Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#161

Post by petra » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #141

petra wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// Their innovations are more around key details and hardware/software integration that makes the whole system work like magic. That philosophy was Steve Jobs' key insight back than. Today many companies excel at magical ux design. And sure, their control over iOS and their rich clients allow them to do stuff others cannot. And definetly, it's incremental innovation. But that's very little innovation, considering the…

How much have Google’s “innovations” led to profit? People seem to forget that one of the first things Jobs did was get rid of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group and focused research on profitable products. Google’s lack of focus explains why it has had five failed messaging apps.

Google is doing well. Some of their older investments (like AI maybe) are already making them money.

And they have a few bets that with time and some luck could make them a lot of money.

It's very likely they would be able to cover their investments, at the very least.

And they have ackuired many new capabilities as a result.

It makes for a better financial future, a stronger company long term, and also, contributing so much value to the world is simply a good thing.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#162

Post by notatoad » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

summerlight wrote: post #160

Larry and Sergey still holds more than 51% of voting stocks. IMO, this is the only thing that matters unless they delegate all the decisions to Sundar. Although I expect "other bets" to be forced to evolve into more realistic businesses but no radical structural changes. And another thing to consider is that a significant portion of Alphabet's value already comes from potential growth of "other bets" (e.g. Waymo). Th…

>unless they delegate all the decisions to Sundar.

My understanding from the rumour mill is that's essentially what's been happening for a while now.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#163

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #161

scarface74 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much have Google’s “innovations” led to profit? People seem to forget that one of the first things Jobs did was get rid of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group and focused research on profitable products. Google’s lack of focus explains why it has had five failed messaging apps.

Google is doing well. Some of their older investments (like AI maybe) are already making them money. And they have a few bets that with time and some luck could make them a lot of money. It's very likely they would be able to cover their investments, at the very least. And they have ackuired many new capabilities as a result. It makes for a better financial future, a stronger company long term, and also, contributing…

How much “longer term”? Compare Apple’s, Microsoft’s, or even Amazon’s revenue mix since 2001. They have all diversified. Google still makes 90%+ of its profits selling ads.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#164

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #126

crazygringo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? All I can find is that, as of 2019, nobody knows [1]. (Unfortunately I can't read the full paywalled content.) Also, it might not be profitable but could still be break-even. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ok-google-hows-youtube-doing-11...

Nope no source. I’ve tried looking as well. I assume since it costs so much in infrastructure that Google lends for free to YouTube, and that they have never been able to announce nice numbers for YouTube, ever, that it likely doesn’t make a profit or break even. Especially after accounting for all the freebies Google provides YouTube.

I guess I just have a time believing it's in the red, considering the sheer quantity of advertising they show and the fact that video hosting itself isn't all that expensive (relative to the cost of showing an ad), and even cheaper given how cost-efficient Google's datacenters are.

But also, given YouTube's astronomical growth over the past 15 years, I can also see it operating similar to Amazon -- not technically making a profit, but only because it continues to massively reinvest what would otherwise be quite profitable, for even greater future eventual profits.

Of course all this is conjecture...

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#165

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #163

petra wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is doing well. Some of their older investments (like AI maybe) are already making them money. And they have a few bets that with time and some luck could make them a lot of money. It's very likely they would be able to cover their investments, at the very least. And they have ackuired many new capabilities as a result. It makes for a better financial future, a stronger company long term, and also, contributing…

How much “longer term”? Compare Apple’s, Microsoft’s, or even Amazon’s revenue mix since 2001. They have all diversified. Google still makes 90%+ of its profits selling ads.

How's Google cloud doing? Does that count?

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#166

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #165

scarface74 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much “longer term”? Compare Apple’s, Microsoft’s, or even Amazon’s revenue mix since 2001. They have all diversified. Google still makes 90%+ of its profits selling ads.

How's Google cloud doing? Does that count?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/08/02/amazon-...

AWS - 47%

Azure - 15.5%

GCP - 4%

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#167

Post by raxxorrax » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

mantap wrote: post #14

dzdt wrote: post #5

As usual, I like Matt Levine's take. [1] Page and Brin ran Alphabet as a highly funded system of moonshot programs with near-infinite runway to make profits, which is unusual or unique. Basically it only worked that way because Page and Brin were idealistic visionary gazillionaires who were bored of thinking about the somewhat dirty business of selling targetted ads. With a more standard corporate governance under a…

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…

I disagree on the criticism of Apple, since they do try to innovate, but I think you are spot on on Google embracing a conservative business culture centered on selling attention.

Directly to advertisers and indirectly through content creators, so they have multiple channels at least.

Not an Apple fan at all, but if I could pick an employer, Apple actually is on a track to become more favorable. Still, their locked down environments aren't really interesting if you don't care about monetizing software directly.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#168

Post by sailingparrot » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

hash872 wrote: post #152

andbberger wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except not really at all. Musk and co have a mandate to be profitable and don't have a vast advertising fortune to fund fundamental research with.

Famously, neither of his companies are even remotely profitable, and he has one of the most prominent reputations in the world to help him raise endless investor funds- either from private investors or retail ones. Both of his companies have been burning cash for close to two decades now! To my understanding SpaceX- which just raised another funding round despite never being profitable for a minute- doesn't even have…

SpaceX has a very easy path to profitability. They may even be profitable right now. And if they aren't, it's because they reinvest everything in R&D for starship, so if the shareholders decided that they just wanted to make cash on the short term they could just stop reinvestments in R&D and milk the satellite launch market, they are making a profit on every one of those launch and customers are queueing to be on a falcon rocket.

As for Tesla, their last quarter was profitable, sure they aren't profitable year over year yet, but saying that 'neither of his companies are remotely profitable' seems pretty far from the reality.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#169

Post by partingshots » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

This is why without a technological background or acumen, you’ll never be able to find the investments that succeed based on innovation.

Because there’s no financials to analyze, the companies that succeed this way basically go from making nothing / losing money for many years before all of a sudden becoming exponentially profitable. The signal doesn’t exist on the financial side, which is why so many people in Wall Street often fail so badly when valuing hard technology companies.

It’s why a company like Waymo will in 10 years be valued more than the entirety of Google, yet many in finance won’t even have an inkling of this in the present day.

Also, by the way, this is why I believe the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley was able to uniquely succeed in the beginning due to a heavy concentration in extremely technical investors compared to the rest of the United States and the world in general (i.e. the VC capital of the world is in Silicon Valley and not New York for a reason).

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#170

Post by petra » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #163

petra wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is doing well. Some of their older investments (like AI maybe) are already making them money. And they have a few bets that with time and some luck could make them a lot of money. It's very likely they would be able to cover their investments, at the very least. And they have ackuired many new capabilities as a result. It makes for a better financial future, a stronger company long term, and also, contributing…

How much “longer term”? Compare Apple’s, Microsoft’s, or even Amazon’s revenue mix since 2001. They have all diversified. Google still makes 90%+ of its profits selling ads.

Selling ads does speak nothing of diversification.

In 2001 Google probably only sold search ads.

Today they sell ads on so many digital places, some of those they own.

As for the question of "long term" - Google X was founded only 9 years ago.

That probably a reasonable time for a drug startup to show sucsess.

And they recently started testing self-driving cars with no safety driver , with real passengers. So they're close to some deployment.

That seems quite good.