Paris 2024 Olympics recap: Internet trends, cyber threats, and in-person impressions

Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week in Net. It's the August 21st, 2024 edition, and we're back with a special episode about Internet trends, more focused on the Olympics. I'm your host, João Tomé, based in Lisbon, Portugal. And with me, I have for the first time in our show, Cloudflare's co-founder, president and COO, Michelle Zatlyn. Hello, Michelle. How are you? Hi, I'm great. So happy to be here. I can't wait to talk about Internet trends and the Olympics. Two of my favorite things mashed together. So first, where does this show find you? Where are you? Not at the Olympics right now. Of course, it already ended for more than a week. Where are you? I'm back in the Bay Area after a great summer. It's kind of back to reality. I'm back in the Bay Area and my kids are getting ready to go back to school. And so it's a beautiful day here in the Bay Area. Before we start with some of the trends that we monitor with our data, how was the event for you? You were there in person. Thousands of people were there from all sorts of countries. How was the experience? Was it the first time for you or not? Well, so yes, I had the privilege of going to the Paris Olympics. It was my third time going to the Olympics. I had gone to Calgary in 1988. I'm Canadian. Some of you might know that. I went to Vancouver and then now this is my first summer games. All three were fabulous, but Paris was just such a special time to be there. And I brought home some of my favorite merch. I have brought home some souvenirs. But just being in Paris during the Olympics, I was there during the second week. The city transformed itself. It looked absolutely incredible. Everyone was there cheering on the athletes. Those athletes work so hard, are so prepared, so uplifting. The camaraderie, the teamwork, even the sportsmanship between each other. I think there are so many business lessons to be learned. And I just said that I had absolutely a blast being there. I think anytime you have the chance for the Olympics, I'd say go. It was much less busy than I thought. I was worried about the crowds. And then actually, the best, best part is I got to do it with Matthew Prince, who's my co-founder. We did it together. And I'd say it's probably the best co-founder bonding experience you could ever have. He will give you some insights during some of the events? For sure, for sure. I mean, Matthew's a very well-read person, incredibly intelligent. And has been to the Olympics a couple of times as well. And so knew a lot about a lot of the sports that I maybe was less familiar with. And so it was fun kind of bantering back and forth while watching these incredible athletes perform. One of the things we wrote about in the blog was related to the first, the opening ceremony, and then the closing ceremony. It was on Sunday, not this Sunday, the previous Sunday. So I actually did not see either the opening or the closing. Matthew was there for the closing, but I had left to come back. I had some personal commitments I had to get back to the US for. But, you know, I watched on TV like many others. And I think what's interesting that some of our data shows is that during the opening and closing ceremonies, Internet traffic was down double digits around the world. And it makes sense. This Olympics is this event where people catalyze together to watch, to come together around the world. And while I was not there in person, so I cannot speak to the vibe, I will say my household was very intensely watching during the Olympics. And I know that we miss having it in the background on our TV. From the events you were assisting, what was the one that you felt this is different, this is something different than what I've experienced before? Okay, I have to say, okay, so it's a couple of things. I saw a lot of events. I watched a lot of sports that week, which again, made me very happy. But anytime France was playing, there was just a special or France was competing. There was a special something in the air that I'm not sure necessarily translate on TV, or I did not appreciate what I was watching on TV. I appreciated much more in person. We were there kind of early in the indoor volleyball games, and France was playing Germany in the men's indoor volleyball. And at a particular point in the game, France was down to nothing. And so Germany was ahead by two games. And France came back to win it in five sets. And I cannot tell you, I think any indoor volleyball game is really fun to watch. I think the crowd gets into it. There's a lot of cheering. It's fast paced. These athletes are incredibly athletic, strong, fast. But seeing France come back from a two set deficit, I mean, it was or two game with deficit, it was incredible. And the fans behind them, and anytime France was performing throughout the week, you just heard the fans come to life, even if even if that athlete didn't meddle. And I think that that that was great. That joie de vivre of supporting, you know, the home the home athlete, there was something nice about that. And by the end, even I was cheering for the French athletes because like, yes, go. You can feel the vibe, right? There, you mentioned that we saw drops in traffic. That was one of the things that surprised me, working on the Olympics now in terms of looking at Internet trends. It surprised me how much traffic drops during major events like the open ceremony or closing ceremony. But I was also surprised. Even some more particular competitions, for example, the US basketball final that won the US team, the team US the gold medal, for example, that was one where traffic in the US was lower, like 10%, around 10% than it was the previous week. That surprised me like a specific moment, not only a closing ceremony or an opening ceremony, but a specific moment impacting traffic. And this reminds me also the fact that these types of events are still relevant in terms of making a little bit more relevant also traditional mediums like TV, television. Although we also saw a big spike in HBO Max or Max or Peacock in the US, there's like more than 200% increase in some of those. So that's also interesting. But it's kind of interesting to see that these types of real world events where traditional TV still has an impact, makes a move in Internet traffic. Humans are aware of these types of events. Well, I will say I was at the the men's semi final basketball game of the USA versus Serbia, which was one of the best basketball games I've ever seen. I you know, I live in the Bay Area, I'm very lucky to have the Warriors down the road, I go see a lot of the Warriors games. And obviously, they've won the championships many times over the last decade. So I've seen a lot of good basketball and I almost didn't go I was like, I've seen a lot of good basketball. Thank goodness we went because that game maybe was one of the best basketball games ever played. Serbia, the USA, I mean, so many of those players all play in the NBA, but they were they brought their hearts, they played their hearts out the intensity on the court. You know, at one point USA was down more than 15 points and they battled back the teamwork. I like that how they were celebrating every time they got a basket and close the gap. I mean, being down 18 points in the second half was you know, not that many minutes left to go. It's quite a big deficit to dig out of. And I think there's a lot of us whether it's in business or in your life, you'd say, Oh, it's not worth it. This is lost. Those athletes dug back every single basket, and then celebrated each step along the way, even though they're maybe still down by 12 points, they celebrate that they had closed the gap by six and they just kept inching their way up. And next thing we knew the USA had won that game. And I think that I've watched a lot of subsequent interviews with the players since I think they all said that was maybe one of the highlights of my career, I've never had more fun. And being in the audience watching, I was having so much fun. And I think it's this point of like, what sports can do, it can transform you. And, and I think that Olympics really is a more inclusive sport watching experience. We saw so many families in Paris bring their kids to the games. So many people all, all different walks of life, different countries, nationality, everyone came together to come watch these athletes be part of the spirit of the Olympics and, and just being there, it was different than going to see a professional game. And so I'm not surprised that traffic was down because I my eyes were glued on the court. But you know, if I'd been at home, I would have been glued to the TV screaming like, go, go, go. And it's just these moments. And I think that's what the Olympics does. It brings us together around the world and different time zones. And, you know, maybe it doesn't matter what your political view was. It's like, hey, let's come cheer on, cheer on these athletes and have a good game and a good performance. And all the stories are just incredible. For sure. Let me share my screen here. We were mentioning the United States specifically. Gymnastics was also a really important thing here. We were there. I was there for this. Well, not to cut you off. But yes, during her balance beam and her floor routine finals on the Monday, I was there. It was actually the first event we went to. And I mean, after the US, after their artistic gymnastics early in the Olympics, and, and the finals kind of went through that first weekend and the start of the second week. And we went to the, the, the women's finals, the balance beam and the floor and seeing Simone on TV after all those years, I mean, watched her many Olympics and then seeing her in person, the power, the grace, and just how they all treat each other, the gymnasts across all of the different countries, how, how much they were supporting each other, seeing their team support them. Some of the things you don't quite capture on the TV, but you see in person was really, really interesting. And I mean, she's just, you know, iconic and it's, it was really special to be able to see her perform on that Monday, even though it's probably not her best performance. I think she was really tired by that Monday. She'd been for, she'd been competing many, many days. But yes, we were there. We were there when the Italian Alice won gold on the balance beam. And I know there was a corresponding drop in Internet traffic in Italy because that's the time they'd ever won gold. It was. Yes. And, and you can imagine that someone starts to say that all of a sudden you drop what you're doing. You go, you go tune into the TV to see Alicia, you know, celebrate her win on the balance beam. There, there was a, in this case in Italy. Yeah. It's quite amazing to see some of the drops there that happened throughout the event. In France, for example, French swimmer, Leon Marcin, won gold medal, several gold medals actually. But we could see traffic drop exactly in the moments where he was participating in France. Not only the opening ceremony, there's drop, but also in specific moments when he was competing. That says to someone that you're important in your country for sure. There's a bunch of good examples. Yes. Yes. And I think what your point before, which I kind of brushed over because I was so excited about the athletes were is exactly right. It is really interesting. You know, the Internet's transcended our lives on a daily basis and we use it for so many things, but it's actually kind of interesting to see how the patterns change based on what we're doing in other places in our life offline. And I think that this, the Olympics is a really good reminder that, Hey, we're going to not be online. We're going to go tune in to this moments. And we see the same thing with super bowls or, or, or presidential debates. Like there's certain moments where people stop kind of doing their day to day and, and are purposeful about going to tune into something else. And I think that, um, every time Leo went to swim was a good example of where that, where that happened. So it's just clear in the data, which is super interesting. Break dancing was also present for the first time, the Olympics, also some drops, especially in France related to the break dancing competition that came late, uh, during the games. Uh, you mentioned something this year, one of the things we noticed that was actually featured in your times and others was a drop in traffic during the, um, eclipse, total solar eclipse in the U S Mexico and Canada. Uh, and we saw like a cleared drops in traffic, especially in the States where it was a total, the solar eclipse completely. So it was no light for a few minutes, uh, in some States, like 60 % drop in traffic. Uh, in some situations we call, we call that like potentially an outage. There's a lack of Internet, but no, this was for a few minutes. People were not watching their phones, just looking at the sky. So there's moments like that still in 2024 that, um, put us all together watching something. Right. Which, um, which is a good thing that, that, that's what you want to see. I think you want to be able to say, okay, people still take the time to go outside. Of course. Um, I love being connected. I love the Internet. It's enabled so many things, but we also have to be able to enjoy some of these offline events and it's great to see that that's, that's still happening. So, um, you know, speaking of, of dropping, uh, I, I'm not sure if people read and I don't think we have any data around it, but when the men's, uh, uh, relay, the, the, the men's relay race where the U S like dropped the baton for like the fourth time, but we went to the track and field one night, not that night, another night where we saw some other, uh, athletes perform. And as a gift, I got this baton. And what's so interesting about the baton is it's so light. It's like really light. And so it's, it's, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to practice doing a relay with my family this weekend. And so I have it out and we were playing with it last night before I went to bed and it's, uh, it, the baton is very, very light device. So that's something that was rising to me. Is it metallic? Yeah, it's metallic and it's very, I'm not sure what it's made out of. Um, but it's, it, it's really got like alloy. It's, it's, it's, they gave that to winners, right? Uh, metal winners. Yes. I think they, I think they give posters. And then of course the metals, this was, this was, um, you know, at the venue, there was an opportunity to kind of, uh, be gifted this baton and, and I, I brought it home as a nice memory keepsake from the Paris Olympics. So, you know, again, hopefully it won't be dropping it around my house, but the, the, you know, the drop of the Internet traffic, the drop of the men's relay, the baton, it was really interesting to see. I had never been to a athletics, which in where I grew up, when I grew up, it was called track and field. Now they they've rebranded it athletics. I've never had never been to an, um, a live athletics competition before. And it's interesting, you know, it's on a huge field that was at the Stade de France, which is where they did the closing ceremonies, um, big arena. I think that's where France plays football and, uh, all of the events are happening at the same time. So depending where you are in the stadium, you have a good view of like one of the five, because you know, the stadium's huge. And so we are by the hurdles, finish line, the sprinting finish line. And so everyone who was coming in, we saw, we were right at the finish line. So we could see kind of be part of the photo finish and gosh, those runners come in fast. Those, those athletes come in fast and there was full vol going on and shot put and long jump and triple jump and all happening at the same time. And, and so, uh, it was kind of a unique experience where, um, if you easily get bored, it's a great event to go see, because there's something else about to start up that you can just look, you don't have to wait for the next one. You just look somewhere else in the field and there's something going on. So there's a tip for our viewers. And is there like screens there? Because I think sometimes you can miss like important moments because you were not like aware that they were happening, uh, being there. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to spot where is the action going on, right? Because there's a lot. Yeah. You know, it was interesting because we saw a lot of different, so it really depended on the venue. Um, it was interesting, like each venue kind of had a different, um, uh, viewing in-person viewing experience. Uh, like there's something like beach volleyball, which was, uh, I'm sure a lot of folks saw, which were, you know, at the base of the Eiffel tower. And it was an intimate, um, it was an intimate viewing experience. So no bad seat, everyone could see everything. And because they had built that just for the Olympics, the AB was not, they didn't have, they didn't have, I would say world-class AB in there. So you were really watching what was happening on the sand. And, but it was an intimate, uh, um, intimate venue. So you could, and so that was really great. Um, and so the kind of the screens around were more for scoring or to kind of up the energy more than replaying what the match point, because you're kind of watching it in, in, in real time, which was great versus at the track and field, the athletics, which is huge. They absolutely had screens. Like the AB was at a different level. Cause that's a kind of an existing structure. And so the AB was, um, the, the, what was quite, um, um, extraordinary that experience. And you really needed to use it because again, this you're in a huge stadium and the atmosphere of being there and cheering everyone is exciting, but you really, where we were sitting, the, the, the triple jump was literally across the field. There's no way from where we could, we could see them running and hopping three times. Yeah. They got to look like almost like a video game in the, in the distance, but you couldn't really see what was going on, but you could see them moving and then watching on the screen. I personally really got into pole vault that afternoon and, or that evening, we went to an evening event and there was, um, the Canadian performing that night and she ended up getting bronze. And it was the first time Canadian, a Canadian woman had ever meddled for pole vaulting and the American got second and Australian got first. And that was really fun and exciting. And even that you could see them going to pole vault and you could see whether you get over or not. So it's kind of fun to see it in real life, but then also pair it with the, with the screen experience for the whole thing. Um, the other thing I'll say is in some of the venues, the commentary was amazing. Like they really kind of, they brought what was happening to life. Um, but it was interesting. That was uneven. Some venues had a lot of that and others had less and, and, um, it was interesting. And then the other thing that was super interesting is some of the DJs. Oh my goodness. I cannot, the music, the energy. And, and I mean, shout out to the DJ of the beach volleyball venue. I mean, they just did a top notch always on points. Um, you know, they had a few seconds to play something and they, they capitalized on it and it was really fun. So that, that was, that was great. We have a bunch of, one of the things that always surprises me specifically about our data is we have different products. That means we can have a different perspective on the Internet. We also have, we have our quad one, 1.1.1 DNS resolver. And with that, we can also see, for example, Olympic websites related to, uh, where the traffic is coming from specifically. And before the event started, Olymp started, France was number one, but during the event was the United States that brought more traffic to those types of Olympic related websites. France second and UK third. Um, so a bit of trends there. Another thing I want to show, I, I spoke about this before it's related to, um, the, the streaming. So Peacock, Max, we spoke about this. There's a, there was a clear increase to those types of video streaming sites that had on -demand, um, events, um, during the event and also break dancing sites, which was also interesting. I mean, I think there was a lot of people saying what's break dancing, what's, what's breaking and, you know, you can go look, show me some examples. And they use breaking. Yeah. They use breaking for the name of it really. It is interesting. I, you know, I think that in what's been one, um, just parallel between tech and the Olympics. Again, I think there were some, lots of business lessons, lots of, uh, if you're an entrepreneur, a lot of entrepreneurship lessons, but the, uh, uh, I think in the Olympics, they've renamed some sorts of things like track field is now athletic athletics, even, um, what I would call synchronized swimming is now called artistic swimming, breaking. And so not break dancing, but breaking. So these are kind of what I used to refer to these events as, and now they've been renamed. And I, I was, there was a parallel to some of the titles in tech where, you know, HR is now called the people function in, in the ology. It's, you know, we've renamed HR to people and, and there's other, that's true. Yeah. So it's five years. Yes, exactly. So you're constantly evolving and, and, and, and evolving. All right. Are we going to talk about passing, passing the baton? Yes, LA, LA 2028, a clear. So during the closing ceremony, uh, Tom Cruise came and, um, and took the, the torch from Paris to Venice beach in LA. Uh, and we can, we could see like a large increase, 1600% increase to LA 2028 Olympics websites, uh, during that day, uh, specifically that was interesting. I mean, I, I think that by the end of the Olympics, um, you know, it was a little bit contagious. There was contagion where people just got more excited and there's a little bit of nostalgia. Oh, I can't believe it's ending and it's okay. And coming to watch kind of the ceremonial handoff. And, you know, if you just think logistically what it takes to put on the show. And again, I think Paris did a great job really using these iconic venues and the city. And it was really, it was really fluid how they had done it and where it was integrated into this beautiful city of Paris. You know, it's kind of a, after being there, I, I, I love saying, Oh my gosh, I can't wait to see what LA does. Cause it's the Olympics or the Olympics, but really each host city can, has a lot of, um, uh, has a lot of, uh, ways to make it their own. Like, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not super prescriptive. They can kind of make it their own the way they want. So it can be the Olympics with an LA flair. We got all it picks with the Parisian flair. And I'd say that was, um, uh, very well done, very well done. Um, and so I'm excited to see what LA does, which will have a totally different vibe because LA is just a totally different city than Paris and what's important there is different. And, and I felt what I loved about the Olympics, both while I was watching on TV, but then being there in person was it felt distinctly Parisian. Like it felt very much France was hosting the Olympics. And again, I, I, my sense is when it was in London, it was the same thing in Sydney. And I hadn't been to those in person, but it really had that French flair. And, and I hope that when we, as they pass it off to LA, that LA really leans into its West coast vibes. True. Um, we also saw DDoS attacks targeting Olympic related or sponsor websites, a clear increase to those websites in July and also August, uh, attacks as are always around. And we also, we have also an email product that gives us an email perspective. And we saw a clear increase to Olympics and Paris 2024 subjects of emails, um, during the Olympics, a lot of emails related to the reminder. Yeah. Sorry. Not to, not to, not to cut you off. I'm sorry about that. I just a reminder of, you know, you can, obviously I had a great time being there in person. And again, watching, we had a lot of viewing parties with our friends and family and our own family. Like it was just fabulous. It's just a reminder that even when you're enjoying it, you can't let your guard down on security there's there's. Um, and I think that was the same for the team behind the Olympics. I think they did a really good job keeping everyone very safe there. There was a lot of heavy security, like physical security in Paris, like a lot of machine guns in a lot of places. And I know they were doing a lot behind the scenes. And so big hats off to the whole, um, uh, security team at the Olympics who helped keep the games very safe, both physically, but then online. Um, but it's interesting that even though it's this very joyous moment, these heightened events make it that you have to pay attention to your own business security. Like it's, it's not let your guard down. And, and unfortunately that's what the data shows. The data shows that the attacks were still up and on sponsor sites and all these other places, both email and on web. And so you gotta, you gotta do the basics on when it comes to securing your businesses. And of course Cloudflare can help with that. And we're happy to talk to any of you, but it's really just do the basics to secure your business because even when it's these fun things that are happening in the world events, um, the attackers don't sleep. True. And like popular, uh, people like Simone Biles, those are used in emails sometimes to try to put malicious email, try to pull someone from your company in a sense. So popular events and popular people in a sense are used for, for bad in a sense by, uh, attackers. And we, we still have time, uh, for interns, uh, you hosted yesterday. We're recording this, uh, on August the 20th. You, Oh, there it is. Yeah. I really came up with some merge. This is, this was the, this was the, um, the mascot for the Olympics really everywhere. Um, I, I can't pronounce the name very well. It's like the French name, right? Yeah. I think anyhow, but really cute mascot everywhere. And this one's actually a Paralympics mascot. And so while the Olympics are over, this is the shadow to say, remind, remind everyone that the Paralympics are going on. And I think that that's equally amazing. And so if you're missing your sports dose that you can maybe shut off, you know, your online, uh, you know, your go check it, tune in to see what's going on in the Paralympics. Cause those are happening. They, they start right away. And, and, um, you know, it was interesting France really, they recruited a lot of people across France, uh, to come help be volunteers. So they had, they had 45,000 volunteers from the, from the country of France come to Paris to volunteer to be part of the games. And so they were driving cars, um, to as part of the transport system, or they were welcoming you when you came to the venues, those are all a volunteer system, 45,000 volunteers, apparently 320,000 people have applied to be part of these volunteers. And so it was pretty amazing just seeing the, the, the, the citizens of France really embrace having the games and being part of the spirit of the Olympics. And I was mentioning yesterday, you hosted a call for TV event with our interns. So we, we, to be honest, it's quite amazing to see what first interns are able to do. Uh, second, what interns are, um, how they are sponsored, how they are helped to do something. So how was that experience of talking with, uh, the interns and seeing what they achieved during their internship? You know, actually thanks for bringing it up. And as you were asking me the question, it kind of brought me back to this moment of the Olympics where I was sitting there watching these sports. And I mean, I went to wrestling. I don't even really know how scoring and wrestling went. And the whole experience was just so uplifting and energizing because of how hard these folks work, how like how accomplished they are, these athletes. And yesterday speaking to our summer interns, I, I spent time with 13 of them from around the world, Lisbon, London, New York, Austin, um, uh, San Francisco. And I was left so energized, same feeling that I had from the Olympics because you just feel like these folks are so smart. They're so competent. Um, they're really articulate. They're excited at curious, uh, individuals. And you think, okay, this is uplifting. You, you almost gain a lot of energy talking from folks, um, kind of earlier in their career. And it almost re -energized me for the day. It was the best way to start the day. And so I left extremely energized, uplifted for both what I was doing at Cloudflare, but also just for the world. I was like, we're going to be okay. When you have people like that coming up, being the next generation of leaders, it's quite impressive what, what, um, kids in college and university can do today. And just how much, how much more confident they are than maybe even when I went to university and just much more, how much more they believe in themselves, how much more they've done. And I think that's, that's a really great thing for, um, society. Absolutely. Here are some of them. Actually, they wrote a blog post about their experience. Um, here are some of them, different areas, uh, different experiences, different projects. They do different things, but they do a lot. That's my understanding. We also have this internal, um, Zoom meetings where interns show what they did. Quite amazing to see what they can accomplish in a few months. Oh, it is amazing. I think actually, you know, um, this was a really fun blog post. I think both the Olympic blog posts and this blog post is great. Read it, share it to other people who are looking for summer internships. I think, I think just demystifying what is a summer internship? How do you find one? How do you think about it? Our interns, um, I think did a really good job just kind of demystifying all of that, how they went about finding the internship, what did they do? And they did so many different things, which I think is great. There's lots of ways, there's lots of ways to contribute in society and not everyone has to have the exact same interest. And I think that again, our, our, our interns really span many teams, many projects, many specialties, many strengths. And I think that that that's a beautiful thing. Uh, but the, the second thing I'll just say, which I, which I loved is how much you can do in three months. Like in, in, I think as time goes on, sometimes people think, oh, three months is not very much time. You can't get much done, but actually you can get a lot done in three months. And there was a lot of examples of interns who came in, they started a project and they ship something like ship a feature. That's part of a product that our customers are now going to use within three months and talk about what amazing app, real life experience for them to couple with what they're studying at school and how great it is for our customers in the Internet that this next generation is able to contribute and it's great for our business. And so it's, it's kind of a win, win, win all along. Um, all of our interns at Clever works on real projects that, that really made the business better. And if they hadn't done it, we would have had, you know, somebody else who was a full -time employee at Cloudflare do it. So these were not made up projects. They are really helping the Internet, helping our customers, helping Cloudflare move forward. And I think that feels really good to contribute and be part of it, be productive. And so yes, the, the, the, the, it's sad that summer is coming to an end and then we are saying goodbye to all of our amazing summer interns, but it was great to have them and wish them all the best as they go back to campus. True. It was, uh, great to hear from them in terms of stories, what they learn are quite amazing. And we end on that note and with the mascot that I won't pronounce the name, but it's the mascot of the Paris 2024 Olympic. Doesn't it just put a smile on your face? Anyway, I, it was fun. Thank you Xiao for including me and letting me relive some of that, that amazing week of being in Paris. And really, I think sometimes it's hard to decide to do these things, but I encourage everyone, if you have an opportunity to kind of go to LA for the Olympics or the, the, the, the winter Olympics in two years in Italy, like just go get tickets to something and just being the atmosphere and being there. I really think even if you're not a sports fan, it's an enjoyable experience and kind of good, clean fun. Absolutely.