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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

#211

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#212

Post by rayiner »

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/

For perspective, Microsoft Office has 500-750 million users.

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

#213

Post by morgante »

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.

Switching the operating system for all my devices (especially my desktop) would be substantially harder than switching my search provider.

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

#214

Post by jacquesm »

jhuckestein wrote: post #194
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…

DuckDuckGo uses Google search results

Please don't spread information that is factually incorrect, especially not if it concerns a small company trying to compete with a much larger one.

"In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we primarily source from Yahoo!, and in some regions and scenarios, Yandex and Bing.

From: https://duck.co/help/results/sources

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

#215

Post by jrbapna »

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.

Utility isn't necessarily correlated with profitability. Craigslist/wikipedia being obvious examples. Apple's good at making products that people will pay a premium for.

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

#216

Post by firloop »

jhuckestein wrote: post #194
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…

DuckDuckGo uses Google search results

I thought DDG used Yandex for search?

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

#217

Post by zeeshanm »

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.

I am already on DuckDuckGo and I love it.

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

#218

Post by toomanybeersies »

shimon wrote: post #110
jonesb6 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree that comparing Google and apple is silly. But calling Google an "artificial intelligence" company is just feeding another buzzword into the fire.

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.

Google's flagship product is an advertising platform, not a search box.

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

#219

Post by toomuchtodo »

itcmcgrath wrote: post #201
hammock wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Having worked on the Drive team, I can assure you Google Apps (which includes GMail, the Docs editors, and Drive) has much more than 50 million. A quick search on public figures for these services will give better numbers. Edit: Those are Apps for Work numbers, excluding consumers - obviously you can't compare just a subset with a total.

Why does Drive lack where Dropbox has succeeded (efficient, reliable syncing)? (Honest question, since you mentioned you're on the Drive team)

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

#220

Post by dragonwriter »

hollerith wrote: post #177
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.

By the same reasoning, the most valuable companies should be the dominant suppliers of food, water, electricity and maybe gasoline and basic internet connectivity.

> By the same reasoning, the most valuable companies should be the dominant suppliers of food, water, electricity and maybe gasoline and basic internet connectivity.

No company is as dominant in any of those areas as Google is in its area, or they probably would be. Water and electricity are often public utilities; while there are big food companies, there's no parallel to Google; there are a number of major oil companies, but no one single dominant one -- but those of the many in the top tier that are publicly traded are valued highly (from tens of billions to hundreds of billions), and several are not public so that no public valuation exists.

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