The Guardian (October 25)
“The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence.” This has raised “concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry,” as well as “criticism over transparency. Microsoft and Google regularly publish figures for their water consumption, but Amazon has never publicly disclosed how much water its server farms consume.” Based on partial disclosure, Amazon consumes at least as much water “as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco.”
Tags: AI, Amazon, Capacity, Competitors, Criticism, Datacentres, Google, Microsoft, Partial disclosure, San Francisco, Server farms, Transparency, Water consumption
WARC (June 13)
“Alphabet, Amazon and Meta dominate the advertising market outside China: they’re set to account for 54.7% of that total in 2025 – equivalent to $524.4bn – rising to 56.2% in 2026. The introduction of AI stands to disrupt some ad revenue models, particularly in search, but Google’s dominance of that market will likely persist in the near term,” according to WARC’s Global Ad Forecast Q2 2025.
Tags: $524.4bn, 2025, 2026, Ad revenue, Advertising market, AI, Alphabet, Amazon, China, Disrupt, Dominance, Dominate, Global Ad Forecast, Google, Market, Meta, Persist
Financial Times (January 25)
“A small Chinese artificial intelligence lab stunned the world this week by revealing the technical recipe for its cutting-edge model, turning its reclusive leader into a national hero who has defied US attempts to stop China’s high-tech ambitions.” DeepSeek claims to have “used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and $5.6mn to train a model with 671bn parameters, a fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train comparably sized models.” The release of DeepSeek’s R1 model “has Silicon Valley on the defensive, raising doubts “about whether better resourced US AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, can defend their technical edge.”
Tags: AI, Anthropic, China, Cutting edge, DeepSeek, Defensive, Google, High-tech, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, R1 model, Silicon Valley, Stunned, Technical recipe, U.S.
The Week (June 28)
“There may be no bigger scramble in business right now than the race to dominate retail media,” which is expected to “account for more than a fifth of all digital ad spending in 2024.” The stakes are high. Amazon, for example, “earned $46.9 billion from retail ads,” which was more than all of Coca-Cola’s global revenue “and makes Amazon the third-largest advertising platform in the United States, behind only Google and Facebook.”
Tags: $46.9 billion, 2024, Advertising platform, Amazon, Business, Coca Cola, Digital, Dominate, Facebook, Google, Race, Retail media, Scramble, Spending, U.S.
The Week (April 29)
“Sometimes booms go bust. That may be happening with artificial intelligence.” OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and other tech companies “have unveiled gaudy new products with fanfare,” but AI hasn’t revolutionized the way people live, work or communicate. Profits are also “turning out to be elusive.”
Tags: Artificial intelligence, Booms, Bust, Communicate, Fanfare, Gaudy, Google, Live, Microsoft, OpenAI, People, Products, Profits, Revolutionized, Tech companies, Work
WARC (January 4)
“Quite simply, most advertisers just aren’t ready for the world that comes next.” Google has begun its six-month phase out of tracking cookies. “Nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK marketers are not well prepared for the withdrawal of third-party cookies, while a majority (58%) of global marketing leaders lack a working understanding of how changing privacy regulations will affect their work.” Google’s move “will fire the starting gun on a deep process of adaptation across the online ecosystem.”
Tags: Adaptation, Advertisers, Google, Marketers, Online ecosystem, Prepared, Privacy regulations, Process, Tracking cookies, UK, Withdrawal
New York Times (July 11)
“A deal to ensure that data from Meta, Google and scores of other companies can continue flowing between the United States and the European Union was completed on Monday, after the digital transfer of personal information between the two jurisdictions had been thrown into doubt because of privacy concerns.” It may ultimately prove a temporary patch, but the E.U.-U.S. Data Privacy Framework marks “the final step in a yearslong process,” resolving “a dispute about American intelligence agencies’ ability to gain access to data about European Union residents.” Guard rails will now allow some data collection, but the subjects will be able to object and challenge the collection.
Tags: Collection, Data, Deal, Digital transfer, Dispute, E.U.-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, Google, Guard rails, Intelligence agencies, Jurisdictions, Meta, Object, Personal information, Privacy
WARC (April 13)
“Search marketing is on the cusp of its most consequential transformation since Google first introduced its sponsored keyword search auction over 20 years ago, and the more recent introduction of the use of data and algorithms to provide greater personalisation in search results.” As we move into the Search 3.0 era, it will be “defined as much by image or video as text, and by artificial intelligence and natural language processing, in which marketers shift from targeting keywords to targeting intent and context.”
Tags: AI, Algorithms, Auction, Consequential, Data, Google, Image, Intent, Keywords, Marketing, Natural language processing, Personalisation, Search 3.0, Transformation, Video
TechCrunch (February 11)
“Google is flailing” as it now tries to rush its AI strategy. In contrast, Microsoft seems to be nearing a break-away moment. “The move to integrate the latest GPT model… with Bing and Edge is a kind of forced hail mary, its last and best play in the search engine world.” This move has “clearly rattled” Google, causing its “leadership to swiftly transition from anxiety to full-on flop sweat.”
Tags: AI, Anxiety, Bing, Edge, Flailing, Google, GPT model, Hail mary, Integrate, Leadership, Microsoft, Rattled, Rush, Search engine, Strategy
IR Magazine (November 11)
“It was a bad few weeks for tech companies with the Twitter and Meta layoffs, and then Amazon lost $1 tn in market value….For perspective, that’s almost like losing what Google’s parent Alphabet is worth, which is now around $1.13 tn. The loss makes Amazon the first public company ever to lose $1 tn.”
Tags: $1 tn, Alphabet, Amazon, Bad, Google, Layoffs, Loss, Market value, Meta, Tech companies, Twitter
