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Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

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Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#81

Post by jariel »

drawkbox wrote: post #27
endorphone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Waymo is in the value creation phase, business/marketing/analysts may not value it as much but there is a goldmine under it. Waymo may not be a revenue behemoth currently but there is immense value there not only to self-driving but to maps improvement and more. I am not a fan of software patents but they have surpassed Toyota in patents [1] and there are hundreds of patents from Waymo [2]. Everyday in Arizona Waymo…

I don't think you understand what 'value creation' is.

Science and Engineering is not 'value creation'.

'Value' is the appraisal that customers give it. It literally has no economic value unless someone is willing to buy it.

If nobody wants to buy it (or feasibly take it for free) then it's no use to anyone - and it's not 'valuable'. It's just a science project.

There isn't necessarily any value in massively expensive 'science projects' - often just the ego of those behind it all.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#82

Post by drawkbox »

scarface74 wrote: post #68
drawkbox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money making products don't start making efficient money day one. Value creation in this area takes time and it is not quick when dealing with physical/driving products. The patents alone will probably be worth more than the effort. Google is a data/information company and you are completely disregarding the impact Waymo has on that especially for the Maps product. Waymo is also already a market leader in their space…

Amazon retail is still a low margin, low profit business and is not a good example. AWS on the other hand is printing money. Google hasn’t had a non advertising based hit besides maybe Android since it’s inception and even that has only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception until the Oracle trial where the number was revealed.

The low margin e-commerce led to massive innovations and improvements including their services architecture that became their biggest product and the first to market in the cloud.

AWS was created out of the continual re-investment by Bezos back into Amazon.

Amazon also has many acquisitions from it and associated to all their businesses: IMDB, Twitch, Zappos, Whole Foods, etc.

Google with search, maps and mobile won some intense battles via innovation and a better product in many cases. Google became the biggest OS on mobile with Android and beat out Microsoft that really should have been better positioned and won (Windows Phone was probably better as well). Google also beat Microsoft at their own Office game and storage with Drive, Docs, etc. That was huge. Mobile is a massive victory within the last decade, search the one previous, others in play. Those wins shouldn't be discounted.

> only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception

Yep, only $23 billion, horrible. /s

Microsoft also gets a chunk of that with their Android used mobile patents [1].

In a way I wish Microsoft didn't get a chunk of Android devices and instead we had three competitive mobile platforms. Android is fine but it isn't the best development platform, iOS and Windows Phone both better (was in the case of Windows Phone), Android was just positioned well and timed right.

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15...

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#83

Post by colejohnson66 »

sowbug wrote: post #53
dylan604 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And for now Waymo's revenue is estimated to be $5M. While Google's revenue is about $160,000M. Why the decision to write $160,000M vs $160B? Was it so the same as the previous $5M number? Even still, it seems unnatural to me.

As topkai22 said, it's to make the author's comparison easy to understand. But this is a chance to mention that ~50 years ago the UK abandoned its old "billion" terminology, which used to be equivalent to a trillion elsewhere (10^12), and adopted the global definition of "billion" as 10^9. I think they called 10^9 a milliard, but I've never seen it in use. For a long time after the change, you'd see English written f…

Fun fact about long scale billion (short scale trillion): it stands for bi-million because it’s a million millions. Trillion is the same with a tri-million being a million billions.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#84

Post by basch »

scarface74 wrote: post #70
basch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF his forte is operations, more Ballmer and Cook to a visionary, it makes sense. Put a new visionary in charge of Google, and start focusing on turning the other bets into self sustaining companies. Maybe split google up a bit too, make CGP its own bet. You could even make the case for Youtube, Nest/Pixel, Doubleclick, maybe Android. Refocus google on being an information sorting and calling tool, whether that be se…

A “visionary” without any operations expertise is useless. Cook has as much to do with the rise of Apple as Jobs. Jobs wouldn’t have had the supply chain experience to manufacturer 100 million iPods at his height or all the products that it ships now.

and Pichai would still be there. I fully 100% agree, Cook is who scaled Apple.

Whoever else decided to allow iTunes onto Windows should be shown a lot of respect as well. That was a very uncharacteristic and forward thinking move.

Putting a visionary in the drivers seat of google doesnt mean that operations should be thrown to the wayside. And part of that pretense is paring down and refining what "google" is. GCP obviously needs a more salesman/finance/trustworthy leader at the moment. One who can walk into a Fortune 100 company and say "trust us to be your foundation." That div reinventing itself shouldt be hampered by Google needing to become truly innovative again. The worst part about reinventing search specifically, is that if done right, its a bit of a thankless endeavor. Google search is so seamless and chromeless, that when it works you dont even notice it. It's job is to present other information.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#85

Post by nvrspyx »

abalone wrote: post #34
mantap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems way more idealistic somehow. More likely, with a more standard corporate governance Google will begin to rot from within. Apple certainly made more profits under Cook than Jobs, but innovation has slowed to a crawl and he has failed to diversify Apple away from having one product (instead he just added a bunch of accessory products and services). The last thing Google needs is to double down on ads, it tak…

> innovation has slowed to a crawl This is so typical of Apple criticism. They did do well with the iPhone and Mac that now any new innovations seem boring in comparison. It’s wrong. The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The AirPods are pretty innovative in terms of the fine grained details that have made them su…

I won’t speak to “innovation” because of how subjective that is. However, the quality has taken a serious downturn. MBP keyboard issues, MBP speaker crackling issues since 2016, iOS 13 bugginess (random FaceID locks, lock screen refusing to turn on, phone shut offs in the middle of the night, alarms randomly not going off, bottom “gesture pill” disappearing on the lock screen making you unable to swipe up to unlock your phone requiring a reset, apps killed in the background after just a few minutes, etc etc etc), macOS bugginess with Catalina, SwiftUI mess, iCloud corrupting files, and much more.

I’m at a point where I’m surprisingly preferring Windows and Linux for my desktop work. I just wish there was a better alternative in the mobile space than Android, which I feel is in an even worse state than iOS.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#86

Post by scarface74 »

ghaff wrote: post #78
scarface74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS has not “withered”. True very few people use it, but every site still supports rss where it makes sense.

Very few people using it seems the very definition of withering. Yes, a lot of sites and blog software etc. still default to offering RSS feeds. (Which I take advantage of from time to time and it's presumably used behind the scenes for various purposes.) But that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the role of RSS in today's world.

Why do you care if other people use it as long as it is available?

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#87

Post by colejohnson66 »

scarface74 wrote: post #72
ghaff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other RSS readers but RSS as a stand-alone thing that people use (where “people” was always somewhat of a niche) has largely withered in the face of social media. Much as the tech crowd likes to complain about Reader’s Denise, it was at least in part a response to RSS’s decline not the cause.

RSS has not “withered”. True very few people use it, but every site still supports rss where it makes sense.

As ghaff mentioned, it’s the very definition. COBOL is still used by some old banks, but you’d still say it’s popularity has “withered.”

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#88

Post by [deleted] »

nvrspyx wrote: post #85
abalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> innovation has slowed to a crawl This is so typical of Apple criticism. They did do well with the iPhone and Mac that now any new innovations seem boring in comparison. It’s wrong. The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The AirPods are pretty innovative in terms of the fine grained details that have made them su…

I won’t speak to “innovation” because of how subjective that is. However, the quality has taken a serious downturn. MBP keyboard issues, MBP speaker crackling issues since 2016, iOS 13 bugginess (random FaceID locks, lock screen refusing to turn on, phone shut offs in the middle of the night, alarms randomly not going off, bottom “gesture pill” disappearing on the lock screen making you unable to swipe up to unlock y…

[deleted]

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#89

Post by scarface74 »

drawkbox wrote: post #82
scarface74 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon retail is still a low margin, low profit business and is not a good example. AWS on the other hand is printing money. Google hasn’t had a non advertising based hit besides maybe Android since it’s inception and even that has only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception until the Oracle trial where the number was revealed.

The low margin e-commerce led to massive innovations and improvements including their services architecture that became their biggest product and the first to market in the cloud. AWS was created out of the continual re-investment by Bezos back into Amazon. Amazon also has many acquisitions from it and associated to all their businesses: IMDB, Twitch, Zappos, Whole Foods, etc. Google with search, maps and mobile won…

Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition.

As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android.

Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom.

As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#90

Post by rstupek »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #69
abalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> innovation has slowed to a crawl This is so typical of Apple criticism. They did do well with the iPhone and Mac that now any new innovations seem boring in comparison. It’s wrong. The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The AirPods are pretty innovative in terms of the fine grained details that have made them su…

> The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The Apple Watch is literally designed to be an accessory to the iPhone - you can't use most of its features without an iPhone. I wanted one for my Android phone but tough shit for me. If you like it as a product that's fine, but it is absolutely an accessory to an iPhone be…

Right now it requires an iphone. They've been slowly reducing the need to have one until pretty soon, maybe v5, won't require one
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