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Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

techcrunch.com

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Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#41

Post by kumarm »

educar wrote: post #30

So, Google makes fantastic products. Much of our online interaction involves Google in some way or the other. And the only way these guys have figured to make money is ads. Why can't they sell products and be like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft. I am guessing it's too much work to grow in such a massive pace without ads. Ads are a marketers/sales persons dream and these marketers are very likely to spend money. This ad…

>>Email will no see decent progress thanks to gmail.

I remember how great email was before GMail:

1. Every few days I had delete emails so that I can get new email.

2. Delete sent mail immediately to make space for new emails.

3. More than 50% of emails received are spam.

Yeah right GMail was one that stopped progress of email :)

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#43

Post by ucha »

losty wrote: post #12
randomname2 wrote: post #6

How did they miss earnings, after buying back $2.3B of stock in Q1?

The two are unrelated. They could spend all their cash on buybacks and the earnings would be the same.

Earnings are reported per share so stock buybacks are actually a pretty common way to make earnings look better. Of course, it doesn't change the total earnings but the number reported by techcrunch would indeed change.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#44

Post by Someone »

afarrell wrote: post #28
eru wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can still block those. My adblocker does by default.

Why? Isn't that the exact time when you would want to see ads?

In my case, I guess 90% of searches either include the term "stack overflow" or "Wikipedia", or get augmented by them when an initial search doesn't give desired results. I can't see how such searches might produce adverts that would help answer my questions.

It's very rare that I search for a product and even then, chances are that I add "review" or "sucks" (can work fine in combination with a specific product; negative reviews often tell you more about a product than positive ones, just like a requirements document or a product road map becomes a lot better if one includes things that people might the product to do that it will not do)

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#45

Post by avar »

educar wrote: post #30

So, Google makes fantastic products. Much of our online interaction involves Google in some way or the other. And the only way these guys have figured to make money is ads. Why can't they sell products and be like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft. I am guessing it's too much work to grow in such a massive pace without ads. Ads are a marketers/sales persons dream and these marketers are very likely to spend money. This ad…

    Why can't they sell products and be
    like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft.
Econ 101 on HN again.

Aside from what Google's doing. You're assuming that the value someone personally derives from using something is the value other people derive from pushing it to them.

I.e. you have ads on Google, some of which cost >$10. To the companies paying for them that makes sense, because they might be selling a product that costs $500-1000, with say 10% conversion.

But a user is never going to be persuaded to pay >$10 simply to click a link.

So yes, there are some things Google does for free that they could be selling, but a) they may not be easy to sell directly b) even if people bought them it wouldn't make up the difference they make from ads, because the value isn't on the consumer side, it's on the advertiser's side.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#46

Post by pavs »

ASinclair wrote: post #9
jerryhuang100 wrote: post #5

GOOG/GOOGL's 'other bets' revenue is more than doubled yoy, though they spent 27% more yoy ($657MM just for Q1!!) for their 'other bets' operation.

Fiber infrastructure is expensive.

Did they invest a lot on fibre infrastructure? There are only in a couple of smallish cities and towns and most of their service deployment is based on existing infrastructure, AFAIK. Maybe I have missed something...

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#47

Post by acchow »

dendory wrote: post #23

It's interesting to see how Google, a company that has arguably some of the best engineers in the world and the most brilliant technologists, still only makes a decent revenue on online ads. All of their other startups are losing money.

Google had $75 billion in revenue in 2015 with $16 billion net income. They are a 17 year old company. I think that's a lot better than "decent".

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#48

Post by pmyjavec »

petra wrote: post #39
pmyjavec wrote: post #35

I wonder if other search engines are also starting to catch up? I've been using DuckDuckGo for a while now and there was a time when it felt like I was missing out; However the product has improved dramatically of late and forget I'm no longer using Google.

Its hard to believe, because tracking and especially tracking over search history both over the immediate term and the somewhat longer term is exactly what enables Google to surface such good results.

I understand the theory behind all that but I'm preferring the results DDG is now giving me. The bangs feature is also really nice.

I actually used DuckDuckGo about a year ago but I went back to Google after a month as the results felt crap, but I gave it a try recently and haven't looked back.

I haven't felt this was since leaving Altavista!

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#49

Post by russell_h »

nightski wrote: post #40
petra wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If push comes to shove Google can do any number of things to fight against ads. For example, it started, silently, without explaining,for some who remove ads in youtube, to stop the video in the middle. Heck even creating a credible enough rumor that blocking google search ads seriously degrades results could have a material impact.

This would be a good thing in the long run. It would open the door to paid services that could be competitive. Currently YouTube is free and there are no consequences for blocking ads. It's funny, I didn't even realize that YouTube had ads until I turned off my ad blocker one day. I was amazed at how awful the experience was...

I think you can pay to disable ads on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/red

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#50

Post by ryanobjc »

dendory wrote: post #23

It's interesting to see how Google, a company that has arguably some of the best engineers in the world and the most brilliant technologists, still only makes a decent revenue on online ads. All of their other startups are losing money.

Why, you're right - somehow another $20b a quarter business has eluded them! They're normally just all over the place, I have a few in my couch at home. So weird.

And yeah, all those other 'bets' - losing money. New things are usually immediately hugely profitable, and even thinking about trying something that doesnt make huge bank right out the gate makes 0 sense.

This is in stark contrast to winning companies such as Microsoft, Intel, AT&T, Exxon (and any other oil company), which have all figured out how to get those $80b/year businesses bootstrapped, not to mention who have significantly diversified their revenue from their original business lines!

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