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Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

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Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#191

Post by jbverschoor »

EL_Loco wrote: post #74
laweijfmvo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have moved to Kagi as my search engine, although 99.99..% of people will probably never pay for search. Anecdotally, whenever I'm not finding what I need on Kagi and fallback to Google (less than once per week), it's shocking what a disaster the UX of Google's products have become (Maps is an even bigger offender than Search, where seemingly arbitrarily labeled places get more visibility than the search results).

What do you use instead of Google Maps? I don't know enough about alternatives to choose one.

Apple Maps has better satellite images, and since about a year is often better at navigating.

Google maps trumps with pois

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#192

Post by lanza »

refulgentis wrote: post #176
Mg6yDfjp5U wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting that $150M spent on RSU grants per year from? Unless I'm missing it, I don't see that in the report and it seems way too low. Let's say the average engineer gets $100k/year in RSUs. (I would guess the actual number is higher.) That would only cover 1500 engineers.

You're right, it's too low, see link at bottom: my guess is the $2B number, inclusive of all granted but not vested, is the correct #. In general people way overestimate the # of SWEs at Google relative to the employee #, even within Google. I don't wanna get too cute in public but some fermi estimates including, say, number of employees per engineer at a 100 person startup, and a jaundiced yet correct view of how mu…

It's in the earnings. It was $5.2B this quarter against $15.7B repurchased.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#193

Post by imp0cat »

harryp_peng wrote: post #163
rvz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Most of the commenters here really have no clue of what is going on and are just reacting to the headlines. I'm very delighted that I bought GOOGL stock at $95 when it fell after everyone panicked at their Bard demo a year ago. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713073

I'm bullish on GOOGL - Gemini 1.5 Pro is insanely good! GCP is also democratizing the cloud; I think the market share will only increase.

But isn't that exactly the problem with Google?

Everyone wants their shares to go up, more growth, which can then lead to questionable actions on their part. Did you see the recent article about search enshittification (tldr; to make key metrics go up, make search worse so that users have to make more queries to get what they want)?

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#194

Post by derf_ »

refulgentis wrote: post #164
VirusNewbie wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does it regularly as they pay out so much RSUs they want to keep the same number of shares on the market. You can look and see them historically doing this

A side effect is avoiding dilution from RSU grants. Poster is correct: that is not the reason for them. We can confirm this. Compare RSUs granted/year -- $150M -- to buybacks this quarter -- $70B. ~ 700x as much.

According to https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001652044/0... their stock-based compensation expense was $15.539b in 2023 (and actual repurchases were $2.324b).

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#195

Post by zeroonetwothree »

_mlbt wrote: post #49
endisneigh wrote: post #4

Fascinating that they’re issuing a dividend. Can’t find anything better to do to drive growth?

Dividends were originally the main point of owning corporate stocks in the first place.

Dividends started in 1602 with the Dutch East India company. However corporations with shares predate that somewhat. So it wasn’t technically the original point.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#196

Post by squigz »

fooker wrote: post #102
christophilus wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DuckDuckGo for search, Apple Maps when on my iPhone, and Gnome Maps when on my computers. My main browser is Firefox, but I use Brave (Safari-based) on iOS due to better ad blocking there. I use local markdown files for all of my note taking, and Fastmail for email. But I am aware that I’m not typical.

Firefox is funded by Google. Apple gets billions from Google, funding quite a bit of their R&D. Most of the open source software you use including the Linux kernel has a bunch of contributors from Google. Going one step further, Google has a large hand in open standards for everything, from wifi to programming languages. I'm not saying you should avoid these, it's just interesting that you can take so many non-typica…

Is it that interesting? How might you expect one to avoid Google's influence in standards? Whereas Firefox is one of the few mainline browsers that isn't directly controlled by Firefox.

In short, taking some of these steps is reasonable for a person, and some... are not. Painting it as some kind of moral hypocrisy isn't helpful.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#197

Post by citizen_friend »

swader999 wrote: post #123
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think this line of thought is due to people just not accepting how profitable advertising is to the end business. We're taking a clear and massive increase in profits that dwarf advertising costs. People don't advertise on meta/Google because they are duped by bots or some conspiracy between ads marketplace and marketing teams to hide the fraud. They advertise because their bottom line goes up and it's c…

Maybe, but I can't remeber an add I've seen, much less clicked on in the last week. You?

Maybe not. But your brain noticed those brand names and when you need a product in that category they are more likely to come to mind.

It’s actually shocking if you think about products from your childhood which are no longer advertised and have completely dropped out of public consciousness.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#198

Post by citizen_friend »

belter wrote: post #18
darth_avocado wrote: post #8

> Alphabet’s Board of Directors today authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares in a manner deemed in the best interest of the company and its stockholders The most important item on the report

Also...10,000 fired... Employees previous equivalent quarter:190,711 and now:180,895 Edit: 190,711 employees on March 31, 2023

This happens naturally with turnover if they freeze hiring.

Re: Google Earning Q1 2024 [pdf]

#199

Post by futureshock »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #119
lupire wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting part is why they chose to issue a dividend instead of sticking only with a theoretically equivalent buyback.

Put money in Larry and sergey's pockets without them having to sell any shares?

That’s not a terrible guess. Together they own 56% of the voting shares and maintain control of the company. A divided puts money in their pocket without needing to sell any of their class B 10x voting shares.
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