✏️ My blog posts
5G: if you build it, we will fill it. Link
Podcast with Steven Sinofsky and me on CES. Link
🗞 News
Google is buying Fossil's smartwatch business, for $40m. Fossil might be called the Luxxotica of watches - it has its own brands and also a lot of mid-range watches for licensed brands (Armani, Marc Jacobs etc), and has pushed into smart watches in recent years. I doubt Google is happy with where Android Wear has got to - it seems pretty clear that Apple dominates the space, selling something over 50m units so far (although without managing to create much of a software ecosystem). Wear struggles both with style (not always the strong point of some of Google's partners) but also its underlying tech: Apple's chip team is a major advantage here that Wear has struggled with. So, this suggests continued commitment, but more work will be needed. Link
France fined Google €50m for GDPR breaches. We are all still trying to work out exactly how GDPR will be enforced, but the default view remains, I think, that making it hard to use data across different platforms makes life easier for unified platforms (i.e. Google and Facebook). Meanwhile, one wonders how much enforcement will focus on privacy, or competition policy by proxy, or nationalism. Link
The US is looking at allowing large trucks to replace (some of) their mirrors with cameras. This helps both safety and fuel efficiency (especially once a little bit of object detection is added to the mix). Link
Facebook invested in a new centre for 'AI Ethics' in Munich. Link
Quite a lot of exec turnover at Snap recently. Link
🔮 Reading
a16z: Notes on software security in 20198. Link
Netflix got a lot of attention saying in its latest quarterly results that it competes more with Fortnite than HBO. I'm not entirely sure why this is more true for Netflix than any other TV product... Link
'Will we ever build a mind?' No. At least, not any time soon. Link
Looking back at Google's research efforts in 2018. Note the emphasis on ethics and social purpose. Link
Qualcomm's push into autonomy. Link
The state of D2C brands. Link
Steven Sonderbergh (perennial experimenter) has made a film for Netflix shot entirely on iPhone. Link
😮 Cool things of the week
Remastered footage of Paris in the 1890s. Fixing the frame rate and jitter makes these people feel much closer to us. Also, it's always fascinating to see how different streets were before cars - pedestrians, cyclists and large vehicles mix freely and the concept of lanes is much more fluid. Some of this will come back. Link
📊 Statistics
Data is so cheap in India that smartphone users average over 8 gig a month, and binge on video. Link
App Annie on app stores in 2018: they estimate $120bn. Link
Pew study of how Facebook users feel about targeting. Link
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All views contained herein are my own and do not represent the views of AH Capital Management ("a16z" or “Andreessen Horowitz”) or any a16z affiliate.
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