
Google's Tough Alphabet Transition - tosseraccount
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/googles-alphabet-transition-tougher-b-c/
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sna1l
This doesn't seem very unexpected. Companies who haven't been expected to make
revenue/profit are being forced to rethink their business strategies with that
in mind. It is a tough process and a lot of people don't like it. I think in
the long term it will become beneficial for alphabet as they will funnel money
into the successful businesses.

Having said that, this might make the funding of true moon shots less likely.
The self driving car business isn't close to profitability, but clearly has a
successful business model ahead of it. Obviously it won't just be a direct
measure of revenue, but it should be interesting to see how this affects how
much time Google gives the rest of the Alphabet companies

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lettergram
I'm picturing it killing a lot of innovation at Google. Many projects, such as
the self-driving car or search for that matter have no initial profitable
means for years if ever. With that, I feel it will also stop the evolution of
many products, e.g. Why risk investing in a long term project, when they know
we can make money this quarter doing X.

On the other hand this will likely lead to more stable products,and products
will disappear less often.

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wrsh07
Just FYI, search is ridiculously profitable [see "search ads"]

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lettergram
I agree search is ridiculously profitable, but if you showed up to a meeting
in 1998 and said: "Search is going to be a multi-billion dollar industry" the
business exec would laugh you out of the office.

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nine_k
In 1998 there was a enough online commerce (in fact, there was a _crazy boom_
of it, the original internet boom) for a good exec to see the potential of the
ad market for it. Searching is _precisely_ the moment when an ad can be well-
targeted.

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erikpukinskis
I was alive back then. It was not common belief that search would be a huge
money maker. No one thought Google would be bigger than Microsoft until they
started doing the ad auctions and people could start to see how the money
could actually flow. That Google won the Internet money pot was a bit of a
surprise to most.

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mc32
I think that started with overture. At least I recall overture's business prop
being paid search results.

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ihsw
Where does Google's Cloud Computing tie into?

There was some noise about it rivaling the search business in terms of growth
and capacity to be self-sustaining.

Surely it's prudent to at least mention it in the same breath as search.

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simula67
I assume they are part of Google itself.

From the earning's report [1] it seems like total revenue was $21 billion for
quarter ending in December. Around $19 billion "Google advertising revenues"
and $2 billion "Google other revenues". There seems to be no more break up of
beyond that point.

[1]
[https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...](https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnings/index.html)

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webwielder2
I know I shouldn't immediately dismiss the entirety of an article just because
it uses Rob Enderle for a quote, but I choose to do so anyway.

