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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

#81

Post by jedberg »

whack wrote: post #76

Kudos to Google. I'm happy for them. But it's also worth pointing out that Market Cap is a horrendous way to measure how "valuable" or "powerful" a company is. Companies A and B both want to raise $10B to fund a new investment opportunity. A decides to issue corporate bonds, because it doesn't want to dilute its shareholders. B decides to issue new equity instead, because they feel that their company stock is actuall…

In both cases you describe, the company with the higher cap is the more "powerful" company though. In example one, they have a lot more control of their destiny since they have debt and not more shareholders.

In number two they have more control because if an opportunity comes up that costs say 10 billion, Company B can act on that and Company A cannot.

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

#82

Post by millstone »

pluma wrote: post #64

EDIT: Go fuck yourself, HN.

Prices alone are not comparable across companies. But if you multiply by the number of shares, you get a sort of measure of what it would cost to buy the entire company. This is called the market capitalization.

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

#83

Post by Mangalor »

rsp1984 wrote: post #72
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's obvious that is where they are going.

Where they are going yes but not what they are today.

AI is basically learning technology, and they already employ AI in search ranking.

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

#84

Post by HappyTypist »

jfuhrman wrote: post #25

Well, abusing their search dominance among other things like making ads indistinguishable from organic results and paid placement on verticals like shopping/hotels etc. was eventually going to pay out. More details on how Google manipulated search rankings manually to make more money: From http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-skewed-search-results... >A previously undisclosed report by staffers at the Federal Trade…

Google's purpose is to give users the most relevant results. No Google algorithm update goes through without users liking it; it doesn't matter how much profitability it increases.

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

#85

Post by amlgsmsn »

nsxwolf wrote: post #20
yulaow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for b) I would say the contrary. Have you tried entering in a common website from a mobile browser without an adblocker? You get like so many ads, SO MANY, one over the other, some full-screen some that just let you see the 10% of the real site, some with a pseudo-pop-up, all with those little "x" almost unclickable to close them that force you to click on the ad in the end. And in the "free apps with ads" of the mob…

Can that really go on forever? I don't know anyone that deliberately clicks on ads. Ads usually act as a "don't buy" signal to me - I assume the product is of low quality or a scam because of the skeeziness of how they tried to reach me as a customer. Like higher education, the online ads business seems poised to collapse.

Apparently almost half of search engine users don't even realize that there are ads on the page.

http://marketingland.com/wsj-search-engines-thumbing-noses-f...

Search engines have been slowly removing background shading and borders over years and make the ads have the same fonts as the search results to drive ad clicks.

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

#86

Post by aqzman »

Very impressive. I remember being a young teenager when Google first went public, and around the same time my parents were looking at investing a moderate amount of money (around 10K, if I remember correctly) in the stock market. I suggested they buy stocks in Google, they didn't take my advice, which I don't blame them for as taking investment advice from a 14 year old typically doesn't end well.

It will be very interesting to see where Alphabet/Google go in the next 10 years.

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

#87

Post by jonknee »

rsp1984 wrote: post #72
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's obvious that is where they are going.

Where they are going yes but not what they are today.

Wall Street values you based on future expectations and Google is being valued in part for its perceived lead in AI and the growth that will bring. Their main product (search) uses plenty of AI so it's not a stretch whatsoever.

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

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

whack wrote: post #76

Kudos to Google. I'm happy for them. But it's also worth pointing out that Market Cap is a horrendous way to measure how "valuable" or "powerful" a company is. Companies A and B both want to raise $10B to fund a new investment opportunity. A decides to issue corporate bonds, because it doesn't want to dilute its shareholders. B decides to issue new equity instead, because they feel that their company stock is actuall…

> A decides to issue corporate bonds, because it doesn't want to dilute its shareholders. B decides to issue new equity instead, because they feel that their company stock is actually overvalued at the moment. Net result: A's market cap remains the same. B's market cap increased by $10B. No difference in future projected earnings/revenue between the 2 of them, but B now leads A in market cap.

Er, there is a difference: A added a bunch of future debt-service expense that B didn't; presumably the expansion that each A & B funded has future expected revenue, but A's future expenses cut into that, while B, with equity financing, didn't add expenses. So, B's actual value should be greater than A's, which the market cap in your scenario reflects.

There are good criticism of market cap as value, but yours isn't one of them.

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

#89

Post by bduerst »

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…

* Apple's quarterly profit margin: 24.2%

* Google's quarterly profit margin: 31.9%

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