Crazy News Topics Of The Week! What Is Going On At Google?! | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the John Stockton of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, uh, we thought we'd just talk about some, uh, interesting things that caught our eye over the past couple of days. And yeah, man, so should be interesting. What's up, bro?

The Olympics is going on. The Olympics is happening. I know it's not so, there's lots of debates whether what's a better team, the current USA men's basketball team or the Dream Team.

And Allen off camera just said that Charles Barkley said that that Team USA would beat this Team USA, and I strongly disagree.

Well, I'm just telling you what he said.

Yeah, Barkley, you're washed as shit, bro. I don't even think you have a TV show anymore.

No, I don't know what's going on with that.

Well, I mean, the team— the NBA on TNT is done.

Well, no, like, the NBA now is in a lawsuit because all these different, like, Amazon, Peacock, CBS, TNT, and now they're in this whole lawsuit about The who's got the rights to the thing because the NBA is like, you know, pitting them all against each other and wants to be on multiple channels and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Yeah, that sucks, man. I agree with Barkley said about that because I just remember being a kid and waking up early. You know, you watch your early Saturday morning cartoons, you get your bowl of cereal, and then NBA in the morning would come on. Like literally like at 9 o'clock or whatever, 10 o'clock, 10 AM. What, on TNT? No, on regular TV. I ain't have no fucking cable growing up, bro.

No, I know that, but there was no cable.

No, yes there was cable. Okay, I don't know.

But not when I was growing up.

I'm not that old, son. I'm 44 years old, bro. I'm talking about it in the '80s, early '90s. Yeah, there was— You watch early morning cartoons and then on channel, what is it? I think it was NBC.

Was it recorded games? No, live.

It was live.

They played at 9 in the morning, early in the morning.

Like, well, it wouldn't be— that's what time it would come on. So then like the pregame, and then it would— I'm pretty sure it started at 10 o'clock in the morning.

I think it used to come on at like 11, 12 o'clock.

It wasn't 12. That's way— that's way too long for me to be sitting in the house on a Saturday morning.

Okay. Like, no, I do remember like games would be on.

That would happen on Saturday and Sunday, like the NBA Countdown and shit, man. Like, So I, for kids who don't, one, you know, all this streaming stuff, there's kids who don't have internet. So how are they gonna watch these, their favorites athletes? It's just a really trash decision on the NBA. I really, you know, it's hard enough to even support your team locally because it's like it gets blacked out because it's on some other TV network that you don't have or you have to pay to subscribe to. Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

That is a terrible, terrible for the fans. Like football too.

Terrible for the fans, bro.

Like football too. Oh, games are on Amazon, games are on here.

I mean, football is simple because, you know, you can subscribe to your team. Like for the Green Bay Packers, it's easy as shit.

Like, and then the other—

my dad already bought it, it's already set up.

Then the other thing they're debating, you know, Stephen A. Smith is, you know, always got something to say about the Olympics, and he's like, He's upset that the USA Women's Basketball didn't pick Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to be on their team because now the USA Women's Basketball, it's not been getting any— like, um, they're not filling up the stands at their games. So he's like, and nobody wants to watch it on TV.

I mean, you can't just say, oh, you're on the team. That's not how that shit works. There's a whole process behind it.

Whatever.

And she's—

there's— they're rookies.

Come on, man.

They've put rookies—

Stephen A. Smith says shit for anything for clickbait, bro.

He's just saying, he goes they should have been on the team strictly for marketing purposes, and that— and that's—

so why ain't they out there supporting him?

Out where?

Out in Paris.

Um, Angel Reese was out there for a couple of days, but they have their They're back in like camp now, like the training.

Exactly. So exactly.

Well, those people are over there playing. They're exempt from the training.

I don't care.

Whatever. It is what it is.

Yeah, man, it's stupid.

So let's jump into some other news.

So if anyone hasn't heard this, you were either smoking rock or under a rock. Google, the judge found that Google is a monopoly to the other search engines. So Google's appealing. I have Google's statement. This is what— it was hilarious to me.

This—

the way Google said this is just great. Shout out to Kent Walker, president of global affairs for Google. This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine. But concludes that we shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the court's finding that Google is the industry's highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users. That Google has been, has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices.

Well, that's because they—

Wait, it's not finished.

Okay.

And has continued to innovate in search, and that Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google's search quality relative to its rivals and find Google's to be superior. Given this, and that people are increasingly, increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use. I thought that shit was hilarious. Basically, they were like, yeah, we're the best. They suck. They're mad. Boo-hoo. We're gonna appeal. It's pi— I mean, in my— I don't see how you can call it a monopoly when people have free choice to use these other things. It's not a monopoly. You have a fucking choice. If you don't want to use Google, use Mozilla. If you don't want to use Mozilla, use whatever there is. You have MSN Explorer, you got whatever there is, bro. I don't— you got stuff, go, right? Whatever you want to use, bro, go ahead. You cannot use Google. So this to me just seems like some— I, I don't, I don't really get the point of it.

Well, you know what I can compare it to? Visa and MasterCard. They want to complain about Visa and MasterCard. The Visa and MasterCard built a great way for you to accept payments. It's the same thing as Google, right?

Right.

And the Congress is all over Visa and MasterCard all the time. I mean, now they want to be all over Google.

And I'm not saying like Google is this, you know, perfect company, or, you know, Alphabet is like this, you know, you know, untouchable place or whatever. But, and they always have our best interests at heart by any means. But this doesn't mean anything to me. And I just think it's like a big waste of time and resources, you could be fighting homelessness in the United States after, instead of arguing whether or not Google is the best.

And they're probably spending stupid hundreds of millions of dollars fighting with lawyers. Absolutely. And they could be doing something much more constructive with the money. Yeah.

The fentanyl epidemic. I don't know, like homelessness.

Exactly.

Let's keep going. So yeah, man, it'd be interesting to see what happens from that. I haven't heard any statements or seen anything. I mean, Facebook, other search engine groups.

No, no, Facebook.

I haven't heard anything else from the other, you know, like other major, uh, search engines. They haven't said anything.

So Mark Zuckerberg came out and said he's worried about it because they could come after Facebook Connect. So that's what he had to say about it. He didn't like it. We'll see. But they, you know, so here's, here's, here I found some funny stories in the news. Well, the first one's not exactly funny, but it's kind of crazy. There was a video, you know, people have cameras like in their house, right? So this people had a camera in their house and the dog got a hold of a lithium-ion battery that was in some kind of device. And was laying on a dog bed, starting this— yeah, chewing it up. And then the dog bed caught on fire. The good thing is the people called the fire department. Tulsa Fire Department came out. Luckily, 2 dogs and a cat that were in the house escaped out of a doggy door.

But it's, uh, that was the one thing I was worried about, about the fire.

Yeah. And, um, yeah, because I saw a lot of stuff about the fire And I was just wondering, like, what kind of ion— I mean, is that an ion battery? That's like something inside of like your phone.

It's in everything.

Yeah, it's in everything. It's crazy. And, um, yeah, there's been other stories where the batteries have overheated.

I shared that to my daughters.

It caused the fire too. And then here's this, another funny story I found was, uh there was a, a van driving on I-5 in California near a city called Weed, California, and it was swerving in and out of the lane. So they pulled the car over, and the car didn't pull over for like 3 miles. Inside the van, they found 1,021 marijuana plants that were rooted, and according to the driver Young Faiziz, whatever, 53. He was on his way to Oregon, but he did not have proper documentation from the California Department of Cannabis Control to move the plants, so he was arrested and charged with the illegal transportation and possession of marijuana. I don't understand that.

You can't have plants.

You can't have plants. Oh, you could have the smoke, but you can't plants. That's crazy.

It's so stupid. That's why, uh, I mean, the recreation thing is coming on the ballot this November in Florida. I mean, I'm all for it, but it's stupid that I don't understand how anyone can pass these laws and you can't make people— you know, it's still illegal to grow a plant, bro. Like, you can smoke the weed, you can go to the dispensary and buy it, but you can't grow it yourself. That's just so ridiculous. But not all states are like that. A lot of states have like up to 8 plants per— like in DC you can grow I think 10 or 12 plants.

Oh really?

Yeah. California you can have certain amount of plants, uh, Denver, etc. Most, most places do, but I don't know. And then DeSantis, he's got some billionaire backer that just spent like donated like $12 million to stop, to railroad the recreational.

Well, it's on the ballot, so people are going to vote for it if people want it. And, you know, I like it.

They can still kill it.

No, they can't kill it. If the people vote for it, you get it. They can put regulations.

You know what they say? Do you know why they don't want this?

Why?

They said that the state of Florida will smell like weed.

It already smells like weed. I was, I was thinking to myself, I go for a walk in the morning.

You know what he's afraid of?

What?

He's afraid of walking outside of his oceanfront condo.

Yeah.

And walking to the beach and some guy smoking a fat spliff.

That's already going on.

And the thing, but not on his private area. Well, because— no, listen, because they're too bougie about it. Okay, you know, people I know people who smoke weed, you will never in your life think like, "That motherfucker smokes weed?" Like, "Yes." Oh good, listen, I go walk— Listen, so that's why they don't want it. I need to go walk. Because they want to hide under the back room and to make it seem like it's a big deal. And so they don't wanna walk outside and next thing you know, their son is smoking a blunt in front of the, with the guy.

You know what I mean? Well, they have like recreational marijuana in Vegas, but you can't smoke it in public.

I was smoking it in public.

Well, no, I'm just saying they have like rules about it, about where you can smoke it. The police ain't got time to be dealing with that. I know they don't deal with it, but I'm saying they have rules.

So that's the problem. I mean, to me, that's the real problem.

Well, listen, I walk around 6 in the morning, walking Rocky, 6, 7 o'clock in the morning.

You don't live where these guys live though.

Okay, I live in a nice neighborhood, single family homes, there's condos. I'll be walking down through there. There's—

you gonna smell some weed?

Yeah. There's people smoking at 6 in the morning, sitting on their porch, smoking pot all the time. Yeah, I see people walking their dog, smoking pot. The cops don't stop them. They don't do it. Yeah. So here's, here's a, here's a great— a great— I saw this article in The Washington Post and it was about, you know, people trying to deduct stuff from their taxes. So it was kind of interesting. One guy found an interesting way. He likes to drink beer. So he wanted to tax deduct all the beer that he drank. So he tries different beers every day, apparently, or goes to different restaurants for beer. So he created a beer blog. So now he doesn't have— he can tax deduct all the beer that he drinks.

It's a great smart idea.

I think we should start a marijuana blog. It won't work. It won't work. It won't work.

Okay, I'm a convicted felon too, so it's like, then there's that. So it's like I can't even do shit, which is so stupid. I can't wait till this shit passes because I'm— I really want to open a dispensary or a smoking lounge.

And, uh, yeah, you know, they, you know, they passed that in Vegas to have smoking lounges, and I think hardly any have opened up yet because they have too much regulation.

Yeah, no, it's a pain in the ass.

Yeah, uh, because they tried to put one in one of the hotels. Yeah, this— and they—

because I mean, out east it's been, it's been legal like that for a minute and they still ain't got no—

right—

smoking lounges.

And then there was another one where some guy, some lady took her dog to work and she wanted to tax the duck all the dog treats. And they said, no, you can't do that, but it would be okay if it was an actual guard dog. I thought that was funny. And, uh, no, but there's, you know, it's all the time, like, you know, crazy, you know, people trying to do crazy stuff. But the other thing that I keep You know, the other thing that's in the, you know, the big thing with Google is, you know, they just have these, you know, those two, the 230 exemption.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay, so the 230 exemption is the exemption from all these social media companies. And that includes Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. What are you talking about there? Okay, well, they have an exemption about like, any stuff that they post on their sites, like they can't get sued for it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for all that stuff. And all of that's all part of this whole monopoly.

I don't know what the 230 agreement is, but that ain't— wasn't mentioned in this.

No, but I'm just saying that's like the, the kind of the— that's kind of like the premises of—

because that they are saying that Google is running shit, and that's what it is. That's basically what it all boils down to. No one uses Firefox. No one uses MSN Explorer, whatever the hell.

Edge.

None of them. You know what I mean? And Google, they, of course, it might seem like a monopoly, but in my eyes, it doesn't. And I don't see how that has anything to do with this either. But it's anyway, so the other big thing that I seen that I was like, I'm passionate about is that, you know, hip hop is in the Olympics, yo. Breakdancing made it to the Olympics, man. And Team USA's got some interesting people in there. Victor Montalvo, Jeffrey Lewis, Logan Idra. There's another woman, I couldn't find her real name, but she goes by Logistixx. And then a woman, 35-year-old woman by the name of Sunny Choi. And her story out of— I didn't really get a chance to look into all the other ones, but her story kind of piqued my attention because she was the director of global direct creative operations for Estée Lauder, which is like a skincare company, skincare, whatever.

Yeah.

So she has a background in gymnastics. And she was going to the University of Pennsylvania and she was in her senior year. Gymnastics was over with. She wasn't like this, she wasn't, what was her name?

Simone Biles.

Simone Biles, right. So she's like, she really enjoyed it. And anyway, she walked outside her dorm and some kids was breaking and she stayed and watched and then they invited her to one of the classes. And, you know, long story longer. But so whatever, when the Olympics were announced, what was that, like 4 years ago? I think that was. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. 4 or 5 years ago. She started like really, you know, going hard, you know, and then she, she ended up quitting her job to, you know, seek this out. And that's really cool, man. So the first, the women's qualifying event is today, this morning. I think it already took place. I mean, tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. When this podcast comes out, it'll be on. So the 9th of August, I think it said it was at, what did it say, 10 AM?

Yeah, 9 or 10 AM.

9 or 10 AM. And then Saturday is the men's qualifying and Sunday's the finals. So yeah, man, I'm sure that is, you know, as a guy who grew up in a culture and really just, you know, I wasn't, like I said, I wasn't into breakdancing. I was rapping and doing the graffiti. But it's just really cool to see how far hip-hop has come considering like when I was listening to it in the late '80s, you know, my mom, dude, I just remember my mom's, "Turn that shit off. What are you listening to?" You know, my dad, he was kind of more into it. 'Cause you know, he liked Digable Planets, whole different story, whole different podcast. But yeah, so like, you know, to see like all the negative behind hip-hop when I was growing up, like in the news when they were trying to ban it and all this, all the negativity surrounded. And it was so naive to me because growing up inside of the culture, it was so accepting. And there was just, it was all about peace, love, and having fun. You know what I mean? And like, that's what was, that was the energy. Like, But if you weren't in the culture and you would try to stop that shit, yeah, you was gonna mess around and have some violence. You know what I'm saying? And so like, you know, it was just crazy. And for the fact that, you know, breakdancing is recognized as a sport is even more amazing because I myself could never even attempt to try to do some of these things that they do. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's crazy.

So like, It's going to be interesting to see, like, how many countries participate, how many countries have teams.

Hip-hop is worldwide, bro.

No, no, but I'm saying it would be, you know, the other thing that's interesting about the Olympics is, you know, like, a lot of different things happened at the Olympics this year. Like, Snoop Dogg is all over at the Olympics. I know we talked about it before.

I mean, to me, that's all it was, kind of hip-hop's in the Olympics, so you got to have a representative of hip-hop. And then, you know, To me, that's a bad choice. Like, he doesn't— I'm not saying hip-hop don't represent— Snoop Dogg doesn't represent the culture of hip-hop as a whole. But for me, I would have rather seen something else up there. Like, you know, I mean, the judges is something different. The judges, there's— I don't know who the judges are. But like, for me, you know, like, KRS-One, for instance, like he's the guy.

I know, but I think like when they look at Snoop Dogg, you see he's like on a TV show with Martha Stewart. He's on all these morning shows.

Exactly, that's not hip-hop.

Well, I know, but I'm just saying he has this identity of—

He represents— don't get me— don't come killing me. I love Snoop, man. I grew up off on Gin and Juice straight up, and I was outside with it, so relax. But Snoop now is like, he's super— like I said the other day, he's superseded, surpassed hip-hop. He's like, he is a celebrity icon. He's an icon. Exactly. He's a cultural icon and not a hip-hop cultural icon, even though he is. He surpassed that. Like, he's Snoop, bro. Like, he goes to anywhere and smokes weed, even in Dubai. Like, so like, come on, man.

They were asking him who would he like to have dinner with and smoke with? And he said, he said Bob Marley. He said, but he said, he said the only guy that took him out was Willie Nelson.

He said Taylor Swift smokes a lot too.

Oh wow, I'm sure everybody smoked with Snoop Dogg. No, but the other thing that's kind of cool at the Olympics is, is like you see Flavor Flav and he's like, for some reason he like read some story about the women's USA women's water polo team, and they were all having a hard time paying their bills and they didn't have sponsorship. And he stepped up and he's sponsoring the women's water polo.

Yeah, I've seen that too.

He, uh, and he goes to like all their games and their practices and he's out there and he's going around meeting everybody. And then I also paid this one woman's rent. Yeah, he paid somebody's rent for the rest of the year. Serena Williams' husband's participating, helping athletes. I heard he owns Reddit or something. He's the owner of Reddit. I don't know. Something. The guy, the owner of Reddit.

Serena Williams gets too much shit for her men choices. Like, bro, she grew up in California, bro.

And then the other thing that was cool was the USA women's—

She likes dude bros, whatever.

The other cool thing was this USA women's rugby team. I didn't even know that we had a rugby team. Apparently they play.

What?

Yeah.

So that's one thing that I love watching.

So I want to tell you, there's a girl—

men's rugby.

No. So there's a woman on the women's team, Alona Mar. No diddy. Alona Mar. She's amazing. She's 5'10". There's like a video of her on TikTok and Facebook, you know, in the reels. And she gets the ball, she runs down the field, she's stiff-arming people, throwing people to the ground.

She's like Samoan or something, right?

Huh?

She's Samoan or something.

Samoan? No, that's another girl. There's another— the other team that's really good is the one from New Zealand.

That's who I'm talking about.

Yeah. And there's a girl on that team.

I wouldn't— I wouldn't want to run against her any day.

Her last name is like Woodman or something like that. Oh, man. You see her running and she's just— and she's not that big.

She looks—

and she's bullshit. She looks like an NFL linebacker smashing people, throwing them, picking them up. Throwing them up. Rugby is tougher than NFL.

It's like football with no pads. That woman had me when she was screaming at the camera. I was like, yeah, no, you crazy.

Oh, yeah, they do that. They do like some kind of like ritual before they play the haka or something. It's called all the New Zealanders.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about she was running down the field after she scored. And I was like, oh yeah, this woman, she's—

yeah, she doesn't— she was— she had like— she's a killer. Literally, they were like, this is like Marshawn Lynch running down the field smashing into people.

Perfect example, uh, comparison of what she looked like. And then Alona Moore, it was long and it was looking like she was just— yeah, that was crazy. Yeah, she's—

she—

shout out to her.

And Alona Moore too, she was— she scored like 2 long 2 long runs where she was just smashing people and throwing them on the ground and everything. And she was—

how's Team USA baseball doing?

I don't know. I haven't been following that. I don't know. It's hard to follow the Olympics because, you know, it used to be when, like, growing up, you would watch the—

you would watch— like, is it even a sport?

Yeah, they have baseball. I'm saying, like, I don't know if they have it this year, but I know they've had it before. No, but what I'm trying to say is, like, They have the, you know, you would watch like the Olympics, it would be on like at night and there would be like a whole recap of like what's going on. And now it's like, it's on all these channels. It's on Peacock, it's on CBS, it's on this channel, it's streaming over here, it's streaming over there. And then you turn it on and then I'm like, I already watched this. Like some stuff that I saw, I wish that they would just, you know, show like more. Have like a better way to consume the Olympics.

Yeah, now that I'm reading this, I kind of remember they were saying how Team USA doesn't, like Major League Baseball doesn't let their players play.

Right.

That sucks.

Yeah.

I remember that.

Yeah, they don't take a break. They did one time, they took a break. They had like, they stopped the baseball for like a few weeks. That's terrible. Yeah, and then they went to the Olympics one time.

Why would they stop the team from playing?

I don't know, because some teams had like 2, 3 players missing.

Well, that way, yeah, like the Yankees, the early— yeah.

So the— so like the same thing.

I can see how that's a problem because it's in the summertime and baseball is in the summer.

So if you look at WNBA, they stop playing now for like 3 weeks, and you have like 3 women from the Las Vegas Aces on the team. 2, 3 players from the Phoenix Mercury on the team.

Oh yeah.

And there's 3 players from like the New York team.

Yeah.

So they would be missing a lot of players, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah, man. So the Olympics this year, I mean, I'm hopefully this weekend I'll get a chance to at least catch the recap of the breakdancing competition. I really want to watch that, but that's super early in the morning. So I don't, well, not super early enough. It's in the morning and I'm gonna be doing stuff. So I don't have time to be sitting around.

That's our news stories for the week. What's going on in the news?

Stop crying to Google about your whack-ass search engine.

Well, I heard they pay, the big thing is, is there was controversy. One of the controversies was how much money are they paying the Apple to be in the Apple phone and how much money they're paying all the manufacturers of all the Android phones to be the default search engine in all these phones.

Get your weight up, man.

Huh?

Get your weight up.

People have choices. You can download other apps.

You always have a choice.

Yep. There's always choices.

So you don't have to go to the pod, man. Smash the subscribe button for us for the one time. August 8th, 2024, episode 265 coming live. All right, peace out.

Carpe diem.