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2020 Q4 Alphabet Earnings Release [pdf]
- gundmc 6y agoI fear this will only encourage the frankly absurd number of ads that have been on Youtube videos lately.
- jansan 6y agoIMO they show you those annoying ads (two in a row recently) to make you subscribe to the ad-free premium service.
- mav3rick 6y agoYou can also get an ad free experience for about 3 dollars a month.
- mattlondon 6y agoIn the UK it is £12 a month for YouTube premium which is more like 15USD. Feels quite expensive when Netflix is about half of that.
- deadmutex 6y agoHow much is Spotify? YT Premium ~= YT Music + Ad free videos + YT Originals.
- ra7 6y agoIsn't YouTube Premium $11.99 per month?
- mav3rick 6y agoA family plan is 15 for 6 people.
- partingshots 6y agoIt’s a fixed number. So EU/UK people pay more. Same thing with games 60 dollars vs. 60 euros
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- polote 6y agoYoutube is almost unusable without uBlock Origin or you have to call it Adstube.
- silexia 6y agoPay the $10 a month or whatever for Youtube premium and never see an ad again.
- vkou 6y agoIt's a decent deal if you also want the YT Music (Formerly Google Play Music) library, not a great deal otherwise. (I do want the music library, so I've been a subscriber for a very long time.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sniperjzp 6y agoYou can see this kind of comment in every YouTube related posts, please, there's no free lunch, either pay for the subscription or use tools to block the ads.
- gundmc 6y agoI have no problem with some ads. I have a problem with midroll ads every 5 minutes and ads >> 2 minutes long when I've stepped away from my device and can't skip.
- actuator 6y agoWhy not just pay for the service?
- pb7 6y agoBecause despite the common request to "let me pay a monthly fee to not see ads", the vast majority of people are too cheap to pay up. This is why ads are as prolific as they are.
- Jtsummers 6y agoFor me it's a bit of a Catch-22. I don't watch much YouTube content anyways, but I've reduced my consumption over the years because of the ads. From what I can tell, there's nothing I want to watch anymore because I no longer know what's there (and of value to me). So the prospect of paying is absurd for me as I'd be buying something with no real value except to remove an annoyance on the few occasions each month I bother to watch something on YouTube. If I had a clearer reason to increase my YouTube consumption, I'd entertain paying. Other video services have clearer value to me in the content they provide so I pay for them. I suspect I'm not alone in this.
- seaman1921 6y agowhat makes you think you are entitled to using youtube for free? The ad-free experience in Premium is great. And don't forget they are paying a huge sum to the content creators as well - it is a delicate balance.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoI find it annoying that lots of content creators still put sponsored ads in their videos which are shown to me as a premium user. IMO those should be skipped automatically when Premium, but alas...
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoI'm not why you expect YouTube to skip sponsorships which are directly integrated into the video... Also, content creators do it because brand deals are generally a big chunk of change.
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago> I'm not why you expect YouTube to skip sponsorships which are directly integrated into the video... As a user, I don't care how or why the ads appear - they're ads regardless.
- actuator 6y agoI don't think YT should interfere. As I see it, YT is a pipe for content. If you pay for it through ads/subscription you are paying for the pipe not just the content. The content creator should be free to monetize their videos as they choose to like TV channels can show ads for a TV show.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoBut I'm not just paying for the pipe. Part of my money already goes to content creators.
- SomewhatLikely 6y ago
- belval 6y agoCheck out YouTube Vanced, it's a YouTube app with all the advanced functionalities and no ads. EDIT: https://vancedapp.com/ https://vancedapp.com/
- gundmc 6y agoI don't want to avoid ads entirely - I still want to support creators and the success of the platform. It just seems as if the length, number, and frequency of ads has been ratcheted up to 200% lately.
- belval 6y agoProps to you for sticking to your principles. For what it is worth, I only started using it after the increase in ads.
- Crash0v3rid3 6y agoCan we please stop suggesting apps and extensions to circumvent these ads? They offer a paid service, exactly what people on HN wanted. You are stealing from creators here.
- jay_kyburz 6y agoThis whole thread is about google making $40B. They don't need your money. Keep it and give it to somebody who does.
- solipsism 6y agoI think you read the comment you're replying to incorrectly. You are stealing from creators here
- belval 6y agoMost creators make peanuts from these ads that Google insert everywhere. The real value is in sponsorships that I actually watch because it's part of the content. I don't feel the need to pay 10$/month to watch LinusTechTips which is itself 20 minutes long advertisements for PC parts, sponsored by their respective manufacturers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoNewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
- PieUser 6y agoSo Google Cloud is still losing money. Anyone know if Azure is profitable?
- threatripper 6y agoAre the cloud losses all real or is it an accounting artifact due to internally providing services without charging for them in full?
- mike_d 6y agoGCP runs on Google, but Google doesn't run on GCP.
- paxys 6y agoI don't think there's any major production Google service actually running on GCP (which, IMO, is a problem and likely one of the reasons for their trouble).
- scarmig 6y agoInternally Google has platforms that support easy reproducible builds, binary verification, secure deployment, etc. out of the box. Those don't exist for GCP (or, for that matter, other cloud platforms). That means you need a strong justification for GCP over borg. Many acquisitions and Other Bets do end up on GCP after migrating from AWS/Azure, though.
- kevincox 6y agoAnother way to look at it is that Google has a batteries-included opinionated way to deploy internal services, it would be an incredibly tough sell to off that more directly to other users. "First rewrite your app in one of these 4 languages" doesn't fly. People want to buy a VM, or maybe a Kubernetes cluster. (Plus external services need stronger tenant isolation which Google internal services don't deliver)
- gundmc 6y ago
- lawrenceyan 6y agoLive Earnings Call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O45kGgcbR8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O45kGgcbR8s
- ksec 6y agoGoogle still growing revenue at 23% YoY? Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. All of them beat even the most optimistic estimates. Will have to dig into whether the cost of being Apple's default search engine has risen. Generally speaking it should $10 / user / year. Apple just reported another 200M increase in Active Devices. There should be some hint, or may be it will have to wait until next contract negotiation.
- actuator 6y agoI personally think Google can continue at this pace as GCP value is still not unlocked completely. I can't comment on the other services but in my previous job we did shift a lot of compute instances stuff to GCP from AWS because of ease of orchestration. If other services catch up to AWS and with unique offerings like Spanner, a lot of room for them to grow. Though it is quite scary how these companies are so big and yet growing so fast, a lot of this is because of usurping new markets, like Apple did with Airpods. I just hope this doesn't suffocate smaller players in due time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nojito 6y agoThe first page after doing a Google search is inundated with ads. Not to mention the ad proliferation on YouTube.
- jdminhbg 6y ago> Apple just reported another 200M increase in Active Devices. Don't forget to subtract the ones in China.
- bko 6y agoSerious question, do you think threatening to remove google as the default search engine is a serious threat? I use ddg and tried Bing when they were paying people to use it, but I have no illusions that google is by far the most superior search engine. It would be weird if they switched the default. But then again... apple maps.
- random5634 6y agoOperating margin 28% and climbing. Net income $40B for the year through 12/31/2020. The growth in revenue at 20% is impressive given these players are already so massive. One big takeaway, AWS is CRUSHING GCP on the financial side. There is basically a 50%?? delta here? Ie, AWS is +28% margin, GCP -30% margin? Still GCP is growing briskly though much smaller. In short, AWS could do a lot more to compete on price if they wanted.
- jacques_chester 6y ago> In short, AWS could do a lot more to compete on price if they wanted. Maybe. GCP can be subsidised by Google, but AWS is the breadwinner for Amazon.
- amf12 6y ago> One big takeaway, AWS is CRUSHING GCP on the financial side. Or, Google is investing more to compete? AWS is financially stable now because of its investments in initial years. GCP revenue growth does seem promising.
- JCM9 6y agoThe comparisons between GCP and AWS are sobering. AWS booked $13.5 billion operating income on $45.4 billion revenue and is growing at 30% YoY. GCP lost $5.6 billion on $13 billion in revenue. It’s growing a bit faster but not much considering the small base. The “we’re losing a ton of money because we’re growing” argument smells like the sort of thing unprofitable startups without a viable business model say. It looks really off when you’re competition is also growing super fast and is very profitable.
- scarmig 6y agoGCP doesn't need to beat AWS. It doesn't even need to increase market share, really: the cloud market as a whole is growing rapidly, and more money is more money, regardless of bragging rights. It just needs to get to profitability. There's also a strategic aspect of clipping the wings of AWS by providing a BATNA in the big deal negotiations. With Amazon significantly cutting into Google's advertising market share, it needs another front to put pressure on its strongest competitor. If Google can prevent $10B in Amazon profits by burning $5B of its own money, that's arguably a win.
- stingraycharles 6y agoMore money isn’t necessarily a good thing if you’re losing money to make it in the first place.
- gundmc 6y agoAWS launched compute and storage in 2006 and took until 2015 to first be profitable. Google launched cloud compute in 2013 and arguably didn't take it seriously until the last few years. Growing nearly 50% is a great result, even if they're still a distant 3rd.
- scarmig 6y agoGoogle launched GAE in 2008 and GCS in 2010. GSuite ("Google Workspace") launched in 2006 and is also part of Cloud. I think GCP is in a decent position with momentum today, but it's definitely playing catch-up after a near decade of missteps and fucking around.
- throwawaysea 6y agoIt's crazy that these companies can grow at this speed even though they are larger than any that existed historically. We're talking about multiple companies with market caps north of one trillion USD with double-digit growth and massive profit margins. We need to have a revamp of anti-trust regulations to break them up, because with their immense financial warchests and the protection of network effects, they are not going to face real competition from anyone. An economy made up of many smaller companies will not just create better outcomes for customers but also distribute wealth better. But right now, I don't get the sense that the competition mechanism works well against these giants.
- d1zzy 6y agoI don't agree that an economy made out entirely of smaller players is strictly better. I think there pros and cons to each of these scenarios. For example one thing smallest companies cannot do is effectively tackle problems that take huge amounts of funding, engineering and coordination.
- jacques_chester 6y ago> It's crazy that these companies can grow at this speed even though they are larger than any that existed historically. It's likely that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the largest company of all time in both inflation-adjusted terms (estimates made in 2017 put it between $7.9 and $8.2 trillion dollars) and in terms of % share of world domestic product.
- MarkMc 6y agoI'm going to repost a comment I made a couple years ago because it's still 100% relevant: ------ Incredible that Google has been able to sustain almost 20% revenue growth for so long - much longer than most people expected. For the past 6 or 7 years people have been predicting that Google's growth would soon slow because: (a) The number of ads on a search result page had reached saturation point (b) The percentage of people using the internet in rich countries had reached saturation point Although real, these effects have proved to be outweighed by other, less limited factors of growth; in particular Google's ability improve the quality of match between advertiser and user. Even now I think there is significant room for Google to improve this matching - eg. when I put an iPad Pro in my online shopping basket at apple.com but don't buy it, why don't I then see iPad ads on YouTube? When I give Tesla $1,000 to reserve but not buy a Model 3, why don't I then see Model 3 ads reading The New York Times? Apple and Tesla are leaving money on the table, and when they wake up Google will make even more money