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

Google Will Eat Itself

googlewilleatitself.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 139 posts

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#121

Post by brazzy »

hessenwolf wrote: post #110
rplnt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for the decimal mark (comma), it's most of the world really. This has nothing to do with grouping in numbers. I find both types of thousands separator (, or .) misleading, pointless and not nice at all. But maybe that's because I grew up in a country that used neither of those.

I have to deal with a lot of millions and billions in work (reinsurance). Thousands separators are so essential to me!!

Then prepare to have your mind blown (if you haven't heard about this before): the correct culture-agnostic term is "grouping separator" because not everyone uses 3 digit groups - in some East Asian languages (specifically Japan and China, not sure who else) you have separate words for "ten thousand" and use 4 digit groups.

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#122

Post by hessenwolf »

rplnt wrote: post #111
hessenwolf wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to deal with a lot of millions and billions in work (reinsurance). Thousands separators are so essential to me!!

Yes, they are. I just prefer to use space for this.

A space is a pain to transmit between umpteen file formats.

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#123

Post by hessenwolf »

infruset wrote: post #119
thanatropism wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you find exponent notation to be neater? 1E+03 = one thousand 1E+06 = one million 1E+09 = a thousand millions / an american billion 1E+12 = an american trillion / an european billion .. and that's as far as you need; the GDP of most countries is on the order of 1E+12 or 1E+13

wait wait wait, a billion means two different things in Europe and America? I'm from Europe and I always used 1 billion to say 10^9. I hardly see how I would not have noticed figures being so different in say, news articles from America and Britain.

When I was growing up in Ireland, a billion was a million million in Britain and Ireland. Now, we have adopted the American thousand million. In Germany and Italy, a thousand million is a Milliard, and a billion is a trillion.

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#124

Post by hessenwolf »

thanatropism wrote: post #117
hessenwolf wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to deal with a lot of millions and billions in work (reinsurance). Thousands separators are so essential to me!!

Don't you find exponent notation to be neater? 1E+03 = one thousand 1E+06 = one million 1E+09 = a thousand millions / an american billion 1E+12 = an american trillion / an european billion .. and that's as far as you need; the GDP of most countries is on the order of 1E+12 or 1E+13

I think I have genuinely never seen scientific notation used in an accouting context. If it can be rounded, then we will use 1MM or 1B.

I see it as follows. Unlike science, where there are a few numbers related in complex ways, accounting has very many numbers, related in very simple ways.

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#125

Post by a-priori »

infruset wrote: post #119
thanatropism wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you find exponent notation to be neater? 1E+03 = one thousand 1E+06 = one million 1E+09 = a thousand millions / an american billion 1E+12 = an american trillion / an european billion .. and that's as far as you need; the GDP of most countries is on the order of 1E+12 or 1E+13

wait wait wait, a billion means two different things in Europe and America? I'm from Europe and I always used 1 billion to say 10^9. I hardly see how I would not have noticed figures being so different in say, news articles from America and Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#126

Post by Punoxysm »

lutusp wrote: post #95
yetanotherphd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I only need to point out the many companies that don't pay dividends and yet are widely accepted as investments. Your logical error is in assuming that if a company that pays no dividends now is considered a good investment, then that must mean that investors don't care if that company never pays dividends. On the contrary, investors don't care if Google pays dividends now , because every dollar Google doesn't pay a…

> Your logical error is in assuming that if a company that pays no dividends now is considered a good investment, then that must mean that investors don't care if that company never pays dividends. That is not a logical error, it is an uncontroversial fact. In point of fact, investors DO NOT CARE whether a company pays dividends, as long as their capital grows. Do you really think people who invest in Berkshire Hatha…

If Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt announced tomorrow that they would do everything in their power to prevent GOOG from EVER paying dividends, buying back stock, or selling to another company, then that would be catastrophic for the share price, correct? This is a step beyond simply being disinterested in dividends and buybacks in the near term, but you seem to be confusing the two.

Anyone who purchased shares at that point would be doing so because of one of the following 1) They believe that Page, Brin and Schmidt will change their minds 2) They believe that control will be wrested away from Page, Brin and Schmidt by more buyback/dividend friendly management 3) They believe that other people will still buy for reasons 1,2, or 3. This is classic Keynes Beauty Contest investing.

GOOG could still grow its revenues, but if it is guaranteed to never pay a dividend or buy back stock (Berkshire Hathaway doesn't pay dividends but Buffett has said he would definitely pursue share buybacks under certain conditions) or sell its assets, then there is no way to get cash out of GOOG except by trading with other beauty contest investors. The only thing left to anchor GOOG stock value to Google the company is the possibility of bankruptcy.

So yetanotherphd is 100% correct. It's not impossible for people to trade as if there's no connection between a company's future dividends/buybacks/asset sales and its stock price. But that's how you end up buying tulip bulbs for their weight in gold.

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#127

Post by smartician »

kreilly wrote: post #114
mcv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be fraud? It sounds to me like they're using their advertising revenue to buy Google shares. What's wrong with that?

"We generate money by serving Google text advertisments [sic] on a network of hidden Websites." They are not really ads that are viewable by consumers. Most likely bot traffic.

Possibly related:

http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2011/03/uncovering-adv...

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#128

Post by mcguire »

thearn4 wrote: post #59
vesinisa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone then explain to a layman, why Google shares even have any value? What good is a share, if it's voting power in controlling the company is practically void? Google has never paid any dividend either. Are all the stock investors just speculating that GOOG will pay dividend in the future? Or is it possible that Class B shares will loose their special voting rights at some point so that Class A become instrum…

I guess it would still have value for those who want to go long, and sell at a higher stock price.

This is typically termed the "greater-fool theory".

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#129

Post by sysop073 »

sbd wrote: post #118
thanatropism wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you find exponent notation to be neater? 1E+03 = one thousand 1E+06 = one million 1E+09 = a thousand millions / an american billion 1E+12 = an american trillion / an european billion .. and that's as far as you need; the GDP of most countries is on the order of 1E+12 or 1E+13

I assume he requires a few more significant figures in his line of work

It's not like scientific notation precludes that. 1.234567E+06 = 1234567, but it's also at a glance obviously around 1 million

Re: Google Will Eat Itself

#130

Post by sysop073 »

pinaceae wrote: post #70
maaaats wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your contribution.. This , vs . is often a problem, because my bank will issue tables with , used as decimal separator, but copying that into some tool everything breaks because it expects . to be used.

his frustration stems from the fact that even after at least 50 years of software development the handling of number formatting (and add in dates for fun) is still something where time and time again software developers fuck up. it is amazing, all those CS and other courses and still every new generation of (predominantly) US developers discover the fact that there is a world outside the US. the most dominant data po…

You really don't need to take some developers not knowing this quite so personally.
Post reply on HN