That is probably an apt description of the markets too. They seem to be a little up and a little down. They are just a reflection of optimism (or lack thereof) amongst investors, right? This is very oversimplified and probably a function of where I am at in life: 45 years old, a decent head on my shoulders, a solid education. So my prospects should be bad provided I contribute the aforementioned effort. So maybe the market can work the same way (shoulder shrug).

What would the equivalents of my features be? Ther market doesn’t really have an age. But it does. The time horizon of those invested in it will affect how capital is invested. The age of those doing the investing will also affect investment. There are lots of smart people out there, certainly far smarter than me, so smarts shouldn’t be an issue. Or maybe it should? Or it is about temperament. Something to keep in mind. Willingness to work and create is something though.

Right now, unemployment is really low across most economies but they are still having trouble finding people to work. Why is that? There is a guy who lives on my street and took an earlier retirement because of the pandemic. Could that be a reason employment numbers are low but people are still looking for workers? Has the labour supply just shrunk? It may get worse too. A pilot was telling me the other day that United Airlines is expecting ⅓ of its pilots to retire in the not-too-distant future (5 years?).

So is the labor supply down? It is hard to find this number. I will continue to look and report back.

This latest jump today (Monday, July 13, 2020) comes despite coronavirus infections in the United States reaching a daily record high of close to 60,000 cases. Yikes! But one wakes up today and the markets are up almost 2%. Wow! I know the market performance is based on future returns but how far in the future are these investors looking?

There has to be some rationality to it because there are definitely smart people behind these investments. And, as has been said before – and can’t be said enough – the market is not the economy. So what are they seeing that I am not grasping? Profitability for sure. The economy is down and people are, very unfortunately, hurting a lot. So consumers aren’t spending. But that isn’t the only way to be profitable. You cut costs. You furlough workers, you close stores, offices, cut whatever you can – coffee, paper, Christmas parties, etc. Maybe the cost savings is what is doing it.

But it can’t possibly be enough to balance off a 20% drop in spending or whatever it is. Governments have gotten in there and dumped A LOT of money into the economy and that is making its way through (maybe not to those who really need it but not sure the markets care about that too much, just as long as it is there). So that, combined with cuts, offsets the amount of money that has fallen out of the economy? It would seem so.

But what will happen when that money goes away and the virus is still here and people are scared to go outside or, if they do they get sick? Maybe that won’t happen and that is what investors are banking on. Or maybe they are seeing the cuts will stay and that will more than compensate for the loss of business that will eventually bounce back? Or maybe this rise is being pushed by the companies (see consumer staples, tech companies) that have maintained or even grown through this pandemic. Like I said, I really have no idea how it is happening. I will continue to watch with interest.

I will leave this post with a couple more thoughts:

15% – that is the number I heard today on the Motley Fool podcast (titled “Retail’s Rough Ride“) which they attached to the average growth rate for online for the average retail business. Average overall growth was just 2-3%.

As well, my brother – who works in retail – was talking to a buyer the other day who happened to be a millenial. She said she buys nothing in stores anymore.

“We’re currently reviewing this report from the CCI’s (Competition Committee of India) ongoing investigation,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with the CCI and remain confident that we comply fully with India’s competition laws.”

These accusations, while certainly not new to Google, are exactly what they need to avoid if they want to continue their internet search dominance. If users even think they are being served results which aren’t in their best interests then you could see them leave in droves – provided another ready-made option was available. The same would be true of advertisers if they feel they aren’t getting an honest shake on Google’s platform.

The wheels are already in motion in Europe where regulators appear to be aggressively targeting Google’s shopping results and comparisons of the regulators move against Microsoft and how that affected the former tech giant are already being made. Currently Google dominates search in Europe, reportedly enjoying penetration as high as 97 percent in some jurisdictions and Android use as great as 75 percent in the entire market.

Given this it will be interesting to see in India – which with its increasingly young, literate and urban population- responds to any serious allegations against Google. Currently Google dominates search with India’s 300 million online users and its Android operating system. But this is a country with a population of well over 1 billion and as they begin to come online could be a bellwether for where search is headed.

I’m referring to the hullabaloo around the New York Times article from a couple weeks back which for a minute blew the roof on the working conditions off the world’s largest retailer (yes, only by market cap but isn’t that crazy unto itself?). Apparently Amazon runs itself like some sort of corporate Lord of the Flies where employees are encouraged to make other ones look bad, losing a loved one or falling gravely ill is frowned upon, and you’d better answer your emails promptly whether it’s 2 pm or 2 am.

To be honest the article ran the gamut of emotions from “that’s pretty horrible,” to “that is understandable” to, in the end, “are we really surprised if this is true?” The third seems to majorities take as not much was heard  about the piece after Jeff Bezos’ retort.

However, as a digital marketer trying to help retail companies sell as much of their product online as possible there was one thing the article really impressed upon me; these people are serious about selling everything they can online. It seems for every product category they have specific teams (like greeting cards for goodness sakes) whose only reason for being is to figure how to sell said product category online as quickly and for as cheap as possible. With some 450 million different products and 150,000 employees worldwide there probably isn’t much Amazon isn’t trying to sell.

So the question begs does your client have a team like this doing this for them? Probably not. Do they kinda hope you’re that team or at least a major part of it? If they don’t then you, as a trusted advisor (I am now speaking to fellow digital marketers),  should be impressing upon them of taking their digital efforts, whatever those may be, very seriously. This internet thing ain’t going away and there it isn’t just Amazon out there looking to take their customers from them.

But at the same time these digital efforts need not come from a place of fear necessarily. Us digital marketers should really be articulating and impressing upon them the opportunity they have to find new customers and new markets for their products. So what we need to do is impress upon them this need to look at their business and determine just how much they think this can help their business both from a defensive standpoint but also by taking the offensive against these large competitors. After all, the user on the other end just has a need for a product that your client can provide. Let’s help them do it!

That’s because all these companies we talk about fighting over search – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon – really have larger ambitions beyond your search queries. Sure they want you to look for things using their products but they also want you to do that along with everything else – wake up, go to work, make dinner, sleep – within their environment. So in fact the future of search is more than just search; it is a desire to have users do everything within a certain environment. All of these companies (along with others) have different ideas of what the best environment is and what their user value and how they will interact with each; this will be sussed out more within this space in future posts.

Anyways with that in mind there was one interesting piece of news that came out today (there were more but we’re just focusing on one here). First we should establish that Google is the leader in search and some would say they have an unassailable position and that any digital marketer, and in particular SEOs focusing efforts elsewhere is a waste of time. Perhaps this is true when you consider only search. But if you start thinking that the end goal is to get you into an environment than the future is much more interesting.

For example, Microsoft announced today that downloads of their new Microsoft 10 platform is now in use on 75 million devices worldwide and the company is targeting 1 billion devices within the next three years. To put that into context Google announced their Chrome browser (Google’s flagship environment) has 1 billion users just this past May along. Who knows where Chrome will be in three years time but growth is harder the larger you get and perhaps they will not be able to achieve much beyond their current status (honestly, these companies are all one data hack or NSA scandal away from big trouble). And if Microsoft can bring back those users they have lost via this new Windows product – which it seems to be doing a decent job of accomplishing – than the future of search may look a lot different than the present.