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

Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#11

Post by mhb »

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.

Really? I thought a beta of one means that if GDP goes up 10%, then Google's revenue goes up 10%.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_coefficient:

More specifically, a stock that has a beta of 2 follows the market in an overall decline or growth, but does so by a factor of 2; meaning when the market has an overall decline of 3% a stock with a beta of 2 will fall 6%.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#12

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#13

Post by someperson »

mynameishere wrote: post #8
jmah wrote: post #3

What a poorly-chosen title. It took me a while to realize that "gears" is the verb; it's not about Google Gears. Non-title capitalization could have avoided the ambiguity.

It's a pun. Editors do it all the time . ... Anyway, I've never had any luck with google. Yahoo charges me 0.10 dollars for certain keywords, while google wants 0.50. Sorry. Not worth it. It's probably just a quirk, but as far as I'm concerned, google doesn't exist in the ad sphere.

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

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#14

Post by sh1mmer »

In some ways this article highlights how fragile Google is. If you think about how quickly Google cleaned up in the search market and yet 97% of their revenues are web Ad based (according to the article).

While not all of those are going to be Ad Words a lot will be and if someone replaced them in search (not Cuil, obviously) then they would be in trouble, fast.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#15

Post by bandris »

"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.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#16

Post by byrneseyeview »

mhb wrote: post #11
byrneseyeview wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? I thought a beta of one means that if GDP goes up 10%, then Google's revenue goes up 10%. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_coefficient : More specifically, a stock that has a beta of 2 follows the market in an overall decline or growth, but does so by a factor of 2; meaning when the market has an overall decline of 3% a stock with a beta of 2 will fall 6%.

As far as I know, you are agreeing with what I said. The GDP has not gone up 90% per year any time recently.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#17

Post by Retric »

mynameishere wrote: post #8
jmah wrote: post #3

What a poorly-chosen title. It took me a while to realize that "gears" is the verb; it's not about Google Gears. Non-title capitalization could have avoided the ambiguity.

It's a pun. Editors do it all the time . ... Anyway, I've never had any luck with google. Yahoo charges me 0.10 dollars for certain keywords, while google wants 0.50. Sorry. Not worth it. It's probably just a quirk, but as far as I'm concerned, google doesn't exist in the ad sphere.

You might want to get over sticker shock and do some A / B testing. Google has a reputation for taking your add dollars further but it's not always the case.

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#19

Post by tyohn »

humm, I wonder if this is where companies slip into bureaucratic methods and practices. I'm all for streamlining business but "rigid quality-control system designed to eliminate waste" could be a slippery slope to start down...

Re: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times

#20

Post by jumper »

someperson wrote: post #13
mynameishere wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pun. Editors do it all the time . ... Anyway, I've never had any luck with google. Yahoo charges me 0.10 dollars for certain keywords, while google wants 0.50. Sorry. Not worth it. It's probably just a quirk, but as far as I'm concerned, google doesn't exist in the ad sphere.

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.
Post reply on HN