Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

Post by manarth » Fri, Jul 29, 2016, 1:43 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #115

zaroth wrote: post #33

I don't think it's right to equate R&D spending with "losses". Google makes a profit, not a loss, so technically it does not have losses. It has expenses, and among those, investments in future technology. If all Google could do with their cash flow was pay a dividend, that would be very sad, and it would call for a much lower P/E ratio. This article completely misstates the facts. Perhaps the way they break out thei…

Company X invests billions into the "future". This continues for 5-10 years without results turning into profitable products or direct improvements. Shareholders begin to question the value of those investments. "Is the R&D being well spent?" Google hasn't turned any moonshot into a profitable product yet, right? They're going to need a winner or two to convince investors. Apple will be in the same position in a few…

Post by anjc » Fri, Jul 29, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

mfav wrote: post #25

Subtly dishonest journalism in my opinion. This article could just as easily be titled "Alphabet invests $859M on long-term projects". In fact, that would be a more accurate title since that is precisely Google's intent.

Post by mathgeek » Fri, Jul 29, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

AnAfrican wrote: post #113

taneq wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe even "Alphabet invested $859M..."

In some contexts, not all Spending is Investment even if it can be defined as investment in layman terms.

Post by drusepth » Fri, Jul 29, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

manarth wrote: post #154

brador wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're only good investments if they tap that well someday. If you sit around moonshotting all day and never shipping they're worth $0. So far, no moonshot by a big corp has paid off. Maybe it's too early, or more likely Google is hoarding tech and filing patents like a rational engineer running a business using machine learning would do, and while that's good for Google it's bad for Society to have so much cool tec…

> no moonshot by a big corp has paid off Does SpaceX count as a moonshot?

Post by Roedou » Fri, Jul 29, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

Vexs wrote: post #147

redthrowaway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search has stagnated. Google has gotten scarily good at anticipating what I want to know, but conspicuously bad at answering hard questions. There's tons of room for improvement. Similarly, Google Maps has added features that make it a better map, and it's a great place to find what time a store closes and what their phone number is. But it's been essentially the same service, with iterative improvements, for years.…

I think the biggest issue with google right now is they have so many simple answers available. If I google some even slightly in depth problem, I'm bombarded with quarter explanations from "popular" sites like howtogeek, cnet wikihow, etc, which as far as I remember have never helped me one bit. They seem to rely too much on site popularity, and not enough about quality of result, and god help you if you try to googl…