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G is for Google

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Re: G is for Google

#361

Post by gutnor »

Jarwain wrote: post #278
rrss1122 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've heard is that this would help them in terms of taxes, allowing them to write off projects that don't make money, although I'm not entirely clear on how Alphabet would accomplish this. That would be no joke if that was a reason to do it.

The first thing I thought of involved the regulations and other troubles that Google was facing in the EU. Those troubles seemed to summarize as "Google is too big and is taking advantage of its large market share". Alphabet looks like it'll fracture the google businesses more, which might help reduce the issues they're facing in the EU. But that's just my best guess

Well, Google is already quite fractured in the EU - it has something like 20 subsidiaries, one in most EU countries[0] ?

That is also a common (mandatory?) setup, for multinational companies to have a local subsidiary in every country where they operate. I guess institutions like the EU must be handle that and focus on the activity independently of the fine details of the company structure, so that the restructuring would not really help or hinder.

[0] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125070...

Re: G is for Google

#362

Post by aniket_ray »

tapsboy wrote: post #131
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wave, Plus, Glasses at least. If we are to include less ambitious stuff, Google Video, Orkut, Chromebooks (never went far), Reader, Google Code, Dart, nothing much came out of Morotola, etc. And let's see were those "self driving cars" will go, market-wise...

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…

> Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing

Umm, no. Reader was not hugely successful. Users loved the idea of using Reader but they did not actually use it.

Re: G is for Google

#363

Post by lk145 »

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…

What tax benefits this move might have is my question as well. It seems like if this were purely about internal organization they could have effectively reorganized Google in the same way without making Alphabet (although I'm not an executive so I could certainly be missing something here).

Re: G is for Google

#364

Post by sahaj »

franciscomello wrote: post #293

Here's why I think Google's transformation into Alphabet was not a wise one. As Google cofounder Larry Page, now CEO of the holding company Alphabet, that will have as its main subsidiary Google, the search company, said earlier today: >As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you coul…

Investors already thought/knew this. Listen to any of the earnings calls from the last year and you'll see what I mean.

Re: G is for Google

#366

Post by snowwrestler »

minot wrote: post #336
amyjess wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference I see is that Google isn't unbundling their core businesses from each other; we're not getting something like Sun splitting SPARC and Solaris. Search, Android, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, etc. are all staying under Google. The stuff that's going under other Alphabet subsidiaries is the stuff that's totally disconnected from Google's core businesses, like Calico, Life Sciences, etc.

Joel Spolsky's Strategy Letter V is something that I think is interesting in this Sun conversation > Sun is the loose cannon of the computer industry. Unable to see past their raging fear and loathing of Microsoft, they adopt strategies based on anger rather than self-interest. Sun's two strategies are (a) make software a commodity by promoting and developing free software (Star Office, Linux, Apache, Gnome, etc), an…

Joel has always seen things from Microsoft's point of view. And we are actually living in the world he mocked: both hardware and software, on the server side, have been largely commoditized.

Re: G is for Google

#367

Post by munificent »

coldtea wrote: post #115
Oletros wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them are moonshots, I thought that the moonshot part is the one under the X Labs Umbrella Dart and Chromebooks failures? Since when

Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming). And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no…

> since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming

Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :)

There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.

Re: G is for Google

#368

Post by AJ007 »

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…

Some things I've been thinking about

a) Is this about firewalling disappointments and legal problems from Google's core business from the new things that will drive it for the next 20 years?

b) Will they spin out Google's Europe operations in to a separate company so EU regulatory actions have minimal impact on the rest of thier business?

c) Are there other changes they are worried about to the ad business? Proposals to change the tax status of advertising deductions (US) would hit their bottom line hard, even if it if their ad auctions algorithms continue to behave as shill bids.

Will be interesting to see how this changes the main Google business, for better or worse.

Re: G is for Google

#369

Post by dragonwriter »

munificent wrote: post #367
coldtea wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming). And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no…

> since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :) There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.

If you can use C or C++, why could you not use interpreted languages (including those with GC) whose implementation is in C or C++?

Re: G is for Google

#370

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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