Has Alphabet heard of Lina Khan? If not, Google her now.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the search giant’s parent company Alphabet has engaged bankers about a possible acquisition of HubSpot, a popular online marketing software company valued at $32 billion. 

Spot Check

At HubSpot’s current market cap, even without a purchase premium, any acquisition would mark the largest in Alphabet’s history. And the company has more than enough firepower to get a deal done; at the end of December, Google reported a war chest stuffed with $111 billion. HubSpot primarily serves smaller companies with 2,000 employees or fewer, offering customer relationship management (CRM) software crucial to marketing tasks — making it a logical target for Google if it intends to crack a market mostly dominated by Salesforce, Oracle, and Microsoft. 

A HubSpot acquisition “could help Google’s position in digital advertising with greater ability to leverage first-party data,” Oppenheimer analysts wrote in a note, pointing out the obvious potential synergies. Of course, Google is already facing steep regulatory scrutiny over its rather large position in digital advertising:

• In January 2023, the Justice Department and a coalition of states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, arguing that the company monopolized multiple products in the digital advertising industry by way of serial acquisitions and anticompetitive manipulation. The trial is set to begin in September.
• That’s in addition to a broader antitrust lawsuit brought by the DoJ alleging Google has abused its dominant market position in the search engine industry; the final verdict for that case will be handed out in May. So what’s another acquisition? Right?

Alphabet has discussed making an offer — as well as the likelihood of regulatory roadblocks — with bankers at Morgan Stanley, sources told Reuters. One anti-antitrust argument Google could theoretically make: Its entry into the CRM space could actually shake the dominant position of Salesforce, which owns about a 40% market share. Like, we’re on your side here, Ms. Khan.

Pay-I Search: In non-antitrust Alphabet news, on Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that the company might place some of its new AI-powered search tools behind a paywall, which would mark one of its first paywallings of a core service. And the timing makes sense: Analysts have long warned that generative AI responses from chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini could supplant consumers’ standard search habits, devouring traditional search ad revenue. Meanwhile, the new tech has trapped Google in an unwinnable cat-and-mouse fight against spammy AI-generated content designed to float to the top of search results, one recent study found. It’s approaching a hostage scenario: Pay for the good AI search engine, or get stuck sifting through the free version now ruined by AI.

That door plug is setting Boeing back nine figures.

Alaska Airlines revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has received $160 million from Boeing in compensation for the loss in profits Alaska incurred after a door plug blew off one of its planes in January. That little snafu resulted in the Federal Aviation Authority grounding all Boeing 737 9 MAX planes for three weeks. For Boeing, this is just the latest, but not the last, of a thousand cuts.

You’re Grounded

Grounding compensation has become a pretty key part of the aviation industry, and Boeing is no stranger to it. Boeing’s 737 aircraft were grounded in 2019 for two years following two mass casualty crashes, and in the immediate aftermath Boeing said it would pay out $4.9 billion to its airline clients. And, as part of an overarching $2.5 billion settlement with the Department of Justice in 2021, which included a $500 million fund for the families of people who died in the crashes, Boeing agreed to hand over another $1.77 billion to its airline clients. 

Exactly how much got paid out to whom isn’t entirely clear, however. “Boeing and Southwest reached a confidential agreement on compensation late in 2019 over the Boeing 737 Max grounding,” aviation consultant Sindy Foster told The Daily Upside. “Other airlines have publicly announced they are pursuing claims and then we have heard nothing more,” she added. This time around, Alaska Airlines says it’s not done chasing Boeing for compensation, although it didn’t give a number it’s targeting. Of course, it’s not the only airline out for blood:

• Michael O’Leary, CEO of Irish budget airline Ryanair said in February that the company would pursue compensation from Boeing. O’Leary said this was because the manufacturing chaos at Boeing that followed the door blow-out meant they had not delivered planes on schedule, which in turn constrained Ryanair’s growth. 
• Ryanair isn’t the only one struggling to cope with a dearth of Boeing aircraft. Fortune reported this week that United is asking pilots to volunteer for unpaid leave because Boeing hasn’t delivered enough planes for the airline to fly. 

Personal Touch: Boeing’s undergoing a bit of a management shake-up, and its new chairman Steve Mollenkopf has reportedly ripped apart the company calendar, bailing on some planned meetings with airline CEOs. Instead, sources told Bloomberg, Mollenkopf is reaching out individually to each of those CEOs in an effort to repair the relationship between Boeing and its disenchanted airline customers. Nothing like some quality one-on-one time to get the magic back, Steve.

A GLP-1 medication from French drugmaker Sanofi — similar to Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro— was found to slow disease progression in a small mid-stage trial of early Parkinson’s patients. 

While further research is needed, it seems like every other day more possible uses are being discovered for the already immensely popular class of diabetes and weight loss drugs. 

A Million and One Uses

In the past few years, medications like diabetes treatment Ozempic, its weight-loss cousin Wegovy, and Mounjaro have ascended to “wonder drug” status by mimicking naturally occurring hormones and making patients feel full. But the habit-curbing doesn’t seem to stop just at eating. In some instances, patients have reported less desire to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, gamble, compulsively shop, and even bite their nails. 

And now, there’s evidence that Sanofi’s drug lixisenatide — which the company says it took off the market last year for business reasons — might be able to treat a neurological condition that causes tremors and muscle stiffness in roughly 8.5 million people globally:

• In a year-long trial that followed 156 patients with early Parkinson’s disease, the half treated with a daily injection of lixisenatide exhibited less progression of motor disability than those who took a placebo, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Both groups took their usual Parkinson’s medications as well.
• The differences weren’t major, but the Parkinson’s mitigating effects found in the lixisenatide group lasted for two months after the trial had ended and subjects had stopped taking the drug.

Federal Spending: Public funding has quickly ramped up for GLP-1s in the past few years. Medicare is prohibited from paying for weight loss drugs, but it does cover Ozempic for diabetes patients, and just recently started taking on the cost of Wegovy for people at risk of heart attacks and strokes. Last month, KFF — a non-profit that researches public health policy — published an analysis that found gross Medicare spending on Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Mounjaro has skyrocketed in recent years, increasing from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022.