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Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

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Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#131

Post by sangnoir »

azinman2 wrote: post #122
dekhn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and in doing so, set themselves up for much larger failure. Google instead pivoted that energy into cloud, which is now broken out in their earnings. I was one of those googlers who, when Plus was announced, wondered "why aren't we announcing an AWS competitor?"

What makes you think it was the same people inside Google that did social instead of cloud computing, and that was the choice going through leadership? Google can walk and chew gum at the same time.

> Google can walk and chew gum at the same time.

As I recall from my outside/user perspective: Google Plus pretty much co-opted the entire organization in an supposed "all hands on deck, existential fight" against Facebook. Every product and feature had to have a "social" layer (including GMail!); YouTube even adopted a "Real Name" policy but still amazingly managed to worsen the comment system.

Can you imagine what a similar level of effort on the cloud would have produced? Maybe they wouldn't be a distant #3 in that space today.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#132

Post by sangnoir »

deadmutex wrote: post #17
kansface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the pandemic is good for pushing activities onto the internet of which Google takes its slice.

Umm, a pandemic is not good for business. Many of the ads are bought by real businesses. "Alphabet has been viewed as a key beneficiary of the **reopening trade**, given it stands to gain from a pick-up in travel-related searches and advertising on Google Search." (** emphasis mine **) Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-google-reports-q3-20...

A lot of "real businesses" are online and saw a massive boom of people searching for, and buying products online. Additionally, a lot of marketing campaigns on TV/radio were stopped when the lock-downs started, and the budgets were shifted online. Same real businesses (think fast-fashion retailer), simply shifting more money to Google while they figured out if, and how to shoot new ads to replace those that depicted happy people at crowded parties.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#133

Post by dustintrex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #66
disdi89 wrote: post #54

I do not understand this financial books and lingo enough to understand this correctly so have to ask "Is google cloud business gone really down as compared to previous years? Am I reading this correctly?"

No. Google Cloud Revenue went up from $3.4 billion for Q3 2020 to $4.9 billion for Q3 2021 Google Cloud operating losses went down from $1.1 billion in Q3 2020 to $640 million in Q3 2021. (Though it looks like this change is almost exactly accounted for by a change in depreciation expense due to revised estimate of the useful life of servers.) So they are bringing in significantly more money through the front door wi…

The server depreciation changes affect all of Google. GCP accounts for only a portion of Google's server usage.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#134

Post by wdr1 »

HWR_14 wrote: 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…

> So who is actually seeing these ads?

Hacker News isn't representative of mainstream society. ~27% of Internet users block ads.[1]

> How can those numbers be going up?

People continue to shift various activities online. Against, HN isn't representative here -- most of us probably already do most things online. There's still a very large chunk of time watching broadcast television, reading printed (offline) media, etc.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#135

Post by dragonwriter »

dustintrex wrote: post #133
dragonwriter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Google Cloud Revenue went up from $3.4 billion for Q3 2020 to $4.9 billion for Q3 2021 Google Cloud operating losses went down from $1.1 billion in Q3 2020 to $640 million in Q3 2021. (Though it looks like this change is almost exactly accounted for by a change in depreciation expense due to revised estimate of the useful life of servers.) So they are bringing in significantly more money through the front door wi…

The server depreciation changes affect all of Google. GCP accounts for only a portion of Google's server usage.

> The server depreciation changes affect all of Google.

Good point. Not sure why I miscontextualized that number.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#136

Post by ksec »

HWR_14 wrote: 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…

Only on HN will you see All Ads = Bad or Evil.

The reality is vast majority of people are fine with some ads.

Not to mention Ads are not just on the Web, but also In-App as well. In App Ads works way better than on the Web as it function more like TV ads. Especially as newer generation trends towards online media consumption vs old TV box. These are just Ads revenue shifting from TV to Youtube.

I dont think the Fundamental of Ads has changed much at all. It might have changed medium, but ads, from a marketing and product strategic perspective remains pretty much the same as in the 80s.

But then again, this is HN, defending Ads is contrarian.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#137

Post by ksec »

klelatti wrote: post #27

Alphabet + Facebook revenue now represents 1/2% of world GDP and still growing rapidly. Edit: possibly not quite but almost certainly 1/2% excluding China.

Judging from all the comments below I guess I am the only one confused.

Because I interpreted it 1 or 2% of world GDP.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#138

Post by jeffbee »

azinman2 wrote: post #121
jeffbee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time Facebook tried and failed to take on Gmail.

I would not argue they failed. Young people don't email their friends.

They don't Facebook their friends either, and email is now integrated into schools. Every kid I know has Gmail and none of them have Facebook (although, many do use Instagram).

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#139

Post by waterloosong »

vgeek wrote: post #85
bduerst wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>adjust Quality Score parameters or bid floors to increase the CPC and/or make ads look more like organic results to increase the ad CTR. That's not really how auctions work. Raising the price floor would just exclude ads with CPCs below the floor from paying, and since they're already getting paid for the maximum CPC bid at the time anyways they would just make less revenue. If they messed with quality score discoun…

Ad Rank is a function of bid and QS ( heavily weighted towards CTR). Adjusting weighting of any of the three public components of QS will impact all participants, ignoring cases of exceeding max bids, all bids should increase proportionately-- with some participants having different impacts, but overall a net increase. Bid floors will exclude ads from showing unless a certain ad rank is met. If users want to continue…

I think you are missing the big picture in the details.

For the long-term growth is constrained by the sum of all campaign budgets, and those budgets are set by advertisers themselves.

What the company needs to do is to keep advertisers happy enough to have them increase the budgets, and also prevent the software engineers from breaking the system with bugs enough that the advertisers would walk away.

Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]

#140

Post by HWR_14 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #51
HWR_14 wrote: 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…

The price of the ads could be going up at a quicker rate, especially as more and more viewers from previous ad spending channels (such as TV channels) move to online options (such as Youtube). Also, the number of people using ad blockers must be extremely low. Even crazier, most people who I talk to about content blockers on iOS zone out of the conversation before I can even get to how easy it is. They do not even ca…

Out of curiosity, which ad-blocker/content-blocker on iOS do you try to steer people towards? Or do you propose a DNS based solution?
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