Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 26

Alibaba CEO Urges Workers to Ignore Share Plunge, Keep Focus: Alibaba’s chief executive officer exhorted employees Tuesday to ignore plunging stock markets after the e-commerce giant’s shares fell below their initial public offering price for the first time. Daniel Zhang, who took the helm of Asia’s largest Internet company three months ago, wrote a memo urging his 35,000 workers to brush aside the market turmoil. Alibaba has lost about $128 billion in market value since its November peak amid a slowing Chinese economy. “This is not the first time that the global stock market has plunged,” Zhang wrote in the e-mail. “It is not the last time, either. I hope everyone can shift the focus from the stock market to customers.” Alibaba fell 3.5 percent Monday to close at $65.80 in New York, dropping below its September IPO price of $68 as a global market rout revived investors’ concerns about the company’s sales growth. The company’s shares rose 4.2 percent to $68.57 at Tuesday’s close in New York, outlasting a rally in U.S. stocks that evaporated in the final hour of trading. “Let’s forget about the stock prices,” Zhang wrote. “We should not be distracted by short-term obstacles, but plan for the future and stick to it.” The Hangzhou-based company’s shares peaked at $119.15 in November, with investors eager to reach Alibaba’s more than 300 million customers. Their subsequent decline has been fueled by concerns about the decelerating Chinese economy, increased competition from JD.com Inc. and government reports that Alibaba wasn’t doing enough to weed out counterfeit goods on its site.

Amazon expands Prime Now, offers U.S. alcohol for first time: Amazon.com said on Tuesday it will begin delivering wine, beer and spirits to U.S. customers for the first time as part of its speedy delivery service, Prime Now. The online retailer is expanding Prime Now, its one- and two-hour service, to Seattle, where the company is headquartered, and offering alcohol deliveries there. Amazon Prime, the company's $99 per year shopping membership program, offers free two-day delivery on millions of items. It is a key testing ground for the retailer's new services, ranging from TV and on-demand video to fast delivery. Amazon has said it has "tens of millions" of Prime subscribers. Analysts estimate the program to have around 40 million users worldwide. The company has steadily expanded Prime Now since it launched the service in New York City last year. It facilitates integration of the retailer's grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh, which has been slower to expand to new markets. On-demand grocery delivery is a growing and competitive market in the United States. Instacart, a grocery delivery company, announced on Tuesday that it had expanded to Indianapolis, its 17th city. Other startups, like Postmates, which focuses on meal delivery, also deliver personal care goods and alcohol for customers using a network of couriers.

Gmail To Auto-Populate Google Calendar With Things Like Flights, Hotel Bookings And Ticket Details: Google announced today that it’s starting to roll out features that will place ticket, flight, hotel and restaurant info onto Google Calendar. Automatically. For example, if you buy a flight, rent a car, book a hotel and set reservations for the day you get into town for business, all of those items will be added to your Calendar if the exact time for those events are available. Your flight would show up at 4, reservation at 9, etc.

Hulu Teams With Facebook's LiveRail and Oracle to Sell Ads This Fall Tests programmatic advertising waters: The streaming-video service, owned by Fox, NBCUniversal and Disney, is partnering with Oracle Data Management Platform and Facebook-owned video-ad platform LiveRail to offer programmatic advertising options—automating the buying, placement and optimization of ads—for the first time. The rollout will happen this fall and won't be specifically tied to any of Hulu's major fall premieres. The Oracle DMP will combine first-party and third-party data, which Hulu says will help it increase reach, scale and efficiency for marketers as they personalize their Hulu campaigns. And LiveRail's Video Private Exchange will allow Hulu to complete direct deals with advertisers programmatically. The news comes as Hulu is also prepping an ad-free option, which would reportedly launch this fall and be priced between $12 and $14 per month. That would be at least $4 more than Hulu's current $7.99 monthly subscription free, which includes ads but fewer of them than Hulu's free version. Hulu still isn't commenting on its ad-free plans. While advertisers undoubtedly won't like being shut out of Hulu's priciest tier, the streaming service hopes its new programmatic offering will help them get the biggest bang for their buck.