bot from a commerce perspective?

Brian: [00:33:35] So I think, you know, there's been some good examples of people putting bots directly on their site and kind of giving instead of having a site, it's actually just the chat interface.

Phillip: [00:33:49] Yes, I just love this idea.

Brian: [00:33:52] Yes. Very fun idea. Is it actually something that I think people should go and do? Probably not yet.

Phillip: [00:34:00] Is there somebody out there that you know of that's doing this?

Brian: [00:34:03] Yes, there is. Now, who they are...

Phillip: [00:34:07] While you look one up, there's a company called Drink Easy, which is one of those brand new sort of conversational commerce type startups. Drink Easy, is an online liquor store, but you can't get there and shop anywhere but through text message. When you go to DrinkEasy.co, you have to literally text a number, a 646 New York number. And it is a shop catalog, but you do it all through text message and over MMS. And so it's like personal shopper, quasi personal shopper meets AI. And so then you're like, you know, "What do you like to drink?" "I like to drink bourbon." "Oh, tell me about the kinds of bourbons you like," and then blah, blah, blah. So that whole personal shopper thing, and then it will proactively make suggestions for you, like what kind of whiskey do you prefer? It's like, oh, I have this, you know, this interesting one man distillery. It's just very, very cool that it all takes place over text message because it's already an app you have on your phone. Just think of when when somebody texts you, you already have their phone number. You sort of have had some context of who they are. It's very interesting because that is so forward thinking. And if we can bring that into the chat app space instead of just over text message, I think that's the kind of thing that I'd like to see more of because this is innovating like that instead of... Like they did this instead of building an online liquor store. They have no interest in being an online liquor store. They're breaking the paradigm.

Brian: [00:36:00] Totally. No, it's unbelievable. I can't find that store unfortunately.

Phillip: [00:36:05] Aw ok.

Brian: [00:36:05] I know. But yeah, unfortunately, I've burned through a lot. Really. I should have bookmarked it.

Phillip: [00:36:11] But could you like prognosticate for a minute and kind of think about the kinds of things that people might be able to do with a bot that's that's beyond just I think, you know, I'm trying to think of something that's beyond justbuying a mess of products.  

Brian: [00:36:32] Oh well I mean, beyond just buying, obviously customer service is right there. I mean, people already have chat apps on their sites that are connected to humans. But, you know, we can start to get to the point where people can't tell the difference between the human and...

Phillip: [00:36:52] Right. The Turing Test.

Brian: [00:36:53] Yes, exactly. And of course, when you hit that bump where the chat app freaks out for a second, you know, if it does, then you have a human jump in and take over and it's relatively seamless. And we were talking about how operator does this already to some degree. And I think that it wouldn't be that far of a stretch to do that on your site. I also think that there's definitely a lot of growth in this area as well that could happen. I mean, how hard would it be to sort of have a platform that recorded all of your chats, your human based chats, and then your human operators could flag different answers as something that they want to include in the bot because they know what's going to come up again or they've seen it again, or if something comes up more than one time and your software can recognize that, then that gets included in the bot. And all of a sudden, you know, as your humans interact more and more with customers...

Phillip: [00:38:02] Yes, exactly.

Brian: [00:38:04] You're building up this base of information that your bot can then spit back and you don't even have to touch it.

Phillip: [00:38:13] That's the bot, right? So the bot doesn't just have to be something that two parties interact with. The bot could be something that only one of the parties is interacting with and getting either cues about like scripted responses. Or would you like me to respond with this? Would you like me to respond with that?

Brian: [00:38:31] Exactly.

Phillip: [00:38:31] I think that would be a very, very interesting thing.

Brian: [00:38:37] Well, you can start a/b testing. You can start, you know, doing all kinds of really cool stuff on the bot, on the bot's responses. And eventually you can provide personalized responses.

Phillip: [00:38:50] Yeah, and I think personalized responses is the key. So like, from a customer support perspective, there's obvious upside, like being able to make intelligent product recommendations, but having a bot... So in the eCommerce platform that I use a lot, Magento, there is a view as an admin to be able to see what people have in their shopping cart or in the wish list at a given point in time. And so as a customer service rep, you can make recommendations or populate their shopping cart for them. These are things that you could do from chat that would make sense in context, because that's where people would be having the conversation with you.

Brian: [00:39:35] In fact, I believe that's what the Facebook messenger chat integrational Shopify can already do.

Phillip: [00:39:42] Oh really? Ok.

Brian: [00:39:43] Yeah. It can make product recommendations based off of previous interactions, which is just unbelievable.

Phillip: [00:39:48] Oh wow.

Brian: [00:39:48] But I mean, beyond just product recommendations, I think, there's lots of interactions that bots are going to have with humans. Obviously. Right now, what people are experiencing when a human knows that it's interacting with a bot is that they try to break it. The first thing they try to do is mess with it. That's what we love to do, you know? Right?

Phillip: [00:40:16] Yes. Exactly.

Brian: [00:40:16] And so, you know, especially as people are starting to interact with them more and more, I think there's going to be this wave of people kind of like playing with that.

Phillip: [00:40:29] Yeah. Which, by the way, that's what makes Alexa so unbelievably impressive. It is incredibly difficult to break.

Brian: [00:40:37] Yes. So true.

Phillip: [00:40:38] It's incredibly difficult to break. So I think there's just so much available, and I think coming in the future in the conversational space. I love that term conversational economy because it really is a conversational economy. I'm kind of thinking...

Brian: [00:40:57] Wait, one more note on that. There's a couple of things from A16Z worth checking out. There's a podcast called AI Deep Learning and Machine Learning, a primer by Frank Chen that is absolutely worth watching if you want to kind of dive into AI little bit deeper. And then there's also an article by Benedict Evans. Actually I already mentioned this. This article is called AI, Apple, and Google, published on June 23rd on his website. And that's absolutely worth checking out. If you want to kind of dive a little bit deeper into the difference between bots and AI and a philosophical, well, not philosophical but practical difference between them and then also sort of a philosophical conversation about AI.

Phillip: [00:41:48] Is that in any way related to that video that you sent me from Andreessen Horowitz?

Brian: [00:41:54] Yeah. That's actually one of them. That's the podcast video. That was the first one I mentioned. The second one from Benedict Evans is another article. Yep. Yep.

Phillip: [00:42:07] Yeah, very cool. I do think there's a lot of really interesting things that can happen there. I think in a different way... So these are all been like sort of consumer facing discussions. I think that there's this explosion of speech recognition that are these technologies that really we're only being given access to as these very closed APIs of the text voice recognition service happens. It's powered in the Cloud, and it just gives you the recognized result. And you have to parse that yourself.

Brian: [00:42:48] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:42:48] It would be very interesting to see a licensed or a service, perhaps like this would be a perfect Amazon service, to take the Alexa voice service and to be able to use the voice recognition power that it has to be able to feed in your own audio streams instead of having to interact through one of its own human input devices. A great example of this would be a call center that wants to take all of its archives, have speech recognition applied to it, and then be able to do data mine it for all the conversational points to be able to build profiles about a customer.

Brian: [00:43:29] That is crazy amazing.

Phillip: [00:43:30] Everything from mood and tone and attitude to like use of vocabulary. You could create some really interesting customer segments from a business point of view based on someone's use of and command of the English language that could signal someone's educational level. It could signal a lot about, you know, someone's accent, could signal where they're from or where they may live and be able to help you sort of regionally target further advertising or any sort of future communication with the customer. You can sort of learn through interaction what a customer either is wanting or calling for, things that they could, you know, potentially, things that would mitigate a potentially stressful situation, like the types of remediation that usually lead to pacify a customer who is irate. These are all things that I think would be incredible real time services for a company like Amazon who already has the technology, they would just have to open it up to it as a paid, like just like they've done with the machine learning service that they provide.

Brian: [00:44:41] Right.

Phillip: [00:44:42] Provide the voice recognition service for custom voice input and be able to then use that data real time to be able to feed that information back through various chat application or through some custom API that you might build that would be able to give guidance and direction and feedback to someone who's having a real time conversation. Those are all very interesting applications of conversational opportunities, I think.

Brian: [00:45:13] Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. It's just I think, you know, so much is happening right now.

Phillip: [00:45:25] Yeah.

Brian: [00:45:25] And it's so many breakthroughs, I feel like right now that are kind of starting to come together. I just think that there's going to be a lot of stuff that happens that we're going to get really excited about. And it's going to kind of disappear. And then there's going to be a lot of stuff that we're super excited about right now that's going to be around for years, like it's going to power our lives.

Phillip: [00:45:48] Well, I think there are some that are already powering our lives and we're just not aware. I think Watson is a good example of that.

Brian: [00:45:53] Watson is a great example of that. Yes.

Phillip: [00:45:55] Yeah. I mean, you know more about Watson than I do.

Brian: [00:45:58] Well I don't know that much about Watson,

Phillip: [00:46:00] Some of the things you were hinting at to me about the way that Watson is being used in industrial applications is a kind of an incredible thing.

Brian: [00:46:07] Yes. Well, I mean, it's not just Watson. Also GE. GE is doing crazy stuff right now.

Phillip: [00:46:17] Oh yeah. GE out of nowhere, out of left field has decided that they're going to get into this, as well. Incredible.

Brian: [00:46:24] And create sort of like this industrial Internet, like it's going to be processing more data than the Internet as we know it today all by itself. That's what they're predicting, which is just insane. Their predicts platform, is that right?

Phillip: [00:46:51] Yeah.

Brian: [00:46:52] Yeah, they're like right now, one of their customers is BP, and they're tracking all of the data.

Phillip: [00:47:03] Tiny little company.

Brian: [00:47:04] All of the centers of all the sensors for all oil extraction and refining that they do throughout the whole world, which is so much data all by itself. And that's just one of their customers. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:47:24] BP stands for Brexit Petroleum, I think. {laughter}

Brian: [00:47:30] Oh, yes. For those of you that don't know what... {laughter} Brexit Petroleum. I like that.

Phillip: [00:47:39] See, it's contextual conversation we're having. This is it. We're in the future. It's very, very interesting stuff there. I think, you know, from an industrial application, I'd love to have somebody on the show who could speak to that sort of stuff with some sort of a point of view.

Brian: [00:47:59] Yeah. Authority.

Phillip: [00:48:00] Authority and some point of view from within that end.

Brian: [00:48:01] Totally. So speaking of which, that is something that's going to happen on this show. We are going to be getting some fantastic guests on here.

Phillip: [00:48:11] Yeah.

Brian: [00:48:12] To talk about things that we just don't know as well. I'm hoping that we can get somebody to talk about Watson. I think there's just so much there. It would be great to sort of kind of discover what Watson can accomplish together with our listeners. Can be really, really cool. So hopefully that's something we can bring about here shortly.

Phillip: [00:48:35] Yeah. And I think that we would actually even want to turn it over to our listeners to say we want to hear the sort of things that you were doing in the realm, not just in context of this show, conversational commerce. How are you using it? How is it changing the way that you do business? What are you doing to plan for the future, to make use of the new technologies that are right here and available today to reach your customers in a new way? But also in a broader sense, what are you doing to prepare yourself for the future of commerce and all of the changes that are happening in the world around us? What is your take? We want to hear from you. And so you can leave us that feedback at FutureCommerce.fm, probably where you're listening to this right now. Just scroll down to the bottom and and leave some feedback in the Disqus box.

Brian: [00:49:24] That would be great. Man, we didn't even touch on Google Home. I wanted to get to that.

Phillip: [00:49:30] Oh, ok. Oh, wait, let's do that for a second.

Brian: [00:49:33] Ok good. Because I was really hoping to talk about that today.

Phillip: [00:49:35] I thought we were going to wrap up, but I have one last thing to say. I read this incredible article on CNET, which is not a also phrase not uttered in the last three years. I read this great article on CNET, which was an interview with the former CEO of Nest, who had suffered an ouster recently. So Nest is part of that acquisition from Google to sort of complement its home line of products. And Nest is popular because Nest thermostats are popular and, you know, very, very interesting devices, but the Nest smoke alarm a little less exciting. I have one and a little less exciting. And then the whole idea of these these products all complementing each other and being used together in sort of like a connected home, Google, you know, Google connected home, sort of a point of view. Those things never really came to be because of a lot of internal turmoil and struggle at Nest. They have many, many products that Nest had been supposedly iterating on for years that the Google Home team were surpassing them on. Nest squandered their massive lead in the market by never really being able to get out of their own way. And they've had a lot of shake up there.

Brian: [00:50:55] Not hard to do by the way.

Phillip: [00:50:56] Oh, it's very easy to do. {laughter} It's very easy to get mired in your prior successes and then stall out, you know. Lord knows I'm guilty of that myself in some regard. So I would say, you know, the fact that Google Home is being touted here, we're seeing devices like the On Hub, which is like Wi-Fi router meets voice assistant, which is basically the shot back across the bow of the Amazon and the Echo devices.

Brian: [00:51:27] Well, it's not that great of a shot. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:51:36] {laughter} Well, probably not. You know what's I think a compelling thing, though, is that if you are in the router, if you're in the market to buy a new router...

Brian: [00:51:46] Well it is definitely in the router space, no doubt. No, but the real shot that Google is taking is their unreleased device that's coming out here. That's going to be really beautiful. It's going to come and I think it's going to have a different colors. Isn't that right?

Phillip: [00:52:01] What is it? Oh, it's the Home device?

Brian: [00:52:03] The Home device. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:52:05] Isn't that part of the On Hub thing, though?

Brian: [00:52:07] I think On Hub is its own thing if I recall correctly. I could be wrong about that. We should verify and let our listeners know in the next episode. But yeah. Yeah, I think I think they're going to be releasing it as a standalone device, if I recall correctly.

Phillip: [00:52:24] Ok, I mean, that makes sense. I think that would make... Oh I don't know. It would make some sense.

Brian: [00:52:29] I think it would make a ton of sense actually.

Phillip: [00:52:32] Yeah. You know what? I just can't help but think, so when you look at these devices like they're really nice, they're kind of design-y, and they've got this really weird, angled top, like they all kind of have this like sort of similar look to them, which kind of looks like an air freshener, like a really futuristic air freshener. It makes me think back to do you remember the Nexus Q? Do you remember that?

Brian: [00:53:04] I don't remember that. That's pushing back.

Phillip: [00:53:05] Google announced a few years ago at I/O, I think it was like 2012 they announced at Google I/O that they were creating a Nexus device for home theater, and it was like this little round metallic sphere that had a bunch of. I swear to you. I swear to you.

Brian: [00:53:22] Oh my gosh.

Phillip: [00:53:23] It had a bunch of like High-Fi connections in the back and like an Ethernet cable.

Brian: [00:53:27] This is Future Commerce not like past failure of... {laughter}

Phillip: [00:53:32] OK, all right. It's amazing, though, because it was kind of a crap device. It was supposed to be sold for like three hundred bucks. It was like them kind of getting into the quasi TiVo space, plus some High-Fi audio something. The thing is, is that was much maligned. You know, everyone's like the Apple TV is way better. This is three hundred dollars. Who the heck wants this? It's a sphere.

Brian: [00:53:55] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:53:56] And eventually following criticism, they decided they were never actually going to release the device. That gave way to the Chromecast, right?

Brian: [00:54:04] Right.

Phillip: [00:54:05] And the Chromecast is a phenomenal device. So I'm really curious if the On Hub and Google Home plays, which now are sort of forging ahead without Nest, I'm really curious if those will ever actually bear any fruit or if they'll give way to better products.

Brian: [00:54:23] I think they will. I think they kind of have to given at least if Google wants to play in that market, they need this next iteration to work out. Alexa and the Echo ecosystem is so far ahead right now.

Phillip: [00:54:39] Yeah, it's true.

Brian: [00:54:40] If they don't have something work out, they're really going to be looking at a deficit that may be too far to overcome, even for Google.

Phillip: [00:54:49] Possibly, I mean. I will say... I don't know. It's interesting, I think that there's really only enough room in your house for one device of this nature. That market share is being eaten up pretty quickly by a lot of people who are apparently willing to spend two hundred dollars for one of the Echo devices. I happen to have two Echos and now a Dot and another Dot on the way.

Brian: [00:55:16] Nice.

Phillip: [00:55:17] And I'm addicted, but I'm also developing for it. And so for me, I'm like I'm wanting to sort of have it everywhere.

Brian: [00:55:25] I got in on the initial release for like a hundred bucks because I was like, this is so cool.

Phillip: [00:55:34] Genius. Yeah.

Brian: [00:55:34] And I tell you, I cut a lot of crap for that up front. People are like, "What?"

Phillip: [00:55:37] People are like, "Who the heck needs this?"

Brian: [00:55:39] Yeah, yeah. They call it a paper towel dispenser.

Phillip: [00:55:43] {laughter} It kind of looks like one.

Brian: [00:55:44] It does look like one. Yes. So but I mean, the thing was, you know, the idea of being able to control my home and the things that I use with my voice was a really compelling idea because it's so natural.

Phillip: [00:56:03] Well, from a home automation perspective, it is the killer app. It is the thing you've seen in movies for twenty five, thirty years. It's like you walk into the house and you're like, you know, "Turn on the lights," lalala.

Brian: [00:56:14] Oh it's a great Ray Bradbury short story called the The Rain Softly Falls? I think? Hold on, I got to look this up now because it is such...

Phillip: [00:56:27] It is that.

Brian: [00:56:27] It is that. It is that. He nailed it to a tee. Of course it's also sort of an end of the world story, like where we actually destroyed ourselves with nukes. And it's just this house...

Phillip: [00:56:38] {laughter} Which is again, also probably true.

Brian: [00:56:40] Well, yeah, yeah. It's so it's just like this house that's sitting there in the rain and it's operating. It's reminding, you know, it's doing all these amazing things that we can do with Alexa now, and no one is there to be ushered along by its reminders, its push notifications, if you will.

Phillip: [00:57:00] Oh yeah, exactly. You know, I think is really interesting. If this was a device that was only ever manufactured by, like, Bang & Olufsen in the 1980s, like as a home automation device, honestly this might be heralded as the next iPhone. Like it is that revolutionary of a device.

Brian: [00:57:22] Easily.

Phillip: [00:57:22] I think the timing of it, like the release timing of it and where it fell in history, unfortunately it's interesting, but it's not as interesting or groundbreaking as it would have been ten years ago. But I think just to learn from... Obviously these home control devices, whether it's the Google Home compliment or the Echo always on, always listening devices, those are interesting. But I think they do have some very serious... There's some ground to break from a privacy and security perspective and the way that people sort of live their lives.

Brian: [00:58:02] Well considering you can do banking with the Alexa app right now. I mean, there's a Citibank voice skill.

Phillip: [00:58:12] Oh, ok. Why don't you do that? So we were going to introduce something on a future show.

Brian: [00:58:16] Let's do that.

Phillip: [00:58:17] So we were going to do... So let's. Ok, fine. We're done with that whole segment. I think it's interesting stuff.

Brian: [00:58:22] Let me say one more thing before I jump to this. So I will say this. I tend to agree with you. If it was introduced ten years ago, it would have been hailed as the next iPhone. I don't know that people would have been ready for it. I think it really took the mobile apps and sort of mobile phones as like sort of that first iteration,  that first step towards this before we can actually handle this. And so it's not like people haven't wanted to do this for a long time. I think it's really just a matter of making sure that the level of voice recognition is there, which the difference between 95 percent and 99 percent is the world. And also getting people to the point where they're mentally ready to interact with computers at this level, I think, if it had been released earlier, it might have flopped, like when Microsoft tried to introduce tablets.

Phillip: [00:59:21] Yeah, possibly. I mean that's probably true. I think it depends on who it comes from. Amazon putting out a phone was laughable, even though they owned the eReader market for a number of years. Who has a Kindle anymore? I bet you have a Kindle.

Brian: [00:59:38] Everybody has Kindles.

Phillip: [00:59:42] Nobody has Kindles. Nobody uses Kindles anymore.

Brian: [00:59:46] Come on now.

Phillip: [00:59:48] All right. Well, anyway, we're so off base at this point.

Brian: [00:59:50] Old people use Kindles.

Phillip: [00:59:52] There you go, fine. Fair. That's fair.

Brian: [00:59:53] Just be a little ageist right now.

Phillip: [00:59:55] So ok, we want to introduce segment that we're going to wrap up our shows with every so often called Hot Skills.

Brian: [01:00:03] Yes.

Phillip: [01:00:04] Hot Skills. So you kind of hinted at what you're...

Brian: [01:00:06] Bow hunting skills and...

Phillip: [01:00:09] {laughter} Sweet nunchuck skills.

Brian: [01:00:11] There you go.

Phillip: [01:00:13] What is your skill of the week? Your Alexa skill of the week?

Brian: [01:00:17] My skill of the week is the seven minute workout. {laughter} Oh my gosh. I tried this, and I did this consistently for a little while. Actually I really should pick it back up again because it doesn't take very long. And frankly, I mean, I'm not in the best shape.

Phillip: [01:00:31] So it's like a personal trainer.

Brian: [01:00:32] It kicked my butt, like it takes it takes no time, but the idea is you just do exercises for a certain amount of time and it's basically just a timer with instructions. That's all that it is. And it's perfect. It's you can just do it right there in your home with no exercise equipment at all. And if you need to get in shape, you will feel it.

Phillip: [01:00:59] Right. And I do need to get in shape, and I will feel it. I will commit to doing at least one of these seven minute workouts.

Brian: [01:01:06] Yes. Good, good.

Phillip: [01:01:08] You know what I'm going to do? You're going to make these recommendations every week. I'm going to do them. It's going to be a great segment.

Brian: [01:01:16] Oh I like this a lot. You have to try to the seven minute work out to start.

Phillip: [01:01:18] Yeah, I'm going to do it.

Brian: [01:01:20] Next time it's going to be something silly like Lord of the Rings trivia. {laughter}

Phillip: [01:01:24] I will say this. There is an awful lot of garbage available on the Alexis skill store.

Brian: [01:01:29] It's almost all garbage.

Phillip: [01:01:31] It's pretty awful.

Brian: [01:01:32] I think one of the reasons for that is because there's like no monetary incentive in many ways for developers to do this right now. Obviously, companies could leverage this to provide a service that connects people to what they do. But companies just haven't really taken advantage of it yet. There's not a lot of first movers here.

Phillip: [01:01:54] You know what the killer app would be?

Brian: [01:01:56] What's that? There's a lot of things that could be the killer app.

Phillip: [01:02:00] A killer skill would be for the Church of Scientology. So they could do that thetan scan on you and then you could find out how many, like dead spirits are living inside you.

Brian: [01:02:11] I wouldn't be surprised if that's not already there.

Phillip: [01:02:14] {laughter} There's a tremendous amount of Latter Day Saints stuff from a skills perspective.

Brian: [01:02:21] There's a lot of just like really random things right now.

Phillip: [01:02:27] Like the National Arbor Day Society skill to tell me when the next Arbor Day is. It's like, that's ridiculous.

Brian: [01:02:34] Oh, for real. I mean, that's the kind of thing that's on there right now. And I think that's what, like 900 or something skills. Maybe pushing a thousand now. And I would only use a couple of them.

Phillip: [01:02:46] There's a big rumor that Magento is looking very heavily at this sort of stuff. This is sort of a big deal. There's a rumor that they're going to release a dev kit to be able to to plug in Magento stores through an Alexa skill kit.

Brian: [01:03:00] I heard that. I think it makes sense.

Phillip: [01:03:03] Well, it makes perfect sense. I do think that there are so many things that you could use it for. It's interesting. From a consumer perspective, I don't see how that would even be possible. As a merchant, there's some other interesting potential applications like possibly being able to do store management or maybe, you know, order and shipping fulfillment, those sorts of things. Those might all be very interesting things for Alexa, but we'll get into that in a very specific Alexa focused show.

Brian: [01:03:42] We'll get into that. I think we need to have our little Alexa interview.

Phillip: [01:03:45] Yeah, I think we're going to have to do something to that effect.

Brian: [01:03:47] Have her be on the show.

Phillip: [01:03:49] Yeah, she's going to join us one of these days. She'll get out of her little toilet paper throne over there. What is it? Paper towel throne?

Brian: [01:03:58] Paper towel throne.

Phillip: [01:03:59] She'll join us one day.

Brian: [01:04:01] Yes.

Phillip: [01:04:01] Well, anyway, so in the immortal words of Car Talk, you've done it again. You wasted another hour...

Brian: [01:04:10] You've wasted at least an hour here. {laughter}

Phillip: [01:04:11] Listening to Future Commerce. We're really, really glad that you joined us. We do want your feedback. And so please go on iTunes, give us a five star. You know, leave us some comments here below and leave us a positive review. We want to make this podcast what you want it to be. And so we want your feedback for all things commerce to the future and beyond. So from over here, from Philip Jackson.

Brian: [01:04:36] And Brian Lange.

Phillip: [01:04:37] And Brian Lange, we're bidding you a happy future. I don't know. Are we going to say that? We would never say that.

Brian: [01:04:43] Np. {laughter}

Phillip: [01:04:44] Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon.

Brian: [01:04:49] We'll see you in a bit.

Phillip: [01:04:51] {laughter}

Brian: [01:04:51] We'll talk to you in a bit.

Phillip: [01:04:51] Bye.

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