AI Cuts Into Search, The Existing Market Trap #1, The Night Stairway To Heaven Made Robert Plant Cry & Pirate Snacks
Thanks for reading.
The Different Newsletter.
Musings for entrepreneurs, marketing leaders, category designers and creators with a different mind.
Sponsored by Bad Tuna Industries.
With content stolen from Category Pirates.
🏴☠️
No one.
Starts at legendary .
This is where Microsoft started.
🏴☠️
AI Category Growth Cutting Into Google
Google's global search market share dropped below 90% for the first time since 2015 during the final three months of 2024.
According to data from Statcounter, Google’s market share was:
• 89.34% in October
• 89.99% in November
• 89.73% in December 2024
First sustained period below 90% since early 2015.
🏴☠️
AI is NOT a:
co-pilot to the thing
companion to the thing
or an assistant to the thing
it is the thing
🏴☠️
Thank You
Readers like you (just) made our new book “The Existing Market Trap” a number one best seller.
It’s a quick read. Only 130 pages.
If you don’t have your copy.
You’ve done dummer things with $20.
Some people even think it’s “required reading”.
🏴☠️
Heart’s Stairway to Heaven: A Tribute That Moved Legends and Fans
On a crisp December night in 2012, the Kennedy Center Opera House became a cathedral of rock ‘n’ roll.
Heart, led by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. With Led Zeppelin in the audience.
Took the stage. To honor the mighty Led Zeppelin.
It got quiet.
Nancy’s (D.C. winter chilled) fingers danced across her acoustic guitar.
Channeling Jimmy Page’s iconic intro.
To Stairway to Heaven.
This wasn’t (just a) cover of a rock song. It was a transcendent love letter to The rock song.
Ann’s voice (a tour de force) carried Robert Plant’s poetry with a soul-deep intensity that felt (both) familiar and exciting.
Backed by Jason Bonham’s thunderous drums (his father John’s spirit in every snare hit and high-hat hiss).
The backing vocals from Joyce Garrett Youth Choir’s transcendent harmonies, the stage swelled with an orchestra and choir that turned the song into a communal hymn.
Now truth be told.
I normally am not a fan of these types of big blow out type of performances. Generally. I think they are too much.
Not this performance.
This is what music sounds like in heaven.
The audience, including President Obama, rose in a standing ovation.
But it was the faces of Led Zeppelin (Page, Plant, and John Paul Jones) that told the deepest story.
Robert Plant, the golden rock god was visibly undone.
Tears glistened in his eyes, a rare crack in the armor of a man who’d grown weary of the song’s towering shadow.
Plant had called it “that bloody wedding song,” tired of its ubiquity and countless lackluster covers.
Yet, as Heart wove their magic. Something shifted.
He later told Vulture he felt like a “voyeur” to his own creation, no longer its keeper but a witness to its life in the world.
“I’m not responsible for it anymore,” he said, yet admitted the performance reminded him of his “responsibility, for better or worse.”
Plant, who rarely praised covers, told Ann Wilson, “I usually hate it when people try to cover ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ but I like your version.”
Fans felt it too.
The performance, broadcast on CBS and now immortalized on YouTube with millions of views, sparked a tidal wave of awe.
On X, fans call it “the greatest tribute ever,” a moment where “time stopped.”
Jimmy Page beamed, nodding along, later praising Nancy’s guitar work.
John Paul Jones sat rapt, absorbed in the moment.
The choir’s final, soaring notes, adorned with bowler hats in tribute to John Bonham, sealed the spell.
This was more than a performance.
It was music.
From heaven.
🏴☠️
🏴☠️
Thanks for reading.
Shalom my Pirate friend,
👊🏴☠️🙏
Here come the dis-credits.
Pirate (scooby) Snacks ☠️
And Legal Warnings…..
All Different newsletters contain nuts 🐿
All rights perturbed.
Copyright Category Pirates, LLC
Category Pirates is our real newsletter.
People who subscribe on Substack get this Different newsletter first.
Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.
Data in this document was sourced/verified with Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT, Bing, & Google.
This newsletter does not have an editor.
Think of it as a comedian riffing in public.
There are spalling and gramare mistxkes.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Dear Americans.
For the love of God.
Please.
Pretty please with bourbon on top.
Get the fuck out of the passing lane.
You should feel very little obligation to read from this point on.
Your time would be better spent watching re-runs of the original Wonder Women show from the ‘70s.
Or getting your who-who waxed.
Utah is the ponzi scam capital of America.
This time, we're going beyond 11. 🤘
“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” reunites director Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer as they reprise their iconic roles as the legendary heavy metal band Spinal Tap in this long-awaited sequel.
Almost everything you need to learn about life, can be gained by watching The Big Lebowski and Spinal Tap.
Researchers genetically altered fruit flies to crave cocaine
Duck terrorizes Florida neighborhood, sending 1 to hospital
In Germany dancing is prohibited in public places on certain religious holidays like Good Friday & All Saints’ Day.
Earth’s axis wobbles like a spinning top in a cycle called precession, taking about 26,000 years to complete one wobble.
Peacock creates hazard on Colorado golf course
CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined
Shocking video claims to capture Bigfoot lurking in Colorado woods
This is a Category Pirates must read.
The greatest Facebook Group in the world: “Left Lane Prius”.
Most SAP employees don’t subscribe to this newsletter.
Contrary to Internet rumors, “The American Journal of Alternative Executive Medicine” is not the secret funder or publisher of this newsletter.
We in no-way-shape-of form are associated with The American Journal of Alternative Executive Medicine”
Can a newsletter make you nuts?
This one can.
🏴☠️
gramare mistxkes. Welcomed
The Kennedy Center rendition in one word: Goosebumps.