Street View for Google Maps launched 15 years ago this week, and Google is taking advantage of the anniversary to drop some updates, including a major update to the Street View mapping hardware. The one most people can immediately enjoy, though, is the ability to “go back in time” on Street View using Google Maps for Android or iOS. This feature has been available on the web for a while now, but it’s being added to the Maps app for the first time. Accessing this historical data is pretty straightforward: just get into Street View and tap anywhere on the image to pull up details about the location. After that, you’ll find a “see more dates” option that pulls in all other Street View captures for the location. 

Obviously, this will only work for locations where Google has a lot of historical Street View data, so what you’ll be able to find will vary widely by location. Google says that how often it scans areas for Street View depends on factors like how frequently the area changes, how popular it is and how difficult it is to get to. Street View first launched in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver, so those places will have the oldest historical data for the curious.

For those interested in the hardware Google uses to get Street View data, the company is announcing a big update to its camera system. Google says that the new camera (pictured above) has all the resolution and processing capabilities that are in the full Street View car, but it’s a 15-pound device that is “roughly the size of a house cat.” The company hopes this will make it easier to get data from under-mapped areas of the world; one example of such a place Google gave was the Amazon jungle. 

A camera system this small, relatively speaking, will be a lot easier for Google to deploy in more areas — it can be shipped anywhere and mounted to any type of vehicle. As long as it has a roof rack, Google says it’ll be good to go. Google says that historically, it had to create totally new camera systems to fit whatever area they wanted to capture, but the new camera is modular and customizable.

 It’ll serve as the “base” system that can be added to should the circumstances require it. For example, Google notes that the new camera doesn’t have the lidar scanners typically found on Street View cars that operate in cities, but they can be added on when they’re needed. Google says that the new camera system is being tested now and expects it’ll fully roll out in 2023. 

Finally, Google is adding four new collections of Street View imagery from some pretty noteworthy locales. The Pyramids of Meroë in Sudan, The Duomo in Milan, Les Invalides in Paris and the Sydney Ferries in Australia (the last one is coming later this year). The Duomo in particular shows off the inside of the largest cathedral in Italy as well as the exterior, while there's a virtual tour available of Les Invalides in Paris. To check these new sites out, visit Google's blog for direct links.

Uber continues to show that it has grand ambitions that go far beyond the ride-sharing service that it first became known for. At the company's second annual, product-focused Go/Get event, Uber announced a host of new features focused primarily on expanding its offerings in both the travel and delivery categories. 

Travel may sound obvious, given Uber's background, but probably the most notable new offering is simply called Uber Travel; its focus is helping you get around when you're not in your home city. It's an integration with Gmail that can pull details out of your inbox like hotel, flight and restaurant reservations and group it together in the Uber app. The point, of course, is that you can then schedule rides for each of these events, and Uber will give 10 percent back in Uber Cash when you do. Uber Travel goes live today in the US and will be available in Canada within a few weeks.

Uber

Of course, you may be understandably wary about linking your Gmail account to Uber. I asked the company about what protections they have in place, and a spokesperson note that integrations with Gmail all have to undergo a security assessment and also get a letter of verification from a third party that Google chooses. Uber was verified through this process, and the company also has to follow the data privacy requirements found in Google’s API Services User Data Policy.

Another rather unconventional new service is called Uber Charter. This lets you reserve large vehicles directly through Uber — think things like party buses, coaches, passenger vans and so forth. It's not clear how far in advance you'll need to book these things, but the benefit is that you'll see up-front pricing for whatever sort of vehicle you need. Uber says this is coming to "select cities" starting this summer.

Uber

Uber definitely has larger gatherings on its mind with that new features, and Uber Vouchers could be similarly helpful for weddings and other events. Let's say you want to make it easier for your guests to get to an event. Uber Vouchers lets you fill in event details like the location, set a maximum amount that you will pay. Once that's set, you can share a code with your guests and their rides will be paid for out of the pool of money you put aside for those trips. Uber's been doing this for businesses already, but now anyone can use the voucher system.

A number of other announcements Uber is making focus on its delivery services. Earlier today, the company made an announcement that it was launching two different autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles, one with autonomous vehicle company Motional and the second with Serve, which will do deliveries with autonomous robots (the Serve robot is pictured above).

The other new delivery features aren't quite as big a deal, but they'll actually be available to people not in LA. For starters, Uber Eats will soon support voice ordering with the Google Assistant. As you might expect, you simply say "Hey Google" and then ask your phone to order by asking for specific items from specific merchants. This will only work on Android for starters, but hopefully Uber Eats users with iPhones will get this feature as well (or something similar with Siri). Google Assistant integration is rolling out this summer, at which point I imagine we'll get more specifics on exactly how it works. 

Uber Eats will also soon be available in a handful of sports arenas and stadiums, as well. Obviously, you won't have drivers bringing food to the venue — instead, you can place an order from the arena's eateries and go pick it up at your convenience. You can skip the line and go straight to pick-up once your order is ready, and Uber says it'll work with food, beer, merchandise and more. This new program is initially rolling out at Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium in LA, Yankee Stadium in New York, the Capitol One Arena in Washington, DC, Minute Maid Park in Houston, PayPal Park in San Jose, and internationally at Roazhon Park in Rennes, France. 

Uber

Finally, Uber has a few new features specifically focused on electric vehicles. Uber Green has let you request a ride from a hybrid or electric vehicle for a while now, but the new "Comfort Electric" option specifically lets you request a ride in a "premium EV" (think a Tesla or Polestar). This is available for starters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Dubai.

Meanwhile, Uber drivers using EVs will get some new tools to help make their lives easier. There's a charging map built into the Uber app for drivers that shows the nearest EV chargers, their charging speeds and navigation to get there — this should make it easier for drivers to top up their cars during a shift. This is part of a new EV Hub in the app that gives drivers info and incentives on switching to an EV when the time comes. Among the details it includes is a cost of ownership estimate for an EV versus a gas-powered vehicle. The car-buying market is a bit wild right now, and it might take years before you start to see cost savings if you just buy a new EV to replace a functional gas vehicle, but drivers who might be thinking about a new vehicle may be able to find some useful tools here.

All this news comes shortly after Uber announced its quarterly earnings, a report that showed the company was bouncing back from the pandemic better than its rival Lyft. That's at least in some part thanks to the relative diversity of Uber's offerings — indeed, Uber Eats played a huge role in keeping business up as traditional rides tanked in 2020. While none of today's announcements on their own will likely make a huge impact on the company's business, it does help paint a picture for how Uber sees itself growing in the future.

The iPod's death has been a long time coming. Somehow, it's already been eight years since Apple discontinued the iconic iPod classic. Nonetheless, the news this week that Apple is discontinuing its last iPod, the touch is significant: This officially marks the official end of a product that set up the company for two decades of success.

A lot has been written about how the iPod changed Apple's fortunes, transforming the company from an influential but niche computer maker into one of the biggest companies in the world. Similarly, the iPod's effect on the music industry almost speaks for itself at this point. The device slowly but surely ended the reign of the CD and moved people to a world in which they could just buy a handful of songs from an album instead of paying $15 for the whole thing on a plastic disc.

That's probably why the death of the iPod brand doesn't feel all that notable, despite the fact that I was an iPod early adopter who quickly went all-in on Apple's ecosystem. It was inevitable that Apple would eventually stop selling the iPod touch, just as the end of the iPod classic in 2014 felt overdue.

That's probably because both the consumer technology and the music industries have long since moved on from the iPod. It's not hyperbolic to say that the iPod reversed both Apple's fortunes and the record industry’s — but we've since seen another seismic shift that made the iPod feel almost as quaint as the CD.

The iPod was responsible for several major changes in the way music is consumed. In the 2000s, CD sales began to fall as more and more people started buying music through digital storefronts like the iTunes Music Store. There, you could get an album for $10 or a single song for $1, a significant discount over CDs at the time. And while many people still purchased full albums, uncoupling songs from the record propelled custom mix CDs and playlists to the forefront of how people listened to music. The iPod and iTunes Store killed the romance (and burden) of a physical music library while giving listeners more freedom in how they bought and listened to music.

But in 2022, the music industry has undergone a second sea change. For many, the concept of owning music at all is obsolete. Spotify, Apple Music, and the like have fully moved us to a place where we pay for access — to a catalog of some 90 million songs — not ownership. The idea of the album is even less important now than it was during the iPod's peak, as the streaming services curated playlists for us, based on our listening histories and what's popular. Apple, Spotify, and their competitors are the de facto DJs now, guiding listeners to new music the way radio DJs did for decades.

A big part of Steve Jobs' pitch for the iTunes Store was that it was a response to piracy and a way for music creators to get paid. The thinking was that the store would offer a vastly improved experience over dealing with sketchy piracy apps so that people wouldn't mind paying a few bucks here and there to download songs, thus putting money back in artists' pockets.

In the streaming era, however, the debate over the fairness of music streaming payments to artists and songwriters rages on. While the iTunes Store was the first place Apple introduced its controversial 30 percent take, there’s been increasing furor in recent years over how Spotify carves up payments for artists into fractions of a cent per stream. Musicians have often made more money from touring and merchandise sales than album sales, and now that most people are streaming rather than buying music, that gulf has widened even more. (That’s without mentioning how much of a hit artists have taken on touring revenue since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.)

Just as the music industry has moved on since its iPod-fueled transformation in the 2000s, the consumer tech industry no longer resembles one in which the iPod was dominant. The iPod was conceived as a device that did one thing well: play back your music and podcast library. Sure, it picked up other features over the years (most notably displaying your photos and playing videos), but music was always its raison d’etre.

A number of other single-purpose devices flourished around the same time. Amazon introduced the first Kindle in 2007, digital cameras hit the mainstream in a big way throughout the decade and the Flip Video camera had a brief time in the spotlight, just to name a few. But the modern smartphone, which Apple itself ushered in with the iPhone, largely eliminated the need for a dedicated music player, not to mention most other purpose-built gadgets. We’re now 15 years into an era of convergence, where the smartphone is the most versatile and important device we carry.

It’s no coincidence that the last iPod Apple sold was the iPod touch, a device that is basically an iPhone without the phone. For years, it was a good option for kids or people who couldn’t afford an iPhone, but giving children a phone isn’t the taboo it once was, while monthly payment plans mean more people can afford them. It’s not clear who the iPod touch was for in 2022.

Apple may be pulling the plug on the iPod now, but the world moved on years ago. We’re past the point where those of us waxing nostalgic about the iPod can be considered youthful; if the rise of the iPad was a defining experience for you, you’re likely an elder millennial at best. I don’t say all this to downplay the iPod’s importance, though. On the contrary, looking back at how far we’ve come over the past 20 years reveals just how transformative the iPod was for music, and for tech.

Sonos devices have supported Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant for almost five years now. The Sonos One from 2017 was the first speaker the company made with built-in microphones, and almost every speaker it’s made since has worked with Alexa, not to mention Google Assistant. Despite supporting those popular services, though, Sonos has decided to build its own voice assistant. Dubbed Sonos Voice Control, the feature is specifically designed to work with music only, so this isn’t exactly a competitor to Alexa and Google Assistant. Instead, it’s meant to control your music as quickly as possible, and with privacy in mind. 

Oh yeah, and it's voiced by none other than Giancarlo Esposito. 

Sonos

Sonos Voice Control will be available on every Sonos speaker that has a microphone, going all the way back to the first-generation Sonos One. Like other voice assistants, you use a wake phrase (Hey Sonos) to get the speaker’s attention. From there, you can ask it to play songs, albums or artists from Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer or Pandora. You can also ask it to play stations from Sonos Radio. Nope, Spotify and YouTube Music aren’t available right now, though Sonos says it plans to add more services in the future. 

As I alluded to earlier, Sonos Voice Control isn’t a full-fledged Alexa competitor. You can’t ask it for the weather or to add items to your to-do list; instead, it’s specifically tailored for music and controlling your Sonos system. That means you can ask Sonos to move music you’re playing from one speaker to another, or to play on all the connected speakers in your house. Simple commands like volume and skipping tracks work, as well. 

Those limited commands, plus play and pause controls, will even work on Bluetooth speakers like the Roam and Move when they’re not connected to WiFi. Sonos also promises that setup will be a simple matter of turning on the feature in the Sonos app – since you’re not connecting to a third-party system, you don’t have to bounce between multiple apps to get things working here. 

You may be wondering why you’d use Sonos Voice Control over one of the other voice assistants that work with its speakers. The company thinks privacy will be a big selling point here, as it cites research that a lot of people who don’t set up voice commands on Sonos speakers do so because of privacy concerns. But Sonos Voice Control gets around that by doing everything on-device – the company was explicit about this in a press conference, saying that no voice commands are saved or sent off the device back to Sonos. 

This has another benefit: Sonos Voice Control is fast. Most of the time, there’s no need for the speaker to verbally respond to your query, so you just ask it to play a song and the song plays. Obviously, we’ll need to do more testing with the software’s final version, but in a demo I saw earlier this week, the performance was extremely impressive. When I ask smart speakers to play music, there’s usually a noticeable pause as the speaker pings the internet and starts streaming music. Most of the time, the assistant also repeats what you asked for before it starts playing. But with Sonos Voice Assistant, there’s no verbal response, and the time it takes to process and understand commands seems to be much faster than when I use Google Assistant or Alexa on my Sonos speakers. In my unscientific testing, Alexa is definitely faster than Google Assistant for most queries, but the Sonos assistant seemed faster still.

If you’re already using Alexa on your Sonos speakers, you can add the Sonos Voice Assistant to work alongside Alexa. You can use the “Hey Sonos” wake phrase to control your music and still ask Alexa to do all the things it can do. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the case with Google Assistant; you can only use Google’s voice commands or Sonos, not both. In the past Sonos has alluded to Google being the reason that you couldn’t use both Alexa and the Google Assistant on its speakers, and that appears to be the case here, too.

As for how Sonos landed on Giancarlo Esposito for their voice assistant, the company says it considered numerous different options, including computer-generated male, female and gender-neutral options. But ultimately, the company wanted to go with a voice that would be familiar to many users – one that had more personality than you’d get from a generic voice. That said, you don’t hear Esposito talk too much, as the system is designed to talk back to you only when you directly ask it for information, like what song is playing. Sonos says it will add more voices over time as Voice Control arrives in more regions, but a company spokesperson declined to say whether they would come from well-known actors like Esposito. 

Sonos Voice Control is set to arrive in the US on June 1st, followed by France later this year. 

Once in a blue moon, Sonos releases its speakers in some fun colors or finishes, but most of the time, people just have to pick between black and white. But starting today, you can get the portable Sonos Roam in three new shades; Wave, Sunset and Olive. As you might guess, Wave is a chill shade of light blue, Sunset straddles the line between orange and pink and olive is a cactus sort of green. 

Aside from these colors, there's nothing else new with the $179 speaker — it has a built-in battery for about 10 hours of play time, Bluetooth for when you're away from WiFi, a microphone for voice commands via Alexa and Google Assistant and auto Trueplay technology to tune the speaker for optimal sound wherever you place it. I really liked the speaker when I reviewed it last year, and even though it costs $10 more than it did when it launched, I still think it's a great portable speaker that is a smart addition if you're already using other Sonos products.

There will be one new features for the Roam on June 1st, though. The speaker is one of many in the Sonos portfolio that'll work with the just-announced Sonos Voice Command platform. It's the company's own voice assistant that's specifically focused on controlling your speakers with speed and privacy top of mind. You can read more about that here, and you can order the Roam in these new colors today at the Sonos website.

Sonos products have never been cheap; in fact, the company raised prices on most of them last year. But Sonos has also recently released some products that push things into more affordable territory. Last year, the company released the $179 portable Sonos Roam speaker, and later followed up with a microphone-free version for $159, the cheapest Sonos yet. Home theater speakers, however, have remained premium products, with the $449 Beam being the cheapest soundbar option the company makes.

That changes today with the Ray, Sonos’ most compact and inexpensive soundbar, which arrives June 7th. At $279, it’s not competing on price with bargain options like Roku’s $130 Streambar. But in an advance demo earlier this week, it was clear that the Ray is a powerful soundbar that will provide a massive upgrade over just about any TV’s built-in speakers. Sonos made a few compromises to hit that $279 price point, but I think for a lot of people, it will make more sense than spending $449 on the Beam.

Like other Sonos speakers, the Ray connects to WiFi so you can stream audio to it from a range of popular services. You can group it with other Sonos speakers for multi-room playback and send songs to it via AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. Since it’s a soundbar, it connects to your TV with an optical cable to play whatever audio is coming through your television. And, like other Sonos soundbars, you can wirelessly pair the Ray with the Sonos Sub for extra bass, or a pair of Sonos One speakers for true rear surround sound. This last point makes it an ideal entry point into a Sonos home theater system that you can build up over time.

Sonos

To keep the price below $300, Sonos made some changes that it believes won’t be a major concern to its target audience. Since the Ray uses optical audio rather than HDMI, it has less audio bandwidth than the Beam and Arc soundbars. This means that the Ray is only capable of decoding Stereo PCM, Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Surround; it’s incompatible with Dolby Atmos, a major difference from Sonos’ other home theater products. It does keep an ethernet port for faster networking performance, though.

Sonos also skipped out on including a microphone here, so you can’t use it directly with the new Sonos Voice Control feature or other assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. In addition, the Ray has simpler speaker internals than what you’ll find on the Beam and Arc. All told, you get two center midwoofers, two tweeters with split waveguides to broaden the speaker’s soundstage, a bass reflex system that provides a surprising amount of low-end performance, and four Class-D amplifiers.

Sonos

The speaker has a tapered design and forward-facing speaker components, unlike the Beam and Arc. Sonos says this is so you can tuck the Ray inside of a media stand without sound bouncing off the walls. This is part of the overall vision for a product built for smaller spaces than other Sonos soundbars, which are both large and loud. (As usual with Sonos products, it comes in both black and white, either of which should look just fine in a wide variety of homes.)

Naturally, the Ray’s speaker setup is more modest than more expensive Sonos speakers, but in practice it still provides an impressively well-balanced listening experience, whether it be music or movies. Sonos said that it focused on areas where it felt built-in TV speakers were particularly lacking, like dialog reproduction and bass. Both of those characteristics were definitely noticeable in the demo. Naturally, we’ll need to do some closer listening to see how it compares to other soundbars from Sonos as well as its competitors, but the Ray made a positive first impression. Like other Sonos speakers, too, you can use an iOS device to enable Trueplay speaker-tuning technology to optimize the Ray’s sound for your specific environment.

At first glance, it seems the Ray offers a lot of value for $279. In some ways, Sonos is positioning it as the “gateway drug” for its home theater lineup, similar to how the Roam serves as an entry into the Sonos ecosystem. Like the Roam, the Ray costs more than some competing products, but that cost gets you a full-fledged Sonos device with all the benefits that entails, including a focus on audio quality. You could definitely get a less expensive soundbar, but Sonos isn’t trying to be the cheapest by any means necessary. Instead, it’s trying to bring the power and clarity of its other soundbars to a smaller, more affordable package. How successful it’ll be remains to be seen, but at first listen the Ray could attract a lot of people interested in something like the Sonos Beam, but who were otherwise scared off by its price.

Google's last tablet was the ill-fated Pixel slate, a device that was widely criticized — so much so that in 2019, Google said it wouldn't make tablets anymore. In classic fashion, though, the company is changing its tune. Today as part of its hardware presentation at Google I/O, Google has announced the Pixel Tablet, a premium Android-powered device that's set to arrive sometime in 2023. 

As this product is months away from being released, Google is only giving us scant details right now. Rick Osterloh, Google's SVP of devices and services, said that the Pixel Tablet was a "premium" device that'll run on the company's custom Tensor chips, just like the latest Pixel phones. What we haven't heard is how much it'll cost, how big the screen is or when it'll be released. We can say that, based on the renders we saw, it looks a bit like someone just took the screen off a Nest Hub.

Naturally, the new tablet will run Google's version of Android specifically built for larger screens, an initiative that's been in the works for a while now. Historically, the big knock against Android tablets is that the software never feels like it's built for the bigger screen, and that apps aren't optimized to use this bigger view. Even with changes made to Android to support larger screens, it doesn't necessarily mean developers will build their apps to take advantage of that space. 

But Osterloh told reporters in a briefing ahead of I/O that Google has clearly heard that users want a larger-screen Pixel experience to compliment their phones — so the company is at least seeing some level of consumer demand for such a device. Whether that leads into market adoption is another question entirely, as neither Chrome OS nor Android tablets ever caught on in a significant way. Samsung has had some success with its Galaxy Tab line and Amazon's budget lineup of Fire tablets have both stuck around, but Apple's iPad remains dominant. 

Given that this device won't be out until sometime in 2023, it's far too early to predict if Google has learned from its past mistakes in the tablet arena. But the company made a commitment at I/O to rebuild more than 20 of its apps for large-screen devices, and huge developers like Facebook, TikTok and Zoom are on board as well. If more third-party developers get on board by the time the Pixel Tablet arrives, it could have a shot at redefining what we think of when it come to premium Android tablets.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2022 right here!

For a few months now, Google has been talking about Android 12L, an upcoming version of Android that's focused on making the OS work better on larger-screen devices like tablets and foldable phones. Thus far, most of those changes have focused on interface tweaks, but today at Google I/O the company had some news about making apps perform better on larger screens, too. 

Google says more than 20 of its apps will be redesigned and optimized for tablets, something that should automatically make Android taps a lot more useful. Among those are YouTube Music, Google Maps and Messages. YouTube Music has a redesigned now playing screen that takes advantage of the extra screen space, while Messages has a multi-column view to quickly jump between different conversations. Google also says that third-party apps like Facebook, TikTok and Zoom will soon be updated to be better optimized for large screens, too. If Google can get more big developers like these on board, the Android tablet ecosystem should benefit greatly. 

Google also says that there are 270 million active users already using large-screen devices, so there's a decent number of people who'll be able to take advantage of these updates immediately. To find them, Google Play is getting a large-screen redesign as well that'll highlight apps built for tablets. 

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2022 right here!

Michelob Ultra and ESPN have decided to use AI to answer an enduring question: what would happen if tennis legend John McEnroe played against himself? An upcoming ESPN+ special entitled "McEnroe vs. McEnroe" will feature the 63-year-old star, who retired from singles competition in 1992, playing against a complicated, AI-trained version of himself. 

According to TechCrunch, the process for the actual game is fairly involved. After the real McEnroe sends a ball over the net, the AI avatar responds to its direction and "swings" — at this point, a new ball is launched from a ball cannon, which is obscured by a smokescreen. The positioning of the ball cannon and smokescreen are designed to make the ball appear as if it's coming off the avatar's racket. The avatar itself is projected onto a hologram particle screen. This teaser below shows off a tantalizingly small amount of footage.

As for how this all came together, the real McEnroe spent a day with production company Unit 9, who used full-body motion capture and scans combined with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator technology. Adweek says that the McEnroe avatar and its programming are based on five different points in McEnroe's career, including his debut in 1979, his ascent to the top of the sport in 1981, and his final year as a pro in 1992.

Besides the work with the real McEnroe, Unit 9 also analyzed hundreds of hours of footage from his career and recorded 308 different shots for the virtual avatar. Given that McEnroe is now 63, he'll be playing against a much younger version of himself — whether or not that means the AI will have the edge remains to be seen, of course. If this somewhat odd matchup has piqued your interest, TechCrunch says the special will air tonight, May 7th, on ESPN+ at 10PM ET. 

Among the biggest questions on people's mind since Elon Musk made his bid to buy Twitter is how the service might change under his ownership. We're still a long way off from the deal becoming official, but Musk nonetheless has had to pitch investors on his vision for the company to get the funding he needs. As it so happens, the New York Times has obtained a copy of a pitch deck for investors, which gives us an idea of the preposterously grand vision that Musk has for the company. Here are a few highlights.

For starters, Musk wants to grow Twitter's monthly users from the 217 million it had at the end of 2021 to nearly 600 million in 2025 and 931 million users by 2028. That's more than quadrupling its monthly users in the next six years. Musk also wants to have 104 million paid subscribers for a service only referred to as "X." There weren't any details on what sort of product X would be, but Musk has cryptically hinted at an ad-free paid Twitter experience. 

Speaking of paying for Twitter, Musk's pitch deck has a lot of details on some ambitious revenue goals, as well. He believes that Twitter can quintuple its annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from the approximately $5 billion the company made last year. And Musk wants to significantly diversify how Twitter makes money, as well. Right now, advertising makes up about 90 percent of Twitter's revenue; Musk wants to cut that to about 45 percent by 2028. His forecast would include $12 billion in advertising revenue and $10 billion in subscription revenue. 

To meet those lofty goals, Twitter would obviously need a lot more paid users. Musk forecasted 69 million Twitter Blue users by 2025 and 159 million by 2028. Twitter Blue is a $3 per month service that launched in the US this past November and offers perks like ad-free news articles, the ability to undo sending a tweet and a few other small niceties. Between the mysterious product X and Twitter Blue, Musk is clearly putting a lot of importance on getting users to opt into some sort of paid Twitter experience.

Finally, Musk sees Twitter making some moves in the payment space as well. He wants the company to bring in a modest $15 million in revenue from a payments business in 2023, with that number growing to around $1.3 billion by 2028. Currently, Twitter offers very limited shopping and tipping features that the NYT says make no notable impact on the company's bottom line. 

The NYT didn't have any details on how Musk expects to meet these lofty goals — only that he expects big things from Twitter once his takeover is complete. Quadrupling users and quintupling revenue is an extremely tall order for a company like Twitter that's already well established. But Musk clearly didn't want to spend $44 billion on Twitter just to keep the status quo.