Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

abc.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 273 posts

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#101

Post by sharadov »

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…

I was asking GPT some question reg a Postgres feature , it gave me the answer with the caveat that it's knowledgebase hadn't been updated in a year.

I went right back to google.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#102

Post by fooker »

christophilus wrote: post #96
killjoywashere wrote: post #62

Of all the people in this thread swearing they don't use Google, I wonder how many are writing their comments using Chrome (or Chromium, or Edge, or Brave, or Opera, or any other browser that uses the guts of the Chromium project)

I use DuckDuckGo for search, Apple Maps when on my iPhone, and Gnome Maps when on my computers. My main browser is Firefox, but I use Brave (Safari-based) on iOS due to better ad blocking there. I use local markdown files for all of my note taking, and Fastmail for email. But I am aware that I’m not typical.

Firefox is funded by Google.

Apple gets billions from Google, funding quite a bit of their R&D.

Most of the open source software you use including the Linux kernel has a bunch of contributors from Google.

Going one step further, Google has a large hand in open standards for everything, from wifi to programming languages.

I'm not saying you should avoid these, it's just interesting that you can take so many non-typical steps to avoid google and still mandatorily have them involved in all of your technology.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#103

Post by csxv68 »

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…

Or there is large scale number fudging and fraud.

Just remember no one is auditing what views, likes and clicks count Google and Facebook tell you, you are getting. Advertisers just milk corporations. They dont care if the numbers are fake. They are now trained to tell everyone to spend more or you dont get attention someone else will.

As Goldharber once famously said , about the Attention Economy - people have limited attention to give anything but infinite capacity to receive attention.

No one likes to hear or believe they dont really have any influence when the system is signalling they do. So the ponzi scheme grows larger and larger.

There is a great book about it (from an ex-googler) called the Subprime Attention Crisis.

No one knows what to do about it so everyones head is buried deep in the sand.

We need new attention allocation systems that are not market driven.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#105

Post by cloudking »

killjoywashere wrote: post #62

Of all the people in this thread swearing they don't use Google, I wonder how many are writing their comments using Chrome (or Chromium, or Edge, or Brave, or Opera, or any other browser that uses the guts of the Chromium project)

Don't forget.. As of February 2024, there are approximately 3.6 billion Android users worldwide, spread across 190 countries.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#107

Post by CivBase »

killjoywashere wrote: post #62

Of all the people in this thread swearing they don't use Google, I wonder how many are writing their comments using Chrome (or Chromium, or Edge, or Brave, or Opera, or any other browser that uses the guts of the Chromium project)

So far I've replaced Google products with Firefox (even on mobile), Kagi/DDG, Proton Mail, Simple Mobile Tools, my own FTP server, Emby, and F-Droid.

But I also still use Android, the Google Play Store, YouTube (via NewPipe), Google Messages, Google Maps, and Google Keep because I haven't found great alternatives. It's surprisingly hard to completely get rid of Google.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#108

Post by arebop »

csxv68 wrote: post #103
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…

Or there is large scale number fudging and fraud. Just remember no one is auditing what views, likes and clicks count Google and Facebook tell you, you are getting. Advertisers just milk corporations. They dont care if the numbers are fake. They are now trained to tell everyone to spend more or you dont get attention someone else will. As Goldharber once famously said , about the Attention Economy - people have limit…

Advertisers don't always insist on seeing evidence of genuine ROI but online advertising is more measurable than most other forms of ads and when the ROI slips a lot of ads customers notice and act accordingly.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#109

Post by jldugger »

lupire wrote: post #75
adonovan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or halting the layoffs.

This has nothing to do with layoffs. They have plenty of money for salary even after these payouts. The layoffs are intended to reduce costs / increase profit. Google has no desire for employees; they only have employees insofar they are a necessary expense.

Once upon a time it was said by Google leadership the biggest cost Google pays is opportunity costs, chiefly in the form of projects and products they don't pursue.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#110

Post by HDThoreaun »

advisedwang wrote: post #83

Google has been doing stock buybacks for years. Why are they pivoting to also doing a dividend too? Does a dividend give a bigger short term stock bump?

Buybacks are useful for many reasons, but one is that theyre good for people borrowing against their shares. If a lot of people have borrowed against their google shares and now that interest rates are high want to pay back the loan without selling a dividend makes sense.

Lots of other reasons too I think but much of it probably has to do with the change in interest rates.

Post reply on HN