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By The Numbers

The cable giant that wasn’t

Tony Wagner Apr 24, 2015
$45.2 billion

That’s what a merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have been worth. But Comcast, under scrutiny, abandoned the takeover Friday morning. The deal would have united two largest cable companies in the U.S. and created a telecommunications giant.

18 karat

That’s the ratio of gold in the luxury version of the Apple Watch. The price tag? Up to $17,000. Apple officially released its smart watches Friday, and some of those customers are receiving their online orders. In addition to the regular Apple stores in your local mall, you can also find the wearable technology in select fashion boutiques around the world. Still not sure which model to get? Take our quiz.

4.6 billion

That’s how much Amazon’s cloud computing business made last year, and its expected to rake in $6.23 billion this year. The retailer revealed the numbers behind Amazon Web Services for the first time on Tuesday. Wired notes that the cloud is high-margin, and growing faster than Amazon’s other businesses, but plenty of companies are lining up to take a piece of the expanding market.  

Three months

This is how long Puerto Rico has before the government runs out of money. Saddled with $70 billion debt, the U.S. territory faces tough decisions in budget cuts. Finance officials warned that a government shutdown may be in store if the government cannot reduce spending and increase revenue. And unlike Detroit, for example, Puerto Rico doesn’t have the luxury of U.S. bankruptcy protection.

2007

That’s the year Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia first conceived Airbnb, the hospitality start-up that has gone on to become a multi-billion dollar business with shared rentals worldwide. We visited company headquarters in San Francisco recently to talk with Chesky about the service’s rapid growth, recent controversies and just what kind of company Airbnb is anyway.

$12

That’s the new federal minimum wage proposed by Senator Patty Murray of Washington. The bill would up wages 75 cents to $8 in 2016, then a dollar more each year until it reaches $12 in 2020. 

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