After Math: The state of the 'uniom'


It was a week of taking stock as the President meandered his way through the State of the Union address and a number of tech firms reviewed their Q4 earnings. Alphabet and Amazon both had something to crow about, while Apple and GoPro both posted less than stellar holiday sales. Numbers, because how else would we realized that, at this point, the rules are made up and the points don't matter?

77.3 million: That's how many iPhones Apple sold during the 2017 holiday season, down from 78.3 million a year ago. Sure, that's only a 1.3 percent drop but its evidence that Apple's stranglehold on the smartphone market might be slipping.

Bloomberg's Best Photos 2014: Nick Woodman, founder and chief executive officer of GoPro Inc., stands for a photograph with a GoPro Hero 3+ camera in his mouth after ringing the opening bell for the release of the company's IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Thursday, June 26, 2014. GoPro Inc., whose cameras let surfers, skiers and sky divers record their exploits, rose in its trading debut after pricing its initial public offering at the top of the marketed range. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

$1.8 billion: That's how much GoPro earned in 2017, roughly the same as what it did the year before. However, the company did also post a net loss for the year of approximately $183 million and does not expect to return to profitability before the end of summer.

A view of the new Amazon logistic center with the company's logo in Dortmund, Germany November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen

$1.9 billion: And that's how much Amazon made -- last quarter -- in profit alone.

The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

$32.3 billion: That's Alphabet's revenue total for Q4, an impressive sum given that only $4.7 billion of it came from what the company calls Google's "other revenues" (ie what we spend on Google Play or YouTube Red). That's a whole lot of ad dollars right there. Certainly explains how the company can afford to spend $1.1 billion on its HTC acquisition.

2 million miles: That's how far Waymo's fleet of self driving test vehicles travelled in 25 American cities in 2017, effectively doubling the total distance driven since testing began. Impressive numbers indeed. Especially given that the company reported only 63 disengagements (wherein the human operator had to step in) over the course of the 352,545 miles driven in California in 2017.

4 days: That's how long it took Elon Musk's Boring company to sell out all 20,000 units of its $500 promotional flamethrowers because screw it, just burn it all down.

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