Hey Snackers,
Helvetica, Arial, Comic Sans and... Goldman Sans. In case the world's 200K fonts weren't enough, Goldman Sachs just released its very own typeface, free for public use. The 1 rule of Goldman Sans: you can't use it to criticize Goldman Sachs (no joke).
Markets rose on word regulators will loosen some rules put in place after the '09 Great Recession (aka the Volcker Rule) — the move from the FDIC gives banks more freedom with cash deposits, like the ability to more easily invest large sums in venture capital. JP Morgan and Citi jumped on the news.
Short end of the breadstick... Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants got it on earnings. In addition to the unlimited breadstick icon, Darden parents eight other restaurant chains, including Capital Grille and LongHorn Steakhouse. All its kids disappointed this quarter.
Blame the booze... During lockdowns, 99% of Olive Gardens were open for curbside pickup. Takeout sales soared 142%, and 3X'd at LongHorn (Darden doesn't deliver). But that wasn't enough to make up for all the lost booze bucks.
Big chains can survive and come back stronger... Darden stock jumped because it survived — 91% of its dining rooms are now open and it expects earnings will be positive again by 1st quarter 2021. Plus, it still has $750M in cash to weather slowdowns. Smaller biz isn't so lucky: 53% of restaurants that closed during the pandemic said they won't reopen. That wipes out a lot of Darden's competition.
Gmail's worst nightmare... Almost exactly a year ago, Slack went public with the goal of killing company email forever. It hasn't been able to do that completely because of one big roadblock: you're still emailing people outside your company. Slack is almost exclusively an internal messaging tool. But with its latest development, Slack might be able to drive the nail into all of work email's coffin:
Nothing like a Nando's name drop... to seal the value statement. Slack believes Connect is for more than just project-based communication. Over 1M users have already tested it.
Consumer messaging could be Slack's next frontier... Slack is 100% focused on business communications. Now, it's expanding its focus from pure intra-company to cross-company. Microsoft just launched a personal version of its Slack rival, which is called Teams, to communicate with friends/family. With the "Connect" platform already built out, Slack might not be far behind.
Well, that's a change... Google will pay some news publishers to license their content for a new service it's launching this year. News outlets have been wanting this for years. But why is Google finally doing it now?
This is a step in that direction... Google's future news service will include content from local and national news publications — and the news agencies will get a piece of the ad money Google brings in when you scroll. It has a few on board already, and is looking to expand. It's not the first to dabble in paying publishers:
This aims to solve two existential problems... for news publishers:
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