4 ms·

Is Google trying to be anything other than an ads company? If so, what? I know they are famous for spinning up projects and killing them super quickly. If not

Is Google trying to be anything other than an ads company? If so, what? I know they are famous for spinning up projects and killing them super quickly. If not, what are they doing? They have 140k+ employees worldwide. Is that what is needed to maintain their core ad business without focusing on growth of any kind (ad related or not)? If not... how many engineers/managers/whatever positions could they afford to "layoff" if we were to see US recessionary pressures/consumer spending pullback?

colinmhayes 4y ago
Google is putting a lot of resources into enterprise productivity software with gsuite. Google's strategy there largely revolves around letting students use the software for free and giving away chromebooks to school districts so that ten years from now every college graduate will be more comfortable with gsuite than microsoft office, so a bit of a long game there. This is basically microsoft's entire business, so there's definitely a huge market there. They also have GCP which is chugging along I guess.
- xapata 4y ago
  To some extent, that was Microsoft's strategy in the 90s and 00s.
- substation13 4y ago
  They sure missed boat with Teams / Slack.
- paganel 4y ago
  MS also famously has lots and lots of pretty decent re-sellers all around the world, which re-sellers have their own very deep lists of business contacts. Afaik Google has tried to get something out of the enterprise space for a good 5 years now (I'd say), ever since they launched GCP, but it's just not in their DNA to do and especially to maintain business sales.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    What enterprise would want to buy products from a company infamously known to cancel products left and right?
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Google has tried at least since 2002. So it's been 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance The Google Search Appliance was a respectable business in of itself. They deprecated it as it wasn't large enough for "Google". It would have been in the ranks of peer unicorn startups given the revenue prior to being killed off.
    - giobox 4y ago
      It was also a business for which the writing was very clearly on the wall. How many companies are left that still sell a SaaS/PaaS that requires you to install bespoke on-prem server hardware? I'm guessing its a much smaller list than it was 2002. For crawling/indexing, I can't even imagine convincing IT we need a dedicated appliance today! For the problem GSA solved, its just not needed anymore and subsumed by other google products/services that don't need me to install a rack-device like: https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ As someone else has pointed out, GSuite has seen success in the enterprise space, so their enterprise efforts aren't a total write-off. With so many students now on GSuite at their school or colleges and a generation effectively raised on Google Docs... I certainly wouldn't bet against it today.
      - chris11 4y ago
        I can imagine on prem hw being a benefit if a company didn't want a 3rd party to index material. But yeah, I wouldn't want to manage an on-prem setup unless it was necessary.
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    GSuite (now Google Workspace) is actually chugging along nicely and continuously improved. I bet it becomes one of their reliable long term products.
- arebop 4y ago
  1/3 of Microsoft's revenues and operating income come from their cloud business, which has done much better than Google's.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Azure has largely been propelled by microsoft's strong business relationships. I think it's likely that google sees gsuite and GCP as synergies given how successful msft has been at parlaying their office contracts into azure signups.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      You assume that Google has any competencies in dealing with the enterprise or anything that requires high-touch. And then they hired an Oracle veteran to head GCP. What could possibly go wrong? https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kurian-makes-his-move https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kuria...
      - colinmhayes 4y ago
        Oracle is probably the most competent enterprise software sales organization other than microsoft, seems like that's a pretty reasonable decision if they focus on building out the sales team. And Google probably realizes enterprise sales is a huge problem for them which is why they're investing in these products to make it easier to grow the organization. Selling to enterprises is something Google needs to get good at if they want to grow long term, having strong products to sell helps attract talent and close sales which gives their team experience.
        scarface74 4y ago
        I have never in 25 years - most of that in the enterprise - has dealt with Oracle enterprise sales and came out feeling good about it.
        4y ago
chucksmash 4y ago
Another justification people give for Google staffing levels is keeping talent locked up/not competing with Google. To the extent that's the case, thinking wouldn't be along the lines of "could we get by with fewer workers?"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
twblalock 4y ago
Google also makes the most popular mobile OS in the world, the most popular web browser in the world, runs a major cloud provider, runs an app store, and provides services in hundreds of countries which requires a large amount of employees to do all the legal, compliance, localization, and support work.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The most popular mobile OS in the world that according to evidence that came out in the Oracle trial, only made Google $27 billion in profit from inception until then. For reference, Google pays Apple a reported $14 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices. It’s highly likely that Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android. Chrome is just another gateway to advertising. Google’s Play store game revenue is $48 billion a year. But if they count revenue like Apple does, they are counting the gross amount people pay net after they give developers their cut is 30% of that excluding other expenses. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Those things are why Google has a lot of employees. It doesn't mean they are successful business ideas.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >the most popular mobile OS in the world ... which is free for consumers, and also for manufacturers to license ... >the most popular web browser in the world ... which is free ... >runs a major cloud provider ... which is unprofitable ...
  - kcb 4y ago
    Android Open Source Project may be free but check out any Android phone sold in the west at least and it will be loaded with closed source Google software.
  - 4y ago
knorker 4y ago
Google Cloud by now brings in almost as much as YouTube ads.[1] Notably up 39.4% year-on-year for 6 months ending 2022-06-30. Google Advertising is up "only" 15% the same period. Assuming consistent growth rate (big BIG assumption, but Google has not reported a broken out Cloud revenue forever) then Google Cloud revenue will exceed their ads revenue in ~11 years. And I believe that the market is there for the trend to continue, even if AWS and Azure continue taking most of the pie. In fact it's possible that ads revenue could decrease. [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20220726_alphabet_10Q.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20220726_alphabet_10Q.pd..., page 11.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Google is putting a lot of resources into enterprise productivity software with gsuite. Google's strategy there largely revolves around letting students use the software for free and giving away chromebooks to school districts so that ten years from now every college graduate will be more comfortable with gsuite than microsoft office, so a bit of a long game there. This is basically microsoft's entire business, so there's definitely a huge market there. They also have GCP which is chugging along I guess.

xapata 4y ago
To some extent, that was Microsoft's strategy in the 90s and 00s.
substation13 4y ago
They sure missed boat with Teams / Slack.
paganel 4y ago
MS also famously has lots and lots of pretty decent re-sellers all around the world, which re-sellers have their own very deep lists of business contacts. Afaik Google has tried to get something out of the enterprise space for a good 5 years now (I'd say), ever since they launched GCP, but it's just not in their DNA to do and especially to maintain business sales.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  What enterprise would want to buy products from a company infamously known to cancel products left and right?
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Google has tried at least since 2002. So it's been 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance The Google Search Appliance was a respectable business in of itself. They deprecated it as it wasn't large enough for "Google". It would have been in the ranks of peer unicorn startups given the revenue prior to being killed off.
  - giobox 4y ago
    It was also a business for which the writing was very clearly on the wall. How many companies are left that still sell a SaaS/PaaS that requires you to install bespoke on-prem server hardware? I'm guessing its a much smaller list than it was 2002. For crawling/indexing, I can't even imagine convincing IT we need a dedicated appliance today! For the problem GSA solved, its just not needed anymore and subsumed by other google products/services that don't need me to install a rack-device like: https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ As someone else has pointed out, GSuite has seen success in the enterprise space, so their enterprise efforts aren't a total write-off. With so many students now on GSuite at their school or colleges and a generation effectively raised on Google Docs... I certainly wouldn't bet against it today.
    - chris11 4y ago
      I can imagine on prem hw being a benefit if a company didn't want a 3rd party to index material. But yeah, I wouldn't want to manage an on-prem setup unless it was necessary.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  GSuite (now Google Workspace) is actually chugging along nicely and continuously improved. I bet it becomes one of their reliable long term products.
arebop 4y ago
1/3 of Microsoft's revenues and operating income come from their cloud business, which has done much better than Google's.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Azure has largely been propelled by microsoft's strong business relationships. I think it's likely that google sees gsuite and GCP as synergies given how successful msft has been at parlaying their office contracts into azure signups.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    You assume that Google has any competencies in dealing with the enterprise or anything that requires high-touch. And then they hired an Oracle veteran to head GCP. What could possibly go wrong? https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kurian-makes-his-move https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kuria...
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Oracle is probably the most competent enterprise software sales organization other than microsoft, seems like that's a pretty reasonable decision if they focus on building out the sales team. And Google probably realizes enterprise sales is a huge problem for them which is why they're investing in these products to make it easier to grow the organization. Selling to enterprises is something Google needs to get good at if they want to grow long term, having strong products to sell helps attract talent and close sales which gives their team experience.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        I have never in 25 years - most of that in the enterprise - has dealt with Oracle enterprise sales and came out feeling good about it.
        4y ago

chucksmash 4y ago

Another justification people give for Google staffing levels is keeping talent locked up/not competing with Google. To the extent that's the case, thinking wouldn't be along the lines of "could we get by with fewer workers?"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

twblalock 4y ago

Google also makes the most popular mobile OS in the world, the most popular web browser in the world, runs a major cloud provider, runs an app store, and provides services in hundreds of countries which requires a large amount of employees to do all the legal, compliance, localization, and support work.

scarface74 4y ago
The most popular mobile OS in the world that according to evidence that came out in the Oracle trial, only made Google $27 billion in profit from inception until then. For reference, Google pays Apple a reported $14 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices. It’s highly likely that Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android. Chrome is just another gateway to advertising. Google’s Play store game revenue is $48 billion a year. But if they count revenue like Apple does, they are counting the gross amount people pay net after they give developers their cut is 30% of that excluding other expenses. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
- twblalock 4y ago
  Those things are why Google has a lot of employees. It doesn't mean they are successful business ideas.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>the most popular mobile OS in the world ... which is free for consumers, and also for manufacturers to license ... >the most popular web browser in the world ... which is free ... >runs a major cloud provider ... which is unprofitable ...
- kcb 4y ago
  Android Open Source Project may be free but check out any Android phone sold in the west at least and it will be loaded with closed source Google software.
- 4y ago

knorker 4y ago

Google Cloud by now brings in almost as much as YouTube ads.[1] Notably up 39.4% year-on-year for 6 months ending 2022-06-30. Google Advertising is up "only" 15% the same period. Assuming consistent growth rate (big BIG assumption, but Google has not reported a broken out Cloud revenue forever) then Google Cloud revenue will exceed their ads revenue in ~11 years. And I believe that the market is there for the trend to continue, even if AWS and Azure continue taking most of the pie. In fact it's possible that ads revenue could decrease. [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20220726_alphabet_10Q.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20220726_alphabet_10Q.pd..., page 11.