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I've never understood why people focus so much on revenue. "My company has a 2M$ ARR." All right, good for you, but if you're spending 2.5M$ per year to run you

I've never understood why people focus so much on revenue. "My company has a 2M$ ARR." All right, good for you, but if you're spending 2.5M$ per year to run your company, it looks like a crappy business to me... I would suggest something more like "Facebook fined 15 hours of profit for breaching order in Giphy takeover investigation"

yunohn 5y ago
On the contrary, I don’t understand why you’re focusing on profit. It’s quite public knowledge that most companies avail accounting practices to lower profit over revenue. In fact, it’s not even a trick - investing profits back into your business is common sense.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  But it's also common knowledge that there are quite a few low-margin businesses, which have insane revenue, but comparatively very low profit - general stores, for example. Think of someone living in SF and someone living somewhere in the central US in a cheap region, both earning 100k$. If you fine both of them 10k$, the latter one probably won't have a big problem, since the living costs are rather low. Someone in SF, though, will spent most of their income on rent, so this fine will hit them hard. Calling the fine 10% of their income will totally misrepresent the impact.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    > But it's also common knowledge that there are quite a few low-margin businesses, which have insane revenue, but comparatively very low profit - general stores, for example. Sure. But Facebook isn’t one of those.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      Which is pretty irrelevant - profit and revenue are only loosely correlated. My point is that simply stating the revenue percentage does hardly tell anything about the actual impact.
      - wdb 5y ago
        You have the fine them were it hurts to make it more effectual so they won't do similar things anymore. There are also say why do they only pick on American companies but that's mostly because of SV is in the US.
      - ViViDboarder 5y ago
        It can be relevant when talking about a company like Facebook while not relevant to others.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Because in order to avoid paying taxes, a lot of companies balance books so that no profit emerges.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Yes, by paying for things and people. Because that's more valuable than paying taxes. However, that only works if one's willing to forego paying shareholders dividends (which are paid out of net). Lots of people are not willing to do that.

yunohn 5y ago

On the contrary, I don’t understand why you’re focusing on profit. It’s quite public knowledge that most companies avail accounting practices to lower profit over revenue. In fact, it’s not even a trick - investing profits back into your business is common sense.

Sebb767 5y ago
But it's also common knowledge that there are quite a few low-margin businesses, which have insane revenue, but comparatively very low profit - general stores, for example. Think of someone living in SF and someone living somewhere in the central US in a cheap region, both earning 100k$. If you fine both of them 10k$, the latter one probably won't have a big problem, since the living costs are rather low. Someone in SF, though, will spent most of their income on rent, so this fine will hit them hard. Calling the fine 10% of their income will totally misrepresent the impact.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  > But it's also common knowledge that there are quite a few low-margin businesses, which have insane revenue, but comparatively very low profit - general stores, for example. Sure. But Facebook isn’t one of those.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    Which is pretty irrelevant - profit and revenue are only loosely correlated. My point is that simply stating the revenue percentage does hardly tell anything about the actual impact.
    - wdb 5y ago
      You have the fine them were it hurts to make it more effectual so they won't do similar things anymore. There are also say why do they only pick on American companies but that's mostly because of SV is in the US.
    - ViViDboarder 5y ago
      It can be relevant when talking about a company like Facebook while not relevant to others.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Because in order to avoid paying taxes, a lot of companies balance books so that no profit emerges.

robertlagrant 5y ago
Yes, by paying for things and people. Because that's more valuable than paying taxes. However, that only works if one's willing to forego paying shareholders dividends (which are paid out of net). Lots of people are not willing to do that.