Microsoft. The most boring trillion dollar company just announced the upcoming release of Windows 11, the operating system used by the majority of people on this planet.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re not just talking about technology. I wanted to also talk about marketing, specifically around branding.

Let’s get into it. What would be the words which you would think of when I mentioned the word Google to you?

Buying a car has become harder lately. Why is that? Car manufactures are shutting down plants because they don't have the electronics parts to put in their vehicles.

Amazon Sidewalk (AS) is the latest example of innovation in the area of smart cities, though probably not in the way you think. (The name, Amazon Sidewalk, is very unfortunate. It brings immediately to mind the failed attempt by Google to install a surveillance monstrosity in Toronto.)

Every day, we hear about companies deploying applications with the dreadful acronym AI to provide the best customer service or something. They talk up their solution, the most advanced solution, with the best AI that money can buy. And of course all that AI that is their big differentiator is a highly guarded secret. It’s also a source of vulnerabilities.

Did you know that for less than $4 per month you can learn how you move, sleep and ... sound? That's right. How you sound to others.

If you’ve never had to deal with ransomware (lucky you!) and are not quite sure what it is, ransomware is a kind of software. You either get tricked to install it on your machine, or a hacker will find a vulnerability and install it for you. The typical outcome is that every bit of information on your computer gets encrypted. Then, the message with instructions on how to buy Bitcoin and where to send it, appears.

The honeymoon is over and the big guys are moving in.

It is 1989 and Sir Timothy Berners-Lee builds what we today call the web. The combination of language (HTML), a communication protocol (HTTP) and the means to see the information (The browser). The objective was to give better access to thousands of documents created at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Another week, another announcement about vaccination. However, this time it is not from the CDC or a national health official. It is from Uber. Now you can book a vaccination appointment through its app.

Some might ask, “isn’t Uber a ride-hailing company?” Actually, it’s much more than that. The company is very much aligning its business with its vision statement - “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.” In doing so, it is maturing along the way towards a profitable future. It’s growing up while losing dead weight of underperforming or non-core business operations, while boosting its immune system against competition.

Look at how Amazon is rolling out new technologies and how it is commercializing them. Who knew that when Amazon built its own data center for selling books online, it would turn this spare computing capacity into the Amazon Cloud (AWS)? And that it would build a multi-billion dollar business out of it? If this innovation is good for Amazon, it must be good for everyone else and Amazon will provide access to it to everyone - right? Sharing (for profit) is caring.