Archive • Narendra Nag • Buttondown

The Machine Is Right and Nobody Believes It

July 17, 2026

On July 2, in a round-of-32 match at this World Cup, Croatia scored what looked like a late equalizer against Portugal. The players peeled away to celebrate....

Writing Past the Free Tier

July 10, 2026

The newsletter you are reading went out automatically on a Friday morning, three minutes after the post went live on the site. It is styled in the same...

Zero-Click as a Business Model

June 26, 2026

A number worth sitting with — more than 80% of Google searches now end without a click to any external website. For queries that trigger AI Overviews, the...

The Bounce-Click Argument

June 19, 2026

Google has a name for the clicks that AI Overviews replaced. It calls them bounce clicks. The framing, articulated by a senior Google search executive last...

Apple's Friday Night Baseball, On Purpose

June 12, 2026

The most underread sports-rights move of 2026 is the one that did not get renegotiated. In November, Apple announced that MLS Season Pass would no longer be...

The Magicians

June 5, 2026

Next Thursday, Mexico will play South Africa at Estadio Azteca in the opening match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The kickoff is at 3pm local time. The stadium...

The Living Room Vote

May 29, 2026

In February, the FCC opened a public comment docket on the consumer experience of live sports viewing. The framing was deliberately mild — a study of the...