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Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

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Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#621

Post by m0zg »

ddalex wrote: post #515
m0zg wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing him with Gates. Although Ballmer did refuse to buy Google when he could. Would have been a drop in the bucket. I forgot, BTW, he also spun up the ad and search businesses: the only reason there's any alternative to Google at all.

Arguably, if he would've bought Google, we wouldn't have the internet as we have it today: people would've payed for search, as for the OS and Office suite: $10 per 1000 queries per month. Hmmm, maybe that've been for the better.

There'd be a heck of a lot fewer ads for sure.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#622

Post by wsy »

p1esk wrote: post #370
wsy wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope that every single person - including shareholders, managers, and employees - holds our fundamental values like peace, freedom, or justice higher than their desire to maximise profits. The top question is not: will it hurt the company. The top question is: will it hurt humanity. We liked Google because their founders did the right thing for a long time, and fended off profit-maximizing shareholders.

Sure we can hope, but in reality if Google is not profitable someone else will take its place. If Google does not cooperate with Chinese government someone else will take its place. Will humanity benefit if, say, Comcast buys the morally pure but financially struggling Google, or if no one is challenging Baidu in China?

As long as Google cares, it is a net win for humanity. Even the worst-case scenario that Google is later bought by an immoral company is a better outcome for humanity than Google immediately becoming immoral.

I also find your argument about Google becoming unprofitable unconvincing. They were very profitable while they held the standards high in the past. Maybe not maximally profitable, but very profitable.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#625

Post by hinkley »

endorphone wrote: post #390
footpath wrote: post #84

https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1203/ Slightly more organized info in the intro bullets. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the CEO and President, respectively, of Alphabet, have decided to leave these roles. They will continue their involvement as co-founders, shareholders and members of Alphabet’s Board of Directors.

In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing. The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

I'm of mixed emotions here.

I am both cautious enough of Google that I've started avoiding using some of their products, and still have an opinion on how they should organize themselves that has very little to do with those feelings.

I was sort of hoping Alphabet would be a spot they could stick all of the projects that aren't going to make a billion a year. I think it still makes sense to maintain projects that 'only' clear $20+ million a year in another division. That would cover a lot of projects that are getting cancelled and causing them serious PR problems (like accusations of being a group of spoiled man-children who can't be relied upon to stick with anything for longer than four years).

Basically there's a lot of space to make money and products that they won't touch, and I don't think it has anything to do with Wall Street. It's just an artificial limitation they've imposed upon themselves.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#626

Post by dannypgh »

koheripbal wrote: post #541
dannypgh wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was mostly motivated by management separation, as much as it was desire to break out revenue and expenses by unit. And this is unchanged.

You can do that even within a company. You certainly dont need separate share classes.

You're conflating a lot of things here. GOOG class A versus C (GOOG vs GOOGL) dates to a 2014 restructuring of ownership, whereas the Alphabet reorg was in 2015.

Can you break out revenue in a single company? Sure. But you can also easily do it with the structure Alphabet adopted. And, this structure also lends itself to easier valuations of entire units, useful if acquisition of a unit is something being considered.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#627

Post by partingshots »

headmelted wrote: post #436
numbsafari wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing the “firewall” between Google and Google Health will prove to have been a big mistake. They should have stayed separate under Alphabet.

Yup. Congress is already whispering about the Ascension deal and how it affects the Fitbit buyout with regards to them intervening.

What “Ascension deal” are you talking about? Also, do you have a source for what you’re saying?

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#628

Post by headmelted »

partingshots wrote: post #627
headmelted wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Congress is already whispering about the Ascension deal and how it affects the Fitbit buyout with regards to them intervening.

What “Ascension deal” are you talking about? Also, do you have a source for what you’re saying?

https://theconversation.com/the-tricky-ethics-of-googles-pro...

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#629

Post by thu2111 »

nostrademons wrote: post #594
thu2111 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of any obvious vision or ideas: a safe pair of hands. The similarities are there, and not just Sundar/Ballmer but Sundar/Ballmer/Cook. It seems visionary CEOs like to appoint non-visionary successors. Someone who won't make big changes to their baby.

https://a16z.com/2010/12/16/ones-and-twos/ This is often inherent in the organizational structure of big companies. To the extent that there are visionaries in a big company, they're usually not anywhere on the executive team, or even anywhere that the CEO comes in direct contact with. If they were, they'd clash with the CEO's vision, which first of all would be confusing and inefficient for the organization and seco…

Great link, thanks. I think you and a16z must be exactly right about it.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#630

Post by jeremyfranco »

Stratoscope wrote: post #618
jeremyfranco wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is funny, downvoted for writing the truth... It is impossible for anonymous readers to open dead comments. If it is not, please explain me how to do it

I wasn't one of your downvoters. (As you may know, you can't downvote a direct reply to your own comment.) But I think I know why your comment was downvoted. greesil wrote: "now that it's flagged I can't even re read it" I replied: "You can read flagged/dead comments by turning on 'showdead' on your profile/settings page." You then replied: "False: you can't if you're browsing the site anonymously." Now ask yourself,…

I thought comments downvoting or flagging was based on the content, not on grammar.

Anyway, I had to login with my phone to comment and read the dead comment, at work I go through a corporate firewall that strips all the unnecessary headers, so I can't stay logged in on HN and I can't read dead comments.

So maybe that you should have been an "I".

I'm not an anonymous reader, but during the day I'm forced to be one.

BTW anonymous readers are probably not an irrelevant number, they still are users and they still count.

Your answer was not entirely wrong, but it was incomplete, hence not true or false.

Don't take it personally.

It's like assuming that everybody speaks a perfect English, it's false.

Not even native English speakers are immune to errors.

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