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Google had a revenue of $180B in 2020, and their EBITDA was $55B. I'm no accountant but that sounds like an absolutely insane profit margin. 8-12% would seem mu
by tinco 6y ago
Google had a revenue of $180B in 2020, and their EBITDA was $55B. I'm no accountant but that sounds like an absolutely insane profit margin. 8-12% would seem much more palatable, so that means they have over 25B of excess profits they could spend on 500.000 middle class incomes for content moderators.
YouTube represents 10% of Google's income BTW, so the other 90% of middle class incomes could do moderation for their other services.
Is that naieve?
- izacus 6y agoI usually frame it this way - Mazda Motor Corporation, an order of magnitude smaller company can provide me with a several salons in my < 2mil population country where there are physical people that will fix my problem. And Google, the mighty megacorporation, can't even clear a basic phone support bar, much less a local user support office in each region? Something normal for other corporations?
- adrianN 6y agoMazda earns several hundred to several thousand dollars of profit from the sale of a car to you. Google earns an order of magnitude or two less per user.
- tinco 6y agoMazda spends several hours in pre- and after sales on each car. Google could automate 99.99% of moderation, and spend literal seconds on 90% of all further moderation per user. A magnitude or 3 less human attention than Mazda's sales pipeline spends on a user would be worlds better than what Google does now. I've seen YouTube channels with thousands of dollars of monthly revenue be closed over issues that would've taken a trained human less than 10 minutes to resolve. YouTubers with that kind of revenue are literally one in a million users or so.
- izacus 6y agoThey also had to source parts, manufacture it, transport it via boat and train, then pay someone to show me through all the buttons, clean it and then offer service at least once every year. Besides that they also provide 24 hour support for breakdowns and plenty of other services. And at best, they made 10% (!!) gross margin on my car - which is of a range of 2500$. Meanwhile Google has 45-60% (!!) profit margins while not giving a crap.
- foepys 6y agoThousands of dollars are only possible with luxury cars. VW, one of the two largest auto makers, makes around 300€ profit per vehicle sale (excluding luxury brands). For some models it's even less than 100€. You can calculate around 1% profit for a car sale, often less. The actual money is in leasing and financing, which is why almost all automakers own a bank.
- gambiting 6y ago>>VW, one of the two largest auto makers, makes around 300€ profit per vehicle sale (excluding luxury brands). Seeing as it's absolutely trivial to negotiate 10% discount on any new VW car, I struggle to see how that's true? Unless you mean that VW makes 300 euro and the rest is the profit of the dealership? Even if that's true, VW makes an absolute mountain of money through financial services. Yes, they will make very little profit selling you a £12k Polo, but VW Financial Services will make £2-3k just providing you with a financial agreement for it.