Investors are going gaga for Google. Shares of Alphabet, the search giant’s parent company, are up nearly 77% over the past six months. And, on Friday, Alphabet passed Microsoft to become the third-most valuable US company by market cap (take that, Mico), days after launching its newest AI model, Gemini 3, last Tuesday.

Beyond doodling

Gemini 3 vaulted over its competitors in the AI chatbot race, surpassing ChatGPT and other models in industry benchmark tests. Then, on Thursday, Google launched an updated version of its image-generation tool, Nano Banana Pro, which VP of Google Labs and Gemini Josh Woodward told CNBC is “incredible at infographics” (it also makes slide decks).

It’s a long way from 2022, when investors were concerned that Google was falling behind in the AI race.

This Alphabet is bigger than A and I

Last quarter, Alphabet’s cloud revenue jumped 32%, and its search revenue grew 15% year over year. As if that weren’t enough, its video-sharing platform, YouTube, has cemented itself as part of the bedrock of the internet. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center on Americans’ social media usage this year:

• YouTube is the most widely used online platform among both US adults and teens.
• 84% of US adults say they’ve used YouTube. Facebook came in second at 71%.
• Nearly half of adults get on YouTube daily.

Google drive: Google subsidiary Waymo has also been firing on all cylinders...figuratively (they’re electric). Waymo is up and running in five cities around the country, with plans to expand into 12 more. The company also announced last week that it cleared the red tape necessary to expand its territory across the Bay Area and SoCal.

Potential speed bump: A federal judge ruled earlier this year that Google broke antitrust laws to boost its ad business, but the remedy likely won’t be known until next year. The government is asking that Google be forced to ditch its ad exchange, which would literally decimate the company. It made $31 billion in 2023—about 10% of Alphabet’s overall revenue, per the New York Times.—BC

Ukraine peace talks yield progress after leaked plan draft raised doubts. Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided the update yesterday after he attended high-stakes talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Geneva, though he declined to offer specifics. After a 28-point peace plan to end the war between Russia and Ukraine that seemed to favor the former leaked late last week, politicians from Europe, the US, and the UK mostly criticized the plan as unworkable. In a statement on Sunday night, the White House said Ukraine’s delegation in Switzerland “affirmed that all of their principal concerns—security guarantees, long-term economic development, infrastructure protection, freedom of navigation, and political sovereignty—were thoroughly addressed during the meeting.”

Tyson to close Nebraska beef plant amid industry struggles. Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in North America, announced on Friday that it will close its beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, on or around January 20. The facility employs approximately 3,200 people. On its earnings call earlier this month, before the closure was announced, Tyson CEO Donnie King told investors that cattle supplies were at record lows, and that its beef business would lose $600 million in the current fiscal year. Around the same time, President Trump said that he instructed the Department of Justice to investigate “the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation.”

X’s new location feature roiled the internet. Over the weekend, the company formerly known as Twitter started showing the country or region in which an account is located. Screenshots proliferated across the platform, with users alleging they had uncovered the origins of several prominent MAGA accounts, which had claimed to be based in the United States, as being based out of Africa, Macedonia, and South Asia. On Friday morning, posts claiming to show that the US Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) account was based in Tel Aviv, Israel, went viral, before the feature disappeared from X temporarily. A global rollout officially took place on Saturday. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, responded to some of the outraged tweets, saying that the rumor of the DHS account’s origins showing up as Israel was “fake news.” On Sunday, DHS released an official denial of its account having been operated in Israel.—HVL

Wicked: For Good, the follow-up installment to the stage show’s big-screen adaptation, brought in $150 million domestically for its opening weekend. That’s a new record for a Broadway adaptation after breaking the $112.5 million benchmark set by last year’s hit…Wicked.

It’s the second-biggest US opening this year, behind A Minecraft Movie’s $162 million opening weekend, but ahead of the Lilo & Stitch remake ($146 million). Are you sensing a theme here?

There’s a reason it’s pronounced Wic-kid. The movie is rated PG, which remains the most lucrative rating for films these days, and the children want to go see it. Last year, PG movies accounted for 36.3% of box-office receipts, according to Comscore, an amount expected to be matched or exceeded this year.

The box office likes this bubble

The film earned generally positive reviews, but it’s nabbing particular attention for being Ariana Grande’s vehicle:

• The events of this second act of the musical follow Glinda’s rise from mouthpiece of the Ozian government to rebel, giving Grande more opportunities to display her range.

Big picture: Variety reckons that Grande’s officially made it over the rainbow, from pop star to movie star. Her experience selling out stadiums is definitely coming in clutch for struggling cinemas.—HVL

This Thursday is giving thanks: Americans will be celebrating by eating, watching TV, and sitting in traffic. A record 81.8 million are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home in the coming days, and nearly 90% of them will drive rather than fly, according to AAA. Once they get to their destinations, they’ll have plenty to watch, between the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the National Dog Show, and three NFL games: Detroit vs. Green Bay, Dallas vs. Kansas City, and Baltimore vs. Cincinnati. The Lions and Cowboys are both playing on Thanksgiving Day for the 48th year in a row.

Holiday shopping season officially arrives: Retailers are in store for a record number of shoppers this holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). Nearly 187 million consumers are expected to shop this year from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, formally kicking off what’s projected to be a gargantuan retail sales season. The NRF expects holiday sales to top $1 trillion for the first time this year, even as consumers have an increasingly gloomy opinion of the overall economy.

Turn things up to Eleven: Wave goodbye to the end of beginning. The final season of Stranger Things premieres on Netflix this Wednesday. The season will be spread out over three release dates. The first four episodes will be out on Wednesday, three more will be released on Christmas Day, and the series finale will drop on New Year’s Eve, wrapping up the sci-fi show’s nine-and-a-half-year run.

Everything else:

• The US retail sales report and the producer price index report for September will be released tomorrow, after both were delayed by the government shutdown.
• The Conference Board will release November consumer confidence data tomorrow. (This report’s on time.)
• Alibaba Group, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, HP, and Dell report earnings tomorrow.
• Zootopia 2 hits theaters on Wednesday.
• Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out movie, will get a limited theatrical release starting on Wednesday, before hitting Netflix next month.
• Deere & Company reports results on Wednesday.
• Weekly jobless claims data will be released on Wednesday.
• Markets are closed on Thanksgiving Day. They’ll be open—but just until 1pm—on Black Friday.

An 18-karat gold pocketwatch that stopped ticking at 2:21am on April 15, 1912, sold for $2.3 million on Saturday and set a record for the most expensive piece of Titanic memorabilia, according to Henry Aldridge & Son, the auction house that managed the sale.

Backstory: The watch belonged to Isidor Straus, 67, a co-founder of the Macy’s department store chain who was traveling first class on the doomed ship with his wife, Ida, 63.

• According to contemporary witnesses, Isidor refused to board a lifeboat because there was not enough space for all passengers, and Ida remained at his side.
• They held each other on the ship’s deck until they perished.
• Isidor’s body, along with the watch, was recovered, while Ida was never found.

Another twist: Wendy Rush, the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, was married to Stockton Rush, the co-founder and CEO of OceanGate. Stockton died in 2023, when his experimental research vehicle the OceanGate Titan imploded during an attempt to visit the Titanic wreckage site. Four passengers also died aboard the Titan.—HVL