Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

Post by sorenjan » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #9

melling wrote: post #6

Google’s attempt to be a modern day Bell Labs was the one thing that set them apart. Make a lot of money in advertising and spend some of it to invent the future. Without the second part, the entire company changes. We need another company to take the mantle: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation...

Looks like the product/engineering/creative focused time of Google is giving way to the metric/marketing/MBA/McKinsey people for a fully pedal to the metal push into their Ballmer phase. When will technology/product/engineering/creative companies learn that the value creation is more important than the value extraction? With value creation there is always the ability to value extract. With value extraction the focus,…

Post by tyingq » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #15

irrational wrote: post #11

The fact that you linked to an amp version of the page, instead of the real link, is deeply disturbing to me. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-04/alphab...

And I was very appreciative of the AMP version being posted. It made for a much better mobile viewing experience than the typical non-AMP experience from Bloomberg.

Post by MarkMc » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #7

Any investor in Alphabet for the long term would hope this isn't the case. It also doesn't make sense at a time when some of their moonshots are looking as though they could pay off. (Eg. Waymo) That said, it makes sense from the Page/Brin perspective, perhaps. It's a lot more difficult to 10x a company that's already worth $Y billion. Perhaps better to start the ventures separately in a way that is more exciting to…

Post by drawkbox » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #18

tim333 wrote: post #10

>Placing the head of Google, which contributes more than 99% of Alphabet’s sales, at the helm of it could call into question the entire purpose of Alphabet I think this gives a false impression of the value of the non Google bits of Alphabet Currently the market cap of Alphabet is $924bn and "Waymo is worth about $105 billion" ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-val... ) which would make that 1…

The market cap of Waymo is $0 because it has no market cap. [edit: note that the parent comment originally spoke to the `market cap' of Waymo before an edit, giving context to this reply] An analyst independently made up a number, likely to justify an outsized Google target number. There have been rumors that Google will seek outside investments in Waymo that might legitimize some valuation, but they haven't. And for…

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #15

irrational wrote: post #11

The fact that you linked to an amp version of the page, instead of the real link, is deeply disturbing to me. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-04/alphab...

And I was very appreciative of the AMP version being posted. It made for a much better mobile viewing experience than the typical non-AMP experience from Bloomberg.