Letters by Burk #162: Three Questions and a Sick Tulip

Hi friends,

Seven posts since the last letter. That might be a record for this newsletter.

Part of it is a new thing: AI Bytes, a short AI news roundup. From next week it moves right in here, three quick lines a week. The rest is me asking questions. Is Google in trouble? What's the best AI tool right now? Does Google index subdomains?

And then a tulip from the 1630s sneaked in. Priced like a canal house, and sick. More below.

Here's my week.

6 iCloud+ Features You're Already Paying For But Never Use

If you pay Apple for storage, you have iCloud+. And with it a handful of features many of us never switch on. If you only try one, make it Hide My Email. Takes a minute.

Read it on Medium or on Substack.

AI Bytes #1: A Judge, a Duck, and 1,200 Rogue Agents

Issue one. Six AI stories, four oddities, one line from me under each. Short by design, and Substack only.

Read it on Substack.

What Really Is the Best AI Tool in 2026?

Five big ones, five unusual ones, and no winner right away. The models got close, the products drifted apart. So I ranked by use case instead, from coding to images.

Read it on Medium or on Substack.

Is Google (AI) in Trouble?

Three of Google's biggest AI names walked out within two months, one of them after 27 years. Sounds bad. My answer still has a few ifs in it.

Read it on Medium or on Substack.

The Best Newsletter Platforms in 2026

Seven platforms, counting down. One free plan got cut in half twice in ten months, and the top spot stayed the same. I run mine on two of the seven, both free.

Read it or .

Does Google Index Subdomains?

Yes. My two big subdomains collected 1.7 million Google impressions in 90 days, and neither points at a server I run. The small print: every subdomain counts as its own site.

Read it on Medium or on Substack.

The Most Expensive Tulip in History Was a Sick Plant

The first of the fun facts pieces that now live here on Substack. The Semper Augustus was priced like a canal house, its famous flames came from a virus, and the crash ruined almost nobody.

Read it on Substack.

📎 From the Archive

This week's Google question is not my first. I asked it in July 2025, when Google's search share slipped under 90 percent after a decade above it. Different numbers, same question.

Read it on Medium or on Substack.

💡 Fun Facts

Three things I learned while writing this week:

• "Tulip" comes from the Turkish word for turban, tülbent. In Turkish the flower is called lâle. Europeans heard a comparison and took it for the name.
• Google started in 1996 as BackRub. The rename came in 1997, a play on "googol", a 1 with 100 zeros.
• Apple's free iCloud tier is 5 GB. It was 5 GB at launch in 2011 too. Fifteen years, same number.

That's #162. Back next Tuesday. ✌️

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