When first launched, Amazon didn’t look like it had a winning strategy. In fact, by 2000, it had notched up a loss of $1.4 billion (€1 billion). It even-tually turned a profit in 2003.

Last year, the world’s biggest online retailer netted $34.20 billion (€24.6 billion) in sales.

• Ruby, a robot developed by students at Swinburne University of Technology, can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 10.69 seconds. Australian Feliks Zemdegs, 16, takes 6.24 seconds to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

• The US military uses 93 per cent of total US government energy use.

• In the first 24 hours of its release, ­Internet Explorer 9 was downloaded 2.35 million times. Three months later, Firefox 4 was launched – in the first 24 hours of its release, it was downloaded 5.76 million times.

• More than 35 hours of content are added every minute to Youtube.

• In 2011, Google’s unique visitors per month have increased to just over one billion. Microsoft follows closely with more than 900 million unique visitors.

• Turkey has the third most engaged online audience in Europe. In first place is the UK, followed by the Netherlands.

• Japan has the largest blog audience in the world. The average visitor in Japan spends more than an hour a month reading blogs.

• Last month, nearly one out of two Germans visited an online gaming site.

• The technology contained in one Game Boy unit manufactured in 2000 exceeds all the computing power used to put the first man on the moon in 1969.