4 ms·

That’s a long way of saying Waymo isn’t making any money.

drawkbox 7y ago
Money making products don't start making efficient money day one. Value creation in this area takes time and it is not quick when dealing with physical/driving products. The patents alone will probably be worth more than the effort. Google is a data/information company and you are completely disregarding the impact Waymo has on that especially for the Maps product. Waymo is also already a market leader in their space. Just because it isn't registering big enough revenues to McKinsey level value extraction only MBAs like CEO Sundar Pichai and Wall Street doesn't mean anything. Most of those in that space have no idea how to create value, only extract it. This type of 'it isn't making money' thinking is similar to how Jeff Bezos at Amazon was attacked for putting all profits back into R&D, or how Elon Musk at Tesla/SpaceX pushes products, or even when Jobs came back to Apple. The bean counters do not understand value creation and do not have product/engineering/creative mindsets. What product/engineering/creative people do is value creation that create the engines for 'making money', the engine doesn't just pop in, there is a concerted effort of play, production, design, creativity, engineering, crafting and refinement that takes value creation to get that engine running which results in value extraction. The business/marketing/managers should just stay out of the engine room and just make sure there is enough runway. The product before the sales/marketing is key. A product of value can always be sold or marketed. You can't sell/market your way to a product.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Amazon retail is still a low margin, low profit business and is not a good example. AWS on the other hand is printing money. Google hasn’t had a non advertising based hit besides maybe Android since it’s inception and even that has only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception until the Oracle trial where the number was revealed.
  - drawkbox 7y ago
    The low margin e-commerce led to massive innovations and improvements including their services architecture that became their biggest product and the first to market in the cloud. AWS was created out of the continual re-investment by Bezos back into Amazon. Amazon also has many acquisitions from it and associated to all their businesses: IMDB, Twitch, Zappos, Whole Foods, etc. Google with search, maps and mobile won some intense battles via innovation and a better product in many cases. Google became the biggest OS on mobile with Android and beat out Microsoft that really should have been better positioned and won (Windows Phone was probably better as well). Google also beat Microsoft at their own Office game and storage with Drive, Docs, etc. That was huge. Mobile is a massive victory within the last decade, search the one previous, others in play. Those wins shouldn't be discounted. > only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception Yep, only $23 billion, horrible. /s Microsoft also gets a chunk of that with their Android used mobile patents [1]. In a way I wish Microsoft didn't get a chunk of Android devices and instead we had three competitive mobile platforms. Android is fine but it isn't the best development platform, iOS and Windows Phone both better (was in the case of Windows Phone), Android was just positioned well and timed right. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/ https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15...
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive.
      - drawkbox 7y ago
        > Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Microsoft really just got their online offerings put together nicely finally in the last maybe 5 years, they didn't want to cannibalize desktop Office and that delayed them immensely. Before Google Docs there was only Office, OpenOffice and LibraOffice but people really only used Office. That has changed, I rarely use it unless I work with a company that is Microsoft-centric. It may change now that Office 365 is finally decent but they still want large purchases of licenses that really only is enterprise focused. > As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. There is immense value in controlling the platform which Google has. There is even more value in controlling the hardware and software platform like Apple. Because they control Android they don't have to pay another mobile provider to be the search provider. Don't leave out Chrome either, that was a big thing for a long time. That really came from Webkit and KDE that Apple open sourced to become Chromium and Chrome. > Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. Android won against Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone in terms of market share. There is value in being the biggest market share, ask Microsoft with Windows. > As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive. Drive is still bigger than any effort of Microsoft. OneDrive did not compete for a long time. Dropbox even beat Microsoft. Google Drive and Dropbox pretty much own this space except for Microsoft Teams or enterprises that used Office. Nadella fixed lots of issues in Microsoft and finally has Office 365 online in a good way, Teams, free IDEs/editors (VS and VSCode) and their new OS is really Azure which was his baby. Microsoft is doing well in lots of areas, even Surface Pros/Books are probably beating Apple laptops right now in terms of growth. Apple doesn't want to cannibalize iPads so they don't have touch screens on their laptops still, Microsoft does and it is a solid device. Hopefully they re-enter mobile one day but right now they are too fat and happy off of profits from Android patents. I like Microsoft, use them plenty and do lots of .NET. I also like Apple and develop on Macs/iOS devices. I also like Google and use Android and develop for that platform. They are all good in different ways. However, you are really downplaying what Google has done. Again we didn't even mention Chrome which did take the web by storm, which they are starting to abuse now with the ol' Microsoft embrace, extend, extinguish but they still did win the browser wars as well from an entrenched IE/Microsoft and over Firefox which was an early developer favorite of Netscape origin.
lukasLansky 7y ago
No, in the context of the conversation, it's an argument for a higher valuation of the entity. The value of every corporation primarily reflects expectation of future profits. That's the reason P/E ratios differs a lot even for established companies.

Money making products don't start making efficient money day one. Value creation in this area takes time and it is not quick when dealing with physical/driving products. The patents alone will probably be worth more than the effort. Google is a data/information company and you are completely disregarding the impact Waymo has on that especially for the Maps product. Waymo is also already a market leader in their space. Just because it isn't registering big enough revenues to McKinsey level value extraction only MBAs like CEO Sundar Pichai and Wall Street doesn't mean anything. Most of those in that space have no idea how to create value, only extract it. This type of 'it isn't making money' thinking is similar to how Jeff Bezos at Amazon was attacked for putting all profits back into R&D, or how Elon Musk at Tesla/SpaceX pushes products, or even when Jobs came back to Apple. The bean counters do not understand value creation and do not have product/engineering/creative mindsets. What product/engineering/creative people do is value creation that create the engines for 'making money', the engine doesn't just pop in, there is a concerted effort of play, production, design, creativity, engineering, crafting and refinement that takes value creation to get that engine running which results in value extraction. The business/marketing/managers should just stay out of the engine room and just make sure there is enough runway. The product before the sales/marketing is key. A product of value can always be sold or marketed. You can't sell/market your way to a product.

scarface74 7y ago
Amazon retail is still a low margin, low profit business and is not a good example. AWS on the other hand is printing money. Google hasn’t had a non advertising based hit besides maybe Android since it’s inception and even that has only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception until the Oracle trial where the number was revealed.
- drawkbox 7y ago
  The low margin e-commerce led to massive innovations and improvements including their services architecture that became their biggest product and the first to market in the cloud. AWS was created out of the continual re-investment by Bezos back into Amazon. Amazon also has many acquisitions from it and associated to all their businesses: IMDB, Twitch, Zappos, Whole Foods, etc. Google with search, maps and mobile won some intense battles via innovation and a better product in many cases. Google became the biggest OS on mobile with Android and beat out Microsoft that really should have been better positioned and won (Windows Phone was probably better as well). Google also beat Microsoft at their own Office game and storage with Drive, Docs, etc. That was huge. Mobile is a massive victory within the last decade, search the one previous, others in play. Those wins shouldn't be discounted. > only made $23 billion a year in profit from its inception Yep, only $23 billion, horrible. /s Microsoft also gets a chunk of that with their Android used mobile patents [1]. In a way I wish Microsoft didn't get a chunk of Android devices and instead we had three competitive mobile platforms. Android is fine but it isn't the best development platform, iOS and Windows Phone both better (was in the case of Windows Phone), Android was just positioned well and timed right. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/ https://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15...
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive.
    - drawkbox 7y ago
      > Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Microsoft really just got their online offerings put together nicely finally in the last maybe 5 years, they didn't want to cannibalize desktop Office and that delayed them immensely. Before Google Docs there was only Office, OpenOffice and LibraOffice but people really only used Office. That has changed, I rarely use it unless I work with a company that is Microsoft-centric. It may change now that Office 365 is finally decent but they still want large purchases of licenses that really only is enterprise focused. > As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. There is immense value in controlling the platform which Google has. There is even more value in controlling the hardware and software platform like Apple. Because they control Android they don't have to pay another mobile provider to be the search provider. Don't leave out Chrome either, that was a big thing for a long time. That really came from Webkit and KDE that Apple open sourced to become Chromium and Chrome. > Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. Android won against Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone in terms of market share. There is value in being the biggest market share, ask Microsoft with Windows. > As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive. Drive is still bigger than any effort of Microsoft. OneDrive did not compete for a long time. Dropbox even beat Microsoft. Google Drive and Dropbox pretty much own this space except for Microsoft Teams or enterprises that used Office. Nadella fixed lots of issues in Microsoft and finally has Office 365 online in a good way, Teams, free IDEs/editors (VS and VSCode) and their new OS is really Azure which was his baby. Microsoft is doing well in lots of areas, even Surface Pros/Books are probably beating Apple laptops right now in terms of growth. Apple doesn't want to cannibalize iPads so they don't have touch screens on their laptops still, Microsoft does and it is a solid device. Hopefully they re-enter mobile one day but right now they are too fat and happy off of profits from Android patents. I like Microsoft, use them plenty and do lots of .NET. I also like Apple and develop on Macs/iOS devices. I also like Google and use Android and develop for that platform. They are all good in different ways. However, you are really downplaying what Google has done. Again we didn't even mention Chrome which did take the web by storm, which they are starting to abuse now with the ol' Microsoft embrace, extend, extinguish but they still did win the browser wars as well from an entrenched IE/Microsoft and over Firefox which was an early developer favorite of Netscape origin.

lukasLansky 7y ago

No, in the context of the conversation, it's an argument for a higher valuation of the entity. The value of every corporation primarily reflects expectation of future profits. That's the reason P/E ratios differs a lot even for established companies.