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More than 20 years after its founding, Google’s advertising business remains the largest source of Alphabet’s income. (Alphabet is Google’s parent company.) While 2019 results have not yet been disclosed, for 2019 advertising is expected to contribute 83% of Alphabet’s total expected revenue of $171 billion1. As a public company, Alphabet is expected to show consistent growth quarter after quarter. Alphabet has been growing over 20% each year for the past 10 years. Read more...

As I’ve written before, we live in an age where self-learning becomes more relevant every day. As less people read books, reading becomes a real competitive advantage. It’s a very effective way of standing on the shoulders of giants. In 2019 I completed a total of 16 books (non-fiction) and 17 novels. From the non-fiction list, these are the ones I enjoyed very much and consider worth recommending: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Read more...

Learning complex thinking is uncomfortable. Complexity is, after all, the realm of unknown unknowns. The Cynefin Framework is a conceptual framework created in 1999 by Mary E. Boone and Dave J. Snowden while working for IBM Global Services. It classifies the issues leaders face into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationship between cause and effect. It offers decision-makers a “sense of place” from which to view their perceptions, and make better decisions. Read more...

Online security is more relevant than ever. News from hackers breaching massive number of user accounts from an online service no longer surprises anyone. Two important things that you should do today to improve the security of your online accounts are setting up two-factor authentication and using a password manager. Two-factor Authentication Two-factor authentication means that each time you log into an online service, before you can get access to your account, you’ll be asked to enter an additional code after you enter your password. Read more...

Cal Newport, in his book Digital Minimalisn, explains that there are two forces that encourage behavioural addiction when using social networks. The first force, intermittent positive reinforcement, exploits the fact that rewards delivered unpredictably are more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. The expectation of likes/hearts/retweets after posting online is comparable to gambling. The second force is the the drive for social approval. Social media is tuned to offer us a rich stream of information about how much (or how little) our friends are thinking about us at the moment. Read more...