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Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#221

Post by dennisgorelik »

junto wrote: post #178
fersho311 wrote: post #147

Fun fact: If you had bought a call yesterday for $300, it would now be worth $3100. 1000% return on investment. Yesterday I bought a chipotle call (because of earnings release) for $600 and now its worth $3600 Now that the political budget debate is over, I think we will see a spectacularly volatile movement upwards and strong earnings will push stocks to absurd prices way over any reason. The best thing to do is to…

Newbie here. How and where can you 'buy these calls'?

Don't buy, unless you want to gamble away some of your cash.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#222

Post by Pxtl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

Google historically left a lot of money on the table (not using every spot on the page for ads, giving away services with real value, etc.) They decided to stop doing that when they decided they were a 'peer' of Apple's. The shareholders love it because it means Google will finally be pulling in as much cash as they 'can' vs as much as they needed. Users seem to be somewhat divided on the issue. Sophisticated users a…

Fortunately, Google isn't HP. They're not mining their good brand-name for crap, they're still trying to push quality products (at leaast, the ones they can monetize). The new WebGL Google Maps is wonderful, and Google's most ad-heavy search-results are cases where you're probably shopping and so their products (with prices) + local vendors + ads approach is actually what you're looking for.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#223

Post by Xixi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #216
azakai wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On my 26" display I have almost never seen ads taking up all the space It depends what you search for. If you search for something Google can monetize, like this search for sofas http://i.imgur.com/KAZ6zuq.jpg then little room is left for "normal" results. But if you search for something non-monetizable, of course less ads will show up.

Very strange: can't get Google to show me ads at all no matter what I type, like "sofas" or "erectile dysfunction" which should trigger a bunch of ads. Perhaps ads pushed consider geographic location?

I live in Japan and "sofa" brings no advertisement, but "ソファー" brings three. So I guess it does indeed consider geographic location.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#224

Post by nmridul »

md224 wrote: post #213
cynicalkane wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't surprise me if most of the people who do a search for "sofas" want to browse shopping websites for sofas. The naturally monetizable searches are going to be searches that users don't mind being monetized. Google probably has teams full of people figuring out that sort of thing. The problem with maximizing revenue is it annoys people, so if you can figure out how to selectively maximize revenue when it doe…

Then why not show the best shopping websites, rather than ads for shopping websites?

The first result is Amazon.com. Its not an ad. The next ones are local listings. And don't think they are also ads. Those are search results.

And I think Google did a good job here as most purchases for heavy items like Sofas will be made locally.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#225

Post by lsc »

dekhn wrote: post #193
grey-area wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there just one normal result there on that entire screen? Ouch.

How many people typing [ sofa ] want generic information about sofas, compared to people buying sofas. The keyword drips ads.

Do you want the product that is considered the best value, the product that is the most popular? or do you want the product that the retailers are willing to pay the most to get you to buy?

Google (well, I shouldn't pick on google. All brokers of advertising) optimize to push you towards the product that their customers are willing to pay the highest ad rates for.

Of course, In a company concerned with it's long-term reputation, googlers will point out, this is modulated by a knowledge that they need annoy the customer less than any alternative.

My point is that an ad is always going to cause the broker to have a conflict between what the user needs and what the customer is willing to pay for, while an organic search result (unless it competes with an ad, which it often does) does not cause that conflict for the ad broker.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#226

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Xixi wrote: post #223
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very strange: can't get Google to show me ads at all no matter what I type, like "sofas" or "erectile dysfunction" which should trigger a bunch of ads. Perhaps ads pushed consider geographic location?

I live in Japan and "sofa" brings no advertisement, but "ソファー" brings three. So I guess it does indeed consider geographic location.

Wow! That makes sense. Sure enough, searching for "沙发" brings up three ads for the PRC market. Here I was thinking that Google scaled back their advertisements significantly, they are just more precisely targetted :)

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#227

Post by groby_b »

lsc wrote: post #225
dekhn wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people typing [ sofa ] want generic information about sofas, compared to people buying sofas. The keyword drips ads.

Do you want the product that is considered the best value, the product that is the most popular? or do you want the product that the retailers are willing to pay the most to get you to buy? Google (well, I shouldn't pick on google. All brokers of advertising) optimize to push you towards the product that their customers are willing to pay the highest ad rates for. Of course, In a company concerned with it's long-term…

Then you'd search for "sofa with best value" and "most popular sofa". And lo and behold, the results look quite different.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#228

Post by skj »

patrickk wrote: post #65
ChrisClark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all subjective but I love the new Gmail interfaces, Hangouts is much better than Talk and keeps getting better. Google+ photos is so much better than Picasa, I love how I can search for 'blue cars' in my photos and it returns them even though I've never tagged any of them. Android has seen enormous improvements, I love stock 4.3 and Google Now. Chrome's new 'native' apps wrapper-like thing is neat. Even Youtube…

I'm using a poor internet connection (because of geography) and my experience is that the usability of Youtube has gone down dramatically. They made a change a while back where the video will only buffer a few seconds beyond where you've paused it. Previously, you could go a few seconds into the video, pause it, and let it buffer 100% in whatever quality you needed, now I find myself having to constantly pause the vi…

Unfortunately this is because ISPs throttle youtube traffic.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#229

Post by iamhungry »

nmridul wrote: post #224
md224 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not show the best shopping websites, rather than ads for shopping websites?

The first result is Amazon.com. Its not an ad. The next ones are local listings. And don't think they are also ads. Those are search results. And I think Google did a good job here as most purchases for heavy items like Sofas will be made locally.

The first result is Amazon.com. Its not an ad.

No, that's the fourth and then some since Google has added white space to make sure only ads show on mos commonly used resolutions. How many people that see only ads think that ads are normal results? About half

The next ones are local listings. And don't think they are also ads. Those are search results.

Google has a financial interest in showing them so call them ads. Why didn't they show Yelp listings, maybe they have more reviews?

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#230

Post by iamhungry »

nostrademons wrote: post #214
iamhungry wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even collect statistics about that for ranking changes. Who's "we"? Are you Larry Page to speak with such confidence? Nope, just a lowly engineer being observed by hundreds of Stanford and ivy League MBAs as your changes impact Ad Clicks, the golden eggs.

FWIW, for most engineers the entire Search org chart, all the way up to Larry, is engineers. Larry was an engineer, Alan Eustace was a hardware engineer, Amit Singhal is an engineer. In my management chain there are two people with an M.S. in computer science (Larry is one of them), zero with MBAs, and everybody else has a Ph.D in CS. If your mental model of Google is a bunch of MBAs who tell engineers what to do, yo…

Was /is an engineer that tries to fool people into clicking ads is irrelevant. Apparently Alan Eustace and Amit Singhal are engineers that engineered this marvelous piece of scam http://i.imgur.com/KAZ6zuq.jpg

Larry the engineer also had to be saved by a $500 million payment from jail for illegal drug ads http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Googles-Page-Knew-of...

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