Mobile is Separating the Players from the Also Rans: Your Headlines for Friday

1) The Senate has voted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama has vowed to veto. As Coral Davenport writes in the New York Times, this ain't just about transporting oil from Canada to the Gulf. Oh, no. Not nearly:

The five-year fight over the Keystone pipeline has become a proxy for far broader fights over climate change, energy and the economy, and for the conflict between Mr. Obama and congressional Republicans.

Oil still makes the world go 'round, even though business isn't what it used to be. The collapse of oil prices have resulted in a rash of oil rig shutdowns and the loss of 22,000 industry jobs since last summer, when supply began to dramatically outstrip demand. A lot of things have changed in five years, but strangely, the price of oil isn't really among them. Yes, crude is down more than 50% off its highs in the $120+ range during that period. But in January 2010 you could get a barrel for about $80. So why is Obama going to veto only his third bill? Process. Because "it would remove his executive authority to make the final decision," per the Times. Which makes the timing of all this interesting. Republicans control Congress only just now (still, the Senate vote depended on Democrats). The last of all the reviews Obama as been waiting for come due next Monday, and "some people say" he could decide next month.

2) Some of tech's biggest companies reported earnings this week, and through the forest of all those numbers Wired's Marcus Wohlsen sees some pretty interesting trees: The winners are figuring out mobile, and the not-so-winners, not so much. "The companies seeing the strongest growth — Apple and Facebook — are the ones with the most successful mobile strategies. The companies seeing declines, missing expectations, or falling short of their former glories — Google, Alibaba, and Microsoft — are the ones that can’t quite make mobile work for them," Wohlsen writes. But it's hardly game over, he argues. In fact, mobile is still anyone's game. Anyone's:

If the smartest, richest companies in the world can’t figure out how to make mobile work, who can? Well, maybe anyone. Optimism seems like a totally rational response to the tumult tech companies are enduring as mobile devices become the primary computing platform.

So fear not, entrepreneurs. You can still be the next Sergey and Larry. Heck — you can even shoot higher.

3) McDonald's Franchises have a message for incoming CEO Steve Easterbrook: Keep it simple. That has never been one of McDonald's gazzilion slogans. But menu bloat has been a big part of what's been blamed for the mission creep at the world's largest restaurant chain. Getting back to the basics of burgers and fries is one plea from stakeholders. Get moving is another: Lisa Baertelin of Reuters surveyed franchisees and advisers and got responses like this: Change is "moving too slow, let's bite the bullet" and "We just have no momentum any more." One action item on one respondent's short list? Get rid of McCafe espresso drinks, "which critics say don't sell enough to pay for the electricity used by the machines that make them." Here's my personal plea to Easterbrook, and it requires expanding the menu: Offer a veggie burger. Shack Shack — which is eating your lunch, proving that burgers and fries are still big business and goes public today— has one. So does Burger King. White Castle, for heaven's sake. Chipotle, which is upending the burger business, has a tofu scramble burrito and is marketing them hard. Some 87,000 petitioners asked you for a veggie burger option a year ago. Just sayin' it …

4) Russia's central bank unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rates by two points, to 15%. The cut — predicted by only one of 32 economists in a Bloomberg survey — was the first since December 2011. The central bank raised the benchmark six times in 2014, notably by 6.5% late last year in an attempt to halt the ruble's slide. The ruble declined by more than 2% against the dollar on news of the latest cut. Russia's economy is being battered by the decline in oil prices and sanctions imposed for its incursion into the Ukraine. According to the International Monetary Fund, oil exports account for about 45% of the government's revenue.

5) THIS JUST IN: US GDP grew by a modest 2.6% in Q4 last year. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal were expecting the number to be 3.2%. GDP contracted in the first three months of 2014, but grew at 5% and 4.6%, respectively, in subsequent quarters. "For 2014 as a whole, GDP expanded 2.4%, only slightly better than the average 2.2% growth of 2010-2013, a moderate pace compared to prior growth periods. During the 1990s the economy grew an average 3.4% a year," write Josh Mitchell and Jeffrey Sparshott.

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Fear not! Isabelle Roughol returns to Top Stories on Monday.

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