5 ms·

I mean, YouTube is another.

by xori 7y ago

zozbot234 7y ago
YouTube is hemorraging red ink, if it wasn't suppprted by the rest of Alphabet it would quickly become unsustainable. Kinda hard to call that a "successful" acquisition.
- karanganesan 7y ago
  "it would quickly become unsustainable" why?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    If its not profitable. Revenue without profit is meaningless without it being part of some larger platform play. Besides that, how much is YouTube benefiting from getting to take advantage of below market access to Google’s infrastructure?
- jsight 7y ago
  I don't see any indication that youtube is losing money. That seems like a pretty bold claim, tbh.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > YouTube is hemorraging red ink Citation please. Everything I've seen is a mix of "breaking even", "still unprofitable", and "adding billions to their bottom line". I.e. nobody really knows because Google doesn't break out YouTube financials. In any case, I still think calling the largest, most successful video serving site on the web "not successful" is laughable.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Do you consider Uber “successful” even if their not profitable?
    - xeromal 7y ago
      I guess it depends on how you define success. If I made a company was used by the entire world at some point, I'd probably be pretty proud and consider it a success even if it failed. My second point would be to say, is a business only successful if it always makes profits? How many years does it need to be in business to be a success? If I made a company that has a good run for 20 years then tanked, was it a success. Does it need to be run by my grandkids before it's a success?
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Uber has never made a profit. If I had a business that everyone used selling dollar bills for 95 cents would you consider it successful? That’s basically what Uber is doing.
        jsight 7y ago
        Except that Uber is not doing that at all. They do make a gross profit on each ride. Its more like asking if you were successful if you were generating a lot of revenue by selling people dollar bills for $1.15/each, but losing money because of very high operations costs. The answer would be "it depends".
        scarface74 7y ago
        Yes and WeWork was profitable when you use their made up metric "Community Adjusted Ebitda". Isn't that true for every money losing company? They make money as long as you ignore expenses? The usual retort is "our addressable market that we have only started to penetrate will allow us to have a large enough marginal profit to cover our fixed cost". But isn't that also in the pitch deck of every startup looking for funding? "There are x number of dog owners in the world. The total addressable market is ten gajillion if we capture 10% of that we will be worth $some_outrageous_number"
        jsight 7y ago

I mean, YouTube is another.

by xori 7y ago

I mean, YouTube is another.

YouTube is hemorraging red ink, if it wasn't suppprted by the rest of Alphabet it would quickly become unsustainable. Kinda hard to call that a "successful" acquisition.

karanganesan 7y ago
"it would quickly become unsustainable" why?
- scarface74 7y ago
  If its not profitable. Revenue without profit is meaningless without it being part of some larger platform play. Besides that, how much is YouTube benefiting from getting to take advantage of below market access to Google’s infrastructure?
jsight 7y ago
I don't see any indication that youtube is losing money. That seems like a pretty bold claim, tbh.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> YouTube is hemorraging red ink Citation please. Everything I've seen is a mix of "breaking even", "still unprofitable", and "adding billions to their bottom line". I.e. nobody really knows because Google doesn't break out YouTube financials. In any case, I still think calling the largest, most successful video serving site on the web "not successful" is laughable.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Do you consider Uber “successful” even if their not profitable?
  - xeromal 7y ago
    I guess it depends on how you define success. If I made a company was used by the entire world at some point, I'd probably be pretty proud and consider it a success even if it failed. My second point would be to say, is a business only successful if it always makes profits? How many years does it need to be in business to be a success? If I made a company that has a good run for 20 years then tanked, was it a success. Does it need to be run by my grandkids before it's a success?
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Uber has never made a profit. If I had a business that everyone used selling dollar bills for 95 cents would you consider it successful? That’s basically what Uber is doing.
      - jsight 7y ago
        Except that Uber is not doing that at all. They do make a gross profit on each ride. Its more like asking if you were successful if you were generating a lot of revenue by selling people dollar bills for $1.15/each, but losing money because of very high operations costs. The answer would be "it depends".
        scarface74 7y ago
        Yes and WeWork was profitable when you use their made up metric "Community Adjusted Ebitda". Isn't that true for every money losing company? They make money as long as you ignore expenses? The usual retort is "our addressable market that we have only started to penetrate will allow us to have a large enough marginal profit to cover our fixed cost". But isn't that also in the pitch deck of every startup looking for funding? "There are x number of dog owners in the world. The total addressable market is ten gajillion if we capture 10% of that we will be worth $some_outrageous_number"
        jsight 7y ago