Greetings from New York City. I'm back from a whirlwind weekend at SXSW with my colleagues at Brand Innovators. I wrote about my key takeaway from my past few days in Austin in my Sunday essay: .
In the news: Should Google be worried about Walmart's rapid success using generative AI to humanize search? Some say yes; I say no. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has positioned the company as a retail innovator – and he Walmart's generative AI-assisted search capabilities – but unless Walmart is going full "Miracle on 34th Street," it should have very little impact on how Google spends its day.
However… Google should be very, very worried about how generalized generative AI platforms (such as Perplexity) are going to eat into their ad revenue. These AI models use bots to crawl the web in real time to collect and surface information in easy-to-understand paragraphs. The bots get the info they need to prompt the generative AI apps, but they don't click on ads. If I were Sergey, that would keep me up at night.
That said, Google practically invented transformer models, they have one of the largest collections of big brains on the planet, and I'm sure they will get their consumer-facing act together very soon. Unless this is Google's Kodak moment…
Nah… it couldn't be. Google is way too smart for that…
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
