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Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

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Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#41

Post by robryan »

jpdoctor wrote: post #27
robryan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the quarter, which would be over 3% for the year. Which doesn't seem to bad if your not putting your money into overly risky things. Treasury bonds may be yielding less?

You're right: The long bond is less, so what are they invested in? "Marketable securities" with 3% yield means that they have something not AAA (which probably makes sense on such a large cash hoard) but there will come a day when interest rates go up. That will cause the value of their bonds to drop substantially. Hell, I'd like 3% on my money.

Looks like we have it easy in Australia http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/savings-account...

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#42

Post by [deleted] »

deltaqueue wrote: post #12

Just a datapoint, but out of all the invitations I sent out when G+ first launched (100-150, I don't recall), 40 or 50 friends signed up. ~3 of them still use it at least once a week. From my observations, G+ still seems to consist primarily of three major user groups: 1. Tech celebrities 2. Technologists in general 3. Non-US users Facebook's feature set is killer, but at some point, I really would like to use some s…

[deleted]

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#43

Post by rachelbythebay »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #9
dcurtis wrote: post #6

"Cash – As of September 30, 2011, cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities were $42.6 billion." During this quarter, Google made $302 million on interest alone. That's an impressive 11% of this quarter's net profit. I wonder what they plan to do with all that money.

Buy patents apparently :-) More seriously, I asked once about this when they were removing bottled water from the local mini-kitchens and dropping over 1 billion dollars a quarter into the bank. My question was "Gee, can't you spare a couple of million this quarter to keep the bottled water restocked?" and obviously the answer was that they could not. But from a corporate/strategic point of view having a lot of cash…

They basically proved that our benefits were their safety cushion. The water bottles were only one example. Remember when they changed the shuttles and screwed a bunch of people's schedules until the backlash forced yet another recalculation?

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#44

Post by suivix »

aswanson wrote: post #28

Their naming /branding scheme is not good. Google + sounds like an API extension or a bad programming language. Sometimes it's better to give a product a human face...beginning with a name that communicates what it is.

I think it's an odd name because it contains a non-alphanumeric character. I can't think of a better one though, so I can't make fun of it.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#45

Post by finisterre »

robryan wrote: post #20
mburns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I missing something? $302 million on $42 billion is <1% return.

For the quarter, which would be over 3% for the year. Which doesn't seem to bad if your not putting your money into overly risky things. Treasury bonds may be yielding less?

True. But consider Google's effective inflation rate. A lot of things they care about - say, Palo Alto real estate - are getting more expensive faster than 3 percent. That money is losing value. Spending on acquisitions or otherwise investing in the business should yield a far better return.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#46

Post by robryan »

finisterre wrote: post #45
robryan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the quarter, which would be over 3% for the year. Which doesn't seem to bad if your not putting your money into overly risky things. Treasury bonds may be yielding less?

True. But consider Google's effective inflation rate. A lot of things they care about - say, Palo Alto real estate - are getting more expensive faster than 3 percent. That money is losing value. Spending on acquisitions or otherwise investing in the business should yield a far better return.

If the right acquisitions present themselves, they already do a lot and at their level there just aren't as many easy win companies to acquire. I think if I was an investor I rather them lose a little bit of opportunity on their pile of cash than say drop $10 billion onto something like groupon.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#47

Post by watty »

dazbradbury wrote: post #38

Scanning through the comments here, in the media, and lots of tech blogs, google+ is taking a bit of a battering. Everyone seems to be hating on it. Sure, it's quite likely it will never "beat" facebook, but what happened to: http://xkcd.com/918/ I'm still very happy there is an alternative. I don't care if people think two social networks is one too many. Competition is good. Facebook = { All the people I know (pret…

I agree, I rarely go on facebook anymore. Picasa + Google+ blows facebook out of the water... except it lacks users :)

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#48

Post by whatusername »

robryan wrote: post #41
jpdoctor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right: The long bond is less, so what are they invested in? "Marketable securities" with 3% yield means that they have something not AAA (which probably makes sense on such a large cash hoard) but there will come a day when interest rates go up. That will cause the value of their bonds to drop substantially. Hell, I'd like 3% on my money.

Looks like we have it easy in Australia http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/savings-account...

Up until a couple of weeks ago -- stocking $USD in $AUD would have had some great retuns.

But Forex risk is real - and should not be discounted.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#49

Post by jlees »

Steko wrote: post #14

Something like 20 million of their users are in India, a lot of those look like Orkut (Google) converts (edit: maybe notsomuch, add FB and look at last few years). http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=google%20plus%2Cork...

I was in India recently; there is a huge amount of love for Google there, so it doesn't surprise me.
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