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Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

online.wsj.com

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Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#21

Post by minsight »

bandris wrote: post #15

"Google recently hired a new chief financial officer, Patrick Pichette. Trained in "Six Sigma" management practices -- a rigid quality-control system designed to eliminate waste -- Mr. Pichette is looking to reduce inefficiencies and delay spending when possible." That is a sign that something goes bad at a company. When they implement "scientific" methods.

Google has been so successful exactly because they use "scientific" methods. They have a mountain of data and they put it to good use. This data includes information about hardware, operating systems, networking, what people are searching for, what people are watching on youtube, etc, etc, etc.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#22

Post by sd »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #7
crsmith wrote: post #4

Google's chief economist has been quoted as saying Google has a "GDP beta" of one. So this shouldn't really be a surprise.

Beta, and not r-squared? A beta of one would imply that Google's revenue (or profit?) increase exactly as much as the GDP. An r-squared of one would imply that Google's revenue changes in proportion to GDP changes. But he probably knows this better than I do, so presumably I'm missing something.

In a linear regression model, r-squared represents how correlated the model is with the data, while beta indicates the relationship between an outcome (e.g., revenue) to an input (e.g., GDP). Thus, a r-squared of one in a model where profit is the dependent variable and GDP is the single independent variable suggests that profit is 100% correlated with GDP. A beta of 1 indicates that profit moves in the same direction and to the same degree as GDP.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#23

Post by helveticaman »

jumper wrote: post #20
someperson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when the users of news.ycombinator rewrote editorialized headlines?

I seem to remember that, but maybe it was just a fabled long lost golden age of myth... when headlines were fixed, children respected their elders, and digg content stayed on digg.

I'm pretty sure it was fabled. There've been people complaining about the Diggification of HN since I started reading (but not commenting) two years ago.
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