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It's really more accurate to say that Google is a company whose goal is, and I quote, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible an

by dgacmu 10y ago

It's really more accurate to say that Google is a company whose goal is, and I quote, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" -- and to do so while being revenue-positive so they can keep operating. This interpretation leads to better predictive value about Google's likely behavior. They probably wouldn't sell chickens. They might well offer subscription / ad free versions of their products (see YouTube red, contributor) to keep the revenue flowing via a different monetization strategy. (They're paying my bills this year but this is purely my opinion from watching the company for a while).

sandworm101 10y ago
Going by the articles that created the company... "The purpose of this Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the General Corporation Law of Delaware. "
- dgacmu 10y ago
  I know - but that's standard boilerplate verbiage used in almost every company's delaware filings. Again, I think it's worth going by whatever description of the company has the best predictive power. For example, Facebook has exactly the same language in their filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512175673/d287954dex33.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512... But it's much more predictive to go by their mission statement, even though facebook too monetizes by ads and has given themselves permission to do anything. "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. " - it's fairly descriptive. Facebook is more likely to buy a messaging app (Whatsapp) that lets people communicate than to sell chickens. I wouldn't call FB an advertising company either, even though 85% of their revenue comes from ... advertising. It's a boring, content-low descriptor that lumps many different companies into the same bin. I suspect that FB, too, if they thought there was money in it, would happily pivot to offering users a paid, ad-free subscription service. In contrast, they probably wouldn't pivot to running ads on billboards.

by dgacmu 10y ago

sandworm101 10y ago

Going by the articles that created the company... "The purpose of this Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the General Corporation Law of Delaware. "

dgacmu 10y ago
I know - but that's standard boilerplate verbiage used in almost every company's delaware filings. Again, I think it's worth going by whatever description of the company has the best predictive power. For example, Facebook has exactly the same language in their filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512175673/d287954dex33.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512... But it's much more predictive to go by their mission statement, even though facebook too monetizes by ads and has given themselves permission to do anything. "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. " - it's fairly descriptive. Facebook is more likely to buy a messaging app (Whatsapp) that lets people communicate than to sell chickens. I wouldn't call FB an advertising company either, even though 85% of their revenue comes from ... advertising. It's a boring, content-low descriptor that lumps many different companies into the same bin. I suspect that FB, too, if they thought there was money in it, would happily pivot to offering users a paid, ad-free subscription service. In contrast, they probably wouldn't pivot to running ads on billboards.