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Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

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Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#211

Post by kohanz »

rqebmm wrote: post #108
matwood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Valve's no manager management style: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-27/why-there... When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.

Valve also has the prestige of being a high-profile gaming company, which brings with it choice pick of engineers. A "normal" enterprise app consulting shop doesn't have the luxury of every computer geek clamoring to work there. If you have first-pick of incoming talent, it makes sense that you can get away with giving those employees an extremely high degree of autonomy.

Is that really true though? I remember when me and my engineering peers were in our teens, some of us dreamed of working for a gaming company, but now that we're older no one does. Most actually have a very negative perception of employment conditions in that industry.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#212

Post by petra »

Animats wrote: post #164

“No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” Remember Nokia. They produced mobile phones with excellent quality, extreme ruggedness, good battery life, and good voice quality. Their manufacturing was highly automated and their costs were low. They focused on their core business. Recently, their CEO said "We did everything right, and we lost anyway". On the other hand…

>> Android is a loss leader to drive ad traffic.

If one gathers all of their businesses which sell ads under "ads" , well, sure they have one business, the same as microsoft has only one business: "software".

But i'm sure their different ad businesses might have different risk factors, so in totality, they're stable. And BTW, Android made $33B (probably mostly indirectly) according to the oracle trial. Also youtube is a $9B business growing at 20%(probably waiting for the shift of brand ads from tv).

>> Automatic driving may pay off, but that is being a component supplier to an car company, not a high-profit business.

Having control on Android, Google Maps, and Waze puts them in right place for people ordering transportation. Couple that with possible network and data effects, and brand of the self driving business and Google's possible big advantage on self driving cars could put them in a good place in the future self driving ecosystem, not just a component supplier.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#213

Post by serge2k »

bduerst wrote: post #203
Afforess wrote: post #38

Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can't dominate a market, it is not intere…

>> If Google can't dominate a market, it is not interested. Google Fi and Fiber are counterarguments to this claim. It's pretty obvious their interest in these markets is to influence the oligopolistic prices and practices, not dominate them.

Fi feeds in to growing android and fiber being scaled back is pretty much proof of exactly that.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#214

Post by wrice314 »

Plenty of companies make so much money. Google didn't have to worry about financial discipline, not because it had so much money, but because it has an unassailable competitive position that is not aligned with its cost structure. Put simply, if you had the mandate to bankrupt a company through competition and had an infinite amount of money, I believe it would cost more to bankrupt Google than any other business.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#215

Post by PunchTornado »

dalbasal wrote: post #209
ChuckMcM wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly correct. If you have a printing press that is dumping a couple of billon dollars into the basement every quarter in spite of what you're spending, you have the luxury of trying all sorts of novel things from a business perspective. That said, the margins on the search advertising business are shrinking, and have been for years now. You can cover for that by eliminating profligate spending and then eve…

How/why are search margins shrinking? Is it getting more expensive to deliver search? Online ad spending is going up, not down.

a lot of it is going to facebook & others.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#216

Post by serge2k »

enraged_camel wrote: post #114
Afforess wrote: post #38

Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can't dominate a market, it is not intere…

>>Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Actually, before you get to the other examples you gave, there is another aspect of that, which is the social aspect. Think about Google Glass. That project, and its failure, really opened my eyes to the reality of Google: that it is one giant bubble, and the people living in that bubble don't c…

> that it is one giant bubble, and the people living in that bubble don't comprehend what it is like to not be in it.

It's the same at other places. Apple and Microsoft have constantly had that claim made about them.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#217

Post by bduerst »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #96
bzbarsky wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the people who ended up with Chrome installed and set as their default browser because they installed some other application (like Flash) were using Chrome willingly, right? Yes, Google was doing that sort of thing for Chrome distribution for a while. They've stopped since, which is better than nothing, I guess. [Edit: apparently they haven't stopped, according to ocdtrekkie's comment! Or maybe they have started…

They still do it: https://get.adobe.com/reader/ (Checked today, Windows 10, while using Edge. Default checked on this page is to also install Chrome.) It's worth noting that Sundar Pichai's claim to fame at Google, prior to Chrome itself, was getting the Google Toolbar installed on everyone's PCs whether they wanted it or not. The CEO of Google isn't just a fan of software installation dark patterns like this, he's t…

Isn't that because you're using Edge, which doesn't support ActiveX?

You can't use acrobat with the browser you're trying to download it with.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-in-browser...

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#219

Post by bduerst »

serge2k wrote: post #213
bduerst wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If Google can't dominate a market, it is not interested. Google Fi and Fiber are counterarguments to this claim. It's pretty obvious their interest in these markets is to influence the oligopolistic prices and practices, not dominate them.

Fi feeds in to growing android and fiber being scaled back is pretty much proof of exactly that.

Fi's market competes with Verizon and ATT, and even if it's a play on Android as you say, vertical integration != market domination.

ATT is now rolling out it's own Fiber program and Comcast it's own gigabit service, in response to Google Fiber, so it was successful in moving the oligopoly.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#220

Post by brazzledazzle »

jasode wrote: post #137
muninn_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…

>Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. You're right but I understood what Periodic intended to explain. Unfortunately, he phrased it as "billions in ad revenue" instead of a less common metric of "profit-per-employee" . If the company generates enough profit-per-employee , it can afford to pay for lavish perks. Consider 2 different companie…

It's not fair to count retail or warehouse employees. Walmart would only need to offer those perks to its corporate employees.
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