Will Bennett

BIG TECH HAS IT’S HEAD IN THE CLOUDS – CATCHES WALL STREET BY SURPRISE

April 28, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

Across the board earnings beats from the world’s largest tech companies have surprised analysts, as cloud computing and job cuts help bulwark against the bleak economic climate.

Mega cap tech stocks Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook (now Meta) all exceeded Wall Street’s revenue expectations for the first quarter of 2023, driven by better-than-expected growth in cloud computing and resilience in ad sales.

The cloud market leader Amazon Web Services grew sales by 16% to $21.4 billion, while Microsoft’s Azure grew revenue by 27% to $28.5 billion. Even the lagging Google Cloud turned a profit for the first time since inception with sales growing 28% to $7.5 billion.

SAMSUNG’S DUMPING OF GOOGLE MAY BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE

April 21, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

In the latest battle of the AI wars, on Monday rumours began swirling that Samsung might be dumping Google’s search engine for the new kid on the block, Microsoft’s ChatGPT enhanced Bing search.

Alphabet shares fell as much as 4% on the reports that Samsung was looking to pick sides in the Bard/ChatGPT race, which Google has been struggling to gain ground on since Bard’s embarrassing unveiling in February.

But the news of the impending breakup might be a blessing in disguise.

Google’s continued belt tightening reflects a broader cooling of the labor market.

April 7, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

First it was 12,000 employees, then it was ‘micro kitchens’ and cafeterias, now its massage therapists, staplers and tape dispensers that are facing the chopping board in efforts to cut costs at Google.

In a companywide email this week, CFO Ruth Porat declared she was on a mission to make “multi-year durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency” according to CNBC.

Google tries to pass the anti-trust buck, as the big tech rivals trade jabs.

March 30, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

Google has accused Microsoft of anti-competitive behaviour in the European cloud market in the same week that it sought dismissal in a US court over allegations of its own anti-competitive behaviour and was fined for market manipulation in India.

In what seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavey told Reuters that it has flagged concerns with European antitrust regulators over Microsoft’s licencing agreements that discourage rival cloud usage. Microsoft hit back saying that it was not the market leader in the space, with only 20% of global cloud services revenue after Amazon Web Services.

Powell blinks, the Fed’s printer goes ‘Brrrrr’ and the ‘taper tantrum’ ends

March 24, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

According to the markets, this week marked the end of our current quantitative tightening cycle, as a new phrase entered the lexicon of the once hawkish Fed Chair’s speech.

“Some additional policy firming may be appropriate,” he said during Wednesday’s Federal Open Markets Committee meeting in which the federal funds rate was raised for the ninth consecutive time to 4.75%.

Layman’s translation: “It’s over.”

Keep tightening until something breaks? Well it just broke.

March 10, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

Forget politics, these days a week is a long time in monetary policy. From hard landing to soft landing, and no landing, it now appears as the economy is on the brink of a nosedive.

On Friday morning bank stocks and the bond market were screaming at Fed Chair Jerome Powell that the economy was at risk of blowing up due to a Lehman style ‘credit event’ if he didn’t stop increasing interest rates.

THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD WEEK FOR EV INVESTORS

March 3, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

It’s been bumpy ride for EV investors this week, with disappointing earnings, and a lacklustre “Investor Day” leaving many licking their wounds as EV hype continues to wane.

Rivian shares hit an all-time low on Thursday despite a broader market rally as investors continued selling off the company in response to a earnings report released on Tuesday that saw the shares in the electric vehicle maker tumble 18%.

Despite Rivian forecasting vehicle production for 2023 would come in at more than double the previous years at 50,000, it still failed to meet Wall Street’s expectation of 60,000.

Once heralded as the rival to Tesla, the company has failed to make inroads in the EV market with the company’s shares down approximately 90% from their initial public offering highs in November 2021.

Yet over in the market leaders’ corner, things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows either.

Big Tech flexes muscle as Canadian lawmakers close in on compensation legislation.

February 24, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

Google is blacking out search results of users in Canada as a standoff between Big Tech and government legislation gathers pace. In response to the proposed “Online News Act”, on Wednesday, Google randomly blacked out the newsfeeds of 4% of its Canadian users in what it called a “trial” response to the legislation should it be passed.

The proposed law, Bill C-18, was introduced to the Canadian parliament last spring and would compel internet companies such as Google and Facebook to compensate journalists when news content is published on their search engines and news feeds.

Google has an estimated 90% market share of search engine activity in Canada and it is estimated that the law could generate approximately $242 million a year for news outlets according to the Canadian parliamentary budget watchdog.

GOOGLE STAFF ASKED TO CHIP IN FOR BARD AS CRITICISMS GROW CONCERNING THE COMPANIES’ MANAGEMENT CULTURE AND FUTURE COMPETITIVENESS

February 17, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

In what appears to be increasingly desperate times at Google, employees are now being asked to teach Google’s ChatGPT competitor BARD how to respond to topics they are “experts in”. The request came the same day that CEO Sundar Pichai asked staff to find up to four hours of their workday to devote to improving BARD.

In an email circulated to staff on Wednesday and leaked to CNBC, one of Google’s senior Vice President’s, Prabhakar Raghavan, asked staff to fact check BARD’s answers. “Your participation in the dogfood will help accelerate the model’s training and test its load capacity” the email said.

Last week Google employees criticized CEO Sundar Pichai for the botched unveiling of the AI which saw the search giant’s market cap fall over $200 billion in just three days. On internal messaging boards employees derided the event as “rushed”, “botched” and “comically short sighted”.

GOOGLE SHARES SLIDE FOR SECOND DAY AFTER IT LOSES THE FIRST BATTLE IN AI WARS.

February 10, 2023 by Will Bennett Leave a Comment

Shares in Alphabet fell for their second straight day after investors confidence in the tech giant’s competitiveness was shaken following a botched product demo and rival Microsoft’s unveiling of a new AI powered search engine.

On Monday Google unveiled its answer to Microsoft’s recently acquired ChatGPT artificial intelligence, coined “BARD”. However, in what has been coined “Google’s Cybertruck moment”, BARD failed to return accurate answers to a question posed to it in a live demo on Wednesday. BARD claimed that the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system had been taken by the James Webb telescope, however astronomers later pointed out this was incorrect.

Will Bennett

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