Just in case you had doubts that Google is serious about competing with Amazon in retail, consider this: Google just invested $550 million in Chinese e-commerce merchant JD.com. Google doesn’t do much business in China so this is about expanding in other markets and listing JD.com as a seller in Google Shopping. Google also announced several enhancements last week that help retailers display their inventory on-line and drive traffic to local stores. See this from The Street for more thoughts on the JD.com deal.

“When we do right, nobody remembers. When we do wrong, nobody forgets.” It’s the motto of Hell’s Angels but Facebook might agree. So let’s give them (Facebook) a little credit for requiring marketers to certify consent for custom audiences they upload to Facebook. But not too much credit: Facebook isn’t verifying that the certifications are valid.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.