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G is for Google

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Re: G is for Google

#261

Post by fredkbloggs »

return0 wrote: post #224
josh2600 wrote: post #22

Is this purely a function of sharding liability across a conglomerate of businesses? It seems like concentrating Google's ad revenue in a smaller, more efficient business unit is a nod to Berkshire Hathaway's method of business. I can't recall this sort of thing happening in my lifetime, so it will be really interesting to see how this plays out. I also wonder how this would be treated if Google didn't have the crazy…

Isn't 96% of Google profits from search ads only? They 've done a million ventures since then, still remain ad-funded.

Yes. Because the Google part isn't being spun out to the shareholders but remaining a part of the conglomerate, this does nothing for the shareholders. The sea change would be if new-Google were a separate listed company returning its earnings to its shareholders. Instead it's a separate private company returning its earnings to Larry and Sergei to blow on whatever BS they want... just like it was yesterday.

About the only thing this changes is that ex-Google is now explicitly acknowledging to the public markets what everyone already knew: it's a conglomerate, only unlike other conglomerates, it has only a single viable business.

Yawn.

Re: G is for Google

#262

Post by magicalist »

gress wrote: post #214
tapsboy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Video was merged into Youtube Orkut was wildly successful in Brazil and India, until they stopped building it for Buzz and Plus Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing Chromebooks are doing great, atleast on Amazon, the world's biggest retailer. Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Motorola streamlined it's product lineup under Google and is doing fairly o…

Google Video, and Orkut, were complete failures and no longer exist. Successful products don't disappear without a trace. If they are closed by management when they otherwise might have succeeded, that is failure. Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed. The rest I would a…

Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).

Re: G is for Google

#264

Post by azernik »

hyperpallium wrote: post #117

At last, reversing Jobs' advice to combine everything, returning to the original idea of trying lots of things. Maybe 20% time will see a resurgence, too? Bonus: small, separate entities makes it easier to tackle new opportunities (which start small) that wouldn't move the needle for Google - as per Christensen. > We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion…

Well, they're keeping combined the things that really can be a coherent product (the new "Google" subsidiary of Alphabet contains Search, YouTube, GMail, Android, etc.)

I think this is just them realizing the limits of that Jobs advice - some things just don't make sense together. Apple just showed that the optimal point was a lot farther in the integration direction than anyone else was willing to countenance.

Re: G is for Google

#265

Post by jusben1369 »

mjn wrote: post #250
bcantrill wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha -- the Sun planets experience was the first thing that occurred to me as well. In my experience, the planets model was a total, unequivocal failure at Sun -- and the answer to the question of whether those companies could stand on their own was actually "no" for all of them (SME, SMCC and SunSoft all needed one another; the value came from what they delivered together). And Sun customers should blame the planet mo…

> this builds much more explicit resentment from those that are profit-centers towards those that are cost-centers An additional bit of trouble, coming from the way Google's current profits are made, is that the profit centers are mainly perceived as less glamorous than the cost centers, which seems likely to only add to the resentment. It becomes much more explicit then, that the people doing the various bits of gru…

To be clear I think all of that resentment is already in place and this is an attempt to bring it into the light and better manage it. I remember hearing Amazon folks thought AWS had nothing to do with Amazon and was a huge capital suck and they hated it. Now of course it's probably 30 - 50% of their valuation. Thats one way to get the "core product" folks to warm up to experimentation.

Re: G is for Google

#266

Post by yRetsyM »

chetanahuja wrote: post #207

Actually reading the first few paragraphs of the form 8(K) was more illuminating than the blogpost. "Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”)" "In connection with the new operating structure and upon completion of the Alphabet Merger (as defined below), Larry Page will become t…

I find it also interesting the non - Google companies:

Businesses such as Calico, Nest, and Fiber, as well as its investing arms, such as Google Ventures and Google Capital, and incubator projects, such as Google X, will be managed separately from the Google business.

Fiber is the most notable to me - seems they see this as more than an experiment and are looking to expand.

YouTube not separating is an interesting one to me, I expected that to be separate.

Re: G is for Google

#267

Post by bcantrill »

mjn wrote: post #250
bcantrill wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha -- the Sun planets experience was the first thing that occurred to me as well. In my experience, the planets model was a total, unequivocal failure at Sun -- and the answer to the question of whether those companies could stand on their own was actually "no" for all of them (SME, SMCC and SunSoft all needed one another; the value came from what they delivered together). And Sun customers should blame the planet mo…

> this builds much more explicit resentment from those that are profit-centers towards those that are cost-centers An additional bit of trouble, coming from the way Google's current profits are made, is that the profit centers are mainly perceived as less glamorous than the cost centers, which seems likely to only add to the resentment. It becomes much more explicit then, that the people doing the various bits of gru…

That was definitely true at Sun as well. At one point, Arthur van Hoff told me with a straight face that "every E10K Sun sold was because of Java." This was in early 1998 -- and it was categorically (and demonstrably!) false. We at Sun who had the filthy task of actually making money were looked down upon by those who were responsible for spending it -- and represented one of the ultimate failures of the planet model, in my opinion.

Re: G is for Google

#268

Post by rob_lh »

jacquesm wrote: post #236
rob_lh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circles for different messages to different groups, as well as the universal profile for logging into all your favorite Google services. It's not my fault these were harebrained ideas, but they were presented as revolutionary. The ideas are still arguably revolutionary (Slack delivers where Wave failed) but Google's execution was lacking. Same fundamental issue facing so many of their other programs.

Hyves in NL had the 'circles' thing before Facebook even existed, let alone before Google went public with G+.

And the Russians dreamed of going to the moon but that's the rub with consumer products - the market has to accept them for it to be an accomplishment. Google thought they'd found the magic recipe and pitched it as something for everyone that was a huge breakthrough. Being first with features or flows doesn't matter at all. The only thing that matters is making it relevant to users' lives, which all parties failed at. Circles is a bad model for a mass market.

Re: G is for Google

#269

Post by sangd »

arihant wrote: post #170
sangd wrote: post #60

Congrats! It's a new chapter for Google, an exciting beginning for Alphabet. It definitely broke PG's theory on the .com

Not really. Alphabet.com is crashed and is down since the press release. So a lot of people are doing what PG suspected.

Those are conventional. “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.”
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