Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by krakensden » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

jfuhrman wrote: post #109

jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's obvious that is where they are going.

How much of Google's profit(or even revenue) is not from tracking user data and advertising? Search, Gmail, Android, Chromebooks, Nexus, Pixel, Youtube, Maps etc. everything is about selling advertisements after scanning user provided data. The rest are either loss leaders or moats, or ones with unclear monetization scenarios like Fiber. One exception is GCE and GAE, but I don't know how much profit/revenue they're m…

Eric Schmidt has been claiming that fiber is making good money. Which doesn't seem impossible.

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

#442

Post by endtime » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #404

endtime wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone says "Google is an AI company" they're obviously not talking about AGI but about applied stuff like ML and IR.

Well, then how about "Google is an ML company"? Though I fail to see any application of machine learning to write home about in their core business -- ads. Search yes, they do a good job on that. But given the amount the data they have on us (browsing history, profile, mails in Gmail) has anybody been that impressed with any targeted ad? I've seen targeted ads from "dummy" networks like the Deck that are 1000% times…

> Well, then how about "Google is an ML company"?

Sure, that's fine, but since ML is generally considered to fall under the AI umbrella your statement is more precise but not more correct.

> Though I fail to see any application of machine learning to write home about in their core business -- ads.

I know basically nothing about our ads (I work for Alphabet), but I believe there is some kind of ML involved.

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

#443

Post by kbenzle » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

PeCaN wrote: post #179

kbenzle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think this is a common sentiment everywhere .

If that was true the US would have A LOT fewer ads.

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

#444

Post by stevenhuang » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

dilemma wrote: post #398

oilywater wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and sentience is a completely made up human thing by which we differentiate betweem ourselves and other non-human animals. What people want to see is artificial general intelligence, currently that is not possible. Does running human software on biological hardware make it sentient, or would the same be true on other forms of hardware? That hardware is just doing what it's been told to.

The human mind isn't software so you're missing the point.

Actually, the computational theory of mind is well regarded in modern cognitive science: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind

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

#445

Post by putlake » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:54 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #315

putlake wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear you have no understanding of markets. Price per share is meaningless. What is being compared is the market cap (Price per share * Number of shares outstanding). In other words, the total value of the company.

> It's clear you have no understanding of markets. There was no call for that. We ban accounts when people attack others personally, so please don't do this again.

Well he wrote in his comment that he has no understanding of markets. I'm agreeing with what he wrote about himself -- verbatim.