🌎 High Holidays

Google is the hottest tech company on the block

Just Google doing Google things. On Friday, Google’s parent company Alphabet surpassed Microsoft in market value shortly after launching its newest AI model, becoming the third-largest US company behind only Apple and Nvidia.

Why is Google on fire?

The search giant has been on a tear this year, with shares of Alphabet up almost 77% in the last six months, largely due to its success in the AI industry. Those wins have started to stack up recently:

• Its latest AI model, Gemini 3, blew past its competitors (like ChatGPT) in benchmark tests and has been called “a new era of intelligence” after its release last Tuesday.

• Then, late last week, Google rolled out an updated version of its image generator, Nano Banana Pro, which quickly went viral after users generated insanely realistic images of major tech CEOs hanging out together.

The company’s performance in anything AI-related is a stark contrast to just three years ago, when investors, analysts, and employees said Google was lagging behind its rivals in the AI race.

AI isn’t their only success

The company is firing on all cylinders. Alphabet reported a 32% jump in cloud revenue and a 15% increase in search revenue last quarter, all while YouTube continues to be a key piece of people’s online habits.

According to a new Pew Research Center report on Americans’ social media use this year:

• YouTube remains the most widely used platform among US adults and teenagers.

• 84% of adults say they’ve used the site (well ahead of Facebook’s 71%), and almost half report visiting YouTube daily.

There are the self-driving cars, too: Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit, is currently active in five cities nationwide and aims to expand into 12 more soon. Last week, the company finally cleared regulatory hurdles to expand in the Bay Area and Southern California.

Scientists recover the “Holy Grail” of shipwrecks

Think they’d spare me a few dabloons? Colombian scientists have successfully recovered some artifacts from a three-hundred-year-old Spanish shipwreck off the Caribbean coast. The haul is estimated to be worth over $20 billion.

Discovery and recovery

The treasure was retrieved from the San José galleon, which sank in 1708 after a naval battle with an English fleet, taking gold, silver, and emeralds with it nearly 2,000 feet below the sea. Read the history behind the ship here.

• After its disappearance, the wreck lived on in popular memory, even showing up in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, until Colombian authorities confirmed its location in 2015.

However, its rediscovery presented some new problems: After it was found, competing legal claims from Colombia, Spain, a US company, and Bolivia’s Qhara Qhara Indigenous community surfaced over who actually owns the treasures the San José holds. Listen to their positions here.

So what’s actually on the ship? Beyond the cannons and sails, the ship is thought to have carried as many as 11 million gold and silver coins, emeralds, and other valuable items. The artifacts are currently being conserved in specialized labs to prevent deterioration.

Walmart wants to be a tech company now?

Even grocers can evolve into tech bros amid the AI wave. Walmart announced it will move its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq, marking the biggest transfer by market capitalization in NYSE history.

Trading places

Walmart, which has traded on the NYSE for more than 50 years, announced during its Q3 earnings call that it will move its listing to Nasdaq, which is a more tech-focused index (see overview).

• The swap officially made it the largest company ever to switch exchanges, according to Walmart executives.

Why do this? Walmart said it’s part of the company’s “tech-forward” strategy, aligning with its efforts to focus on e-commerce, AI tools, and warehouse automation. CFO John David Rainey said the change better matches Walmart’s “people-led, tech-powered” ambitions.

It comes as Walmart dominates: Walmart reported that, unsurprisingly, its emphasis on discounts has been an advantage amid economic uncertainty. The world’s largest retailer said it continues to attract customers looking to stretch their budgets, helping same-store sales rise 4.5% in the third quarter from a year earlier as more shoppers traded down to Walmart’s lower-cost offerings.

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Grocery chains are competing to offer the cheapest Thanksgiving meals

Nothing says cheap like ‘premium’ brand turkey, store-brand everything else, and a side of convenience. Recent data and reporting show a clear shift in how many Americans are shopping for their Thanksgiving meals… and they’re choosing price over everything.

To compensate for budget-friendly consumer tastes, retailers are offering massive discounts on Thanksgiving meal deals despite price hikes on some staples due to inflation.

Who’s got the cheapest bird?

A typical 10-person Thanksgiving meal spread (which includes turkey, stuffing, salad, cranberries, rolls, and pie), using all national name brands, would cost around $90, according to Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute.

• Not to mention, the price of many shopping cart staples has skyrocketed almost 29% in the last five years.

That’s far too much than many of today’s consumers are willing to spend, so retailers are lowering prices for Thanksgiving meals in a bid to earn some shoppers’ loyalty, even if it costs them:

• Walmart is keeping its holiday meal deal at roughly $4 per person for 10 people, though with fewer items than in 2023. The retailer also sells frozen turkeys for less than one dollar per pound, almost half the $1.73 wholesale price.

• Aldi is offering a $40 holiday bundle, which features a 14-pound turkey and sides, for $7 less than last year.

The move echoes Costco’s well-known playbook with its $1.50 hot dog combo: accept lower margins, or even losses, on a popular item (in this case, turkeys) to boost store traffic and drive additional purchases.

It’s a good idea because people really want a nice turkey: According to the Agri-Food Institute, many consumers are increasingly choosing premium brand turkeys while leaning more heavily on store-brand items for sides like stuffing, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and pie.

Thanksgiving is becoming a THC-infused holiday

We all know what you and your cousin are doing on that “walk”. As recreational marijuana grows increasingly normalized, Thanksgiving week has emerged as a major sales driver for the cannabis industry, with some consumers choosing it as an alternative to alcohol.

High holidays

While you may think I was joking about the infamous “cousin walk”, the often-memed private tradition has actually become a mainstream marketing moment that even has big snack brands playing along:

• One Instagram ad for Jif peanut butter referenced a “Pre-Thanksgiving-Dinner Cousin Walk,” while another campaign from Hidden Valley and Taco Bell leaned into the tradition.

As legalization expands, the virality of the secret tradition has shown how cultural attitudes toward cannabis are changing… and driving massive sales:

• The day before Thanksgiving, dubbed “Green Wednesday,” has become a behemoth sales day for dispensaries.

• It’s now the second-biggest day for legal cannabis sales after April 20 (420 for the uninitiated), according to the BDSA, which reports the US marijuana industry topped $30 billion last year.

It’s partly because younger generations aren’t drinking as much: Bloomberg reports that the combined value of the world’s top beer, wine, and spirits companies has fallen $830 million over the past four years, amid shifting attitudes toward cannabis and alcohol-related health risks.

Catch up on this week’s weird news

 > Americans will consume an average of 4,500 calories this Thanksgiving, which would take an average male 10 hours to burn off on the treadmill. See more fun facts about the holiday here.

 > The average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 is $55.18 this year, a 5% drop from last year and the lowest since 2021, driven largely by a 16% decrease in turkey prices.

 > AAA expects 81.8 million people to travel 50 miles or more in the coming days for Thanksgiving, a new record, with nearly 90% opting to drive instead of fly.

> The origins of Friendsgiving, a potluck-style Thanksgiving with friends, may have come about centuries ago, even though the term entered the dictionary just five years ago.

 > Bath & Body Works is piping vanilla and fresh pine through diffusers in the Grand Central subway station, creating a surprisingly “Christmassy” atmosphere for commuters as a part of a holiday scent campaign.