5 February 2016
As you read these SparkOptimus News Highlights, you’re one of over 3 billion people connected to the internet right this moment. That’s almost half the people on earth – while we have yet to celebrate the 25th birthday of the internet’s first website. We live in exponential times and as such, these News Highlights some exponential numbers from the last two weeks regarding events and happenings in the digital world:
● 545 billion dollars was the market capitalization of Alphabet on February 2nd 2016 allowing it to overtake Apple and (briefly) making Google’s newly formed parent company the world’s most valuable company
● 1 billion is the number of monthly active WhatsApp users since last week, making it the fastest company to hit the 1 billion active users mark to date. And while we’re at it, 1 million is the number of new users who register for the messaging app daily. Pretty impressive, given that WhatsApp was only founded a little more than 5 years ago…
● 3.5 billion dollars is the total amount spent on so-called “moonshots” in 2015 by Google’s parent company Alphabet. This is the money Alphabet spends on projects such as Loon (balloons that function as Wi-Fi routers), Google Glass (a computer in your glasses), Wing (delivery drones) and driverless cars (the name kind of gives it away). Not bad for a company that’s only 3 months old
● 1 billion is also the number of monthly active user accounts on Gmail since last week. With that number, Google’s email service joins the (once extremely exclusive but nowadays less and less so) ‘billion-user club’. One-seventh of the world’s people now use Gmail
● 150 millionmonthly kilometers is the number of (virtual) kilometers (as if we can’t get enough of them) Google’s self-driving cars make without ever leaving the garage. By making virtual kilometers, Google is able to bug-test new software before its driverless cars hit the road
Although not exactly exponential, we have some other pretty impressive numbers from news in the digital world (and is a little bit less about Google…):
● 400 is the number of physical stores Amazon might be planning to open in the foreseeable future. This move would be a major move into omnichannel retailing by the e-commerce giant. Although unconfirmed by Amazon, the rumor was enough to rattle investors in struggling Barnes & Noble (Amazon’s biggest “offline” competitor), sending stocks plunging 14% in two days
● 120 is the age we might reach if we can replicate the effects of AP 20187 in humans, an “anti-aging” compound thatextended mice lives by up to 35% in tests
● 60 is the number of unique country customizations for Uber’s brand refresh which emphasizes that Uber no longer just moves people; it now moves food, goods, and soon maybe much more
● 3.57 is the number of steps in which everyone on Facebook is connected with each other. Over the past years this number (also known as our average degrees of separation) has gone down significantly. Check yours out here
And that brings us down to our last number for these News Highlights: 1, the number of eagles it takes to take down a flying drone. So watch out when you’re illegally flying your drone in The Netherlands. Although we might be living in exponential times, all it takes is a single police-trained eagle to take down your high-tech gadget.