Bloomberg reported on the cutthroat restaurant delivery industry this week with some startling data points. Papa John’s Pizza now calls itself an e-commerce company and receives 60% of its orders online, including from Facebook. McDonald’s and Uber are partnering to have fast food delivered, and voice-activated devices are also taking orders. This shouldn’t surprise many of you. Bloomberg’s data shows that about 70% of people have ordered food online. One of the most famous online disruptors was Amazon’s patent on one-click ordering technology. This was a big deal 17 years ago. Expect to see changes on some of your favorite websites when the patent expires on September 11. A March 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Internet pioneer and author James Gleick expressed sarcastic wonder that a company could hold a patent on such a common process. And in prescient words, he wrote, “When 21st-century historians look back at the breakdown of the United States patent system, they will see a turning point in the case of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com and their special invention: ”The patented One Click(R) feature…” News of two other disruptions came this week. Google will follow Facebook’s example and start selling subscriptions to news publications. And Apple flashed some of the cash we told you that they had by announcing that they would spend up to $1 billion on video programming like Netflix or Amazon. That leaves Apple with only $255 billion in cash. Learn more fast: Bloomberg on delivery and Google subscriptions, The Wall Street Journal on Apple video |