On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Google definitely has an announcement that is going to make you go 'What'. Google is getting into the same-day delivery business in a local context. In fact there is a pilot program being launched in the San Francisco Bay Area - if you live there here's your chance to get free deliveries for the next 6 months. Google is also on the lookout for testers. The way it works is like this, you purchase your product online and Google transport vehicles will come along pick it up and deliver it to your home. Google Shopping Express: How does it work The project has just been announced and this is what we can infer. There will be one place to do all your local shopping from your favorite retailers. Once you pay for the product, the next step will begin. You choose a time - select a delivery windows. Your goods get delivered to your home between the time period you selected. The delivery will happen in a nice truck with a smiling Google employee. Strange as though it might seem, this...