Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of time travel, but only in very small increments. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here making plans for 2026. So, there's a thing that I like to do near the end of every year. Sometimes it's December 31st, sometimes it's like December 6th, but I try to sit down and sort of take stock of the stuff that I did this past year and then think of some stuff that I want to do next year. This is like a yearly review cadence that lots of people really recommend and it's a really good goaling exercise for me. Honestly, I just enjoy the process of sitting down and being like, 'Okay, what happened this year?' And sometimes I'll do it with my calendar next to me so I can actually see the stuff.
One of my favorite things to do is open up Google Photos, which is where all my photos are. Open up a document and just sort of journal out the year as I scroll through my photos. Big stuff that happens, important things that I totally forgot about that happened as I was going through the year, just a sort of brain dump as I scroll through 12 months of photos. Sometimes I'll even pull the photos that I care the most about into that doc and just in the course of one sitting put together this very informal, messy, I don't know, document about the year that I just had. I don't know if it actually accomplishes much. And to be honest, I don't often find myself going back and like reading old ones, but I really enjoy the process. So, I keep doing it.
And then at the end, I try to just sit down and be like, 'Okay, what are some actual things I would like to do next year?' Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small, sometimes they're like bucket listy type things, sometimes it's just like I would like to, I don't know, learn how to play the recorder again because I was sick at it in third grade and I want to see if I can get it back. That's a thing that has been on the list in the past and I didn't do it and it won't be on the list again. But anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. What we're here to talk about on the show today is predictions. Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel are going to join me as they did last week to talk about what happened in 2025 and we're going to talk about what happens in 2026.
We did this last year where we made mild, medium, and spicy predictions. We're going to do the same thing this year. We're going to go through our old predictions. We're going to make some new ones, and we're going to see if we can figure out what's coming. This is a complicated business in which to figure out what is coming. Anybody who tells you they could have guessed what 2025 was going to look like was lying to you, including us, as you'll hear from how our predictions went. But we're going to have a lot of fun and it's just fun to figure out what we're thinking about as we go into next year. All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have more photos to go through. I had another kid in 2025 and that has meant like an absolutely gigantic explosion of 400 photos of a child lying on the ground. So, I'm going to scroll through all those. It's going to be a great time. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. It's time for some 2026 predictions. Back with me again a year later, Nilay Patel. Hey buddy.
Joanna Stern also here. Last year, all three of us came to this episode with three predictions. The instruction was basically a mild one, a medium one, and a spicy one. And not only did you have to make your prediction, but the other two people on the show had to decide whether they agreed or not, and we were going to score everybody on who was right. Our predictions were by and large very bad.
Yeah. I'm looking at my like, oh, I got that wrong.
Yeah. So, we're just going to call 2025 a wash. It's been a weird year. Nilay and I both had kids. Joanna wrote a book. It's just, you know, everybody gets a pass on 2025. But I do want to just quickly read both of you your own predictions. So, Joanna, your predictions for 2025. Your mild prediction was that we will still be posting to a million social accounts. I think you were correct on that one. That was right. Your medium take was that Meta is going to continue to outpace Apple on glasses, which I think is like true by default in that Apple did nothing, that there was a new Vision Pro that added nothing. So, I guess you get that one. Nilay and I also both agreed with that. So, everybody wins on that one.
And then your spicy prediction was a touchscreen Mac or an iPad with macOS, which has not come true, but as we discussed on the last episode, 2026, if you want to rehash that one for 2026, I think you have a real shot at it.
Yeah, I think iPad with macOS like didn't come true in literally, but there were so many changes to iPadOS that make it so much more like macOS that I do think I was kind of right.
The iPad is very Mac-ish. If I were in the business of giving half points, I would probably give you a half point.
I think we can agree that I was right there. So, yeah. Okay.
Is that where we land?
And then Nilay, your mild prediction was that Alexa is going to, or Alexa Plus rather, is going to be fine. I want you to self-score on that one because you have delivered many thoughts on Alexa Plus.
I assumed that the industry could put an LLM in front of a traditional smart home and they can't. It's not even quite fine. It's available. That's what I'll give you. It's good enough to be available, but like is it a downgrade from what Alexa was before? No. I think that's fine. Do you know what I mean? That's what I mean. Like it's not a disaster. It's not a huge success. It's just like available. It's fine.
Your medium prediction was that Walmart is going to buy TikTok, a prediction that I loved and Joanna and I both signed on to. If I recall, somewhat against your will, Joanna. You just like wanted to be part of the team. But that obviously did not happen.
In fact, no one bought TikTok and we chose to not enforce the law Congress passed enforcing the sale of TikTok. I have no idea what's going on here. A fun medium take would have been laws don't exist.
We live in a post-law society.
Yeah, you would have gotten points for that one.
If this thing eventually does get sold, I think Walmart is as aggressive about it as anyone, but who knows what's going to happen.
Yeah, fair. All right. And then your spicy take was that Google is going to break itself up of its own volition before the government can do it. I would say this operated on a false assumption that the government would do it. That did not turn out to be the case. At least not yet. But that one obviously did not come true.
I will say Google did replace almost all of its executives in the last year.
it did not. Maybe that's not even a quarter point. But they were certainly like, what if different people ran all this stuff and all of those people, that's what Sundar did.
Yeah, Google turned itself over in a pretty big way, but it did not break itself up. My predictions, my mild prediction was that cable TV is going to pretty much totally die. I actually think I was right about that one.
That happened faster than anybody expected. You both agreed with me. My medium take, which I think is probably the biggest whiff of the whole episode last year, was that somebody's going to make an AI gadget that actually kicks ass and it's going to be a giant hit. Wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong on that one. And then my spicy take was that we are going to more or less give up on Matter, which I will take the loss on, but I actually don't think I get a complete loss on that one. Matter did not make the progress you would hope that it would make in 2025. They have cameras now kind of even though no cameras support it. The spec remains, the protocol exists. People are still adopting it.
Wait, I disagree with you on this in like a minor way.
it is now the default for everything. Like if you want to buy a light switch or a light bulb or a smart plug or any of the stuff that's already supported, all of those things are now Matter by default. It's like harder to buy not Matter versions of that stuff than it is to buy Matter.
I agree. And that's why I take the loss on this. Like we definitely did not give up on Matter.
I just unboxed a new Nest camera and it like had Matter instructions.
Yeah. And that's frankly honestly that's the place you would hope Matter would get to, right? Is that it is like it is such essential infrastructure that it's just always there and you just how all the stuff works.
So like I am psyched that I was wrong about that one, but I was wrong about that one. All right, let's get into predictions for 2026. Joanna, you get to go first. What's your mild prediction for 2026?
Okay, Apple releases a foldable. It's fine because we can say the word fine means multiple things here. I will say the like spicier part of this take even though this whole thing is mild. I think this will happen is that the media and many Apple fans freak out because it's too expensive.
Okay. I think I need one more tick of measurability here which is is it a hit or not? Cuz like the iPhone Air, not a hit. Like definitively not a hit. If the foldable phone is two iPhone Airs stapled together, which is what a lot of people are saying that it's going to be, is it going to be a hit at whatever price it comes out to be?
I think it's an early adopter hit, but I think it's like I don't want to guess at pricing. What do you think the price? What would you guys guess the price to be?
They can't do more than $100 more than like the Galaxy Fold. Yeah, I think it's somewhere between 1799 and 1999 would be my guess. Somewhere in that range.
Yeah, I think $2,000 is fine.
Yeah, but like those numbers don't mean anything because you just like you're like I will give my child to Verizon and they'll give you a free phone.
But I think there'll be like the backlash of the media and people being like this is too expensive or this is expensive. And I think so I like I don't think it's a big hit. Like I don't think it's an iPhone X hit because that was like a completely new design, but it was still a pretty good mainstream phone. It wasn't like too, you know, crazy for people to fathom. I mean, it didn't have the home button and that was a big thing people had to get used to. Yeah, that's why I think it's fine.
No, I'm going to push back. I think it is announced and everybody overreacts and like this is the most important phone that's ever been made and it's a huge hit because changing the form factor of the phone is the thing that they've all been chasing.
But do you think changing the form factor at a $2,000 price point is like when the iPhone X hit $1,000 plus? I think that was like one of the big things that kind of held it back from being like a mainstream phone, right?
And it had like a not a it was like it was the high-end phone. They didn't make as much of them and like the iPhone 8 was the volume seller at that time. Apple will intentionally limit the number of these phones that it makes because it's not the mainstream model yet, right?
Whereas like today I think the 17 Pro Max is the big seller. I agree that this is like a good mild take. I think the overreaction will be the thing that drives everybody insane.
Yeah, I agree. It'll be like a Vision Pro level reaction. Yeah.
And I think just like the Vision Pro, it will become very clear that just like every other company, Apple has no good ideas about what you're supposed to do with a foldable phone. That remains the thing. They're too expensive and there's just no clear idea what you're supposed to do with it.
Hey, look, I read a lot of PDFs on my phone, you guys. Just live in that, think about my situation.
My mildest prediction, it's very mild actually, and I might be wrong. I think after all of the weirdness with the EV tax credits and the sales spiking because everyone tried to get the credit and the sales crashing, I actually think they mount a small comeback next year. I think people actually want electric cars regardless of like all the noise and like people who experience them are like this is a better experience than gas cars. I'm saying this as somebody who has gas cars and like the dumbest possible gas cars and loves them very much. There's no reason for my daily driver to be anything other than EV. And I think that is proven out for like lots of people in lots of ways. And so I think we'll see that market reset itself a little bit.
Do you think it's entirely or just mostly because the new Nissan Leaf looks kind of sick? Is that like 60% of it or is that...
I think it's the Leaf. I think Chevy's going to do the Bolt at like 29...
Yeah, I think a bunch of cars coming in at 30,000 or less is going to be a huge thing for that market.
And then used EVs are just around, right? Like economically, feel how you want about this, but like economically the only car anyone should buy is a used Model 3.
Forever my favorite Nilay take because it is unequivocally true and makes everybody feel feelings and I love it.
Yeah. It's like that sucks, but it's true. Like that's the only car I should buy.
Or a Y. I think of the Y. But anyway, yeah. Because those prices have come down crazy.
There's a lot. I'm saying used. I'm not saying enter the...
No, even the used Model Ys are crazy deals.
Yeah. So, like I just think that there's a lot of everybody who was going to buy one, including me, I raced to buy an EV before the tax credit went away. And so I think it feels like sales cratered because everybody who was going to buy one, bought one, and then everyone overreacted to the sales going away because all those people were out of the market. And I think next year they come back a little bit. Love that for you. All right. My I'm between two mild predictions in part because I can't decide how mild one of them is. But I'll go with my mild prediction for 2026 is that GTA 6 is going to be just a monstrously huge hit in an economic and cultural way that actually no one is ready for that. Like it's going to do to people what like TikTok did to people. And everyone on Earth is going to just disappear inside for a month to play GTA 6. And it's going to be the Skibidi Toilet of 2026. I don't know. Whatever thing you want, like these games that become vastly more than games, like the Fortnites of the world and the Robloxes of the world that become these like cultural touchstones and economic events. I think GTA 6 is going to become that immediately and maybe like jump to the top of that list very fast. The other alternative is it sucks and the gaming industry dies. It's one of those two things.
I would just like the caution I would put there is it's so hard for games to actually cross over into popular culture. And I'm saying that in finger quotes because games are popular culture, but at the same time even the people who play games wall them off from what they think of as the popular culture. So, the idea that GTA 6 is going to come out and then we will have some sort of rational or interesting conversation about the fact that everyone's playing GTA 6, no way. Like, it's going to be a lot of like what I call anthropology where like, you know, on Good Morning America, they're like, there's a new game out called Grand Theft Auto, it's the sixth in the series where gamers steal cars. Like, that's what that's going to feel like.
100%. But like it will be like space aliens trying to describe because everyone will actually be playing GTA 6, which is what it's been with like everybody, you know? I just there's nothing more fun than like local news people trying to describe like the Roblox.
I'm just saying we're at the point in history where the local news anchors are generally young and are themselves gamers and somehow like they are forced to pretend they don't know what they're talking about.
To be fair, I wouldn't know what I was talking about and I have tuned out of this GTA 6 conversation.
But you've had two young boys like it's coming for you.
You want to realize when that comes I will call one of you and you will explain to me what is going on.
Yeah. You'll call us from inside of GTA 6 because that's going to be where we all hang out for about 12 months.
Yeah. I just everything I learn suggests to me that GTA is either going to be the biggest thing that ever happened or like one of the all-time biggest failures. And I continue to bet on biggest thing that ever happened. All right, let's take a quick break and then we're going to come back. We're going to get to more medium predictions. We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. Those are boring predictions. That's fine. We're all going to buy foldable iPhones and play GTA 6 inside of our EVs in 2026. This feels guaranteed. It's going to be fine. Let's spice it up a little bit here. Nilay, you go first this time. What's your most medium prediction for 2026?
This is very medium. I think the backlash to AI slop on the social platforms is going to force them to have to label it and filter it.
Be more specific. What does that look like? Like there's a new next to the for you feed. Is there going to be a slop feed?
Maybe it's like that. Like that's one version of it. I think it's also just don't show me AI content. Like I want to see real creators and I think that will come from the creators themselves. There's some weirdness there because I think some creators are very eager to make AI content because the creator game is all about volume. But I think audiences are like I don't want as much of this as you are showing me. I'm here for the people that I open the app for. And I think that it's a floodgate, right? It's so cheap to make. It's so easy to do. If you just open the algorithm over time, even in the past few months, like it's all flooded with AI generated video, like every feed I have, at some point the audiences are gonna I don't like this. And the creators are going to I don't like this. And I think all of those videos have some metadata in them about being AI generated. You can detect it if you try. And none of them are trying right now. And I think at some point Instagram, YouTube, whoever are going to have to say, 'We're going to detect it. It has to be labeled. And we're going to let people avoid it if they want to.'
My medium take was that instead of all of that, what we're actually going to get is a new creator platform that is going to rise up in a meaningful way. For the exact same reason you just described, right? All of these scale players now, and it's basically just YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, are so deep down the we are just going to fill your feeds with slop rabbit hole that somebody is going to show up and present themselves as like the human alternative to this. And like the algorithm is hard but buildable and there are tons of people who have now worked at all of these companies who could go off and build these things. The possible time to do that if you think you want to build a creator platform is right now and whether anyone can do it economically and compete with YouTube remains to be seen. Like YouTube is just where all the money is and that company is so rich that it would be very hard to bootstrap your way into having the resources of YouTube but somebody's going to try and I think like you start to see like maybe it's going to be Substack is going to get like weird into videos and try to do that. Patreon is like poking at these kinds of ideas. It was a thing I thought Vimeo was going to do for a while and then it sold and now God only knows what's going to happen to Vimeo. But there's like glimmers of some new kind of platform energy that I think could work and I think we might see it in a real big way in 2026.
I mean I would just say the hardest part for all of us any idea there is getting a new user. Like TikTok exists because ByteDance spent billions of dollars on Facebook ads.
And so like you just need it's not do you know how to do it like are there a bunch of ex-Twitter employees who can like make Twitter tomorrow? Of course there are. Can they get millions, hundreds of millions of users to use it? Like no. And that's why I'm like you can have that little bit of competitive pressure right you can already see how it's playing out with like Threads and Bluesky and X like they are competing with each other and that means they release new features which is like fascinating. But I think fundamentally it's the creators themselves who are going to say we want to tell people like turn off the AI stuff and these platforms are responsive to creators a little bit. And I think that might work.
Yeah. And I think if anybody is going to lead that charge, it'll probably be YouTube would be my guess.
Although YouTube keeps saying that the future of their platform is AI.
See, like it almost has to be a platform that doesn't have an AI. All of them do. This is why it's a medium take. Like something has to go bad and then this will be...
Well, TikTok doesn't really. I mean, TikTok's already embracing giving people a little bit more control than others.
TikTok is as full of AI slop as anything in the world. Like TikTok is a rich mange of ideas about piracy. Like how can I get past this algorithm is like TikTok.
But like they're not necessarily encouraging you to use their AI tools in the way that YouTube, Meta, X would.
I think yes and no. I mean, also TikTok at any moment can be sold to like Larry Ellison. Like they're a weird company in a weird spot.
My mild take was almost nobody's going to buy TikTok this year. But that was too mild.
I don't care about that. Can I offer you a possible platform that is not part of my take, but I think is like there's an interesting next turn for this company? It's Netflix. Netflix is poking at video podcasts. It's poking at making deals with creators. There is a world in which Netflix, which has the audience and has the resources to actually go to all of these people and be like you're humans and you want to make things for other humans, come do it here instead of at YouTube. I don't think the scale works the same way, but to the extent that it's like let's build a different kind of creator platform for humans, Netflix is as set up to do it as anybody and seems interested in it in some way, shape, or form.
The problem is that Netflix is going to kill itself by buying Warner Brothers.
Like, kiss of death, man. Is that your spicy take? Netflix is going to buy Warner Brothers and it's going to go horribly for itself. It should be my spicy, not be that spicy.
I think it's my medium take right now. Like Greg, Ted, you know, both of you have been undecoded. Like, come on back and I'll patiently explain to you how buying Warner Brothers will kill you.
Yeah, it's done it to everyone else. Joanna, what's your medium take?
Okay, I was going to make this my spicy take, but I just came up with a new spicy take. So, I'm going to come back to Waymo. And I said last year, I don't... Was it my medium last year? What was I don't remember which...
that Waymo was going to have a moment. It was one of our 2025 predictions.
Okay. Yeah. But you were very in on Waymo having a moment in 2025.
Yeah. I think Waymo is going to have a moment in 2026 and I think it's going to be a serious incident whether it's a death or a big traffic accident or... I hope there isn't a death but I think we are nearing the time where there are so many Waymos on the roads in so many more cities and they are going to be close to doubling that over the next year or two that we are going to see that moment and you almost hear Waymo executives prepping for that. They obviously don't want it to happen, but I think it's just a case of numbers at this point. So, that's my medium take. I should have maybe made it my spicy, but I actually don't think it's that crazy. I just...
I don't think it's that crazy. What I wonder is...
like we saw what happened with the cat in San Francisco and we saw the reaction to that.
Yeah, it killed the cat. You saw that news.
That's awful. I missed that. That's terrible.
It was the whole story. So, at the risk of asking like a really rude question, would a Waymo killing a pedestrian change things in truly meaningful industry shaking ways?
Well, that's why I think it's going to be like a big moment because I think what will happen is you are going to have a lot of anti-any-of-this people talking about it and you see that happening already with the cat incident in San Francisco. And then you're going to have a lot of other people citing a lot of the research that was just in the Times article this week about how much safer these have been on a whole. And you're going to have this just kind of coming to a head with politicians and media and all of it. And it's just look, we're just heading towards that one moment where that happens. Nilay, what do you think?
I think that's right. I think that, you know, the safety data is reasonably clear. Like in the middle of the night, would you rather get into a robot that is not sleepy or an Uber where somebody might be sleepy? Like I don't know the answer. I think there's a lot of parents who are much more comfortable with Waymos than human drivers to send their kids around. I think it will just be a big debate. But I do think the moment where there's a bad accident that forces the debate is absolutely coming.
Yeah. I think the thing that's interesting to me about Waymo is that it feels like... and by the way, it might not be Waymo. Like I should say like it could... I think it will be Waymo because they are so much more prevalent statistically in cities. It could be a Tesla robotaxi. It could be Zoox. I just think we're heading toward this moment.
I think it would go differently if it were anyone but Waymo though. Like I think the conversation around it would be very different if it were a Tesla robotaxi than if it were a Waymo.
Well, so I mean the comparison in Tesla is right there. FSD, we've been in the lawsuits.
Yeah, but there have at least been humans in front of the car.
You've had humans in front of the cars and a lot of lawsuits where like the human was drunk or asleep and like Waymo is just like there's no one there.
But like you were saying, I think the weirdest thing about 2025 to me has been that Waymo is both like not everywhere yet, but is so normalized for so many people. Like that thing you just said where it's like there are lots of parents who would rather their kid get in a Waymo than in an Uber is such an unbelievable victory for self-driving cars that I don't think anyone was prepared for it to happen already. And Waymo just quietly did it. And it's sort of wild that like...
Well, they did it in San Francisco.
But they've done it in Phoenix. They've done it in LA. I mean, they've done it.
Waymo is just becoming normal technology at a really rapid pace. And again, I think in a lot of ways that's a really good thing, right? Like you said, Joanna, that safety data is good. I think we're still having weird debates about what happens when something goes wrong, which is why I think you're right that there will be an explosion of stuff around just the question of like who is responsible for this.
Well, you know, interesting piece there. We've had the CEOs of Uber and Lyft and Cruise recently and I don't remember which one of them said this but I asked a variation of that question and they're kind of like, you know, we're going to get insurance and it'll be fine. The insurance is actually cheaper because the cars are safer, right? So like the insurance calculation is there will be fewer accidents and so the rates will reflect the fewer accidents for the liability that may be incurred which is like a very mathematical way to be like the robots might kill people but it'll be fine because the math...
That's already where their heads are at, right? It's like, we'll take the liability, because we'll take the insurance, because the accident rate will be much lower than our drivers today.
Yeah. But there's still a question of like, the accident rate will not be zero, and who is to blame when something happens, right?
But I think what they're saying is like, it'll be us. I think they're like, it'll be us. We'll take the blame and the insurance companies will pay out and it'll be fine because we'll be paying fewer claims because there will be fewer accidents.
All right. That's my medium take. I maybe it's spicy. I don't know.
