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The $450 Billion Ad Tech Market Is About To Be Shaken Up By AI When Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it was the 21st search engine to enter the market. In 2022 Google generated over $200 billion in revenue off of search advertising and other digital advertising. MIcrosoft launched the Bing search engine in 2009, built from the assets of Live Search which was released in 2006. By all accounts, Microsoft Bing was the laggard among Google and Yahoo in the space. Round 1 of the search engine wars was one by Google which has dominate for almost two decades.

Market Conditions In California Working Against Silicon Valley Big Tech Pundits and industry watchers continue to forecast a demise in Silicon Valley and the tech companies in the region. While the valley's influence may be slowly diminishing, there's still a significant hub and concentration of talent unlike any other region in the world. For those who can still afford to live here, access to top talent, capital, weather, and industry expertise remains parallel to none.

Big Tech and Market Reset Bring Optimism To Markets While many in the market are still psyching others into a recession, the fears are subsiding and the NASDAQ appears to be where the optimists are. Five factors have led to the mini rebound in this market of lowered expectations as watchers await the fed rate decision.:

Gain Pragmatic Advice For What's Next In Web3 and the Metaverse Economy Much hype has been made about the metaverse. However, very few organizations have fully grasped the impact the metaverse will have on experiences, engagement, and even sustainability across the enterprise.

Davos Is The Place For Ideas and Elite Networking The World Economic Forum (WEF) will hold its annual meeting January 16th to January 20th in Davos, Switzerland. Over 2500 delegates from 1000 companies and thousands of additional attendees gather to discuss international trade, business practices, government, politics, economics, and society. While the official meeting is a series of highly PR reviewed and crafted statements, the real conversations happen in the serendipitous environments around the conference. The networking throughout the town at hotels, on the Promenade, and at unofficial Davos events or known as UnDavos are where entrepreneurs, investors, and influencers convene to create the next big idea.

This year's Amazon Web Services reInvent brought over 55,000 attendees to one of the premier tech industry events. The obvious and noticeable change in this year's event was an overemphasis on partnerships and alliances. The AWS leadership team made it clear that partners were more than welcomed.  IBM's presence as the Global Partner of the year did not go unnoticed by the attendees and of course the other public cloud vendors who have not yet had the courage to host in-person events at scale.

Microsoft Faces Its Biggest Challenge Despite Its "Social" Standing Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella’s and Vice Chair and President Brad Smith face their toughest challenge. There was always that belief that so long Microsoft acted like a“good citizen” on social issues they would be immune to anti-trust. That myth has been burst. The FTC has filed a lawsuit and a judge must decide if the case is strong enough to block the $69B deal. The FTC fears Microsoft will not provide titles for other platforms. Other headwinds include 16 countries that will have to approve the mega deal. China will probably block the deal to protect TenCent's position. Tencent also owns 5% of Activision.

The NASDAQ Composite closed out the week with its biggest two-day rally since 2008. CPI numbers hinted that inflation was subsiding and hope sprung that the Fed would take a less severe stance. Should the Fed hiking slow down from 75 basis points to 50 basis points, market watchers remain hopeful and some took advantage of the early signals of slowing inflation.

All Eyes On Digital Giant Earnings With recession headwinds driving lower valuations and earnings uncertainty in high gear, the level of fear remains high. However, in the past week, NASDAQ was up 5.2%. So the big question,will these digital giants hold their gains ahead of earnings season?

Disintermediate or Be Disintermediated On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced the largest acquisition of a private software company and the largest acquisition in Adobe’s history. In a half cash, half stock deal for approximately $20 billion, San Francisco-based Figma would be acquired by San Jose-headquartered Adobe. Adobe is paying a 50 times annualized recurring revenue (“ARR”) multiple for Figma which is expected to surpass $400 million in ARR exiting 2022.