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

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#211

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Dec 08, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

mantap wrote: post #201

scarface74 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how has that worked in the past? AOL/TimeWarner General Electric/Universal/Synchrony Bank AT&T/DirecTV Google/Motorola ....

Those are mergers and acquisitions. I said Apple needs to find new product categories outside of consumer electronics. They were going to make a car at one point but the project imploded. It's really not healthy for a company to build a whole constellation of products and services around one product only. It creates unnecessary risk because if that product ever sours, everything will fall apart.

As of last quarter, only 48% of Apple’s revenue comes from iPhones. For Apple, the Mac and iPad markets are both tiny - at around 10% of their revenue - that revenue by itself would put it in the top 100 companies in the F500.

None of the tech giants are well diversified - with Google being the least diversified. Facebook just buys up competitors.

Amazon has retail and AWS. Microsoft has software and Cloud.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#212

Post by vrc » Sun, Dec 08, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

_Understated_ wrote: post #67

vrc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shockingly high. Most western countries see an average of 26% - 40% ad block rates (by pageview) across the web. Some sites skewing to an older, less tech savvy audience, see between 8% and 15%, while tech heavy sites can go as high as 92% of pageviews being ad blocked. It's actually crazy that adblock rates in developing countries like India and Indonesia can actually be much higher on average because of UC Bro…

I'd love to hear more about your experiences in this field... we don't hear much fron the inside (as it were!)

Officially: https://www.blog.google/topics/ads/helping-publishers-recove...

Beyond that, even though I've been out of the game for a few years, I have to be careful what I say. But I've been planning on writing something soon.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#213

Post by whateveracct » Sun, Dec 08, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #132

whateveracct wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes it a pain in the ass to get to the non-AMP version. You have to click the little (i) and then the link.

On Safari at least, hitting the share sheet button and then “copy” will always return the canonical URL (which I believe the amp standard requires sites to define)

Well that's good to know. I usually end up wanting to bookmark a site in my synced bookmarks, so I need to load the non-AMP for that :/

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#214

Post by abvdasker » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

HSO wrote: post #205

That Google pretty much remains a one-trick pony after billions of dollars thrown against the wall speaks volumes about the glorification of "success" (or misattribution thereof) and the value of all the hagiographies in its wake.

I wouldn't call Google a one-trick pony. They've created a bunch of wildly successful products -- Search, Maps, Android, Chrome -- that help feed their ad business.

What should be scary if you're at the top of the company is that Google has not had a home-run product in a very long time. It's a strong signal that wherever made Google special in the past is gone (though that doesn't mean it couldn't come back).

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#215

Post by moneywoes » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

vrc wrote: post #212

_Understated_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear more about your experiences in this field... we don't hear much fron the inside (as it were!)

Officially: https://www.blog.google/topics/ads/helping-publishers-recove... Beyond that, even though I've been out of the game for a few years, I have to be careful what I say. But I've been planning on writing something soon.

What are you doing these days

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#216

Post by novok » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

mantap wrote: post #198

sneak wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is Apple because every ten years or so they take an existing product category and make it worlds better than anyone has ever before. They’ve done this with workstations (iMac), laptops (iBook then PowerBook then unibody/retina), they’ve done this with phones, and they’ve done this with in-ear headphones. They almost did it with wireless speakers (the HomePod is an absolute engineering marvel, entirely unparalle…

HomePod flopped because few people want to spend hundreds of dollars on Siri when they could spend tens of dollars on Google home which is a better voice assistant. Having good audio quality doesn't explain the price tag when you can pair Google home with a dumb speaker if you find the audio quality is insufficient.

An equivalent quality speaker + amp system, etc will cost you about the same or more, take up more space and create a wire mess.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#217

Post by abalone » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 11:20 AM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #196

abalone wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a predictable response that is trivially wrong. Originally the iPhone required iTunes to set it up. Is it an “accessory”?

iTunes was released for Windows in 2003, so it was available for free on all major platforms. The iPhone was released in 2007. If iTunes had only been available on Macs, it would have been perfectly reasonable to consider the iPhone a "Mac accessory", but it wasn't, so it isn't.

Nah, that’s a different sense of the word “accessory”. Trapped in the ecosystem is one thing. But the question here is whether it’s a substantial, standalone product.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#218

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #208

scarface74 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 9 years, Apple has introduced two products that are probably larger generators of revenue than the iPod. Microsoft has released Azure. Saying that a Google sells ads in more places is about as “diversified” as saying Apple sells iPhones on more carriers.

In 2001 Google didn't own YouTube. Today it does. YouTube profits from selling ads, that's true. Yes YouTube makes all of their money from selling ads. But it's fate is highly independent from Google search. That's diversification. Same idea goes for Other Google businesses. As for Apple - it's less diversified than it seems: the fate of the watch, for example, is highly dependent on the fate of the iPhone.

And all indications is that Youtube is barely profitable....

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#219

Post by shalmanese » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #100

drawkbox wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Microsoft really just got their o…

They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Being first is just a nerd victory like saying Apple was the first desktop operating system wit…

> We know the value - $23 billion over 7 years. The fact that Google still pays Apple $8 billion a year shows that there is more value in a platform that attracts people that can afford to spend money than people who only spend $240 on a phone.

If Google has to pay $8Bn to Apple, then all of the money Google doesn't have to pay by dint of Android existing should count as value creation by Android.