Axios

This is "one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades," as Business Insider reports (with a useful graph on which stores are expecting closures in 2017). That's because visits to malls have declined by 50% between 2010 and 2013, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The online effect: Bebe and The Limited are closing 100% of their physical stores to go to entirely online. Other stores, like J.C. Penney and Sears, are closing stores to cut losses in unprofitable locations, and just today, Sears announced it might be pursuing bankruptcy.

The survivors: Discount retailers like TJX, Ross, and Burlington.

Disney has been slapped with a lawsuit claiming it stole the idea for its Oscar-winning, billion-dollar-grossing animated film Zootopia from longtime Hollywood screenwriter and producer Gary Goldman.

Goldman, whose credits include the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall and Tom Cruise film Minority Report, alleges that Disney ripped off the theme, plot, and name of his Zootopia concept, which he pitched to the studio both in 2000 and 2009.

But Disney denied the allegations, stating that Goldman's lawsuit "is riddled with patently false allegations" and that they "will vigorously defend against it in court."

Sears, once the largest U.S. retailer, said that there is "substantial doubt" that it will be able to remain open, reports the AP. Company shares, which hit an all-time low last month, tumbled more than 5% in early trading Wednesday.

CEO Edward Lampert's hedge fund has sent millions in funding to try and keep Sears afloat, but the declining sales have brought the company into too deep a hole.

According to its most recent regulatory filing late Tuesday, Sears lost more than $2 billion last year.

A new study estimates that $12.48 billion of ad spending in 2016 was fraud, or was the result in invalid traffic, which is double the earlier $7.2 billion industry estimate. This means that almost 20% of the $66 billion spent last year on digital ads globally may have been wasted on ads that were mostly either

• Botnet fraud: never actually viewed by humans
• Adware fraud: not properly loaded for a person to accurately view them

Why this matters: The amount of money lost to digital ad fraud is greater than the total digital advertising revenue for all of the 80 premium publishers of Digital Content Next, a trade group which includes the AP, NBC, NPR, PBS, Turner and many more, according to Jason Kint, the group's president.

Google released a preview of the next version of its Android to app developers on Tuesday, though it didn't offer a ton of details on what's new in the operating system. One key feature of the Android O is that it will limit what apps can do in the background, resulting in longer battery life.

Android O will also add "Picture in Picture" support for phones, which lets users watch movies or other video clips while also performing other activities, like checking email or surfing the web. Apple currently offers this feature on its iPads while Android already supports it on tablets.

What's to come: Google typically releases a new version of Android each year, so this wasn't totally unexpected. The real interest will come later in the year when they announce what consumer features the new phone will have, as well as what the "O" stands for. Oreo, anyone? Expect more at Google's I/O developer conference in May.

Walmart is launching a technology-startup incubator — called Store No. 8 — in Silicon Valley to focus on revamping its retail experience with new innovations like virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, drone delivery and personalized shopping. The retailer is hoping that move, which e-commerce CEO Mark Lore announced Monday at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas, will give the company a competitive edge over Amazon.

Why it matters: Store No. 8 is the latest for Walmart in its hot e-commerce streak. In the last two months alone, Walmart has bought three online retailers — ModCloth, ShoeBuy, and Moosejaw — to help diversify its online presence. And Lore, whose Jet.com store Walmart bought last year for $3 billion, has been spearheading the growth.