
Alphabet announces fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results [pdf] - mrep
https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf
======
tristanj
As far as I can tell, this is the first time Google has reported YouTube Ad
and Google Cloud revenues as separate line items.

~~~
tempsy
It's a red herring designed to distract from the fact they missed ad revenue
estimates by $800M.

Lol at getting downvoted. They missed on revenue and down -5% after hours.
This is a fact, not an opinion.

~~~
pc86
> In Comments

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good,
> and it makes boring reading.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I miss those days when people had nothing but nice things to say about Google,
which was supposed to destroy the evil, not join them.

~~~
ehsankia
I'm curious, what are they doing different now from then? Back then they had
an ad business, and now they have an ad business. Back then they created
useful services like Maps, Translate or Gmail, now they provide useful
services like Photos, Docs and Drive.

What are they doing now that is "joining the evil" which they weren't doing
before? Is your point about the fact that people's perception has changed?
People these days just take free online services for granted and no longer
want to put up with ads, but if it were all to go away, the majority of people
would see it as a strict negative.

~~~
V-eHGsd_
I think it's that, now, everything is to feed the ad business while back in
the day, it wasn't.

back then, they had lots of cool products, and they also served ads. now they
have ads and lots of products the siphon data from users to feed the ads
business.

I say this as someone worked there for a decade and saw lots of "NSA - not
search or ads" t-shirts.

~~~
anaanymouse
Even less data is being used for ads than when you worked there - Gmail is no
longer used, Photos doesn't use them, Android doesn't except insomuch as the
Google search bar exists on the home screen, Maps barely has ads...

~~~
mehrdada
> Gmail is no longer used

Any evidence of that? Enterprise GSuite is not supposedly used, but consumer
Gmail not feeding into ads would be surprising to me. Android feeds location
and contacts data.

~~~
subb
Not much evidence, but they stopped reading emails to target ads a while ago.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-
wi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-will-stop-
reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads)

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en)

~~~
mehrdada
Thanks. That's insightful.

------
topicseed
Google Cloud:

FY 2019: 8.9bn

FY 2018: 5.8bn

FY 2017: 4.0bn

~~~
threatripper
Amazon makes more in a quarter. There's a lot to catch up if google actually
wants to become number one in that business.

~~~
bilal4hmed
Anyone know Azure run rate ?

~~~
sf_rob
MS included Office in Azure revenue so it's fairly inflated.

~~~
scarface74
This meme needs to die.

[https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-q1-2020-earnings-
reven...](https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-q1-2020-earnings-revenue-
up-14-on-office-365-and-azure-growth/)

Office is included in “Productivity and Business Processes” not Cloud.

------
bilal4hmed
where does the money made from youtube tv fall under ?

edit :- that fall under the $5.3 bn number for Other revenue. Its termed as
youtube non advertising revenue.

------
ckastner
I can't believe they made $15bn off of YouTube ads. Who are they reaching with
that crap?

They didn't specify how much they off of YouTube Premium, but at $120/year
they'd need 125 million subscribers to match ads revenue.

~~~
creato
Are youtube ads that much worse than cable TV? I pay for youtube premium and
don't watch cable TV anymore so I honestly can't say myself, but from what I
remember of each, they both seemed about on the same level of garbage-ness.

~~~
ckastner
About three months ago, I visited a friend and we looked up a 15-minute
cooking recipe. We were shown three ads in the process.

I subscribed to Premium quite early. They were showing me an IKEA bed ad
multiple times a day, over a number of days. 3-4 different ads, but always the
same product. The end result being that I will sleep on the ground before I
ever purchase a Nordli bed.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
You literally just did the thing that justifies the ads. You now have
internalized an actual bed model and also spread the word that it exists as an
IKEA model so the subconscious link is there, and to top it off you mentioned
it on a forum, so thats free publicity

Whatever Ikea is spending on ads is apparently doing their jobs

~~~
ckastner
I "internalized" the bed model about as much as Bill Murray internalized "I
Got You Babe" in Groundhog Day, or anyone else would remember something that
they found extremely irritating.

And the saying that there is "no such thing as bad publicity" only works in
certain cases.

------
pier25
Where do ads in third party sites fall into these numbers? "Google Network
Members' properties "?

------
wsetchell
It is interesting to see the low revenue, slow revenue growth (~20% YoY), and
quickly growing expenses from "Other Bets".

If the Alphabet model made sense, I'd expect to see a company starting to
clearly take off after 5 years. The data shows the opposite.

~~~
riyadparvez
People constantly criticizing companies not taking long-term bets. When some
company does take long-term bets, then some internet expert come along and
find some arbitrary timeline to succeed without any justification and start
criticizing without offering anything any substantial.

I wish we can have more thoughtful discussion, instead of Twitter style self
aggrandizing comments.

~~~
scarface74
You don’t find it disconcerting that none of Google’s non advertising bets
have been successful. Compare Google’s revenue and profit mix to Amazon, Apple
and Microsoft.

~~~
webpaymentsguy
I have rejuvenated confidence in Google after seeing the push on Pixel phones
and Nest devices, though that confidence still isn't very high.

~~~
scarface74
How long has Google been selling their own phones without making a dent in the
market?

It’s estimated that Google sold between 10-12 million Pixels last year
([https://www.zdnet.com/article/pixel-3-by-the-numbers-
googles...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/pixel-3-by-the-numbers-googles-
flagship-phone-was-a-flop/))

It’s estimated that Apple sold four times as many in one quarter
([https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-
releases/2019-11-2...](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-
releases/2019-11-26-gartner-says-global-smartphone-demand-was-weak-in-thi))

And Samsung sold twice as many as Apple.

~~~
ksec
>And Samsung sold twice as many as Apple.

Oh no, quite far from it. More like 50-60% Max. For the past few years Apple
sold around 200M iPhone per year, Samsung on average sold around 300M per
year.

But your point still stand, Google Pixel shipment isn't making much difference
on the market.

~~~
scarface74
I was basing the number on the 3rd quarter figures in the link I cited.

But, fair enough 3rd calendar quarter is Apple’s lowest quarter for iPhone
sales - before the new ones are shipped.

------
jpm_sd
Ctrl-F "Other Bets operating loss":

Q4 2018 (1.3bn)

Q4 2019 (2.0bn)

Yikes

~~~
reaperducer
Is "Other bets operating loss" the same as research and development, or is it
somehow different?

~~~
haberdasher
Other bets = Waymo, Project Wing, Verily, etc.

~~~
thedance
DeepMind, too? I imagine that is a real money incinerator.

------
diminish
Quarter after quarter G seaxeh results turn into ads. At some point there
won't be any organic free results and all search results will be paid
placements. Which is now 80% true

~~~
skinnymuch
It’s not 80% true at all. It won’t ever get that far. It’s incredibly
saturated now. But companies know there are limits. As an easy example.
Facebook stock tanked for a bit partly because they lowered guidance and
expectation for their ads. Especially IG ads. As they had saturated how many
they can add and push.

