All this and more in this week’s edition of The Hypha Wire, from Hypha HubSpot Development.
Happy Friday! Welcome back to The Hypha Wire.
Somehow, vacation has snuck up on me. Next week, I’ll be taking some time off (which means The Hypha Wire will be taking a brief hiatus too). Despite having this trip planned for months, I’m still in preparation mode to ensure I can fully disconnect and enjoy.
Here’s what I’m doing to set myself up for stress-free time away—I’m not reinventing the wheel, but hopefully these tips help you when it’s your time for vacay!
First, communicate with your team. While they’ve known about my absence since I initially requested time off, sending a detailed reminder about when I’m leaving and what might be needed while I’m gone prevents last-minute scrambling.
Be realistic about deadlines. It’s simply not healthy to cram five days of work into a few. I’ve assessed my schedule to ensure everything is appropriately spaced. For tasks that need coverage while I’m gone, I’ve made sure handoffs are prepared.
Set your out-of-office email notice. For clients and partners you communicate with regularly, it’s polite to let them know ahead of time. As a failsafe, that automated response ensures they don’t think you’re ignoring them.
Have fun! Sounds silly, but it’s important. We need to value our time off as much as we value our time on. Everyone earns time to recharge, and it’s essential to enjoy it fully.
If you set yourself up for success in the weeks leading up to vacation, you can clear your mind and leave the office stress-free. See you in two weeks!
-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development
Open Mic
Google Antitrust Cases: Is There Any 'There' There?
By Phil Stott, Head of Client Success, Hypha HubSpot Development
For the past couple of years, most coverage of SEO has been focused on AI as an existential threat to Google’s dominance. Less well-reported: a slew of recent antitrust rulings that seem to represent an even more profound challenge to the search giant’s business model—and to digital marketing strategies that heavily rely on it.
This week, hearings began in New York to determine remedies following an August 2024 ruling that Google has an illegal monopoly on online search. Potential remedies include forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser and end exclusive search agreements with device makers like Apple—both of which theoretically limit its monopoly.
From a business perspective, that would certainly be a pain for Google, but it has the potential to fundamentally alter the digital ad space for customers.
Let’s put it this way, it’s the digital equivalent of Bell being broken up: where you had one telephone company that could charge whatever it liked for access, now you have dozens, competing for your business with a variety of features and incentives.
So it goes in the ad market: If one company effectively owns the entire thing, it drives prices up and provides no incentive to innovate. But should Google be forced to divest the bulk of its ad business, there’s a real possibility that the landscape will be dramatically altered in years to come.
What This Means for Your Marketing Strategy
In the short term, there’s no reason to make wholesale changes. Even if Google’s worst-nightmare remedies wind up being imposed, the company has both the means and the willingness to tie them up in years of appeals.
On the SEO side, the Google algorithm remains both all-powerful and ever-changing; while the antitrust remedies being discussed this week would make it slightly harder for the company to maintain dominance, we’re talking about the possibility that users might have to manually set Google as the default search engine on their browser or new iPhone, instead of the option being pre-selected for them. Progress, sure, but in a world where “Google” is a verb, it’s hard to see this moving the needle significantly in terms of the company’s search dominance.
While the digital marketing side is a little more promising in terms of potential outcomes, we’re again likely looking at years before any kind of tangible benefits emerge. If and when they do, we could find ourselves in a more competitive landscape with lower prices for ads. But that will also bring its own challenges, including more fragmented data, and greater difficulty in tracking spend, customer journeys, and results across channels.
What you should be doing (or what our team is already doing on our clients’ behalf): diversifying your digital presence incrementally. Ensure your SEO strategy follows best practices that would work on any search engine, not just Google. At the same time, consider how your digital presence extends beyond Google-dominated channels—including paid search and AI platforms. This isn’t about abandoning ship; it’s about building resilience into your marketing strategy.
Remember that antitrust cases move at a glacial pace compared to technological disruption. By the time these cases reach their final resolution, the digital landscape will have evolved in ways we can’t fully anticipate today. As always, the companies that thrive will be those that remain adaptable without overreacting to headlines.
We’ll continue monitoring these developments closely so you can stay focused on what matters most: creating value for your customers in whatever digital environment emerges.
There was a bit of a mixup happening earlier this week, when Apple mentioned a drop in searches on Safari, attributing that to AI usage. Google countered that with its own statement, but it didn’t stop its stock from falling.
“During a hearing as part of Google’s ongoing antitrust battle over its search dominance, Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue testified that the iPhone maker saw a drop in web searches via Safari for the first time last month, according to Bloomberg.
“Cue attributed the decline to more users opting for generative AI-based services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT search and Perplexity, adding that Apple will likely add the platforms to its search options in Safari in the future.
“[However] Google Search is still performing well and growing on Apple’s devices, just not in the Safari browser. Instead, users could be accessing the search platform via the company’s Google app.”
An update to last week’s story about the unauthorized AI experiment on Reddit. (tl;dr: researchers conducted an unauthorized AI bot experiment on Reddit’s r/changemyview, having bot accounts to comment and post on the Subreddit.)
“On Monday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman shared in a post that Reddit would start working with ‘various third-party services’ to verify a user’s humanity. This represents a significant step for a platform that has historically required almost no personal information for users to create an account.
“‘To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information,’ Huffman wrote. ‘Specifically, we will need to know whether you are a human, and in some locations, if you are an adult. But we never want to know your name or who you are.’”
Hypha Highlights
We’ve all been there. You’re deep in conversation with a client in one window, coding in another, while frantically clicking through HubSpot tabs to find that crucial piece of information you need right now.
Or maybe you’re tired of constantly jumping between your AI assistant and HubSpot just to log notes, create tasks, or update a contact record. It’s death by a thousand clicks, and it’s killing your productivity.
Enter the HubSpot MCP Server—now in beta—which promises to fundamentally change how you interact with your HubSpot data.
Our Senior Platform Specialist, Kevin Campbell, is back with some HubSpot Beta breakdowns!
Create new Contacts from Social Interactions. Teams can now start creating Contacts directly from social interactions! In addition, social interactions will now show up on contact’s timelines.
Ticket Re-Opening Management. This is a long standing pain point for teams using the HubSpot Service Desk tools but relief is here! Teams can now prevent closing messages like “thank yous” from reopening otherwise closed/solved tickets.
Data Model Builder. This one is pretty cool! Teams with more complex data models can build in-Hub data models! Who knows, maybe one of us will be the one to build America’s Next Top Data Model!
Exclude IPs from Form Submissions. We all know how annoying it is when unwanted traffic slips into your Forms, but what if we could make sure that repeat offenders get stopped at the door? Welp, now you can! Teams now have control over IP blocking on form submission!
⭐ To enable these betas, log into your HubSpot account, click your profile picture in the top right-hand corner, and navigate to ‘Product Updates.’ If you run into any trouble, just give your friends at Hypha a call!
AI in Action
News, updates and tools from the AI industry.
Let’s see what’s happening across the AI sphere:
Microsoft President Brad Smith announced that the company has banned its employees from using the DeepSeek app due to data security and propaganda concerns. The restriction stems from risks that user data would be stored in China and that DeepSeek’s responses could be influenced by “Chinese propaganda.”
OpenAI has reversed its earlier restructuring plan and will now keep its nonprofit arm in control of ChatGPT and other AI products, requiring approval from California and Delaware attorneys general by early next year. This decision comes after significant pushback, and the proposed structure will transform the current for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation while maintaining the nonprofit’s control and mission.
Recraft, an AI image generator startup led by Anna Veronika Dorogush, has secured $30M in Series B funding after its “red panda” model outperformed OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a leading benchmark.
Meta has appointed Robert Fergus as the new head of its AI research lab (FAIR), which he co-founded in 2014 with Yann LeCun. Fergus returns to FAIR after spending nearly five years at Alphabet’s DeepMind and will lead Meta’s long-term AI research efforts as the company plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI technology over the coming years.
“Auger-Domínguez delivers a timely, inspirational, and practical exploration of why mainstream efforts at diversity improvement tend to fail and what you can do today to successfully create a diverse and representative leadership team at your company.”
How can we help you?
Industry: Healthcare
The healthcare sector has never been more competitive, or more complex than it is today.
Patients are savvier than ever before, more likely to comparison shop for care providers, and have high expectations around every aspect of the patient experience.
At the same time, providers are busier than ever, presenting major challenges for marketers seeking to get and hold their attention.
Whether you’re seeking to optimize your healthcare facility’s workflows and tech stack–all while remaining HIPAA compliant–or looking to reach HCPs with the right message at the right time, Hypha is here to help.
Connect with us today to learn more about how we can help you:
Get found by patients who need your services
Streamline your facility’s processes, from appointments and reminders to contact management
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