Elon Musk unveiled his epic plan to shuttle thousands of colonists to Mars — and eventually beyond — in giant spaceships lifted by huge, reusable rockets. The SpaceX CEO figures it would take 40 to 100 years to build a self-sustaining civilization on the Red Planet. The biggest hurdle may be the most mundane: The billions of dollars required of a public-private partnership to fund the project.
[April Glaser | Recode]
Nielsen reported the first Clinton-Trump debate drew an average of 84 million TV viewers — more than any debate in history, but still well below the 110 million or so who have watched the Super Bowl the past few years.
[Peter Kafka | Recode]
With an eye toward India and other emerging markets where internet access is primarily on mobile phones with data constraints and sketchy connectivity, Google announced low-bandwidth versions of YouTube, Chrome and the Play Store, along with a public Wi-Fi initiative.
[Newley Purnell | Wall Street Journal]
After just four months on the job, Jason Goldberger is out as Target's chief digital office, in a shake-up that, like Walmart's ouster of e-commerce head Neil Ashe, looks to be related to an inability to gain ground on Amazon. Meanwhile, a new survey found that 55 percent of online shopping searches begin on Amazon, versus 28 percent on Google.
[Jason Del Rey | Recode]
Walmart plans to invest $1 billion in Flipkart, India's largest online retailer. In June, Amazon said it would spend $3 billion expanding its footprint in India.
[Saritha Rai | Bloomberg]
