Welcome to the 44th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.
Last week, I peered into Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT)'s stance on digital content delivery. As in, music and movie downloads from the retailer's website. Wal-Mart quietly shut down its movie download service just recently on the auspices that Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ)'s backend technology was no longer going to be supported.
It seemed odd that the world's largest retailer would launch a movie download service and not have some kind of guarantee of future support from its partners. But, after just a year, the movie service was shuttered.
This week, the gears will be switched a bit and I'll be looking at some of the more recent arguments on Wal-Mart's effect on local communities. There are arguments on both sides (naturally), and a recent piece from fedgazette looked at Wal-Mart's position as a community destroyer (or supporter, if you have time to look at both sides of the issue).
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