The Forward Brief #2
Welcome back to The Forward Brief.
In this edition, we’re talking big bans, bigger data centres, and even bigger spending sprees—from Australia’s under-16 social media ban to Black Friday’s record-smashing online sales.
We’ll also look at Apple’s $20 billion TV+ bet, Google’s AI-powered sales clerk (and why it might mean trouble for e-commerce) and the latest addition to Google’s antitrust track record.
Let’s dive in.
Too young to scroll
In order to protect children, Australia has approved a new bill banning people under 16 from using social media.
The legislation will require social media platforms to enforce age verification before opening their gates. To comply with these requirements, companies will have 12 months. However, there’s a slight issue: the bill doesn’t specify which platforms are targeted or how the verification process should work. One wild initial idea was requiring official ID, but someone likely reminded the masterminds behind the bill that TikTok is essentially owned by China—a country not exactly renowned for its robust online privacy laws.
My unsolicited advice to Australia: if this ban doesn’t work, just hide the router—that always did the trick when I was a kid.
United States v. Google
In 2020, the Department of Justice sued Google for its monopolistic behaviour in online search, including shelling out an impressive $26.3 billion to Apple, Samsung, and others to make Google the default search engine on their devices.
But this is not the first time Big Tech is accused of creating monopolies—they are currently juggling seven major antitrust cases. So, how is this one any different? Well, the judge ruled against Google and proposed to break up the $2 trillion advertising titan by forcing it to sell Chrome and Android.
Chrome, with 67% market share, floods Google with the data it needs to supercharge its search engine. Meanwhile, Android’s 71% market share means Google can distribute its apps and services to 3.3 billion users with just a click.
Since the failed attempt of breaking up Microsoft in 2001 over similar charges, this is the harshest remedy a judge proposed to curb tech monopolies. If, as Google argues, their search dominance comes purely from superior product quality, then they have nothing to worry about—they’ll still dominate with or without Chrome and Android tilting the playing field in their favour. I hope we live long enough to see if that’s the case.
Google’s new virtual sales clerk
Imagine searching for a new winter jacket on Google. Just below the organic listings, an AI-powered sales clerk pops up, serving up personalised recommendations, comparisons, and highlights—all right there in your search results. This is what Google’s new AI Sales Assistant promises.
While this may sound like a good deal for users, it will cost brands their visitors, first-party data and brand equity. As if that wasn’t enough, Google will craft the product content. But who is to say it won’t shit the bed and tank your sales? Remember when Google’s Gemini suggested humans should eat rocks? For an AI that can’t tell humans from birds, messing up your product content is a walk in the park.
The biggest Black Friday ever
The results are in: online shoppers spent a record-breaking $74.4 billion globally on Black Friday this year—up 5% from last year, according to Salesforce.
In the US, mobile devices did the heavy lifting, driving 80% of traffic and almost 54% of revenues. With these figures expected to climb even higher in the coming years, having a “decent” mobile experience is not going to cut it. Going forward, “flawless” will be the new baseline.
But there is only so much a pretty design and a fast mobile site can fix. Consumers are getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products and options—it’s like walking down an endless supermarket aisle. That’s where generative AI chatbots come into play. According to eMarketer, retailers who integrated generative AI into their sites or apps saw a 9% increase in conversion rates.
AI's ever-growing appetite for power
With the surging demand for AI applications and larger models, gigawatt-sized data centres are expected to emerge to handle the computational load. That’s the same amount of electricity roughly 1.8 million people use in a year—more than twice the population of San Francisco.
But where will all this power come from? Not from renewables—they simply can't cover the massive energy needs and aren't reliable enough. After all, these data centres power most of the critical systems and applications we use every day. You wouldn’t want you brokerage firm to say “Sorry, we can’t process your buy order because it’s not sunny enough down in Texas.”
That’s why companies are turning to natural gas as a short-term fix and nuclear power as the long-term solution. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are already investing into nuclear reactors to meet their energy needs.
An Apple TV+ Original: How to dig a $20 billion hole
Despite all the awards and critical acclaim Apple’s original content has received, the company’s streaming service, TV+, has only managed to get 0.3 percent of US screen viewing time.
Since launching TV+ in 2019, Apple has spent a cool $20 billion on original content. Yet, with just 25 million subscribers, it doesn’t seem like Apple is getting its money’s worth. To put into perspective, Netflix leads the pack with 283 million subscribers.
After five years and billions of dollars, Apple is now considering licensing its originals to TV channels in hopes of recouping some of that investment. As Warren Buffett once famously said, “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging,” and it looks like Apple is taking his advice.