Business & Money

Apparently, Google is paying nearly $3 billion per year to be the default search engine on iOS devices.
This reminds me of when AOL was included as the default internet service on Windows when Windows 95 launched. You could search for and use a separate service, but there was a ton of friction in those days (remember software was sold on cd-roms in physical retail stores).
Being the default option is powerful. You don’t have to have the best product if you’re the default. You only have to be good ENOUGH. There are countless examples of this. Going back to Windows 95, it also came with Internet Explorer, which was Microsoft’s web browser. IE was not even close to being as good as Netscape Navigator. But it didn’t matter. IE was free and it was the default. Netscape’s dominant position in the browser market evaporated seemingly overnight.
Tied to this idea of being the default, is distribution. Again here, the product can be inferior if the distribution strategy is spot on. The direct to consumer model has started to change this a bit, but not by much. Distribution still matters a ton.

Human Progress

There’s something interesting happening with the development of blockchains. If you think about the internet in its current incarnation, there is no value capture at the protocol layer. No one got rich solely by creating or investing in open protocols (HTTP, TCP/IP, etc). Instead, all of the value has been captured at the application layer. The big internet companies that have built successful applications on top to the protocols have made all the money.
The reverse is true with blockchain. The market cap of Ethereum is north of $30 billion and Bitcoin is over $70 billion. But the most valuable companies that have built interesting applications on top of the leading blockchain networks might be worth a couple hundred million dollars, at the high end. Most of the value is accruing at the protocol layer.
This suggests that the internet of tomorrow might look vastly different than it does today. With data replicated and shared across a decentralized network, perhaps massive monopoly platforms will not grow to dominate their markets as they do today. Perhaps competition will be more vibrant as barriers to entry come down and new creators can emerge. Perhaps this is how it was always meant to be.

Philosophy

For a long time, I’ve been doing a certain thing a specific way. Recently, some one suggested I do it another way. I gave feedback that I didn’t think it would work for all of these conceptual reasons (not based on any evidence). Then a bit later, I witnessed some one else doing it the way it had been suggested to me. It worked perfectly and made complete sense.
I stretch a lot in the gym these days, sometimes even devoting an entire day to just doing it. But it’s clear my intellectual flexibility needs work. If someone that you trust and admire makes a suggestion, it often makes sense to give it a try, at least once or twice. Of course, there’s no guarantee that what works for them will work for you. But there’s a reason that that person holds your respect and admiration in the first place.

My Latest Discovery

I’ve been trying a bit of an experiment for the last couple of weeks. I’ve removed dairy from my diet to see if it makes me feel materially different (outside of one scoop of cookie dough ice cream that I couldn’t resist 😞 ). So no cheese on my chicken parm, no yogurt in my protein shakes, and I’ve even swapped out my normal whey protein supplement with a plant based protein substitute. Overall, I’d say I’ve noticed better digestion, a bit more energy, and my allergies seem to less of a problem. Planning to keep this up to see if the changes persist.