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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

#291

Post by dhimes »

taneq wrote: post #249
drewrv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is whatever hasn't been done yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn....

Precisely. The image recognition and natural language processing that's "just a deep learning algorithm" today would have blown the socks off anyone ten years ago. Chess playing programs were AI until they could decisively beat all humans, and then we decided that chess doesn't require intelligence. Self-driving cars were AI until they got close to market and now apparently driving a car doesn't require intelligence.…

Don't forget that Facebook is going to be a big player in this game as well- especially facial recognition, where everybody is helping them by tagging people in their photos.

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by dangoor »

npalli wrote: post #95
newman314 wrote: post #69

People were losing their minds over the fact that iPhone shipments slightly declined. If you look at the year over year growth (excluding the massive bump for iPhone 6), it would show that AAPL is still ahead of the growth curve. See https://imgur.com/vO0kPEy * Apple's quarterly revenue: $75.9bil * Apple's quarterly profit: $18.4bil * Google's quarterly revenue: $21.3bil * Google's quarterly profit: $6.8bil In sheer…

70% of the revenue and (maybe) 80% of the profit of Apple comes from a single product - the iPhone. Apple themselves have given lower guidance going forward. There is a limit to the number of people buying iPhone at huge margins every year. The total units might continue to grow but not at the current margins and not as frequently. Hard to be bullish unless some other product takes off.

It's worth noting that 30% of Apple is close to a $70B company, which would probably have $10B in profit. Granted the iPhone helps make all of that other business possible, but even non-iPhone Apple is pretty huge.

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

#294

Post by danharaj »

taneq wrote: post #249
drewrv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is whatever hasn't been done yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn....

Precisely. The image recognition and natural language processing that's "just a deep learning algorithm" today would have blown the socks off anyone ten years ago. Chess playing programs were AI until they could decisively beat all humans, and then we decided that chess doesn't require intelligence. Self-driving cars were AI until they got close to market and now apparently driving a car doesn't require intelligence.…

It's more like, we know what 'intelligent' is, but it's hard to quantify, so we try to find problems that we think are at least as hard as 'intelligence'. when we solve those problems and the solutions don't resemble 'intelligence', we move on.

it may be the case that 'intelligent' is just a word used to make humans feel special things about mammalian brains, but it's also consistent that we overestimate the difficulty of the abilities that add up to 'intelligent'. It's the difference between moving the goal posts and having our perspective changed so that we realize that the goal is further away than we thought.

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

#295

Post by [deleted] »

amlgsmsn wrote: post #278
nostrademons wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the market is valuing Apple's ability to innovate in the absence of Steve Jobs at ~zero. Apple trades like a value stock right now; Wall Street assumes that they're a cash cow that is just going to be milked, and unlikely to have any future major hits. If you (correctly) disagree with this assessment, there may be money to be made here. If you agree with it, well, I understand why Apple wouldn't…

It's cliche at this point but... "The Market Can Remain Irrational Longer Than You Can Remain Solvent"

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by qaq »

mrb wrote: post #108
newman314 wrote: post #69

People were losing their minds over the fact that iPhone shipments slightly declined. If you look at the year over year growth (excluding the massive bump for iPhone 6), it would show that AAPL is still ahead of the growth curve. See https://imgur.com/vO0kPEy * Apple's quarterly revenue: $75.9bil * Apple's quarterly profit: $18.4bil * Google's quarterly revenue: $21.3bil * Google's quarterly profit: $6.8bil In sheer…

Which pretty much shows that the market value of a company is not based on what they sell today, but on the expectation of what they will sell tomorrow. Does Apple do research in biotech (Alphabet's Calico)? Are they developing drones delivering wireless internet to the world (Google's Skybender)? Do they have an investment arm (Google Ventures)? Did they start an ISP (Google Fiber)? People see Alphabet's increasing…

Google has search monopoly Apple has nothing comparable. The rest of google projects are mostly there for google to claim that they are Tech company competing in many markets as opposed to a Search company.

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

#297

Post by QuercusMax »

dragonwriter wrote: post #135
pinaceae wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unlike Google, where practically 100% comes from one single product, which is ads. all "other bets" are actually losing money, per their data.

The "other bets" that are (in aggregate) losing money are things that Alphabet does that are not part of Google. While Google is nearly 100% advertising revenue, it has non-advertising revenue streams inside of Google. And we only know that the "other bets" (non-Google Alphabet operations) are losing money in aggregate , not that all of them are losing money individually .

We do know more: Ruth Porat basically said that Nest, Fiber, and Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences, and where I work) are making money.

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

#298

Post by pbreit »

draw_down wrote: post #24
pbreit wrote: post #2

Both tremendous companies. I actually wish Apple would deploy some of its know-how and capabilities a little more broadly. Not everything has to be an immediate $20 billion opportunity.

On the other hand, that product stance helps them avoid Google Reader-type situations.

First, Google abandoning Reader was a terrible decision. Easily worth a PM and a few devs.

Second, I understand that part of the reason Apple executes well is because it minimizes distractions. But I believe a well-executing company like Apple should be able to take on more projects effectively.

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

#300

Post by eitally »

bradshaw1965 wrote: post #198
Steko wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

... Google is valued highly today because they print money today. They print money because of search and advertising. They are really good at this and that's why their market cap exceed's Apple's today. ... That would be correct if they were value companies throwing off discounted cash flow but both Google and Apple are priced as growth companies. The market believes Apple has peaked in growth and that Google has a b…

Your numbers are off. I hesitated to respond because the actual numbers are still pretty immaterial (but technically material) overall, but it's more like ~$2b than $500m. That's significant, especially for GCP, which is growing quickly in an still very immature and very large market. Give it 2-3 years and GCP will have surpassed AWS.
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