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Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

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Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#181

Post by pinaceae »

jpatokal wrote: post #129
pinaceae wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unlike Google, where practically 100% comes from one single product, which is ads. all "other bets" are actually losing money, per their data.

Nope: there's Google ads, Google non-ads, and "Other Bets". Q4 Google non-ad revenue was $2.1 billion, or almost 10%, and this share has been steadily increasing. https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...

yes, but no numbers on profits out of those segments.

OP was pointing out investor's criticism of Apple as a one-trick pony due to iPhone - I am pointing out that outside of ads, nothing generates any significant profit at Google either, even more so actually.

but whatever, HN really is the wrong forum for certain topics.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#182

Post by [deleted] »

percentcer wrote: post #145

It's interesting to that it took this long, just considering the utility of each company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow I'd be moderately inconvenienced, I'd have to pick up an Android handset instead of my iPhone and maybe set up some new podcast feeds. If Google disappeared the world would screech to a halt.

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#183

Post by pinaceae »

percentcer wrote: post #145

It's interesting to that it took this long, just considering the utility of each company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow I'd be moderately inconvenienced, I'd have to pick up an Android handset instead of my iPhone and maybe set up some new podcast feeds. If Google disappeared the world would screech to a halt.

if it is so mission critical, why can it only be financed through ads?

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#184

Post by hammock »

JesseObrien wrote: post #178
jad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that? To search the web, I'd go to DuckDuckGo or Bing or whatever. Other companies also provide web mail, maps, office document solutions, etc. Google's definitely better at those things, but using a worse version of those products would not cause the world to "screech to a halt." Probably the most disruptive thing if Apple vanished would actually be every tech company suddenly needing to figure out how to use…

As far as "screech to a halt." is concerned, it's maybe a little on the exaggerated side, but I'd believe it. I've worked for 5 different companies of varying sizes from 5 to 1000 employees. All of them have used Google Apps to run their business. Email, Calendars, Docs, Basically the Apps suite in it's entirety is the core of communicating and information storage. There's arguments for backups, etc but in reality if…

Google Apps has 50 million users, iCloud has 125 million

Edit: to clarify, my source[1] said 5 million orgs with 50 million individual users. Not counting Gmail obviously

[1]http://blog.bettercloud.com/google-apps-stats/

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#185

Post by jdoliner »

cryptoz wrote: post #35

The comparisons between Google and Apple aren't as apples-to-apples as everyone in the media seems to think. If we're talking about the future of these companies, and their earning power, they are situating themselves very differently. Apple is really a consumer electronics company, Google is an artificial intelligence company. And investors think more money will be in the future of AI instead of consumer hardware an…

I feel like this comparison of the two started during the handset wars. If you'll recall they were very chummy companies before that with Eric Schmidt sitting on both boards. With the handset wars cooling down a bit I think the comparisons are becoming a lot less apt.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#186

Post by tempestn »

hammock wrote: post #184
JesseObrien wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as "screech to a halt." is concerned, it's maybe a little on the exaggerated side, but I'd believe it. I've worked for 5 different companies of varying sizes from 5 to 1000 employees. All of them have used Google Apps to run their business. Email, Calendars, Docs, Basically the Apps suite in it's entirety is the core of communicating and information storage. There's arguments for backups, etc but in reality if…

Google Apps has 50 million users, iCloud has 125 million Edit: to clarify, my source[1] said 5 million orgs with 50 million individual users. Not counting Gmail obviously [1] http://blog.bettercloud.com/google-apps-stats/

iCloud users are mostly individuals. Google Apps users are largely businesses with users of their own.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#187

Post by marshray »

samstave wrote: post #156
lazaroclapp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's brand trades a lot on having extremely well finished products with very polished experiences. If they started experimenting left and right like Google does, they would lose that brand image, which is arguably their most valuable asset (even above and beyond the technology itself). If Google releases Glass and it flops, it hardly affects their image ('well, yes, it's cool technology, that's what Google does, b…

> Apple's brand trades a lot on having extremely well finished products with very polished experiences I don't fully agree with this. Did you have the first version of the iPhone? No copy and paste? WTF. Antenna signal dropping because "you're holding it wrong!"? WTF. The only thing you can hold to the apple brand without any criticism is the industrial design of the packaging and look of their products has been cons…

You're making the mistake of thinking other people evaluate products the same way you do.

How many people do you really think tested the copy and paste functionality on the original iPhone before making their purchasing decision?

I think almost no one.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#188

Post by millstone »

mrb wrote: post #108
newman314 wrote: post #69

People were losing their minds over the fact that iPhone shipments slightly declined. If you look at the year over year growth (excluding the massive bump for iPhone 6), it would show that AAPL is still ahead of the growth curve. See https://imgur.com/vO0kPEy * Apple's quarterly revenue: $75.9bil * Apple's quarterly profit: $18.4bil * Google's quarterly revenue: $21.3bil * Google's quarterly profit: $6.8bil In sheer…

Which pretty much shows that the market value of a company is not based on what they sell today, but on the expectation of what they will sell tomorrow. Does Apple do research in biotech (Alphabet's Calico)? Are they developing drones delivering wireless internet to the world (Google's Skybender)? Do they have an investment arm (Google Ventures)? Did they start an ISP (Google Fiber)? People see Alphabet's increasing…

Apple's P/E was quite low even at the height of the iPhone growth. The expectation for what Apple will sell tomorrow is nothing, because they'll be out of business, and it's been that way for a long time.

Meanwhile, since Google was founded, Apple went from the Mac company to the iPod company to the iPhone company. Apple has a proven ability to reinvent itself, with more agility and success than Google or really any other tech company. But this has never been reflected in the market. The perception you mention is based on who the companies are, not what they do.

Apple could announce all of those products tomorrow, and the needle wouldn't move. Apple is doomed because Apple, and Google is the market's darling because Google.

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#189

Post by funkyy »

jad wrote: post #158
percentcer wrote: post #145

It's interesting to that it took this long, just considering the utility of each company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow I'd be moderately inconvenienced, I'd have to pick up an Android handset instead of my iPhone and maybe set up some new podcast feeds. If Google disappeared the world would screech to a halt.

How's that? To search the web, I'd go to DuckDuckGo or Bing or whatever. Other companies also provide web mail, maps, office document solutions, etc. Google's definitely better at those things, but using a worse version of those products would not cause the world to "screech to a halt." Probably the most disruptive thing if Apple vanished would actually be every tech company suddenly needing to figure out how to use…

None search engine comes close to Google atm. Also Google marketing and SEO employs a much, much bigger number of people than people working as a freelancers related directly to Apple I assume. (not employees, the freelancers and companies that use the Google/Apple as platform to run their businesses)

Re: Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the World

#190

Post by tempestn »

pessimizer wrote: post #174
shimon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's flagship product is a box that you can type words into, and get relevant texts/references/facts in response. It seems like a textbook example of AI.

Is grep AI?

Google search has moved _far_ beyond grep.
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