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This is very interesting to me. I guess this means Alphabet has enough confidence in Niantic to essentially spin them off. They wouldn't do this if they had n
by Yhippa 11y ago
This is very interesting to me. I guess this means Alphabet has enough confidence in Niantic to essentially spin them off. They wouldn't do this if they had negative future prospects right? I honestly had no idea Niantic was this big to warrant spinning them off from Alphabet.
- gkoberger 11y agoOr, more likely, Niantic was doing badly (financially) and they wanted them gone. If they were doing well, why would they let them go?
- ddispaltro 11y agoA number of reasons but usually focus. It's amazing how distracting even moneymakers that aren't core to the business are to big businesses.
- eru 11y agoDoing well or badly financially is usually reflected in the price you are getting for the spin-off. At the right price, even spinning off very profitable parts of your business can be good. The argument about distraction still holds.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoI've always thought Niantic / Ingress was never intended to make a profit, but instead gamify exploration and map routes and whatnot where Google's street maps cars couldn't reach. Google has a lot of services and products that don't earn them money directly (Chrome is probably the biggest one, Android another), but which do provide Google indirectly - Chrome's initial focus on speed meant lots more page views which caused lots more ad impressions which caused more income. In theory.
- nostrademons 11y agoCompanies usually spin things off when they're becoming a distraction for upper management. That doesn't necessarily mean they're big or that management has confidence in them, eg. hello.com is another Google spin-off that hasn't even launched yet.
- Retra 11y agoOr possibly they're receiving some funding that stipulates not being Google-owned, and everyone just agreed that's the best way forward.