Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#91

Post by vezycash » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #5

I dont really understand this. The race for hosting VMs/Containers is a great short term opportunity but there is no long term differentiation to be had. I suspect in 10-20 years Azure wont make much money . Meanwhile Windows and Office are still popular but not as compelling as they used to be. Xbox? I'm not sure why Microsoft is so popular with investors.

Computing started with dumb terminals connected to super computers.

Personal computing reversed the trend.

Now the trend is reversing. Computing is increasingly being offloaded to the cloud. Gaming, graphics, it won't matter if an app is ARM or x86, 32bit or 64bit or 128bit, windows, android, linux or IOS if it runs on the cloud, even part of the operating system can be handled off hand-held devices.

The only limit AFAIK is network latency. As network speeds, reliability improves and costs approaches zero, cloud computing would become more valuable.

If battery no longer an issue, cloud computing might wane. Until then, MS is right to bet on cloud.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#92

Post by adamt » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

oculusthrift wrote: post #73

I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

Note those charts are FY2016. With the growth of cloud, I suspect those ratios have changed considerably.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#93

Post by blakes » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #85

oculusthrift wrote: post #73

I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

HN in general has an info bubble problem, where it looks to them like Microsoft is dying because trendy Bay Area startups all use Slack and Google Docs. But in the rest of the industry, Microsoft is huge and, if anything, getting stronger over time and not weaker. Microsoft products that HN has never even heard of, like Dynamics and Host Integration Server, still make billions in revenue.

Exactly. Honestly I've been telling people for the last year to buy MS stock. They are going for recurring revenue with all their business facing products, and it's working. The business world, outside of SV apparently, runs on MS products.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#94

Post by s3r3nity » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #85

oculusthrift wrote: post #73

I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

HN in general has an info bubble problem, where it looks to them like Microsoft is dying because trendy Bay Area startups all use Slack and Google Docs. But in the rest of the industry, Microsoft is huge and, if anything, getting stronger over time and not weaker. Microsoft products that HN has never even heard of, like Dynamics and Host Integration Server, still make billions in revenue.

As a die-hard Excel lover ("you can pry it from my dead hands!") and recent convert to Msft Teams, I agree with you 100%.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#95

Post by justicezyx » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

oculusthrift wrote: post #73

I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

The pie chart is dividing revenue sources rather superficially, probably just from the companys financial report.

For example, surface is listed as revenue source, where pixel and other hardware products are not listed for Google.

And for ads, Google has display ads, search ads, YouTube, these are vastly different market. If we treat ads as one source, we might as well treat windows & office as one category: pc software.

In summary, the charts are not convincing to me.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#96

Post by fierro » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #31

golfer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give Google a little more credit. They have 7 separate products with over 1 billion users each [0]. Search, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Youtube and the Google Play Store. [0]: https://www.popsci.com/google-has-7-products-with-1-billion-...

The stock market doesn't care about users, it cares about profits. Android and Chrome and Google Play are unprofitable.

It's dismissive, simplistic comments like these that makes me sad for the HN community. Not only it this actually just wrong, Google's investment in it's various products have complex relationships with one another. The recent post about "commodify your complement" does a good job getting into this specific case

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#97

Post by radarsat1 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #81

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be a Pro vs Home thing?

Nope, MS just uses some Dark Pattern (at least on home) to make it seem that way. The link to make a local account is not obvious.

> Nope, MS just uses some Dark Pattern (at least on home) to make it seem that way. The link to make a local account is not obvious.

I don't know how to prove it, maybe i should have taken a photo (but who cares right), but the link was not dark, it was _not there_. I was able to make a local account and switch to it after installation, but I was not able to completely the installation without a Microsoft account.

You don't have to believe me of course, but the screen did not appear exactly the same as in help tutorials I googled.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#98

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #85

oculusthrift wrote: post #73

I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

HN in general has an info bubble problem, where it looks to them like Microsoft is dying because trendy Bay Area startups all use Slack and Google Docs. But in the rest of the industry, Microsoft is huge and, if anything, getting stronger over time and not weaker. Microsoft products that HN has never even heard of, like Dynamics and Host Integration Server, still make billions in revenue.

Yeah. Uncool companies like MS, Intel and Oracle have shown repeatedly that they can survive and thrive in times of complete paradigm changes. This is something Google and Facebook still have to demonstrate.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#99

Post by zrobotics » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

cabalamat wrote: post #58

Proven wrote: post #2

Simply speaking they actually make more products people like to use. Google essentially has just one, and it’s based on diminishing user privacy to the maximum extent possible. MS collects user data but so do Ubuntu and CentOS... not to the extent Google and FB do it.

> Simply speaking they actually make more products people like to use. They may make more products that people do use, but that doesn't mean that people like using them.

Talk to an accountant about excel, and you might hear something about "pry it from my cold dead hands"...

And people have religious wars that put tabs/spaces to shame on Xbox VS Playstation

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#100

Post by frandroid » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #94

Analemma_ wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN in general has an info bubble problem, where it looks to them like Microsoft is dying because trendy Bay Area startups all use Slack and Google Docs. But in the rest of the industry, Microsoft is huge and, if anything, getting stronger over time and not weaker. Microsoft products that HN has never even heard of, like Dynamics and Host Integration Server, still make billions in revenue.

As a die-hard Excel lover ("you can pry it from my dead hands!") and recent convert to Msft Teams, I agree with you 100%.

> Teams

You don't miss Slack?