G is for Google • Hacker News Board

Re: G is for Google

#541

Post by DonHopkins » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:27 AM UTC

beaner wrote: post #498

ChuckMcM wrote: post #133

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.

The alphabet is better than planets because you can always throw in more Unicode letters, while those damn astronomers took away a perfectly good planet!

Re: G is for Google

#542

Post by parasubvert » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:31 AM UTC

amlgsmsn wrote: post #387

snowwrestler wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joel has always seen things from Microsoft's point of view. And we are actually living in the world he mocked: both hardware and software, on the server side, have been largely commoditized.

He didn't mock the world, he mocked Sun's strategy and it played out exactly like he said causing Sun to die off.

One could say Sun read the tea leaves of the industry correctly, they just didn't couldn't shed their history quickly enough to execute on it. Cloud services are the new proprietary and Sun had begun building that shortly before Oracle came knocking.

Re: G is for Google

#543

Post by DonHopkins » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:34 AM UTC

chetanahuja wrote: post #207

Actually reading the first few paragraphs of the form 8(K) was more illuminating than the blogpost. "Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”)" "In connection with the new operating structure and upon completion of the Alphabet Merger (as defined below), Larry Page will become t…

So if Larry Page is King Azaz of Dictionopolis, then who is his mortal enemy, the Mathemagician of Digitopolis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth

Re: G is for Google

#544

Post by mattlutze » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:40 AM UTC

fredkbloggs wrote: post #404

chetanahuja wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're still mostly investing in the growth potential of Google's existing businesses. Don't forget that Alphabet still completely owns all the money-making businesses of Google.

Wrong. You cannot have your profits and let someone reallocate them for you too. You would be right if you owned a controlling interest, but you don't. Because you don't, all the profits of the money-making businesses go where Larry and Sergey want them to go. That's not (necessarily) going to be your pockets. If you owned a controlling interest, you could throw them out if you're unhappy with their performance as ca…

> So those profits are worth little or nothing to you, both now and in the future, because you aren't entitled to receive them.

You invest in a company assuming it will increase its value over the time you hold your fraction of ownership. Parent isn't saying you're entitled to dividends, but was observing that the decision to buy Alphabet stock will likely mostly be made on the expectation of the money-making businesses continuing to grow, and only minor-ly on the hope that one or more of the ventures takes off and significantly increase company value.

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but I didn't see an expectation of dividends in the parent's comment.

Re: G is for Google

#545

Post by itchyouch » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:44 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #330

ChuckMcM wrote: post #133

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…

For one thing, they're specifically keeping Labs as part of Alphabet directly, rather than as a sub-company. That seems like recognition that experiments shouldn't have to immediately pan out or immediately become self-sustaining. For another, they've said nothing about how they plan to handle IT and infrastructure. Though that'll certainly be interesting; they'd be foolish not to take advantage of the Google datacen…

The recent release of kubernetes into the public domain seems to align with this. Add to that Google's cloud services and you have infra that can be used by the independently spun off orgs.

Re: G is for Google

#546

Post by damcedami » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:59 AM UTC

Now every school book which have "abc" as hypothetical company name should be changed.

Re: G is for Google

#547

Post by teddyuk » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 11:59 AM UTC

I don't understand why everyone thinks this is a bad idea, it is great - run the profitable business as a separate business, use the profits to invest in fun things and also promote people to CEO instead of watching them go CEO somewhere else (yahoo etc).

It is a win win for everyone.

Re: G is for Google

#548

Post by anuraj » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 12:03 PM UTC

The diversification seems to be going in the way of the conglomerate - and conglomerate tax shall apply - whether it is Google or not! Hope it does not turn dystopian though.

Re: G is for Google

#549

Post by fixermark » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 12:07 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #520

Spooky23 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will when Google is manufacturing cars, or is joint venturing with a car company to manufacture them. The Google guys are smart. You don't do something like this without a long term strategic aim.

What about this post from a month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9889942 > There is no strategy. The thought of Google having a central product management strategy -- and successfully executing it across many teams -- is hilarious to people who work there. It's chaos that outsiders try to read into. This is a consequence of bad internal economics and incentives. Google PMs and engineers are incentivized to…

It's one anon's opinion based on their observation and may not be reflective of a larger reality.

Re: G is for Google

#550

Post by fixermark » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 12:11 PM UTC

Jarwain wrote: post #278

rrss1122 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've heard is that this would help them in terms of taxes, allowing them to write off projects that don't make money, although I'm not entirely clear on how Alphabet would accomplish this. That would be no joke if that was a reason to do it.

The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU. But that's just my best guess

IANAL, but it seems unlikely. The Alphabet move doesn't appear to be splitting out the components the EU regulators appear to care about (search, ads, maps) from each other. If regulators are concerned about the effects of personal information consolidation, that's not changing.