This is a tipping point for online grocery

[Bloomberg] [Fully Charged]( From [Bloomberg](   [FOLLOW US [Facebook Share]]([Twitter Share]( [SUBSCRIBE [Subscribe]](  Hi, folks. It's [Shira](mailto:sovide@bloomberg.net). Make a note of this moment. This is a tipping point for online grocery shopping in the U.S. Food and beverage retail is one of the largest categories of consumer spending, accounting for yearly sales of $800 billion or more in the U.S. And it has been stubbornly immune to e-commerce forces. Last year, Kantar Worldpanel estimated online shopping for groceries and similar goods accounted for just 1.5 percent of the U.S. market. Even Amazon.com Inc. hasn't bucked the trend. It has [labored]( for more than a decade with its Fresh grocery delivery service. But times are changing. Walmart Inc., the country's biggest grocery retailer, said Wednesday it's [dramatically expanding]( the number of places where shoppers can pile food into a virtual shopping cart and have their purchases delivered. Target Corp. late last year [purchased]( delivery startup Shipt, and recently said it will [offer]( same-day delivery of assorted groceries and other goods from the majority of Target stores this year. Supermarket chains Kroger Co. and Albertsons Cos. are [teaming up]( with Instacart for online deliveries. All these events happened after June 2017, when Amazon announced it was [buying Whole Foods]( for $14 billion. Grocery sellers weren't ignoring the internet before then, but certainly Amazon's purchase was a declaration that the Seattle superpower was very serious about food, and eager to find new approaches to blur the lines between online and physical shopping. The rest of the grocery industry had no choice but to respond quickly, and embracing food delivery has been the most obvious of their reactions. This was a change of tune for many traditional grocers. Walmart, Kroger and other big chains have tested home delivery options, but they have been [bigger proponents]( of "click-and-collect" shopping, which lets people order groceries ahead of time, pull up curbside at the store and have an employee place the shopping bags in the trunk. Click and collect has the advantage of giving shoppers the option of ordering online, but without the costs and complexity of home delivery. Everyone in the grocery business knows the saga of Webvan, the online grocery pioneer that burned through about $1 billion before shutting down in 2001. No one wants to be Webvan 2.0. It's also clear that no one -- not even Amazon -- believes people are only going to shop for groceries online. That e-commerce company's chief financial officer has said people want to shop in multiple ways -- over the internet, at quick-stop markets and at big-box stores for bigger trips. Conventional grocers are also betting on a mix of physical and virtual retail, but now they're they're leaning much harder on the virtual. Other retailers dismissed e-commerce for too long and are paying the price now. Existing grocers want to avoid that fate. This will accelerate online grocery availability and adoption. We have seen this movie before. In the U.K., the embrace of online grocery shopping by two big traditional supermarkets, Tesco Plc and J Sainsbury Plc, helped to change food-buying habits. Online shopping is about 7.5 percent of the U.K. grocery market these days, estimates Kantar Worldpanel. That's not huge; tipping points can take years to transition to mainstream habits. But we've seen the future. It's hard to hold back the e-commerce tide forever. --[Shira Ovide](  And here’s what you need to know in global technology news: Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos has completed her fall from grace. The U.S. securities regulator announced a [lawsuit and settlement]( with Holmes over charges she defrauded investors in the blood-testing startup. One nugget in the fraud suit said Holmes in the summer of 2015 gave financial results to one potential investor showing Theranos fiscal 2014 net revenue of $108 million. Actual sales that year were a little over $100,000, the SEC said. Holmes didn't admit or deny wrongdoing.  Yes, Amazon now strikes fear into the heart of just about every corporate executive in the world. But as recently as 2014, Amazon was a mess, and investors were losing faith. Here's a tale of Amazon's [quick ascent to a global superpower](.  The company behind a popular Chinese app for customized news and videos is [weighing an initial public offering]( in the U.S. Unlike its bigger (and unrelated) rival Jinri Toutiao, Qu Toutiao has succeeded by focusing on smaller cities.  Viral misinformation is a global problem. Misleading YouTube videos are [rampant in India](, where the mobile internet is exploding in popularity.  And a plug for a [first-of-its kind discussion]( featuring Bloomberg thinkers and writers, engaging in an extended conversation on three topics central to the tech industry. If you'd like to be considered to attend this event next week in San Francisco, [drop us a line](.    You received this message because you are subscribed to the Bloomberg Technology newsletter Fully Charged. You can tell your friends to [sign up here](.  [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022