When every search result is sponsored [sturti/E+ via Getty Images]
[NurPhoto / Getty Images]
Hey Snackers,
Buckle up, folks: Uber now lets you see how many one-star reviews you’ve racked up from drivers. Maybe don’t ride with that seafood-soup takeout…
Stocks fell sharply yesterday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the UN of a “moment of peril” in Ukraine after reports of shelling on the Russia-Ukraine border. The Dow had its biggest one-day drop of the year.
About 2,640,000,000 results… But they’re all sponsored. This week, search-engine blogger DKB wrote a viral post claiming “Google Search Is Dying.” The argument: Google search results aren’t as relevant as they used to be because they’re cluttered with ads and SEO-optimized clickbait. But Google still dominates the search biz with 86% market share.
Buried in the results… The search biz that made Alphabet huge could become a liability if users can’t easily find what they’re looking for, or don’t trust the results. And as Alphabet spent (and lost) billions on Google Cloud and Waymo over the past few years, its core search biz has run into obstacles:
The search industry may be splintering… And Alphabet’s mountain of lawsuits could cut into its huge ad sales and give competitors a chance to take a slice of Google’s search share. There’s a reason people use “Google” as a verb. But as the internet becomes more decentralized, thanks to the rise of blockchain-backed communities, users could gravitate to new search options that reduce ad clutter and give more helpful results.
Parking by the food court just got tougher… Malls were hit hard during the pandemic as shoppers ditched fitting rooms for sweatpants. Lockdown measures forced a record 12K+ US stores to close in 2020, as mall icons like J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, and Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Now Simon Property Group, the country’s largest mall owner, is calling the comeback:
Tale of two retails… While malls have been benefiting from the return to normal, urban retailers are still struggling. Shares of Vornado Realty, which owns property in metro areas like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, are down 33% over the past two years. A couple reasons:
There’s a long road ahead… Brick-and-mortar retail — urban and suburban — still faces an existential threat from our shift to online shopping. Case in point: there’s 90M square feet, or 16 Mall of Americas, worth of empty US storefronts. Vornado's CEO says that even though urban commercial rents may have bottomed, they’re unlikely to ever return to the "unbelievable highs" of the Before Times. Now cities like Denver are offering businesses rent-free space and up to $20K in sweeteners to open shop downtown.
Kabob, goober, and crawdad are words most Americans know but many Brits don’t. Yet Brits know gazump, tippex, and quango, which Americans do not.
Authors of this Snacks own: Bitcoin and shares of Google, Ford, Walmart, Uber, Tesla, Microsoft and GM
ID: 2045973