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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]

#81

Post by webpaymentsguy »

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.

While I understand the sentiment, I think most of us are interested particularly in the separated cloud and productivity revenues, which is why people bring this up.

Even though AWS is 'purer' relative to GCP's and Azure's percentages of productivity revenues in their numbers, I don't think we can extrapolate much more than that from the numbers anyways.

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

#82

Post by webpaymentsguy »

scarface74 wrote: post #80
riyadparvez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have rejuvenated confidence in Google after seeing the push on Pixel phones and Nest devices, though that confidence still isn't very high.

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

#83

Post by wsetchell »

why_only_15 wrote: post #70
wsetchell wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google takes large long-term bets that are closely related to their core business / competency. Some of those seem to be clearly working (see Cloud, Deepmind). As a shareholder, I want to see more of those. Back when I was at Google, X (which many Other Bets came from) had a goal of all their projects having meaningful impact in 10 years. They've been working on Wing and Waymo for close to 10 years now. Those project…

It's true they haven't had a lot of real world impact, but it seems to be widely recognized in self-driving spheres that Waymo is #1, and they're valued at $100B ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/waymo-val... ) which seems like a pretty good return. I think it's fair for them to continue plowing money into Waymo when the money they've put in so far people think could have returns.

Waymo has the best technology in self driving.

They have not deployed their tech at scale, when competitors (Tesla) has widely deployed worse technology.

Even if they deploy their tech widely, it isn't clear it will generate significant revenue/profit. It might not be that expensive (think less than 1B) to build a good enough self driving car in 10 years. That'd create competition and drive down prices.

Someone else might figure out how to capture the value of self driving cars too. Maybe the profitable parts of self driving cars are the "apps" you can build once self driving cars are cheap.

I wouldn't invest in Waymo at 100B until they have a real business with real revenue and a real moat to protect that business.

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

#84

Post by scarface74 »

webpaymentsguy wrote: post #82
scarface74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have rejuvenated confidence in Google after seeing the push on Pixel phones and Nest devices, though that confidence still isn't very high.

How long has Google been selling their own phones without making a dent in the market?

It’s estimated that Google sold between 10-12 million Pixels last year (https://www.zdnet.com/article/pixel-3-by-the-numbers-googles...)

It’s estimated that Apple sold four times as many in one quarter (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-11-2...)

And Samsung sold twice as many as Apple.

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

#85

Post by mehrdada »

subb wrote: post #76
mehrdada wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Thanks. That's insightful.

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

#86

Post by Rastonbury »

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…

It's not the ads. It's that Google literally had a mantra 'Don't be evil' but it was removed and much of their questionable actions to appease shareholders and pursue a profit. Back then, they gave up on the Chinese market to stick to their values. Now we have Project Maven, Dragonfly, restricting employee discourse etc. It isn't the worst company around by a long shot but the difference is obvious.

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

#87

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

Rastonbury wrote: post #86
ehsankia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not the ads. It's that Google literally had a mantra 'Don't be evil' but it was removed and much of their questionable actions to appease shareholders and pursue a profit. Back then, they gave up on the Chinese market to stick to their values. Now we have Project Maven, Dragonfly, restricting employee discourse etc. It isn't the worst company around by a long shot but the difference is obvious.

to be fair, "don't be evil" is still there, they just close with it rather than opening and closing with it.

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

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

#88

Post by sytelus »

scarface74 wrote: post #84
webpaymentsguy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have rejuvenated confidence in Google after seeing the push on Pixel phones and Nest devices, though that confidence still isn't very high.

How long has Google been selling their own phones without making a dent in the market? It’s estimated that Google sold between 10-12 million Pixels last year ( https://www.zdnet.com/article/pixel-3-by-the-numbers-googles... ) It’s estimated that Apple sold four times as many in one quarter ( https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-11-2... ) And Samsung sold twice as many as Apple.

I want to get on the Pixel phones but every time I dig details of the latest models, I get turned off. They seem to be always one generation behind, For example, Pixel's highest memory model is always 2nd highest for iPhone and now Pixel can be expected to carry the camera system of iPhone 10 instead of 11 Pro. All these show off in their unveiling events. Google Android events are often held in venues that are ted better than the high school conference room as emergency meetings with amaturish audio/video system. It's as if they have determined that no one is watching this so why even bother. To me, iPhone always felt like they work hard to be a state of the art while Android is something that the rest of the world would have to buy anyway due to lower cost. Given the available cash and talent, they can do MUCH better.

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

#89

Post by sytelus »

drcode wrote: post #32
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.

I think part of the issue is that their "very long bets" (i.e. AI and self driving) have shown enough progress to now be merely "long bets" now which increases R&D expenses and means GOOG is essentially doubling down on the future via "other bets" in lieu of nearer-term revenue. Time will tell if that's a good strategy.

It's not very long bets but very few bets. The YC model has shown us that success is highly unpredictable and if you want to have big winners, make a lot of small bets. This is exactly the Nasim Taleb's philosophy and other well-known approaches to cultivating the long tail and outliers. Google actually had right model 15 years ago where they were churning out one product after another and today's big winners like Gmail and Maps are the survivors of that era. The story goes that Larry Page went to Steve Jobs and Jobs told him to cut down on all the random projects and do fewer things. Unfortunately what works for Apple apparently doesn't work for others.

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

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

redwood wrote: post #73
dxf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Have a share of Microsoft? If so, file an SEC complaint.
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