The Guardian (October 25)
“The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence.” This has raised “concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry,” as well as “criticism over transparency. Microsoft and Google regularly publish figures for their water consumption, but Amazon has never publicly disclosed how much water its server farms consume.” Based on partial disclosure, Amazon consumes at least as much water “as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco.”
Tags: AI, Amazon, Capacity, Competitors, Criticism, Datacentres, Google, Microsoft, Partial disclosure, San Francisco, Server farms, Transparency, Water consumption
Bloomberg (November 27)
“As China’s assault on the world’s automotive industry gathers speed, Japan’s national champions are emerging as some of the biggest victims. In China itself, the world’s largest car market, Japanese automakers are fighting for survival as local competitors flood showrooms” with EVs. Chinese carmakers are also “pushing into Southeast Asia, rapidly gaining ground in what has long been a stronghold for legacy brands like Toyota, Honda and Mitsubishi.” We’ve transitioned from “Made in Japan to Made in China,” with Japan’s share of global passenger car production essentially halved (from 21.6% to 11.4%) over the past 25 years while China’s share has rocketed from 1.4% to 38.4% in 2023.
Tags: Automakers, Automotive industry, Car market, Carmakers, China, Competitors, EVs, Honda, Japan, Legacy brands, Mitsubishi, Southeast Asia, Stronghold, Survival, Toyota, Victims
Fortune (October 3)
“The boss of German carmaker Mercedes-Benz is bracing his company for a ‘Darwinian battle’ as Europe’s auto giants reel from falling demand and the onslaught of Chinese competitors.” CEO Ola Källenius and Mercedes-Benz are at “a pivotal moment of sink or swim.” As EV uptake slows in the Europe, “a similar demand glut in China and the emergence of cheap competitors from the region has left Europe’s carmakers fighting fires at home and overseas.”
Tags: Carmaker, CEO, China, Competitors, Darwinian battle, Europe, EVs, Falling demand, Germany, Glut, Källenius, Mercedes-Benz, Onslaught
Wccftech (April 4)
“Sometimes, going against the herd pays off massively. Case in point: Toyota is thriving right now with its hybrids-first strategy, while its competitors, including Tesla, the erstwhile king of the auto space, continue to contend with a challenging demand environment and shrinking margins.”
Tags: Auto, Challenging, Competitors, Contend, Demand, Environment, Hybrids-first strategy, Shrinking margins, Tesla, Thriving, Toyota
Reuters (August 1)
“As competitors battled for the podium on the third day of Olympic athletics on Sunday, it was Tokyo’s oppressive heat that perhaps dished out the most pain. Punishing conditions greeted athletes and officials as a trackside thermometer touched 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) and the humidity hovered around 60%, with sun beating down on an Olympic Stadium devoid of spectators due to COVID-19.”
Tags: 40 degrees Celsius, Athletes, Battled, Competitors, Conditions, COVID-19, Heat, Humidity, Officials, Olympics, Oppressive, Pain, Podium, Punishing, Spectators, Sun, Tokyo, Trackside
Washington Post (June 11)
“There will be joy and drama, glory and grief, among Olympic competitors. But this summer’s pandemic-era Games in Tokyo are destined to go down as the most joyless of modern times with athletes sequestered and cheering banned…. Instead of basking in anticipation of the Opening Ceremonies on July 23, the buildup to the Games sees Japan mired in blame, recriminations and laments that it didn’t have to be this way.”
Tags: Athletes, Banned, Blame, Cheering, Competitors, Drama, Glory, Grief, Japan, Joyless, Mired, Olympic, Opening Ceremonies, Pandemic, Recriminations, Sequestered, Tokyo
Inc (April 19)
“The fast food business encourages fast thinking. Competitors strategize quickly in order to gain that extra percentage of margin, the chance to bite a tiny morsel out of their rivals. This leads them easily into going one way and then veering in the opposite direction. Perhaps one shouldn’t be surprised, then, at McDonald’s suddenly deciding it’s not quite as fancy as it promised to be.” After drifting upscale, it’s now “going another way” and simplifying its menu offerings.
Tags: Competitors, Fast food, Fast thinking, Margin, Menu, Rivals, Simplifying, Strategize, Upscale
Financial Times (July 5)
If Japan and the EU sign their free trade agreement, it “will stand as a powerful rejection of Donald Trump’s protectionist posture…. It will also highlight the challenge facing Britain. A hard Brexit would leave UK companies in some sectors on worse trade terms with their neighbour Europe than Japanese competitors halfway around the world.” There’s no shortage of irony as “the UK and the US risk being left behind — or forced to rethink their repudiation of the global order they built.”
Tags: Brexit, Competitors, EU, Free trade, Global order, Japan, Protectionist, Trump, UK
Wall Street Journal (August 10)
“If the International Olympic Committee won’t call out systematic Russian doping, at least some of the athletes at the summer games in Rio de Janiero can. So kudos to those—especially the competitors in women’s swimming—who are boldly going where the IOC feared to tread.”
Tags: Athletes, Competitors, Doping, IOC, Olympics, Rio de Janiero, Russia, Women’s swimming
Financial Times (February 17)
“Forty governments are signatories to the anti-bribery convention adopted in 1997 by the Paris-based OECD…. So it was reprehensible for Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s former prime minister, to state last week that bribery in pursuit of international contracts was not an offence. It would be unfair on Italian companies to play by rules scorned by competitors, he declared.” Italy is a signatory to the OECD convention.
Tags: Anti-bribery, Competitors, Contracts, Italy, OECD, Prime minister, Signatories, Silvio Berlusconi
