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By design, right? The other bets are exactly that - bets. The point of Alphabet is to surface visibility as to how much these bets cost. Not to showcase their

By design, right? The other bets are exactly that - bets. The point of Alphabet is to surface visibility as to how much these bets cost. Not to showcase their profitability.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
I don't think so. As I understand it the "other bets" are supposed to be the things that become big businesses and can shore of the shrinking margins on search advertising and the market share loss to Bing.
- ariwilson 10y ago
  Shrinking margins don't seem like a problem yet. Operating margin went up YoY from 25% -> 26% and revenue was up 20%. For the record, here's the discussion we had last year about search advertising margin: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796448. Odds for your prediction of widespread Google layoffs in 2016 are looking worse by the day. And market share loss to Bing? Don't make me laugh. Bing revenues are up 9% YoY (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2017-Q1/press-release-webcast https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2017-Q1...) while Google website income is up 23% YoY (note we don't have breakdown into search but conference call says this was primarily generated by mobile search & YouTube).
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I agree widespread layoffs are probably not in the cards unless the next quarter really tanks. I don't count cutting back projects like Google Fiber as "widespread". Bing's growth and CPC improvement in the Americas comes at the cost of the only other search engine. I wouldn't get too excited about the 20% revenue growth, it didn't quite match the 21% total growth of the segment[1]. [1] https://www.iab.com/news/first-quarter-u-s-internet-ad-revenues-hit-record-setting-high-nearly-16-billion-according-iab/ https://www.iab.com/news/first-quarter-u-s-internet-ad-reven...
    - Retric 10y ago
      Those numbers are rather suspicious when Microsoft is not getting meaningful revenue from bing.
    - jholman 10y ago
      Do you have any evidence that Google is losing market share? The latest reports I could find (from Feb 2016) showed that Bing's incredibly small increase in market share in the Americas is actually less than Google's growth, and at the expense of Yahoo and Ask.
      - ChuckMcM 10y ago
        https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bings-share-search-market-growing-faster-googles/164425/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bings-share-search-marke... sees it a bit differently.
        ariwilson 10y ago
        0.2% change in one month does not make a trend. Desktop market share is also increasingly less relevant to the search engine game.
- umeshunni 10y ago
  > market share loss to Bing wut?
- philwelch 10y ago
  And by the time that happens, they have become proper revenue-generating businesses rather than "bets".
deleted 10y ago
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By design, right? The other bets are exactly that - bets. The point of Alphabet is to surface visibility as to how much these bets cost. Not to showcase their profitability.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I don't think so. As I understand it the "other bets" are supposed to be the things that become big businesses and can shore of the shrinking margins on search advertising and the market share loss to Bing.

ariwilson 10y ago
Shrinking margins don't seem like a problem yet. Operating margin went up YoY from 25% -> 26% and revenue was up 20%. For the record, here's the discussion we had last year about search advertising margin: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796448. Odds for your prediction of widespread Google layoffs in 2016 are looking worse by the day. And market share loss to Bing? Don't make me laugh. Bing revenues are up 9% YoY (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2017-Q1/press-release-webcast https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2017-Q1...) while Google website income is up 23% YoY (note we don't have breakdown into search but conference call says this was primarily generated by mobile search & YouTube).
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I agree widespread layoffs are probably not in the cards unless the next quarter really tanks. I don't count cutting back projects like Google Fiber as "widespread". Bing's growth and CPC improvement in the Americas comes at the cost of the only other search engine. I wouldn't get too excited about the 20% revenue growth, it didn't quite match the 21% total growth of the segment[1]. [1] https://www.iab.com/news/first-quarter-u-s-internet-ad-revenues-hit-record-setting-high-nearly-16-billion-according-iab/ https://www.iab.com/news/first-quarter-u-s-internet-ad-reven...
  - Retric 10y ago
    Those numbers are rather suspicious when Microsoft is not getting meaningful revenue from bing.
  - jholman 10y ago
    Do you have any evidence that Google is losing market share? The latest reports I could find (from Feb 2016) showed that Bing's incredibly small increase in market share in the Americas is actually less than Google's growth, and at the expense of Yahoo and Ask.
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bings-share-search-market-growing-faster-googles/164425/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bings-share-search-marke... sees it a bit differently.
      - ariwilson 10y ago
        0.2% change in one month does not make a trend. Desktop market share is also increasingly less relevant to the search engine game.
umeshunni 10y ago
> market share loss to Bing wut?
philwelch 10y ago
And by the time that happens, they have become proper revenue-generating businesses rather than "bets".

deleted 10y ago

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