Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company • Hacker News Board

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#181

Post by gwright » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #110

vasco wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an argument for lowering taxes.

No, that's assuming that the free market is best at distributing wealth. Evenly distributing at least some of the money isn't the same as "spending" it.

The casual assumption that it is appropriate for government to tax people in order to distribute wealth "evenly" is disturbing.

I'm reacting to the "even distribution" notion not taxing in general. I think there are legitimate reasons for government to collect taxes but ensuring even distribution of wealth isn't one of them, IMHO.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#182

Post by argonauto » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

wufufufu wrote: post #16

In StarCraft, you always want to be at 0 minerals and 0 gas because that means you are maximizing your investment into buildings and units. People make fun of you if you don't have the skill to optimize for this.

In BotW, it's best to have all meals posible prepared already because if you get hit and ran out of meals, you'd be getting half the replenishment fro the raw ingredients.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#183

Post by habitue » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #172

colechristensen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a semantic argument which misses the point. Let's rephrase: Alphabet has far more cash than it has ideas, which is definitely a good sign that it is far past being classified an innovative company and stockpiling it can be seen as denial.

This is measuring innovation by how big a spender you are. Maybe that isn't a good metric? It seems likely that whatever other companies you consider innovative also aren't spending hundreds of billions on their ideas.

So, the point is that they have a ton of cash. You hold cash because you want to invest in your own company. Implicitly, by not paying it out as dividends or buying back stock with that money, Alphabet is saying to the market "Trust us, we'll put that money to better use than you would. We'll make you a lot more money with this money"

To look at it from another perspective: if it's cheap for you to innovate, ok great! That means you can innovate a bunch more! Spend all that cash innovating away! Oh, you can't spend it all? That means you don't have a bottomless supply of ideas that you haven't been able to try out, it means you're already innovated out and should just buy back the stock to give the money back to investors

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#184

Post by skybrian » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

habitue wrote: post #183

skybrian wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is measuring innovation by how big a spender you are. Maybe that isn't a good metric? It seems likely that whatever other companies you consider innovative also aren't spending hundreds of billions on their ideas.

So, the point is that they have a ton of cash. You hold cash because you want to invest in your own company. Implicitly, by not paying it out as dividends or buying back stock with that money, Alphabet is saying to the market "Trust us, we'll put that money to better use than you would. We'll make you a lot more money with this money" To look at it from another perspective: if it's cheap for you to innovate, ok great…

Yep, that's why they just announced a $25 billion buyback.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#185

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:18 AM UTC

I’ve always wondered what Apple does with all the cash it has and this seems like a great place to ask. What do companies do with it all? Is there an article that goes into the details? Is it invested? In what? Hoarded in a bank vault? What precautions are in place for such large amounts?

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#186

Post by forgotmypw » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:21 AM UTC

wpasc wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a talk I watched with Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt. I know Thiel is controversial, but he was well-meaningly digging at Google for running out of ideas and no longer innovating. The criticism was something like "You have so much cash on hand but no ideas to invest in. However, you can't pay a dividend because the second you do, you're admitting you've run out of ideas and are no longer innovating".…

It's not that they've run of ideas, it is that they've run out of market. There's only so much resources you can pull out of the set of people browsing the web. That set's size has stabilized. Its resources have been divided between largely online shopping and (indirectly) advertising, and the flow paths have been laid down and also stabilized. There's only so much new market every year, and there's only so much they can compete away from the other players, who are also in a similar position.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#187

Post by stygiansonic » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #185

I’ve always wondered what Apple does with all the cash it has and this seems like a great place to ask. What do companies do with it all? Is there an article that goes into the details? Is it invested? In what? Hoarded in a bank vault? What precautions are in place for such large amounts?

Check out Braeburn Capital: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#188

Post by mantap » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

forgotmypw wrote: post #186

wpasc wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a talk I watched with Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt. I know Thiel is controversial, but he was well-meaningly digging at Google for running out of ideas and no longer innovating. The criticism was something like "You have so much cash on hand but no ideas to invest in. However, you can't pay a dividend because the second you do, you're admitting you've run out of ideas and are no longer innovating".…

It's not that they've run of ideas, it is that they've run out of market. There's only so much resources you can pull out of the set of people browsing the web. That set's size has stabilized. Its resources have been divided between largely online shopping and (indirectly) advertising, and the flow paths have been laid down and also stabilized. There's only so much new market every year, and there's only so much they…

Google's problem is that if they enter existing industries, they attract the ire of competition regulators. Google could eat entire industries if they wanted to, but there would be hell to pay from the EU and US regulators. So they are stuck trying to innovate.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#189

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 3:00 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #170

dmix wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not buy some companies and get some proper entrepreneurs back into the mix of management? I can't remember any recent major Google acquisitions. No mega company really has to have internal innovation. And I doubt the pretend internal startups ala skunkswork with an unlimited budget and extensive runways are a real replacement for innovation popping out of the marketplace among the bodies of a hundred other failed…

> Why not buy some companies and get some proper entrepreneurs back into the mix of management? Because it's inefficient. Google could buy a thousand biotech startups that are all doing innovative work trying to cure cancer and things like that, but that work has nothing to do with search engines or data centers, so it makes no sense to put it under the same roof. The same management staff isn't going to be effective…

Google investors won't be able to invest in high-risk biotech startups if they aren't accredited. Everyday investors are only allowed to access weird investments through the left-field bets of big companies.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#190

Post by askafriend » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 3:06 AM UTC

aduitsis wrote: post #146

This will come out as pure whining and probably off-topic, but how on Earth can they can have so much money (in cash no less) and at the same time can't sell some of their flagship products worldwide? We're halfway through 2019, I'm sitting in a small eurozone country and still can't give them my money and order a Google Pixel properly from their site. Using this example because I consider a phone to be a relatively…

The margins on making and selling smartphones are razor thin. Nobody (except Apple, because of their efficient business model) is really making much money selling smartphone hardware.