Live data from Hacker News

Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

abc.xyz

111–120 of 145 posts

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#111

What value do they provide to our society? We empower the wrong things..

I'd love to have access to a free search engine, email, and a video platform. But objectively running and improving those systems takes money that people is not really willing to pay for. Wikipedia is a good example on how our anchor on that everything digital must be free keeps us from developing free systems. I wish we could change that.

Now, what value do those systems provide? I would definitely be living a much different (and likely worse) life if I didn't had access to the Internet and systems like those since middle school.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the world would be more than 0.5% worse without Google, I guess they're still undervalued?

You're making the assumption that no company, or companies, would step in and provide a similar service for a similar or better value.

Don't see how your claim follows. If another company would have stepped in to provide a similar or better service instead of Google, then it would have been that company worth 0.5% of world GDP.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#113
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing > don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it The market share of iOS also has increased a bit, and iOS does not allow ad blocking very easily. You have to configure some sorta DNS-based ad blocking, which is harder than the traditional desktop firefox/chrome adblockers t…

>The market share of iOS also has increased a bit, and iOS does not allow ad blocking very easily. You have to configure some sorta DNS-based ad blocking, which is harder than the traditional desktop firefox/chrome adblockers to install. Are you considering installing a content blocker not easy? Or not ad blocking? Firefox Focus is free and a few taps away from the app store. Seems easier to me than installing ublock…

Safari content blockers dont block in-app ads, though, do they?

Similar issue on Android, you need a DNS based or VPN based solution to block ads in apps. Thats probably too technical for 99% of the market.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The market share of iOS also has increased a bit, and iOS does not allow ad blocking very easily. You have to configure some sorta DNS-based ad blocking, which is harder than the traditional desktop firefox/chrome adblockers to install. Are you considering installing a content blocker not easy? Or not ad blocking? Firefox Focus is free and a few taps away from the app store. Seems easier to me than installing ublock…

Well, youtube videos open in the youtube iOS app. It's hard to block ads in a native app. Is there a way?

Uninstall YouTube app and have yt links open in brave. Works like a charm.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#115
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there were 100 good search engines the price for advertising would be 90% lower Why do you think that? The revenue is determined by the number of searches showing ads, the click-through rate, and the cost per click. The total across all companies would clearly not change for the first two metrics. Would the cost per click change? Given it's determined by an auction, I don't see how it could change. If you have a…

If competition existed company A would offer a better product than just cost-per-click. Then company B would offer another product better than company A, and so on. Google is like a person that owns the only road between two towns. You have to pay them until other people can build ferries or airports or trains. At which point you can exit the mentality of "we have to take this road and pay per drive"

Sorry, that still makes no sense to me. Why would company B have to make a better product in reaction? They're not being impacted at all. Company A having more and cheaper ads certainly won't make any users switch from B to A. It also won't make any existing advertisers stop spending on ads on B and run more ads on A, since the ads on B must have been profitable at the current price, and those ads are reaching a different set of users than the ads on A.

Is it possible that those cheaper ads could create more demand for ads somehow? It seems hard to believe it could. Either it's a search term that people were already willing to buy more expensive ads for, and are now just happy to pay less, or it's a search term that nobody was willing to bid even minimum price for.

What's actually going to happen in your scenario is that company A loses 90% of their revenue, goes bankrupt, and their domain is sold for a fair price to Company B or one of the other 98 remaining competitors.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#116
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please mind that google started to show search results in a fashion that if search "A company" then the first link is the ad pointing to the "A company" website and only next is the same exact link to that company website. This is pure cheating and I'm amazed how they can both: laugh at advertisers face and keep it legal.

Don't advertise that way if you don't want to? I'm failing to see what the issue is. If you don't mind and advertiser saying, hey, look at me instead, then don't pay google to advertise.

Because google has created a market you can't possibly ignore now since your competitors will buy your brand name as a search term. Say I want to buy a widget from Joe's widget barn so I type in "Joes widget barn" into my computer machine and the first link that comes up is an ad for "Jims Cheap Widgets". That is because Jim outbid Joe for his own name. If google didn't exist that customer would have come to my shop or called me or whatever, but because it does that customer went to Joe.

Google has built a nice perpetual money machine by creating a shadow copyright system where you don't need to own the rights to someone's name, you just need to have more money than them.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dirty secret of tech is that markets matter more than effort or smarts. If you have product/market fit and a decent technological lead in a market that is large and growing, you will do better than a company that does not have PMF or a good market, regardless of how hard you work. (This explains so much about Oracle.) Social media mentions are probably a better sign of how well you'll do than full parking lots. I…

> I'd bet that Google & Facebook's current run-up is largely driven by inflation and higher ad prices. What does this mean? The dollar didn't inflate 68%. If you mean that companies are investing more capital into advertising because capital markets are looser, sure, but why is that a bad thing again?

Inflation is uneven, and it tends to pool in markets that are:

a.) close to the point where the money is injected

b.) have quick-adapting prices, ideally ones where competitors bid against each other

c.) are dominated by 1-2 firms with little competition, so they have pricing power.

Google and Facebook tick all the boxes. In COVID money was injected directly to the consumers (thanks to stimulus payments) and to small or mid-size business (PPP loans). Google and Facebook run up-to-the-minute ad auctions, so prices adapt immediately to additional money becoming available. And they have little real competition, so it's not like they can be undercut by competitors.

By contrast, wages (for example) a.) require that your employer have more money, which generally requires that it have trickled down through the whole value chain b.) get updated usually once per year and c.) generally require that your competition also decide they're going to ask for more money too, less your employer just decide to employ someone else. That's why wages are often the last and stickiest place that inflation shows up.

The general phenomena of certain businesses being able to raise prices earlier, faster, and more than others in response to rising money supply is called the Cantillon Effect, and is a pretty fertile ground for making lots of money in an inflationary environment.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#118
post #102
post #48

Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…

Search ads and Youtube ads are unaffected by ad-blockers, and that's a big chunk of their revenue.

Um, YouTube ads and search ads are all blocked for me. It’s definitely something as blockers can block.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#119
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And indeed FB did eat their lunch in social.

Because they worked more hours, or because they chose to build something less stupid?

Because FB took it extremely seriously and iterated like crazy, where as Google never really did. It was a mindset issue in addition to product taste.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#120
post #102
post #48

Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…

Search ads and Youtube ads are unaffected by ad-blockers, and that's a big chunk of their revenue.

wait, what!? what kind of blocker are you using? adblock plus with "acceptable" ads??
Post reply on HN