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Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

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Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#71

Post by hyperbovine »

ckastner wrote: post #15
creato wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are youtube ads that much worse than cable TV? I pay for youtube premium and don't watch cable TV anymore so I honestly can't say myself, but from what I remember of each, they both seemed about on the same level of garbage-ness.

About three months ago, I visited a friend and we looked up a 15-minute cooking recipe. We were shown three ads in the process. I subscribed to Premium quite early. They were showing me an IKEA bed ad multiple times a day, over a number of days. 3-4 different ads, but always the same product. The end result being that I will sleep on the ground before I ever purchase a Nordli bed.

Pretty sure I slept on a Nordli back in college. You would not find the two experiences all that different.

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#72

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ehsankia wrote: post #56
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #53

I miss those days when people had nothing but nice things to say about Google, which was supposed to destroy the evil, not join them.

I'm curious, what are they doing different now from then? Back then they had an ad business, and now they have an ad business. Back then they created useful services like Maps, Translate or Gmail, now they provide useful services like Photos, Docs and Drive. What are they doing now that is "joining the evil" which they weren't doing before? Is your point about the fact that people's perception has changed? People the…

Google's ad experience is night and day different than it was 15+ years ago, and IMO what they do now is much more 'evil' than what they did back then:

1. One big reason that Google became so popular is they clearly delineated ads in the top bar and siderail, but the vast majority of search results were 'natural' search. Google even touted it back in the day: https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ . TBH I'm surprised that page is still up.

2. For many of my searches ads now take up the ENTIRE front page of content, especially on mobile. It's virtually impossible for any business to survive by SEO alone, because Google has ensured that virtually all "commercial terms" get a ton of ads first. Paying "the Google tax" means business need to buy ads on their own name lest another business bid more and rank higher.

3. In the early days, Google was much less reliant on their "surveillance capitalism" because they already had a great signal to show you ads: what you searched for. Of course, the way capitalism works is it demands they squeeze every additional dollar where possible, so keeping track of everything you do allows them to make more money.

4. One small example, enough has been said regarding AMP and its negative impact on the web and small publishers on HN many times over, so no need to add more here IMO.

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#73

Post by redwood »

dxf wrote: post #54
tristanj wrote: post #24

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Google has reported YouTube Ad and Google Cloud revenues as separate line items.

Yes, now that Sundar is CEO of Alphabet they pretty much have to. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-google-finally-disclos... "Revenue-recognition rules that were approved in 2014 and went into effect at the end of 2017 call on companies to report financial results to their investors in the same manner that they are reported to the main decision-maker at the company, typically the chief executive. Basically, if a…

Hard to believe Satya doesn't get Azure numbers...

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#74

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

anaanymouse wrote: post #65
V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's that, now, everything is to feed the ad business while back in the day, it wasn't. back then, they had lots of cool products, and they also served ads. now they have ads and lots of products the siphon data from users to feed the ads business. I say this as someone worked there for a decade and saw lots of "NSA - not search or ads" t-shirts.

Even less data is being used for ads than when you worked there - Gmail is no longer used, Photos doesn't use them, Android doesn't except insomuch as the Google search bar exists on the home screen, Maps barely has ads...

> Maps barely has ads...

maybe you're using a different version of maps than I am, but I just downloaded it and the first page is chock full of ads, it begs me to turn on search history so it can show me "more relevant results".

it's also full of dark-patterns like if I click "commute" in the settings, there's no back "hell, when you finally disable the account linkage (another dark pattern hiding that option), the main window is still 25% (+) ads.

https://imgur.com/a/IMg3PQf

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#75

Post by jgalt212 »

tempsy wrote: post #33
tristanj wrote: post #24

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Google has reported YouTube Ad and Google Cloud revenues as separate line items.

It's a red herring designed to distract from the fact they missed ad revenue estimates by $800M. Lol at getting downvoted. They missed on revenue and down -5% after hours. This is a fact, not an opinion.

I guess, but TSLA revenues were only up 3% YOY and that stock has gone hyperbolic.

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#76

Post by subb »

mehrdada wrote: post #69
anaanymouse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less data is being used for ads than when you worked there - Gmail is no longer used, Photos doesn't use them, Android doesn't except insomuch as the Google search bar exists on the home screen, Maps barely has ads...

> Gmail is no longer used Any evidence of that? Enterprise GSuite is not supposedly used, but consumer Gmail not feeding into ads would be surprising to me. Android feeds location and contacts data.

Not much evidence, but they stopped reading emails to target ads a while ago. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-wi...

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#77

Post by scarface74 »

sf_rob wrote: post #40
bilal4hmed wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know Azure run rate ?

MS included Office in Azure revenue so it's fairly inflated.

This meme needs to die.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-q1-2020-earnings-reven...

Office is included in “Productivity and Business Processes” not Cloud.

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#78

Post by scarface74 »

mehrdada wrote: post #35
lsh123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the 2019 AWS revenue is at $35B which means that a very consistent 4.4x multiplier against Google Cloud for 2017-18 is now going down to 3.9x.

AWS is comparable to GCP revenue not Google Cloud revenue, which includes GSuite (same with Azure whose revenue is mainly Office 365).

Office 365 is not included in Azure revenue. Where is this idea coming from?

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#79

Post by scarface74 »

travem wrote: post #44
mehrdada wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is comparable to GCP revenue not Google Cloud revenue, which includes GSuite (same with Azure whose revenue is mainly Office 365).

AWS includes collaboration tools like WorkDocs and Chime as well so comparison is still like for like. Just because each vendor has different strengths (and leverages them differently) doesn't negate the broad comparison.

Workdocs is mainly used with AWS Workspaces from my experience. It’s definitely not used enough to be materially meaningful.

Re: Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf]

#80

Post by scarface74 »

riyadparvez wrote: post #42
wsetchell wrote: post #26

It is interesting to see the low revenue, slow revenue growth (~20% YoY), and quickly growing expenses from "Other Bets". If the Alphabet model made sense, I'd expect to see a company starting to clearly take off after 5 years. The data shows the opposite.

People constantly criticizing companies not taking long-term bets. When some company does take long-term bets, then some internet expert come along and find some arbitrary timeline to succeed without any justification and start criticizing without offering anything any substantial. I wish we can have more thoughtful discussion, instead of Twitter style self aggrandizing comments.

You don’t find it disconcerting that none of Google’s non advertising bets have been successful. Compare Google’s revenue and profit mix to Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
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