The Briefing

By Martin Peers

Chelsea Clinton, Anthropic's Daniela Amodei and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer are all slated to speak at The Information's Woman in Tech, Media and Finance Summit in October. Get your WTF tickets here.

Greetings!

You might not know it from the news of the past few days, but weather-wise we’re in the dog days of August. And that’s an ideal time to try Meta Platforms’ Ray-Ban smart glasses (no one wants to walk around wearing sunglasses in the winter gloom). Based on my personal experience, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg is onto something when he predicts these eyeglasses will be a “really big product.”

I wore the glasses last week while on vacation and found them a good substitute for earbuds (for making phone calls and listening to music or podcasts), as well as a convenient way to take photos. The artificial intelligence assistant, in contrast, was completely useless. While looking at my Siberian husky, I asked what kind of dog I was looking at, and Meta AI said there was no dog. The AI will presumably improve—but really it’s the audio and video capabilities of the glasses that matter to me, not the AI assistant.

And I’m not alone. Quite a few people who looked at my glasses immediately said they wanted to buy them. Zuckerberg reported last week, with Meta’s second-quarter earnings announcement, that demand for the glasses was “still outpacing our ability to build them.” I heard something similar from the sales assistant when I bought the glasses.

Here's what's really interesting: Some of the people I encountered while wearing the glasses assumed Apple had made them. One person tried them on and said, “OK Siri,” before I corrected them. It certainly seems likely that if Apple had made these glasses, they’d be a much bigger hit than they are. So why isn’t Apple in this market?

There are a few possible reasons. According to my colleague Wayne Ma, Apple is more focused on augmented reality glasses with a display. Indeed, Apple might feel these smart glasses don’t do anything its earbuds and iPhone can’t do (and it may not want to cannibalize sales of its earbuds). Also, Apple, which likes to control as much of its own products as it can, likely wouldn’t want to partner with an eyewear company like EssilorLuxottica, which owns Ray-Ban, as Meta has done. (I asked Apple about this and a spokesperson declined to comment.)

Apple is missing out. Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica, which owns or licenses many famous eyewear brands, will give the Facebook owner an edge as smart glasses become more popular. Eyeglasses in general are likely to become more widespread, given that the incidence of myopia is rising worldwide. Building audio and video tech into the glasses people are already wearing seems like a slam-dunk opportunity, particularly if it allows them to skip the earbuds.

Zuckerberg wants to position these glasses as an AI opportunity. He may eventually turn out to be right about that, but even if he’s not, this is potentially a bigger business than most people appreciate. You don’t have to look through smart glasses to see that!

Cnet’s BuzzFeed-Like Decline

You might think Cnet, one of the early news publications devoted to covering the internet and tech generally, would have become a giant by now. You would be wrong.

Today we got word that Red Ventures is selling Cnet, the 29-year-old tech news pioneer, to Ziff Davis for $100 million, according to The New York Times. That’s down from the $500 million Red Ventures paid for Cnet in 2020—and that sales price was a fraction of the $1.8 billion CBS paid for Cnet back in 2008.

What happened? Cnet is one of a dying breed of free news outlets supported by advertising. Its decline is on a par with that of BuzzFeed, whose value has shrunk from a peak of $1.7 billion in 2016 to around $100 million now.

These publishers have suffered as internet giants like Google and Meta Platforms have cornered the digital ad market. (In another sign of the challenges facing digital publishers, Axios laid off 10% of its staffers today, The Times also reported).

What’s ironic is that Cnet was born before both Google and Meta, launching in 1995. It was so early on the internet scene that its initial securities filings noted that “rapid growth in the use of and interest in the Internet is a recent phenomenon.”

Maybe Ziff Davis can rebuild Cnet’s ad business. Otherwise, Cnet looks like it’s headed for the early internet museum.

In Other News

Instacart reported 15% year-over-year growth in second-quarter revenue, although its operating income fell by about half on sharply higher expenses, particularly in research and development, as well as sales and marketing (more here).
Amazon’s top executive in India is leaving the company, a company spokesperson said Tuesday (more here).
Disney is raising the prices of some of its streaming services and bundles starting in October, as the company launches new viewing features designed to increase the amount of time users spend on its services while driving more advertising revenue (more here).
X is filing an antitrust lawsuit against an advertising industry coalition and some of its members, alleging the group abused its influence on advertisers to boycott the platform, X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino announced in a video.
Axios is laying off about 50 people across the company, according to Katie Robertson of The New York Times (more here).
Uber reported sharply higher operating income of nearly $800 million in the second quarter, as revenue rose 16% to $10.7 billion, the ride-hailing and food-delivery firm said Tuesday (more here).
Reddit reported 54% higher revenue of $281 million and a reduced operating loss.

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