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G is for Google

googleblog.blogspot.com

491–500 of 607 posts

Re: G is for Google

#491

Wow, they are doing letters? Really? Letters? Hey is Eric Schmidt still in the building somewhere? Ask him how well Planets worked out for Sun Microsystems. Interesting strategy, hard to second guess from the outside of course. Sun's motivation was to figure out whether the other parts of the company could stand on their own[1], it also makes it less fiscally complicated to discharge an entire group into the void. Th…

[deleted]

Re: G is for Google

#492

Sounds like Google is turning into Umbrella Corporation: http://umbrellacorporation.jp/aboutus.html Life sciences, life extension, military, information, telecommunications all under one umbrella company.

Clicking around the website, this is most likely not an actual company but a spoof of the evil conglomerate from the Resident Evil games/films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Resident_Evil_characte...

Re: G is for Google

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea was to keep anything related to ad revenue all together under Sundar, and Youtube is definitely a part of that.

Or "web services" in general.

It seems to me that Google is now the software arm and everything else is spun off into its individual niches.

Re: G is for Google

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome insight and backstory about one of SV's iconic companies, so thanks for sharing. Maybe the new Alphabet structure, despite similar failures at Sun and other tech companies, is the best option for maximizing innovation even though it also carries a high probability of failure (an "alpha" bet if you will, hah). Or maybe they did devise an ingenious scheme to neutralize the shortcomings of the Planets model, but…

I fully expect that they have thought it through. And I do presume that Eric shared all of the pitfalls that befell Sun when it tried Planets. So yes, no doubt the idea is fully vetted from that perspective. Given the pain for Sun, and Eric's direct experience of the same, I am surprised that this is the path they are taking.

If their goal is to maximize the odds of innovation, not minimize the odds of failure, which path would you advise? And please share more Sun stories. These were entertaining and informative. It should have been Sun leading the cloud revolution, but that's the Innovator's Dilemma for you. :(

Re: G is for Google

#498

Wow, they are doing letters? Really? Letters? Hey is Eric Schmidt still in the building somewhere? Ask him how well Planets worked out for Sun Microsystems. Interesting strategy, hard to second guess from the outside of course. Sun's motivation was to figure out whether the other parts of the company could stand on their own[1], it also makes it less fiscally complicated to discharge an entire group into the void. Th…

I think you're taking the concept behind the name a little too literally...

They're not going to collect one company per letter just so they can have an "alphabet" of 26 companies. The name just implies that they have a collection, a variety, a spectrum of companies.

Re: G is for Google

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there would be a difference on financials. Alphabet is worth exactly as the old Google, and is currently operating exact same businesses. Separating Fiber is important for other reasons, most notably, saving themselves from conflict of interest/anti-trust lawsuits.

No it isn't. Clearly Google's management believes the new structure is accretive to shareholder value otherwise they wouldn't have done it. I really wonder about this though. Conglomerates have a mixed track record [1] and from where I sit, it's not clear Larry/Sergey are better capital allocators than the public markets. [1] Brealey & Myers "Corporate Finance" has a good section on this topic, comparing big Asian co…

Regulatory costs can be an huge drain on long term profits, and I'd count anti-trust as a regulatory cost.
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