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Showing results for tags 'technology'.
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Recently, Google Ventures lead a huge $258 million investment round in Uber. Which is interesting in itself, because it's their largest investment ever. But, things are put into an interesting perspective when you consider some of the rumors floating around. So... Google wants to build cars and sell them to Uber. Sounds great, really. Uber will corner the automated taxi business, grow huge and go public. Google will cash out and get a huge return on their investment. But why stop there? Why would Google limit themselves to just the taxi business. I mean, they'll need to invest billions into the car manufacturing, no way they'll get their return from just Uber, right? Google will have to spend billions to do this, but not in the way you may think. After working in an automotive manufacturing plant, I can assure you that they don't just pop up out of the ground, on the cheap. There's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of assets in every single plant. There's so much involved in setting up a plant that it'll make your head spin. It'll take too long and cost too much for Google to do it from the ground up, plus it'll give their competition time to get their act together. Nope, Google needs to buy it. They're no stranger to making obscenely large acquisitions, so Tesla's market cap of $19.94 billion shouldn't scare them too much. They have the money to spend, after all. If that was me, it'd be burning a hole in my pocket. But you may be asking yourself, why Tesla? Tesla is more of a technology company then it is a car company. On top of that, the CEO, Elon Musk, embodies everything Google wants. He already wants to bring affordable electric cars to the masses. Their Model S is one of the safest cars on the road. When it comes to customer service, they treat their customers well. Google buys Tesla and has an exclusive deal with Uber. Where's that leave everyone else, though? The technology industry, by and large, won't care. They'll partner with Google to provide in-car entertainment, mainly Netflix, Spotify and Facebook. Amazon and Apple won't care. Microsoft may care, but they'll be so broken that they won't even be able to do anything about it if they wanted to. The real threats, if you can even call them that, are from the incumbents - Toyota, GM, Chrysler/Fiat, etc. But even then, I don't think Google will have to worry too much. They'll dance circles around the old school manufacturers. The game will have changed and Google will be at the forefront, while the rest will be stuck in the past. It's happened before, to multiple industries. No one will be able to touch Tesla's reputation or Google's savvy. My prediction: Google will buy Tesla as a way to fully utilize their partnership with Uber. They'll take full advantage, and take over the automotive market, flooding it with automated vehicles. Billions and billions of dollars in profit will follow and the shareholders of Google will become very wealthy people. When will this happen? I have no idea. All I can for sure is that grand plan has been put into motion and nothing, hell or high water, will prevent it from happening. God help all those caught in the cross fire.
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1897 was Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and the Royal Navy gathered at Spithead to pass in review. Note the boat chugging along doggedly front and center. It has an experimental engine that will soon rock the world- steam turbines. Faster and more reliable- when mated with fuel oil instead of coal, it will become the powerplant of choice in the next 10--20 years. This was just before the dawn of the age of the Dreadnought.. Technological breakthroughs were being made every day that enabled battleships to become the biggest and most lethal war ships in history. Electricity, hydraulics, turbines, radio, steel, welding-: with every new innovation the ships became bigger, faster and more powerful. HMS Dreadnought, 1906. The ship that included the newest technologies of the new century and set the pace for all the rest. Dreadnoughts became the ticket that had to be punched to be acknowledged as a Great Power. To build and maintain a fleet of Dreadnoughts required the economic wherewithal, industrial capability and technological base that only a Great Power could afford. Dreadnoughts were to the 20th century what advanced jet aircraft and nuclear weapons are to the 21st century. They define a Great Power, insure its security and add to its prestige. In a very few short years Dreadnoughts advanced from naval units to political status symbols.
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You have just discovered the horrifying secret. The technology you have been working on to make life simpler for mankind is actually going to be used to enslave them. Your managers aren’t human and you have been used as a pawn. What is going to happen and can you prevent it?
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I was surfing the web and came across this awesome video, if you had the chance would you go to a concert like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aro6w-KDJX4 comment below.
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