Shares of Alibaba and Tencent drop after report says they could be added to US blacklist, Apple App Store customers set spending record on New Year’s Day, Cart.com completes acquisition of AmeriCommerce to build out e-commerce ecosystem, and more

On Thursday, shares of Alibaba and Tencent fell after the Wall Street Journal released a report stating that the Trump administration may add the Chinese tech giants to a US blacklist. The Journal reported that officials are considering prohibiting American investors from purchasing stock in these firms. This follows the US government’s blacklisting of 31 Chinese companies in November over concerns that they support Beijing’s military.

Should the companies be added to the blacklist, American investors will no longer be able to trade their stocks from January 11th. Those that already own shares in the companies will have until November to offload their shares. On Tuesday, the Trump administration moved to ban Chinese payment apps including Alipay and WeChat Pay, which are linked to both Alibaba and Tencent respectively.

Apple App Store customers set spending record on New Year’s Day

On Wednesday morning, Apple released its App Store holiday figures. During the week of Christmas, App Store customers spent over $1.8 billion in apps, driven largely by games, to set an all-time high holiday week record. Apple also hit a new single-day spending record on New Year’s Day with sales totaling over $540 million.

According to Sensor Tower’s year-end report, as quoted by TechCrunch, “global consumer spending on the App Store reached $72.3 billion in 2020, up 30.3% year-over-year from $55.5 billion in 2019.” Apple also noted that App Store developers have earned over $200 billion to date since the App Store launched in 2008, a figure up from $155 billion last year.

Cart.com completes acquisition of AmeriCommerce to build out e-commerce ecosystem

On Thursday, Cart.com announced the acquisition of AmeriCommerce, an enterprise e-commerce storefront software platform, along with three other strategic acquisitions. Cart.com plans to offer e-commerce services across the value chain including e-commerce storefront software, fulfillment services, and marketing services which will enable e-commerce stores of all sizes to scale with ease.

“In today’s e-commerce landscape, merchants are constrained by complex and fragmented options, and large incumbent marketplaces that deliver great end-customer experience at the expense of entrepreneurs and small businesses. Cart.com will put power back in the hands of brands,” Jim Jacobsen, Cart.com Chairman and co-founder, said in a press release. AmeriCommerce will serve as Cart.com’s e-commerce-as-a-service (ECaaS) platform.

 Google Question Hub launches for US Publishers

In 2018, Google launched Question Hub in regions of the world where the company believed that they did not have enough content in its search index to provide answers to searchers’ questions. Question Hub allows searchers to let Google know if their search results do not answer their query. In turn, Google then feeds those questions to publishers who can create content to answer those queries.
As of January 4th, US publishers may now sign up for the Question Hub. This serves as an excellent opportunity for publishers to access a wealth of new information with which they can create new, useful content for searches and publishers alike to benefit from.