5 ms·

Anything besides ads that actually make them money ? I am honestly curious if they still cannot find a way how to make money with anything else besides ads

TekMol 9y ago
Ads=Attention As the world moves into virtual space, nothing is as valuable as attention. Storage and Processing power are commodities. I would say owning the worlds attention is enough of a business model.
- saimiam 9y ago
  > owning..attention They don’t own it. They only provide a way for advertisers to make an appeal for it. Sounds like a quibble but their entire business model can come crashing down in enough people start using adblockers which is already happening organically by word of mouth with little noise. Ownership would mean they can force your attention on anything they deem fit.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    And yet, in spite of ad blockers, they are reporting a 47% increase in paid clicks. Something truly massive is going on here. I'm not convinced that this is sustainable either.
jdross 9y ago
They sell a lot of types ads on a broad set of platforms, much like how Toyota "only sells cars". YouTube, Search, Gmail, Play store and their display network are all examples. But if you want diversification, their cloud services are growing quickly and they seem very committed to growing their hardware revenue.
nostrademons 9y ago
$3.4B in "other revenue" (for Google), which includes hardware sales, their cut of app sales on Google Play, enterprise products like GSuite, and Google Cloud. $302M in "other bets" (the non-Google Alphabet companies), largely from GFiber and Nest. Google - like Apple, Berkshire, and several other companies - suffers from the curse of too much capital. I would love to have a business with $3.4B in revenue - it actually puts you in the Fortune 1000 at around #675, right alongside Urban Outfitters and Citrix and slightly ahead of Diebold, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Warner Music Group. But when your other business is AdWords and makes about $90B a year, it doesn't really move the needle.
- aneesh 9y ago
  That's $3.4B per quarter, or $13.6B annualized run rate, putting it closer to #200 on the Fortune list by revenue.
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    Compre to Apple’s $6B service revenue, which is quickly on the way to be a fortune 100 company. Both companies need diversification. I’m with Google with this one long term because I think their bets are more interesting.
- petra 9y ago
  I'm always curious why they don't built a business/engineering search tools that are far better than the competition, plus other technological building blocks, something like "a killer way to develop new technologies and businesses" and offer those as a complete package only for invested startups.
thisisit 9y ago
What is wrong with that? Most companies operate in a single field of business. Those who diversify sometimes don't do that great as the focus changes a lot.
dmode 9y ago
You can say the same thing for many companies. Example, Apple. Most of their money comes from iPhone
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Ads is a business model and not a product or service. Search is a service. Google generates ads from a variety of services. So not sure what you mean by diversifying? Plus fastest growing is the business not using an ad based business model. It is like saying CBS needs to diversify. Well if they only had 1 popular show then a need to diversify.

TekMol 9y ago

Ads=Attention As the world moves into virtual space, nothing is as valuable as attention. Storage and Processing power are commodities. I would say owning the worlds attention is enough of a business model.

saimiam 9y ago
> owning..attention They don’t own it. They only provide a way for advertisers to make an appeal for it. Sounds like a quibble but their entire business model can come crashing down in enough people start using adblockers which is already happening organically by word of mouth with little noise. Ownership would mean they can force your attention on anything they deem fit.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  And yet, in spite of ad blockers, they are reporting a 47% increase in paid clicks. Something truly massive is going on here. I'm not convinced that this is sustainable either.

jdross 9y ago

They sell a lot of types ads on a broad set of platforms, much like how Toyota "only sells cars". YouTube, Search, Gmail, Play store and their display network are all examples. But if you want diversification, their cloud services are growing quickly and they seem very committed to growing their hardware revenue.

nostrademons 9y ago

$3.4B in "other revenue" (for Google), which includes hardware sales, their cut of app sales on Google Play, enterprise products like GSuite, and Google Cloud. $302M in "other bets" (the non-Google Alphabet companies), largely from GFiber and Nest. Google - like Apple, Berkshire, and several other companies - suffers from the curse of too much capital. I would love to have a business with $3.4B in revenue - it actually puts you in the Fortune 1000 at around #675, right alongside Urban Outfitters and Citrix and slightly ahead of Diebold, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Warner Music Group. But when your other business is AdWords and makes about $90B a year, it doesn't really move the needle.

aneesh 9y ago
That's $3.4B per quarter, or $13.6B annualized run rate, putting it closer to #200 on the Fortune list by revenue.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Compre to Apple’s $6B service revenue, which is quickly on the way to be a fortune 100 company. Both companies need diversification. I’m with Google with this one long term because I think their bets are more interesting.
petra 9y ago
I'm always curious why they don't built a business/engineering search tools that are far better than the competition, plus other technological building blocks, something like "a killer way to develop new technologies and businesses" and offer those as a complete package only for invested startups.

thisisit 9y ago

What is wrong with that? Most companies operate in a single field of business. Those who diversify sometimes don't do that great as the focus changes a lot.

dmode 9y ago

You can say the same thing for many companies. Example, Apple. Most of their money comes from iPhone

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Ads is a business model and not a product or service. Search is a service. Google generates ads from a variety of services. So not sure what you mean by diversifying? Plus fastest growing is the business not using an ad based business model. It is like saying CBS needs to diversify. Well if they only had 1 popular show then a need to diversify.