3 ms·

After hearing about Maradona’s death I have been watching World Cup footage from 86. One thing that caught my attention was the company ads on the sidelines. Ca

After hearing about Maradona’s death I have been watching World Cup footage from 86. One thing that caught my attention was the company ads on the sidelines. Canon, Fujifilm, Camel, Budweiser, Coca-cola, Seiko. Phillips. All, apart from Camel, alive and more or less relevant today. Google will not collapse. It will become an IBM or a MS. Not the amazing super company it used to be, but still big enough to be around and influence our lives.

peanut_worm 6y ago
Camel as in cigarettes? They are definitely still around.
lame-robot-hoax 6y ago
Camel uhhh the ones where you press on the filter and it makes it minty cigarettes were still very popular when I was in college 3-7 years ago. Cigarettes just don’t seem as popular anymore because they aren’t allowed to advertise like they used to in Formula 1, soccer, etc. Also, while Microsoft bogged down and was not so hot or illustrious for a bit, in 2020 I would not even remotely compare the pull of working for MS with IBM. IBM is on Oracle’s level, MS has clawed back to nearly be on the same level as FAANG.
- seshagiric 6y ago
  I think MAGA will replace FAANG as the stock market favorite
randmeerkat 6y ago
Imho your argument grossly underestimates Microsoft. Microsoft completely reinvented itself into an open source software company, rewrote .Net to run on *Nix and hosts a cloud offering that was competitive enough to win the Jedi contract. I could go on and I will... Microsoft is an ML company, a cloud company, a professional services company, an AR company, a public _and_ private enterprise company. Microsoft has VSCode, AD, Office, they _own_ NPM, GitHub and LinkedIn... If you really think IBM and Microsoft are an apples to apples comparison take a look at IBMs cloud and saas offerings, then look at Microsoft’s. Google comparatively has Golang, Gsuite (you’ll lose access to it if you post to many emojis to YouTube though), a cell phone offering that exists to harvest your personal data, and a graveyard of end of lifed services burning customer goodwill. GCP is so bad at the cloud their bid wasn’t even competitive in the Jedi bids. At the end of the day Google is an Ads company. It can’t even compare to Microsoft, which is why its future is in question. Google is the only FAANG stock I wouldn’t want to hold long term.
- kavalg 6y ago
  Nice writeup! I'd be curious to find out why you'd potentially hold FB stock long term, but not Google.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    Thanks! I wouldn’t own FB out of principle, but if I’m trying to be objective, overall I think they’ve shown a better ability for breaking into new markets, like Virtual Reality, a variation on online shopping with Marketplace, better staying power with features that keep their users engaged like events, and while I disagree with their privacy practices, their willingness to aggressively sell data to whoever wants it (Cambridge Analytica) is something that’s going to make them a force for some time.
- sofixa 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but how on earth is the jedi contract any sort of meter for anything but the needs of the US DoD? Do you need what they need? Does anyone actually? Do they even bloody need it? GCP have no special government cloud service, unlike Azure and AWS, but they're more advanced in some niches ( containers, ML). Anecdotally i've never heard of anyone saying anything positive about Azure besides "it came with credits". Fundamentally it's an inferior platform due to less redundancy ( all AWS and GCP regions are composed of multiple zones, that's usually not the case with Azure, and as we saw a few months ago, even their whole auth is hosted in a single DC... Disgraceful)
harha 6y ago
Maybe, but the examples are no where near as relevant and recognized as they were in the 80s. Google could just as well end up as Hewlett Packard, depending on who takes care of finding ways to squeeze out revenue, restructuring and downsizing the operation to deliver shareholders what they paid for.

peanut_worm 6y ago

Camel as in cigarettes? They are definitely still around.

lame-robot-hoax 6y ago

Camel uhhh the ones where you press on the filter and it makes it minty cigarettes were still very popular when I was in college 3-7 years ago. Cigarettes just don’t seem as popular anymore because they aren’t allowed to advertise like they used to in Formula 1, soccer, etc. Also, while Microsoft bogged down and was not so hot or illustrious for a bit, in 2020 I would not even remotely compare the pull of working for MS with IBM. IBM is on Oracle’s level, MS has clawed back to nearly be on the same level as FAANG.

seshagiric 6y ago
I think MAGA will replace FAANG as the stock market favorite

randmeerkat 6y ago

Imho your argument grossly underestimates Microsoft. Microsoft completely reinvented itself into an open source software company, rewrote .Net to run on *Nix and hosts a cloud offering that was competitive enough to win the Jedi contract. I could go on and I will... Microsoft is an ML company, a cloud company, a professional services company, an AR company, a public _and_ private enterprise company. Microsoft has VSCode, AD, Office, they _own_ NPM, GitHub and LinkedIn... If you really think IBM and Microsoft are an apples to apples comparison take a look at IBMs cloud and saas offerings, then look at Microsoft’s. Google comparatively has Golang, Gsuite (you’ll lose access to it if you post to many emojis to YouTube though), a cell phone offering that exists to harvest your personal data, and a graveyard of end of lifed services burning customer goodwill. GCP is so bad at the cloud their bid wasn’t even competitive in the Jedi bids. At the end of the day Google is an Ads company. It can’t even compare to Microsoft, which is why its future is in question. Google is the only FAANG stock I wouldn’t want to hold long term.

kavalg 6y ago
Nice writeup! I'd be curious to find out why you'd potentially hold FB stock long term, but not Google.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  Thanks! I wouldn’t own FB out of principle, but if I’m trying to be objective, overall I think they’ve shown a better ability for breaking into new markets, like Virtual Reality, a variation on online shopping with Marketplace, better staying power with features that keep their users engaged like events, and while I disagree with their privacy practices, their willingness to aggressively sell data to whoever wants it (Cambridge Analytica) is something that’s going to make them a force for some time.
sofixa 6y ago
I'm sorry, but how on earth is the jedi contract any sort of meter for anything but the needs of the US DoD? Do you need what they need? Does anyone actually? Do they even bloody need it? GCP have no special government cloud service, unlike Azure and AWS, but they're more advanced in some niches ( containers, ML). Anecdotally i've never heard of anyone saying anything positive about Azure besides "it came with credits". Fundamentally it's an inferior platform due to less redundancy ( all AWS and GCP regions are composed of multiple zones, that's usually not the case with Azure, and as we saw a few months ago, even their whole auth is hosted in a single DC... Disgraceful)

harha 6y ago

Maybe, but the examples are no where near as relevant and recognized as they were in the 80s. Google could just as well end up as Hewlett Packard, depending on who takes care of finding ways to squeeze out revenue, restructuring and downsizing the operation to deliver shareholders what they paid for.