Once again the gig economy sounds like a recipe for labor unrest rather than a high-tech utopia. Companies like Uber will have to recognize unions and start bargaining with them sooner or later – if they want to survive.
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Mobile payment apps are still a tough sell to America’s consumers and merchants, Kount’s data indicates. The company that can change that paradigm will make a fortune.
That means more two thirds of American retailers or 71% still refuse to accept mobile wallets. Once again it sounds as if Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is losing the payment wars, and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) is not doing very well.
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The biggest current threat to Alphabet might be the trade war that U.S. President Donald J. Trump (R-New York) has declared against the European Union (EU).
The greatest long-term threat to Alphabet is all the competition it is receiving in advertising. Menaces there include social media such as Facebook’s (NASDAQ: FB) and its WhatsApp solution. WhatsApp had 1.5 billion users in December 2017, Statista calculated.
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It looks as if Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) is manufacturing history to give an Oprah presidential run a boost.
Trying to portray a TV huckster like Oprah as the heir or moral equivalent to Dr. King is insulting on every level.
The January 15, 2018, Google Doodle gives us a preview of what an Oprah campaign would look like. That is low on substance; utterly lacking in truth, based on white guilt, and motivated by nostalgia, simplistic patriotism, and emotions.
Currently, I’m leery of both UPS and FedEx because of the danger they are in, in a changing retail market. Threats to these companies abound from both new businesses and new technologies.
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Jeep is planning to bring out a plug-in hybrid version of its iconic Wrangler in 2020, The Free Press reported. The Wrangler is the basic four-wheel-drive Jeep modeled on the iconic off-road vehicle that served America’s military in three wars.
The Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) alliance is vital to Chrysler’s future, because it provides access to autonomous vehicle technology, data, and expertise, without a lot of risks. Another alliance that Fiat Chrysler should seriously consider is one with Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) which has vast amounts of expertise in electric and autonomous vehicle technology.
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“We could hold Google and Facebook and all those big multinationals accountable; we could make sure that people; like those who are currently ‘voluntarily’ contributing their data to pump up companies’ profits are given something that is adequate to support their livelihoods in exchange,” Fuller said.
Fuller’s idea makes a lot of sense because most of those companies’ values come from the data they collect and disseminate. Figuring out how to charge a tax on that data will be difficult because much of its value is theoretical.
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There is a $16.4 billion two-fold threat to Alphabet’s advertising-based business model out there that a lot of investors will not see coming. It is advertising fraud and Big Business’s growing dissatisfaction with digital advertising in general.
Digital advertising fraud will cost brands $16.4 billion worldwide in 2017, the ad-verification company Adloox and The&Partnership predicted in April. That figure marks a 20% increase over the $12.5 Adloox estimated that brands lost to fraud in 2016, CNBC reported. Not surprisingly this level of fraud is upsetting some major advertisers.
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The most frightening AI of all is being developed by a Google project called AutoML (machine learning). The goal of AutoML is to create an AI that can design and build other AIs, The Times reported.
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) is trying to build AI that can reproduce. The thinking behind AutoML is to reduce the need for the highly-paid engineers and computer scientists who to design and build AIs.
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The potential challenges Wells Fargo faces are vast. The greatest of these is falling revenues, which probably reflects the growing implosion of the mortgage market.
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