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Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

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Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#21

Post by addaon »

summerlight wrote: post #15
addaon wrote: post #10

Interesting that they think they're out of internal projects and acquisitions to (profitably) spend money on. Even more interesting that the stock seems to agree -- I guess investors already believed that growth is over, and are seeing this recognition of that as an alignment between reality and internal strategy.

The only major investment left would be computing infrastructures, but it's severely limited by supply. Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy. I don't see any significant future investment opportunities other than Waymo in the foreseeable future, but it seems still far from scaling out.

> Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy.

This strongly suggests that there's an opportunity to spend money relaxing this shortage. If your business growth is being throttled by suppliers, then investment either allows you to grow those suppliers, or vertically integrate them out of the picture.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#22

Post by utensil4778 »

duringmath wrote: post #17
dmckinno wrote: post #9

I thought that this earnings announcement would be the first one where we'd see some impact from competitive knowledge engines, e.g. Perplexity, You.com, ChatGPT + Bing, etc., but Google still grew search $6B/15%. This is impressive both because it's hard to keep such a big business growing at that rate and because essentially everyone in my social circle has moved on from going to Google first for information. I gue…

You still have to verify plausible sounding LLM output somewhere.

And Google is doing a worse and worse job of performing that role or any other.

There are other search engines and almost all of them are orders of magnitude better than google is now.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#23

Post by utensil4778 »

addaon wrote: post #21
summerlight wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only major investment left would be computing infrastructures, but it's severely limited by supply. Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy. I don't see any significant future investment opportunities other than Waymo in the foreseeable future, but it seems still far from scaling out.

> Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy. This strongly suggests that there's an opportunity to spend money relaxing this shortage. If your business growth is being throttled by suppliers, then investment either allows you to grow those suppliers, or vertically integrate them out of the picture.

You can't just create new supply. Chip fabs take multiple years to spool up. You also have to get the machines to make the chips and guess what, those are supply constrained too.

It's not a problem you can simply spend money at, it's a global supply chain problem with many disparate companies each with their own constrained supply chains.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#24

Post by duringmath »

utensil4778 wrote: post #22
duringmath wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to verify plausible sounding LLM output somewhere.

And Google is doing a worse and worse job of performing that role or any other. There are other search engines and almost all of them are orders of magnitude better than google is now.

Citations needed there buddy

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#25

Post by nikhizzle »

A possible endgame of this quest for growth is just mixing unlabeled ads directly in with search content. Effectively pay for ranking with some quality filter. I'm pretty sure it won't come to that, but worse things have happened.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#26

Post by acchow »

belter wrote: post #18
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

> Alphabet’s Board of Directors today authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares in a manner deemed in the best interest of the company and its stockholders The most important item on the report

Also...10,000 fired... Employees previous equivalent quarter:190,711 and now:180,895 Edit: 190,711 employees on March 31, 2023

Closest comparison is the last quarter were they ended with 182,502

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#27

Post by summerlight »

addaon wrote: post #21
summerlight wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only major investment left would be computing infrastructures, but it's severely limited by supply. Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy. I don't see any significant future investment opportunities other than Waymo in the foreseeable future, but it seems still far from scaling out.

> Even if Google wants to spend more money, simply there's no chips to buy. This strongly suggests that there's an opportunity to spend money relaxing this shortage. If your business growth is being throttled by suppliers, then investment either allows you to grow those suppliers, or vertically integrate them out of the picture.

Yeah, I think Google should be actively working on addressing shortage. But I don't think this can be solved in the short term even with infinite capitals since ASML is the fundamental bottleneck and everyone is competing for the same limited capacity.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#28

Post by utensil4778 »

duringmath wrote: post #24
utensil4778 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Google is doing a worse and worse job of performing that role or any other. There are other search engines and almost all of them are orders of magnitude better than google is now.

Citations needed there buddy

No, not really.

The decline of Google's search performance is on the front page of HN at least once a week. It's common knowledge at this point.

Try Kagi if you want to be reminded of what good search is like.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#29

Post by abadpoli »

dmckinno wrote: post #9

I thought that this earnings announcement would be the first one where we'd see some impact from competitive knowledge engines, e.g. Perplexity, You.com, ChatGPT + Bing, etc., but Google still grew search $6B/15%. This is impressive both because it's hard to keep such a big business growing at that rate and because essentially everyone in my social circle has moved on from going to Google first for information. I gue…

Seems like a situation where it’s worth it to be cognizant of your bubble.

I don’t know exactly what you meant by “our demographic”, but I’m a frequent reader of HN, work in tech, and generally stay up to date with all things tech, and yet… I don’t know if a single person that doesn’t still use Google as their go-to place for information. Before this comment I had never even heard of Perplexity or You.com. /shrug

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#30

Post by belter »

acchow wrote: post #26
belter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also...10,000 fired... Employees previous equivalent quarter:190,711 and now:180,895 Edit: 190,711 employees on March 31, 2023

Closest comparison is the last quarter were they ended with 182,502

Correct. Edited my comment to clarify number of 190,711 was as of March 2023.
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