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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

#251

Post by millstone »

epimetheus wrote: post #239
millstone wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Apple has a proven ability to reinvent itself" Apple does, or Steve Jobs did? I don't think Cook is anywhere near Jobs. Meanwhile, Larry Page is not only still alive, but is positioning his company so that he still has creative power and final say. As much as I love Apple, I'm not as optimistic of their future without Jobs.

The market was not optimistic of Apple's future even when Jobs was at the helm.

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

#252

Post by sdrothrock »

latj wrote: post #209
sdrothrock wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could probably think of alternatives for most of these things, but there are a lot of people who just use what came with their phone/browser. Additionally, think of all of the Google-backed services out there provided by other companies. How many companies use gmail heavily that would lose all kinds of records? Normal people would lose their e-mail too, and businessmen would lose a lot of their calendars. The actu…

The world wouldnt screech to a halt though. We're talking about what would happen if Google disappeared and its not a hypothetical situation. It happened in China for a five year period starting in 2010. People who used Google services were very upset. Replacements sprung up and quickly improved. They never caught up to Google but they were good enough, along with propaganda and the threat of prison, to keep people f…

> We're talking about what would happen if Google disappeared and its not a hypothetical situation. It happened in China for a five year period starting in 2010.

My bad. I was thinking about what would happen if Google disappeared as in, one day their servers and services just aren't available for whatever reason, rather than a staged transition/fade out.

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

#253

Post by jrockway »

jasode wrote: post #153
mwfunk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling someone an "X company" means that they make their money from X. There are aspects of AI in targeted advertising, but not enough to call them an AI company rather than an advertising company. It doesn't really matter where they're going- that's what they aspire to be, not what they are. If you judge companies based on their aspirations, you end up judging them based on their most positive and idealistic versio…

>Calling someone an "X company" means that they make their money from X. It doesn't necessarily mean that. It's more common to associate "X" with their business competency . If we always insist on X to be only defined by revenue, we then get the following type of soundbites that we pat ourselves on the back for: - McDonalds is actually a real estate company and not a hamburger company because they make more money fro…

Interesting thought, but the business competency is an important component regarding future valuation. If finance for some reason stops being profitable, GE still knows how to manufacture aircraft engines. If real estate becomes worthless, McDonald's can still sell people cheeseburgers for 99 cents.

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

#254

Post by genericpseudo »

coldtea wrote: post #244
endtime wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text ad which is targeted using AI?

No, the text ad which is targeted (crudely) using tons of data and some statistical methods. It ain't gonna pass the Turing test anytime soon, and it's not more of an "AI" product any other product with basic algorithmic based matching is.

Google are a company whose core organizing principle is using statistical methods over obscene amounts of data. Apple is a company whose core organizing principle is selling desirable consumer products with class-leading design through the single most impressive physical supply chain in the world.

OP has a point.

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

#255

Post by spectrum1234 »

Steko wrote: post #133
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…

> investors think more money will be in the future of AI instead of consumer hardware and software No, first you are mistaking a bet on a single company for a bet on an industry. The obvious counterexamples being that there are no shortage of wannabe AI companies valued orders of magnitude lower than Apple, that doesn't mean wall street thinks devices beat ai as an industry gold mine. Google is valued highly today be…

wow

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

#256

Post by modelmodel »

0xCMP wrote: post #147

You're all talking about Google being more valuable as if Apple did not lose a ton of value since Jan 1 in the scares. Majority of the loss has been in generalized fear. Google hasn't really done anything to grow past them. They just stayed where they were and Apple fell below them. Lets please keep this in mind when we throw around ideas like one is better than the other as a result of this.

What were the scares caused by?

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

#258

Post by aroman »

petke wrote: post #250
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…

Also apple only spends about 3% of revenue on R&D. Google spends about 15% (and so does ms) if i remember correctly. I think at some point this is going to show. If apple isn't careful they might end up making the pretty but dumb phones of tomorrow.

If you consider the fact that Apple's revenue is almost four times that of Google's, the actual difference in spending is not very substantial.

Presumably there's some point of diminishing returns on R&D for one company in the billions of dollars range...

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

#259

Post by dcw303 »

scarmig wrote: post #234
endtime wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text ad which is targeted using AI?

I'm sure this is pretty proprietary information, but I do wonder what the value add of the AI-targeting is. Is it a relatively small bonus on top of a solid platform and audience for ads? Or is it the killer feature?

Recently I searched Amazon to read reviews of a book I bought on Kindle a few years ago. Now every website with Amazon affiliate advertising is showing me ads for that book.

Considering that Amazon could have run a simple account search to determine that I am definitely not interested in seeing ads for a product that I already own, I think that the AI-targeting ad revolution is a while off yet.

That is unrelated to Google, but I haven't seen anything there that would suggest they are running anything smarter.

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

#260

Post by adrusi »

eric_h wrote: post #160
coldcode wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love Apple's products (for the most part). People hate ads (pretty much everyone). So this makes no sense to me at all that Google is worth more than Apple. If you imagine the future, no one really knows what each will do with all the stuff they are building, so saying Google is worth more than Apple in the future seems silly.

> People hate ads (pretty much everyone). And yet the percentage of people who watch the Super Bowl explicitly to see the ads is a non-trivial percentage of the viewing population (obviously anecdata, but I know many people who throw super bowl parties for groups who have no interest in the football, and just want to have a party while watching the moderately amusing, big-budget ads with breaks for football in betwee…

I don't think people hate ads on principle. Some do, and they're vocal, but most people hate ads because they're annoying and obnoxious. If every ad was as well produced and as tailored to the content as super bowl ads are, people would be fine with advertising. Instead we get the ugliest, most obtrusively designed 10 second animations looping alongside articles and in between paragraphs, advertising disguised as content, and tracking scripts that reveal to questionable organizations an unsavory level of detail into our lives.
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