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Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

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Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#181

Post by Moldoteck »

goalonetwo wrote: post #143

I really think we are at the inflection point where Google is seen and perceived as the next IBM. More and more people now realize that the ad/attention economy is overall a bad thing for internet/the world. Googler who at some point were seen as above-average engineers are now seen as leetcoders TC-Maximizer with very little ethical thoughts or opinions on what they work on. All of those changes are a positive thing…

ads sector will only grow. chatgpt-like tooks will be able to integrate ads, a lot of new articles will have autogenerated ad pages, apple launched apple vision + meta's quest 3 is already released which gives a lot of new ad opportunities. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are a lot of places where ads are not yet integrated, but some already moved to this direction (like ad tier in netflix and judging by their userbase nr increase, more changes will follow) So idk, I don't think we are at some inflection point at least for now&near future

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#182

Post by tibbydudeza »

herdcall wrote: post #156
tibbydudeza wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Kurian is awesome - trained by Larry Ellison no doubt :).

In what way is he awesome? His primary job was to improve Google Cloud's market share and it isn't any better as far as I can see, perhaps worse as Azure has increased the lead.

GCP is now relevant - before him it seemed like a Google 4% project.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#183

Post by sdsd »

jfim wrote: post #159
sdsd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google also outsources SWEs. My friend in Mexico worked as this. They have an acronym for this kind of worker, I can't remember. But for example, they contract out work to SWEs at https://www.epam.com . Not contradicting your point really, just a note

TVC

Yes! Can't believe I forgot. He was an interesting guy - a biologist who was deported to Mexico after living in the US since childhood without citizenship, and then tried working in a lab in Mexico, but the pay was so bad he learned to code and eventually became a TVC.

Extremely cool individual who I miss. Maybe I should say hi to him.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#184

Post by [deleted] »

resolutebat wrote: post #106
rogerbinns wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most valuable owner in this space is whoever you communicate with to tell them where you want to go. They get to offer you a price, they get to offer you alternative destinations, and they get to offer you "deals". For example that means that a different supermarket can make an offer you come to them instead, or you can be offered a different price should a different route be taken, a ride share happen, a journey…

Color me skeptical, but I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. I don't go to "any supermarket", I go to Supermarket X because they have the goods I need at a price I accept or the best promos that week or whatever. If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?

[deleted]

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#185

Post by lesuorac »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #130
pkaye wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the total employees for the past few years for a comparison: 2019: 118,899 2020: 135,301 2021: 156,500 2022: 190,234 2023: 182,502 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb...

It is absolutely mind-boggling that a company as large as Google could increase their headcount by 62% in three years.

Not really, their annual revenue went from 161.857 B (2019) up 89% to 307.394 B (2023).

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#186

Post by rogerbinns »

resolutebat wrote: post #106
rogerbinns wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most valuable owner in this space is whoever you communicate with to tell them where you want to go. They get to offer you a price, they get to offer you alternative destinations, and they get to offer you "deals". For example that means that a different supermarket can make an offer you come to them instead, or you can be offered a different price should a different route be taken, a ride share happen, a journey…

Color me skeptical, but I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. I don't go to "any supermarket", I go to Supermarket X because they have the goods I need at a price I accept or the best promos that week or whatever. If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?

They wouldn't decide for you, merely make you an offer. Eg you say "go to supermarket A" which you fully intend to go to because it fully meets your needs and expectations. You get an offer to go to supermarket B instead, and that supermarket will also pay for your journey. You can still go to your original intended destination. Some number of people will take the offer. The entity controlling the vehicle gets the commission, and supermarket B gets a way to acquire customers.

> why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it

They are already most of the way there [1]. Driverless vehicles will be cheaper to operate which will make physical locations more amenable to paying to acquire visitors.

[1] https://www.uber.com/us/en/advertising/

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#187

Post by mustacheemperor »

resolutebat wrote: post #154
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jarringly bad nature of my recent experiences with Lyft/Uber compared to Waymo has likely inspired some hyberpole, but - I have been an Uber and Lyft rider for almost 10 years myself. Back then I was at town meetings in Syracuse, NY advocating for Uber to come to town. I know the experience can be good, but it seems like over the last couple years the experience has gotten considerably worse on average. Experienc…

I'm afraid any cleanliness advantage is temporary. People are filthy enough in cars driven by actual humans, can you imagine what they'll get up to when there's nobody at the wheel?

Yeah, I'm sure some of the experience quality is because the only other riders are people Waymo selected for the beta, and nobody wants to get kicked out for misbehavior. We've joked a few times "don't forget that water bottle, I don't wanna get banned!"

On the other hand though, I have seen misplaced items in Waymos a couple times and when I reported them in the app they pulled the car for cleaning ASAP. I actually did leave a water bottle once - a disposable, single use one - and they emailed me asking me if I wanted them to return it! That kind of vehicle management feels more like a benefit inherent to centralized taxi fleets than a benefit inherent to AVs, but it's something Waymo can take advantage of. I would guess the in-car cameras would be capable of detecting vomit-related events etc too.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#188

Post by SeanAnderson »

lesuorac wrote: post #185
SeanAnderson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely mind-boggling that a company as large as Google could increase their headcount by 62% in three years.

Not really, their annual revenue went from 161.857 B (2019) up 89% to 307.394 B (2023).

Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just also mind-boggling lol

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#189

Post by tomcar288 »

feoren wrote: post #57
tomcar288 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is there's not enough high value projects to do. to much labor, too many employees and too much funding relative to the number of projects that actually bring value. Because all the high value stuff(high ROI stuff) is already done or already being worked on. all that's left is low ROI projects which take up huge amounts of time but bring little value. employees and managers know they generate little value…

Of course there are enough high-value projects to do. You just need to be willing to experiment, expand horizontally, and let your employees go out on a limb with new ideas; something that no corporate leadership anywhere has ever been willing to do. They didn't run out of valuable problems to solve, they just have shit-ass worthless leadership just like every other (public) corporation in America.

well, it's not like they're not trying to branch out. the list of failed project at google is incredibly long.

i sometimes wonder if they would have more success with atoms based innovation rather than bits (reference to avc article on the matter). but that would necessitate hiring something other than software engineers.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#190

Post by ehsankia »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #53
ehsankia wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that just bad management / prioritization? Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Especially at a company that hires general engineers who can work on any project, and also at a company that has a lot of internal tooling which makes ramping up new engineers slow and tedious. They'll probably grow back to 190k within a few months, but those 8k new hires will…

Good luck finding useful projects for 180k people. That's just a ridiculous amount of people and projects.

180k people? That's not how many people were fired. 8k were fired, which is less than 0.5% of the company. Finding useful projects for that many people doesn't sound that ridiculous.
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