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Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

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Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#31
post #28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) The shift from desktop to mobile should have the effect of reducing clicks. Can you clarify this statement?

If you're an advertiser, you've already seen this. Mobile viewers click on ads less often than desktop viewers. So, absent any other variables...if mobile traffic is growing faster than desktop traffic, year over year, click growth would slow.

Unless ad blockers are used on a massive scale?

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#32
post #15
post #11

Paid clicks up 31% overall, on Google’s own sites, up 40%. That's a bit concerning to me, especially when you consider: a) That growth is outpacing internet traffic growth, and has for many years now. Internet traffic CAGR is 23%[1] b) The shift from desktop to mobile should have the effect of reducing clicks. c) Since some of the growth is video, I would expect a decrease in click growth related to this as well. Vid…

Why is any of that concerning? I'm not seeing the link.

Sergey/Larry explain it better than I would.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Scroll down to "Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives"

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#33
post #11

Paid clicks up 31% overall, on Google’s own sites, up 40%. That's a bit concerning to me, especially when you consider: a) That growth is outpacing internet traffic growth, and has for many years now. Internet traffic CAGR is 23%[1] b) The shift from desktop to mobile should have the effect of reducing clicks. c) Since some of the growth is video, I would expect a decrease in click growth related to this as well. Vid…

...or Google is just getting better at serving the right advertisement at the right time?

They are getting better, every single year, over more than a decade, in a way that click growth outpaces traffic growth. Despite circumstances that would counter the effort. It seems unlikely it's just targeting, without spilling over into something that's bad for consumers.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#34

Also interesting to see in this earnings report is that Google's "other bets" aka moonshots are 3.5 billion in the red...[0] [0] https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...

I'd expect years, if not a decade for those to make money.

I'm fond of how Google's voting structure is designed to prevent common stockholders from changing the direction of the company (for the same reason Elon Musk won't take SpaceX public until there are ongoing flights to Mars): investors are too concerned with short-term enrichment.

If all of your ventures are making money hand over fist, you're not trying anything hard.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#35
The comparisons between Google and Apple aren't as apples-to-apples as everyone in the media seems to think. If we're talking about the future of these companies, and their earning power, they are situating themselves very differently. Apple is really a consumer electronics company, Google is an artificial intelligence company. And investors think more money will be in the future of AI instead of consumer hardware and software, so even though Google's earnings are smaller than Apple's, the future earning power is so much more.

If Apple starts going faster on AI then I think it will be very interesting between these two companies.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#38

interesting adjective "most valuable." To many that equates to revenue generated, to others profitability. Haven't read this article but starred for later I'm curious to see what it says.

For public companies this is always going to mean market capitalization, which is the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. This is the amount that would be required to instantaneously buy all the stock were it for sale at the listed price and thereby gain 100% ownership. ( In reality this never happens, and quickly buying large amounts of a stock typically elicits an additional premium on top o…

It's definitely not the amount of money that would be required to buy all the stock. The market cap is usually much smaller than that quantity.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#39
post #28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) The shift from desktop to mobile should have the effect of reducing clicks. Can you clarify this statement?

If you're an advertiser, you've already seen this. Mobile viewers click on ads less often than desktop viewers. So, absent any other variables...if mobile traffic is growing faster than desktop traffic, year over year, click growth would slow.

Unfortunately, this is almost certainly a space where "absent any other variables" is too simplifying an assumption. Some confounding factors to consider:

* Is mobile growth rate so high that it outstrips the reduced expected CTR for desktop users?

* Is mobile use not displacing desktop use, meaning desktop CTR is not falling as fast as anticipated?

* Is mobile use growing in places where there was previously no desktop use? Those users previously had a functional CTR of 0; onboarding them should increase the total clicks even if it reduces the mean CTR.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#40
post #20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for b) I would say the contrary. Have you tried entering in a common website from a mobile browser without an adblocker? You get like so many ads, SO MANY, one over the other, some full-screen some that just let you see the 10% of the real site, some with a pseudo-pop-up, all with those little "x" almost unclickable to close them that force you to click on the ad in the end. And in the "free apps with ads" of the mob…

Can that really go on forever? I don't know anyone that deliberately clicks on ads. Ads usually act as a "don't buy" signal to me - I assume the product is of low quality or a scam because of the skeeziness of how they tried to reach me as a customer. Like higher education, the online ads business seems poised to collapse.

Are you Russian, this is a common sentiment there :)
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