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YouTube TV viewers can no longer see Disney channels including ABC and ESPN after the two sides failed to agree on a new content distribution deal. Other channels that vanished from Google’s pay TV platform include the Disney Channel, FX, and Nat Geo. Google’s pay TV platform said in a blog post late Thursday that Disney had followed through on a threat to suspend its content amid the negotiations. The breakdown could impact coverage of some college football games on Saturday, as well as NBA, NFL, and NHL games. YouTube is the largest internet TV provider in the U.S. with more than 9 million subscribers. Hulu, owned by Disney, is next, with about half that many subscribers. Viewers have become aware of the dispute in recent weeks because of warnings being scrolled across their screens. YouTube said Disney used the threat of a blackout as a negotiating tactic that would have resulted in higher prices for its subscribers. Disney’s move to take down its content also benefits its own streaming products Hulu + Live TV and Fubo, YouTube said. We know this is a frustrating and disappointing outcome for our subscribers and we continue to urge Disney to work with us constructively to reach a fair agreement that restores their networks to YouTube TV, it said. YouTube said it would give subscribers a $20 credit if Disney content unavailable for an extended period of time. YouTube TVs base subscription plan costs $82.99 per month. Disney said that YouTube TV is refusing to pay fair rates for its channels and has chosen to deny their subscribers the content they value most,” pointing out the number of Top 25 teams playing this weekend. With a $3 trillion market cap, Google is using its market dominance to eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms weve successfully negotiated with every other distributor,” Disney said. The company said that it was committed to reaching a resolution as quickly as possible.
Category:
E-Commerce
Earlier this week, I had AI handle all of my grocery shopping. Using Perplexitys Comet browser, I provided a link to my shopping list on Google Keep, then asked it to put everything in my cart for a Kroger pick-up order, making sure to select previous purchase items when multiple options are available. Within a few minutes, Comet had picked out all the correct itemsincluding the taco shells and fake meat we usually get for taco nightand plopped me onto the check-out page. This kind of scenario explains why so many AI companies are now trying to build their own browsers. Perplexitys Comet and The Browser Companys Dia both became widely available without an invite earlier this month, and OpenAI launched its own ChatGPT Atlas browser for MacOS last week. Opera has started previewing an AI-powered browser called Neon, and Microsoft Edge has an experimental Copilot Actions feature that can browse the web on your behalf. These browsers all promise to automate away the mundane aspects of navigating the internet, and there are momentslike when it deals with your grocery listin which that seems pretty compelling. But these AI browsers also bring some serious security, privacy, and usability trade-offs that make me cautious about using them. This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more tips every Tuesday. Whats an AI browser, anyway? Most folks dont think about web browsers all that much, but theyre incredibly important pieces of software. Swapping Chrome for a more privacy-oriented browser like Brave or DuckDuckGo, for instance, can sharply reduce how much data companies collect about you online, while power user browsers like Vivaldi can help you deal with tab overload. (See my browser field guide for more details.) AI browsers, meanwhile, aim to take the friction out of using AI. With ChatGPT Atlas, for instance, the default search box leads to ChatGPT instead of Google, and theres an Ask ChatGPT button that answers questions about the current page in a chat sidebar. You can also ask for details from your other open tabs or dig up pages from your browsing history. Unless youre constantly using AI, some of this stuff can seem superfluous. Opening ChatGPT or Claude in a browser tab (or using their dedicated mobile and desktop apps) isnt that burdensome, and you can summarize a web page just by including a link in your query. What really makes AI browsers interesting, though, is their ability to interact with your personal context. For instance, I manage all my bookmarks in Raindrop.io. While reviewing my tech news bookmarks in ChatGPT Atlas, I asked for one-line summaries with links to each item, in the style of the weekly roundups in my newsletter. I still had to rewrite each summary, but Atlas at least got me started and saved me time copying and pasting links into the text. This was only possible because Atlas was signed into Raindrop and could see the contents of my bookmark list. More ambitiously, these browsers promise to navigate through web pages automatically. The AI companies call this agentic browsing (a term that makes me nauseous for reasons I cant quite articulate). Getting Perplexity Comet to fill up my Kroger cart is one example, but heres another: A couple months ago, I asked Comet to cancel my trial subscription to the airport concierge service Clear. I had already signed to Clears website, and from there Comet navigated the labyrinthine menu system, initiated a cancellation request, and then handled the mandatory customer support chat on its own. What would have been a five- or 10-minute process took seconds. (My wifes AI-free cancellation experience went a lot differently.) Ive been down on AI agents before, but I think theres potential when theyre built into a browser youre already using and are focused on reducing mindless busywork. What are the trade-offs? Heres where I get stuck with these AI browsers, though: Most of the time, I dont want to use them and am wary of doing so. Worst of all, these browsers are security minefields. A web page that looks benign to humans can include hidden instructions for AI agents, tricking them into stealing info from other sitesan attack method known as prompt injection. If youre signed into sensitive accounts like your bank or your email provider in your browser, simply summarizing a Reddit post could result in an attacker being able to steal money or your private data, Braves security researchers wrote last week. No one has figured out how to solve this problem. If you can look past the security nightmares, the actual browsing features are substandard. Neither ChatGPT Atlas nor Perplexity Comet support vertical tabsa must-have feature for meand they have no tab search tool or way to look up recently-closed pages. Alas also doesnt support saving sites as web apps, selecting multiple tabs (for instance, to close all at once with Cmd+W), or customizing the appearance. Compared to all the fancy new AI features, the web browsing part can feel like an afterthought. Screenshot Regular web search can also be a hassle, even though youll probably need it sometimes. When I typed Sichuan Chili into ChatGPT Atlas, it produced a lengthy description of the Chinese peppers, not the nearby restaurant whose website and number I was looking for. (These browsers should be more like Dia, which intelligently routes queries to either AI or Google based on what you ask for.) Meanwhile, the standard AI annoyances still apply in the browser. Getting Perplexity to fill my grocery cart felt like a triumph, but on other occasions the AI has run into inexplicable walls and only ended up wasting more time. There may be other costs to using these browsers as well. AI still has usage limits, and so all this eventually becomes a ploy to bump more people into paid tiers. Beyond that, Atlas is constantly analyzing the pages you visit to build a memory of who you are and what youre into. Do not be surprised if this translates to deeply targeted ads as OpenAI starts looking at ways to monetize free users. How Im handling it For now, Im only using AI browsers in small doses when I think they can solve a specific problem. Even then, Im not going sign them into my email, bank accounts, or any other accounts for which a security breach would be catastrophic. Its too bad, because email and calendars are areas where AI agents could be truly useful, but the security risks are too great (and well-documented). That said, AI browsers have an air of inevitability now, especially with OpenAI entering the arena. While some browser makers may reject AI on principleas Vivaldi has doneothers like Chrome and Edge will continue borrowing ideas from the likes of Comet and Atlas, pulling them directly into their mainstream browsers. The reality is that you might soon be using an AI browser whether you intended to or not. This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more tips every Tuesday.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you plan to hand out chocolate this Halloween, you might be in for more trick than treat. The price of cocoa remains high after spiking last yeara trend that has shoppers turning away from a perennial favorite sweet treat, even on a holiday that revolves around candy. Compared with the Halloween season last year, chocolate costs more this year, and consumers are buying less of it. Overall, candy prices have risen a whopping 78% since 2020, according to an analysis from consumer finance site FinanceBuzz, which tracked candy prices across four major retailers. A 100-piece bulk bag of Halloween candy costs an average of $16.39 in 2025, up from $9.19 in 2020 and $14.06 just one year ago. Those yearly price surges have regularly outpaced inflation, which is already putting shoppers in a pinch. In its earnings call Thursday, Hershey noted holiday sales this Halloween were disappointing and that it planned to study pricing, pack types, and its broader candy lineup through the lens of the consumer in light of underwhelming sales. The companywhich owns candy brands like Reeses, Kit Kat, and Yorkraised prices over the summer to cope with the rising cost of cocoa. Because cocoa is a seasonal commodity, companies that rely on it lock in their prices in advance, leading to a lag time between the key ingredients price fluctuations and what consumers wind up paying in-store for a packaged product. Sweet tooth alternatives Price hikes have driven consumers away from chocolate, but theyve turned toward sugar-forward candies as an alternative. In the run-up to Halloween, U.S. chocolate candy sales had already dipped by 8% compared with 2024, and thats not including the sweets-buying rush closer to the Friday holiday this year, when the majority of Halloween candy is sold. While chocolate demand softens, non-chocolate options like gummy and hard candies are getting more popular with younger consumers, according to a seasonal report from NielsenIQ. Shoppers buying Halloween candy early broadly turned toward non-chocolate options, with sales up 4.5% this year through September, according to market research group Circana. In the same period, chocolate candy sales dipped by 13.7%. Cocoa in crisis Chocolate is more expensive now due to a complex interplay of factors, but climate-caused excessive heat and intense rains in particular have taken their toll in cocoas key regions, sending the commoditys price sky high. In the U.S., persistent inflation and Trumps chaotic trade deals have also impacted the price of imports like cocoa, which cant be grown domestically. Last year, the price of cocoa reached historic highs, rising past $10,000 per metric ton. Because the global appetite for chocolate hinges on a single region in Africa, cocoa is uniquely vulnerable to forces outside of farmers controlparticularly extreme weather events that are worsening as the planet warms. The climate crisis is expected to cause accelerating agricultural losses for staple crops like corn and wheat around the globe, and cocoa is no different. Cocoa prices leveled off some in mid-2025, but the substance that makes chocolate chocolate still costs triple what it did before 2023, leaving consumers to eat higher prices or leave the sweets on the shelf. Even if shoppers stick it out with chocolate this Halloween, they might be getting less for more. Candy aisle faves like Mr. Goodbar, Rolo, and Almond Joy have quietly slipped into new packaging that no longer entices buyers with the promise of milk chocolate. That change in verbiage is a hint that major candy companies like Hershey and Nestlé are dropping the cocoa content in some classics with new recipe reformulations that rely less on chocolates star ingredient. If your Halloween candy doesnt taste quite as sweet this year, it might not just be because you paid more.
Category:
E-Commerce
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