3 charts for you today:
Copy, paste, lawsuit
This week the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Google in its 10-year legal battle against software giant Oracle, which had accused Google of copying around 12,000 lines of code during Google's development of Android — its mobile operating system software.
The code in question was from Oracle's Java application programming interface, and Oracle was hoping that it might be owed up to $9 billion in compensation, as Android went on to become the dominant operating system for mobile phones around the world. The Supreme Court saw things differently and ruled 6 to 2 that Google's use of the code counted as "fair use" under US copyright law.
The rise of Android
Back in 2009 making hardware (the smartphones themselves) was already enough of a challenge, and many manufacturers were loathe to either pay up for operating software, or invest a huge chunk of money in building their own. Google's master move was to make Android free and open source, allowing companies to build and customize on top of the Android OS, at no cost.
That model meant that, slowly but surely, pretty much every manufacturer except Apple abandoned their own operating systems in favor of Android, and at the latest count Android is the OS of choice for more than 70% of the mobile smartphone market according to data from StatCounter.
Android might be (mostly) free at the point of use, but it's a huge revenue generator for Google. The Google Play Store is the official app store for Android devices, and it's very likely a big chunk of the $21bn of revenue that Google reported as "other revenues" in 2020. On top of that you can add on all the revenue from Google Search, YouTube and other Google apps that usually come pre-loaded on Android devices.
For about an hour on Monday the UK was generating 80% of its electricity from low-carbon energy sources — a record for the country.
That particular hour was unusual, it was a very windy and sunny day (which is ideal), but it does reflect a UK power grid that is increasingly green. Last year, according to data from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, the UK generated almost 43% of its electricity from renewable sources — mostly wind, bioenergy, solar and hydro power. A decade ago that number was just 7%.
The UK electricity grid also racked up 5,147 hours without the use of coal power last year, with a 68-day coal-free streak which was the longest stretch of time that the UK hasn't used coal since the industrial revolution.
Energy vs. electricity
These numbers are obviously encouraging, but it is important to distinguish between total energy and just electricity. A majority of UK homes are heated using gas, and a lot of transportation still relies on burning fossil fuels (cars, planes etc).
When you think of big digital advertising businesses the usual suspects come to mind; Facebook, Google, niche chart-based newsletters etc.. You might not have immediately thought of Amazon, but last year the e-commerce giant pulled in over $15bn in advertising revenue, making up more than 10% of the US digital ad market (data from eMarketer).
Searching differently
Shoppers that used to begin their product search on Google are now increasingly starting on Amazon. Amazon realized this a number of years ago and began to sell ads, putting promoted products further up the page. We tested out just how much advertising they sell with a simple test.
We went to Amazon and searched for "tablet". The first row of 4 tablets were a sponsored section, as were the next 2 products as we scrolled down. The one after that was an "Amazon's Choice" product, which conveniently was the Fire tablet... which is an Amazon brand. So effectively the first 7 products we saw were either promoted directly, or were an Amazon product.
Also in the news: Amazon workers in Alabama look unlikely to form a union (more in snacks below).
1) Janelle Shane has used 4 variants of GPT-3, a language model from OpenAI that uses deep learning to produce human-like text and writing, to generate some pick-up lines.
2) Modelling from University College London suggests that the proportion of the UK population with protection against COVID-19, either through vaccination, previous infection or natural immunity will pass through 73% — approaching levels required for herd immunity.
3) Wise Bread have found what they believe is the highest paying cash back credit card on the market. $200 bonus offer AND 3% cash back? Say no more.**
4) More than $72bn of investment went into North American startups in the first quarter of this year, according to data from Crunchbase — the highest quarterly number on record.
5) An early count in Alabama, where Amazon workers were voting on whether to form the first US Amazon union, reveals that roughly 1,100 votes have been cast against the union and 463 votes in favor. Approximately 1,600 votes are left to be counted.
**This is a sponsored snack.
