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Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

nytimes.com

71–80 of 194 posts

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate here (a little) but imagine they took a few dozen million of that and, say, improved their development tool chains for Android (which are disappointingly flaky). Or another few dozen millions and extended the security updates for Nexus phones by a couple of years. That could grow their market share of both developer mind-share and consumers. Moonshots maybe should come once you've mastered al…

> Moonshots maybe should come once you've mastered all your core products? Then they'll never come.

They mastered search. They mastered mapping.

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#72
post #40

The people complaining about this better not be the same Thiel worshippers who constitute most of the Google hate here. Thiel criticizes Google/Alphabet for hoarding any cash at all . A true technology company re-invests all its excess profit. This "loss" corresponds to less than 7% of Google's gross profits in the same quarter.

I can criticise the headline (if that's what you're referring to) while hating on many things that Google do (advertising, crapification of the Web, TPP support, absolutely atrocious user support, a pathetic Android environemnt, from OS to apps to hardware/vendor dynamics.

But idiotic jabs on the fact that long-run investments in R&D haven't paid off immediately are pathetically stupid.

Do I contradict myself? Very well. No I don't!

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#73

I don't see anything wrong with this approach, especially since the company can actually sustainably afford to keep placing these bets. And perhaps "bet" is the wrong word being used here. Usually with a bet in gambling terms, you either win big or you lose it all. When Alphabet tries a "moonshot", they come away learning a lot about whatever problem it is that they were trying to tackle. They build expertise in-hous…

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#76

Why should any organization have net profits at all? "Loses" here is being used to mean "spent". You can't just keep stacking up cash forever. That would be pointless and stupid.

There are incorporated entities which don't, in terms of actual economic activity -- they're not-for-profit charities, generally.

They _still_ need to have some source of income, however, generally through donations, though other sources may exist (foundations, grants, some operate revenue-generating services, direct government aid, etc.).

The reason for the balance of inflow and outflow is based on how our economic system works: there are demand bidding rights which are handed out every so often (dollars, pounds, euros, yen, yuan), whose creation is limited to specific entities (national mints, central banks, and banks generally, via loans).

Being able to freely create those demand rights without limite doesn't work on a few counts.

The general principle is that the bids you take in have to match, over time, the ones you hand out (when you're bidding on goods or services). There are exceptions: bids can be borrowed, those debts can be dismissed, and a bunch of other stuff. But it's complicated.

A company is essentially a flow box which accepts and issues those bids. And over time, the bids in have to match the ones out (or you get to the complicated situations listed above).

In the case of Alphabet, it can continue to operate money-losing companies, but only by diverting bids (at the rate of about $900 million/year) from its other companies. Since one of those (Google) essentially mints cash, that's not a large concern.

TL;DR: We don't live in a moneyless society yet.

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#77
post #55
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is can these moonshots pay off their expenses in the long run. Given how little Google is known to actually ship I question if they can.

Moonshots are called that way because they bear both immense risk of failure as well as a potential to bring in billions. So individual moonshots are almost always failures; the ones that are successful pay the other ones. Google is doing the right thing to remain alive in the future without enforcing lock down on their users (like other companies not producing moonshots do).

They're only good investments if they tap that well someday.

If you sit around moonshotting all day and never shipping they're worth $0.

So far, no moonshot by a big corp has paid off. Maybe it's too early, or more likely Google is hoarding tech and filing patents like a rational engineer running a business using machine learning would do, and while that's good for Google it's bad for Society to have so much cool tech locked away in a damp basement when it could be changing lives and being iterated on.

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#78

It's R&D expense. Nothing new here. It only takes one of these moon shots to be successful to bring in extraordinary revenues, and Google has always been crystal clear that following such path was in their DNA.

I don't see it that way exactly. R&D is an investment. Hell, I'd consider calling it a pure capital investment, if not simply enhancing goodwill. If even one of those moonshots become successful those "sunk costs" will likely start streaming back.

Re: Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

#79
post #33

I don't think it's right to equate R&D spending with "losses". Google makes a profit, not a loss, so technically it does not have losses. It has expenses, and among those, investments in future technology. If all Google could do with their cash flow was pay a dividend, that would be very sad, and it would call for a much lower P/E ratio. This article completely misstates the facts. Perhaps the way they break out thei…

>I don't think it's right to equate R&D spending with "losses" Especially since they are still working on them. Can't really call them a loss if it turns into billions in the next few years. Better to say "Alphabet spent $859M on...."

Maybe even "Alphabet invested $859M..."
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