5 ms·

Google is probably the most undervalued tech company there is currently, by far: 1.) Has cutting edge in house AI models (Like OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, etc.)

Google is probably the most undervalued tech company there is currently, by far: 1.) Has cutting edge in house AI models (Like OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, etc.) 2.) Has cutting edge in house AI hardware acceleration (Like Nvidia) 3.) Has (likely) cutting edge robotics (Like Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Figure) 4.) Has industry leading self driving taxis (Like Tesla wants) 5.) Has all the other stuff that Google does. (Like insert most tech companies) The big thing that Google lacks is excitement and hype (Look at the comments for all their development showcases). They've lost their veneer, for totally understandable reasons, but that veneer is just dusty, the fundamentals of it are still top notch. They are still poised to dominate in what the current forecasted future looks like. The things that are tripping Google up are relatively easy fixes compared to something like a true tech disadvantage. I'm not trying to shill despite how shill like this post objectively is. It's just an observation that Google has all the right players and really just needs better coaching. Something that isn't too difficult fix, and something shareholders will get eventually.

BoredPositron 2y ago
They faked a lot of the showcases in the last years and their public offerings are just weird. Ever heard of https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx/ https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx/ or https://labs.google/fx/tools/video-fx https://labs.google/fx/tools/video-fx ? Because these sites are the consumer facing video and image model UIs and literally no normal person knows.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  That's because normal people are supposed to use the Gemini chat interface, which has access to the same image generation model as ImageFX, and I'd imagine video is coming.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  > VideoFX isn't available in your country yet. That's why nobody knows about it.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > ImageFX isn't available in your country yet > VideoFX isn't available in your country yet Maybe that's why? I still maintain the reason they're playing catch-up with everyone else wrt. LLMs is because their Gemini models were not available in the EU until recently. Back when they were doing their releases, years ago, like everyone else here I took one look, saw the "not available in your country" banner, and stopped caring at all.
thefourthchime 2y ago
This is all true, but at the end of the day, the shareholders care about return on value, and they get that from selling ads. All this amazing tech doesn't generate any revenue.
- simpaticoder 2y ago
  People said the same thing about Bell Labs and they were profoundly wrong. There is nuance. Saying A about B and being wrong does not imply saying A about C means you're wrong. It is indeed possible to lose focus on revenue and die. But it is also possible to focus too much on revenue and die. It is unclear if Google will achieve anything from it's "pure research" investments, but certainly they have room to try, and I personally am glad they are doing so.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    > People said the same thing about Bell Labs and they were profoundly wrong. They were profoundly wrong, but not about Bell Labs' ability to create value from their research. That, they were absolutely dead-on about. AT&T and Bell Labs were absolutely awful at reading the room about what their technology could do and how it could be monetized. Some of that was just packaging things the right way, and some of it - like charging absolutely insane license fees for UNIX in the 80s and 90s during the beginnings of the personal computing revolution - was because of lazy execs who didn't want to really put in any effort. Either way, I'm not using a Bell Labs LabsBook Pro to write code for a UNIX OS, and I'm not using Bellgle to search for information. AT&T ultimately thought the best way to create value from Bell Labs was to sell that division. We're in a long, hot AI summer, but we've had winters too. Who knows which hemisphere they're in at Google right now.
renewiltord 2y ago
[flagged]
BbzzbB 2y ago
None of this will matter if the actual business (search) suffers.
shrewduser 2y ago
Google make almost all their money from search, an extremely lucrative property, which is under threat from all the new ai players. So while they have a bunch of cool tech on the possibility horizon the only thing the market cares about is the ability to make money and there's some uncertainty on that front.
spankalee 2y ago
On one hand, I agree with you, on the other, as a former Googler I think that "just needs better coaching" is a huge barrier in Google's current corporate culture and environment. Google as a whole has a long history of not being able to successfully build great products out of great tech. That seems wrong from looking at search, Gmail, Maps*, Docs*, etc., but I think these are cases where a single great insight or innovation so dominated the rest of the product qualities that it made the product successful on it's own (PageRank, AJAX, realtime collaboration). There have been so many other cases where this pattern didn't hold, and even though Google had better tech, it wasn't so much better on one axis as to pull the whole product along with it. That's the problem I see here. Maybe they have a better model. Can they make it a better product? OpenAI and Anthropic seem to ship faster, with a clearer vision, and more innovation with features around the model. Is their AI hardware acceleration really going to be a game changer if it's only ever available in-house? I do believe in Waymo, but only because they've been incrementally investing and improving it for 15 years. They need to do that with all products, instead of giving up when they're not an instant hit. *Maps, Docs, and YouTube were acquired with their key advantages in place, so I wonder how much they even count.
- causal 2y ago
  Yeah and even Gemini only seemed to come about because OpenAI forced their hand and gave them a product vision to follow. If OpenAI didn't exist I bet Google would still be fumbling over how to make a product out of transformers.
  - zitterbewegung 2y ago
    Even OpenAI wasn’t going to release ChatGPT because the product internally was that it wasn’t that good but with some obvious internal pressure we are where we are at now.
    - sgerenser 2y ago
      I thought at the time OpenAI were clamoring that they couldn't release it because it was "too dangerous?"
swyx 2y ago
ah, HN, where a $2,000,000,000,000 market cap company (#5 in the world) is undervalued
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- antognini 2y ago
  Its PE ratio is by far the lowest of the FAANG/MANGA/Magnificent 7 tech companies.
soperj 2y ago
Sounds like Xerox, they had cutting edge everything in the 70s, did nothing with it. Or AT&T, with Bell Labs inventing Unix. Or Kodak inventing the portable digital camera in 1975.
- causal 2y ago
  Was thinking the same thing. In some ways OpenAI is the Apple to Google's Xerox.
  - synergy20 2y ago
    really? just unsubscribed OpenAI today, was one of the first to subscribe, now it lost all its edge to me, so many options elsewhere, paid or free to use. OpenAI is fading away fast. Plus all major leaders left, Microsoft is leaving too, I don't feel its future is promising anymore.
    - causal 2y ago
      That's fair. I would argue that OpenAI capitalized on transformer tech in a way that Google was late to do, but we shall see if Google will adapt faster than Xerox could
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        So far OpenAI has done nothing other than spend billions of Microsoft's dollars.
        falcor84 2y ago
        As anecdata, I would offer that the conversations I've had with ChatGPT over these couple of years have been incredible for me. Even just for relieving loneliness, it's been worth the monthly subscription a few times over. Maybe the company and their business model are doomed to fail, but I'm grateful for what they enabled so far.
ra7 2y ago
Agreed. Google isn't aggressive enough to productize many of their ideas and their existing products feel like they're developed by N different companies with no unified experience.
chrisweekly 2y ago
Slightly off-topic, but why is it still referred to as "Google" and not "Alphabet"?
- mrWiz 2y ago
  Because the meaning of "Google" is clear while "Alphabet" is not.
  - browningstreet 2y ago
    ...and the link is to a .google domain They foster the confusion themselves.
- anp 2y ago
  Same reason Facebook is still Facebook to me, probably.
- infogrind 2y ago
  Names stick, it’s as simple as that. In most practical situations (such as this discussion), the distinction between Google and Alphabet doesn’t matter. I once tried to rebrand an in-house, purely dev facing product. I failed.
wendyshu 2y ago
So how much GOOG have you bought?
kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
[dead]
UncleOxidant 2y ago
Only problem is that Google has been terrible at follow-through in recent years.
synergy20 2y ago
It hired a project manager to be the CEO, who has zero charisma comparing to other big companies(Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI,Oracle,AMD, Apple, etc), that made the company "boring"
gessha 2y ago
Confusing "having the tech" with "having product-market fit" is huge here. If the company was so undervalued they wouldn't try juicing their search profits at the cost of enshitiffying their product. > Google lacks is excitement and hype People(me) used to look up to Google and the projects they had. 80/20 work/project time, moonshot projects, all the google perks, etc. It felt like the place to be. Fast forward 10 years, I just want antitrust to shatter it into smithereens. > that veneer is just dusty The problem is systematic, affecting the whole org from top to bottom and especially the top. They either get a new CEO that turns things around or become another IBM.
inetknght 2y ago
Google also has a shit reputation for privacy, a terrible (or worse) reputation for customer safety or resolution of issues, and all of that on top of psychopathic executives. All of the technology in the world doesn't make up for that.
mhh__ 2y ago
The difference might be that Google isn't run by a founder.
smileson2 2y ago
Eh the government is about to nuke them They are a roadblock to a lot of the startups backing the current administration
mark_l_watson 2y ago
I agree with you, but even though OpenAI is much lower in my esteem than Google, I would give OpenAI slightly better scores in general on productization. In the last day I have played with Gemini functionality (see https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs) that I have not tried before, and I also played with OpenAI's just released openai-agents-python library. OpenAI's examples seemed a little easier to play with; that said Gemini product manager Jason Stephen reached out to me yesterday on social media in a very helpful way after I commented on Gemini's code execution sandbox. On other similar products like Google's NotebookLLM and Open AI's GPT 4.5 Research Mode: both products are awesome.
logicallee 2y ago
>Google is probably the most undervalued tech company there is currently, by far: [reasons] The only thing you left out of this analysis is their valuation. The market values Google at $2.05T (just over $2,000,000,000,000) which is 21 times their earnings (net profit). They are valued at $250 per person on Earth while selling, annually, $43.75 per person on Earth (sales) of which $12 per person is their profit. How much would you pay to own a golden goose laying $12 in gold per year? Like, $250? If so you are the proud buyer of Google right now. (There is a buyer on every sale of every stock and this is the price they are paying right now.)
- airstrike 2y ago
  $12 in gold this year and $12 * (1+x) next year != $12 flat every single year
  - kibwen 2y ago
    While keeping in mind that x might be a negative number.
- xmprt 2y ago
  If the goose is likely to live for significantly longer than 20 years and has potential to lay $15 or $20 in the future then yes I'd probably buy that goose for $250. Of course there's risk with it (eg. Google might significantly lose business to competitors) but that's why you diversify. A PE of 20 for a mature company like Google isn't crazy. Even Coca Cola has a high PE at 28.
- SeanAnderson 2y ago
  An alternative viewpoint is the consideration of the P/E of all of the Mag 7. These numbers might be slightly off since there's been a lot of market movement lately, but... Apple (AAPL): 34.07 Microsoft (MSFT): 35.07 Amazon (AMZN): 36.69 Alphabet (GOOGL): 21.82 Meta Platforms (META): 24.49 Nvidia (NVDA): 41.33 Tesla (TSLA): 87.87 from this perspective Google, and to a lesser extent Meta, stand out as being valued quite conservatively. Do I think Microsoft is performing 50% better than Google? Not really, no.
bflesch 2y ago
Sounds like Xerox. They have everything, some employees will become multi-billionaires within 10 yrs after they leave the company and create their own startup. But I have zero conviction this corporate moloch will be the one to productize any of it.
tediousgraffit1 2y ago
I'm ignorant, what do they have in 3) cutting edge robotics?
- SeanAnderson 2y ago
  I think OP is suggesting that because Alphabet purchased Boston Dynamics in 2013, and then sold in 2017, that they were able to take their learnings from the acquisition and integrate it in-house, but haven't shown the world the extent of their capabilities. Potentially supported by the Gemini Robotics announcement highlighting extremely dexterous robots.
- gertlex 2y ago
  It's somewhat debatable based on lack of results that have made it to market. In addition to the other comment mentioning Boston Dynamics, they are also the employers of a lot of folks that were formerly at the Open Source Robotics Foundation(?) (OSRF) (it's more complicated than that) which is behind the ROS1/ROS2 framework that are widely (not universally) used; They also have an internal division or whatever, Intrinsic Robotics (or is it Intrinsic AI? too lazy to check). Plenty of smart people that I've met are involved there! But I remain skeptical of the top level comment's take, given the lack of any robotics product execution of note by Google for a very long time now.
  - robotresearcher 2y ago
    The OSRF people went to Intrinsic, not Google proper.
    - gertlex 2y ago
      Thanks for the correction. Discussing with a coworker yesterday, they also pointed out the distinction I'd missed, which is that there are separate robotics groups doing research (Gemini) and applied work (Intrinsic? physicalintelligence.company; these are under the Alphabet or X projects umbrella, I infer? Really haven't paid attention.)
ein0p 2y ago
You forgot: has an active antitrust investigation which could in theory split the company in unpredictable ways.
- SeanAnderson 2y ago
  This is the biggest cloud looming over Google right now, for sure. The stock will have a lot of interested buyers the moment this issue is resolved and evaluated.
- Rastonbury 2y ago
  They also forgot GCP!
karmasimida 2y ago
Their AI strategy is just baffling. It lacks direction and vision. They have a thinking model way back ago, which is pretty good with clean CoT and good performance close to R1. But it never gets any marketing whatever. Veo2 has really good performance too, yet it is so slow in its rollout now Chinese competitors are getting all attentions because it is just easier to access. It feels to me that Google is reliving its experience with messengers where you they have multiple competing roadmaps from different parties. The execution is disoriented and slow. They will have to catch up in 2025, the fact grok is this good in one year is a wake up call to everyone, especially Google. If they failed to do so, Gemini is going nowhere, it already has no tractions outside of Google, nobody’s first instinct when it comes to AI is Gemini
- Rastonbury 2y ago
  I think its 2 things, but Google is big and slow but also they do not need to monetize the models like OAI. If they believe models get commoditized (Meta's plan), heavy investment is wasteful. AI summaries keeping Search strong and people using the Google bar instead of chatgpt is probably their priority. They have Gemini and rolled out AI in Workspace and I believe they still have the most capability million token model
  - karmasimida 2y ago
    I don’t think it is do not need to, it is mainly they can’t at this moment. None of their LLMs are better than competitors, then it is not monetizable. ChatGPT is already top 5 websites people visit, it is behind Google, but it will eat into its business very soon. That will happen regardless.
- numpad0 2y ago
  The Transformer LLM came from Google's NLP research and input method(phone keyboard) development. Prompt processing and next word prediction is exactly what CJK keyboard software always did for past 30+ years, only datacenter sized now. Doesn't ring a bell that very few, if any, of "AGI achieved" people seem to have backgrounds with or exposures to either classical NLP, or Google, and/or cultures that make heavy use of IME? To me the situation looked like that Googlers "have seen that trick" previously, and are doing bare minimum to defend the company from losing presence in this AGI hype storm.
SequoiaHope 2y ago
And yet I worked on a Google X robotics project which was later canceled and doesn’t even appear in this announcement despite those machines notionally going to Google brain for research purposes. They have a very hard time capturing value with any innovations that aren’t ads.
nitwit005 2y ago
Google had a revenue of $348 billion in 2024. For a new product to generate 1% more revenue, it needs to generate $3.48 billion annually. Even extraordinary products are rarely going to do that. Their AI products could be a huge success, and still not significantly change how valuable the company is.
- falcor84 2y ago
  Following up on the Factorio metaphor from the other thread, the bigger your factory is, the more difficult it is to change it to get to the next organization level needed for long-term success.
- gowld 2y ago
  Investors should demand that Google spin off AI, so they can invest in the high-growth part separately form the stable part.
beefnugs 2y ago
Imagine working there : you could create the best thing you always dreamed of... but you know they will cover it in ads and violate every ones privacy, and sell it to isreal to kill, then use your hard work to create an AI to replace you and fire you. why work hard to be a part of that?
tinyhouse 2y ago
Your assumptions are actually not correct. They are behind in many AI areas. Their LLM models for example are not in the same level as the frontier models. The main reason Flash 2.0 is so popular is that it's good enough for most things and is 30 times cheaper from Sonnet 3.7 for example. They definitely have pricing power and also a large stake in Anthropic, so I'm not worried about them.
tdb7893 2y ago
My experience there was that good tech was held back by an inability to have a consistent long term vision. My and many of my friends were on lots of projects that would get abruptly "reprioritized", often after yet another re-org. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what the solution is but it didn't give me confidence in their ability to execute on a long term vision, it was very demoralizing and my work ended up feeling sorta pointless (which having talked to someone recently about the state of the projects I worked on it sorta was pointless). Though that being said it's a big company so it's very possible that other orgs will execute more effectively.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Google had really great products, that almost everyone I knew used, then they scrapped them for new shiny thing that competed. The one that angers me most is Google Talk, it used to work with any XMPP client, until it did not, and now its long since dead. They made their own version of tinychat (hangouts) and then mostly killed that too. Obligatory overview of things Google has killed, because its easy to forget some of the gems: https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- tim333 2y ago
  You'd think they'd be better off spinning them off rather than killing them?
  - vaindil 2y ago
    I think if they make a product, they should support it long-term (within reason of course). Hangouts was great, for example. It could do SMS, voice and video calls, and regular web-based text chat. It was everything you need from a messaging client, all in one app. It was so close to being a real iMessage/FaceTime competitor, but instead they killed it and launched Allo/Duo instead, which was an incredibly baffling decision. Sure it could've used a bit of a facelift and some other tweaks, but they have a history of launching new, half-baked products instead of just maintaining the existing ones.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    I think GTalk being spun off into its own thing might have seen Google Talk succeed beyond whatever Hangouts became. Google Talk had a native client plus it had native clients that supported its protocol. I even messaged from my GTalk to my Facebook as a test, which worked because both were Jabber. Both companies closed both services off to anyone else. Sadly.
summerlight 2y ago
And I think this is the problem. They have all the necessary pieces and are not yet very successful at stitching them together. Google has a very strong foundation and execution skills but failed to effectively govern it. Not sure if this is "vision" or "management" or whatever, it feels like that they're just self shackling in every single possible direction. There are something like 50 different teams involved at a major launch and they make some process/infra requirement/review/integration or whatever, from good will. Imagine how much time, effort and compromises you would need to appease all of them. I think the recent memo from Sergey shows that the leadership finally acknowledges this problem at heart. But solving it is a different story of course. But a long time disconnection between IC, managements and leadership has been the culprit of this problem and at least some awareness might not hurt.
shanemhansen 2y ago
I disagree. As a former googler, that company has never had a problem creating IP. It has a problem executing on that tech to create great products. It has a real problem with canning any project that doesn't have a billion users within a year. Honestly they fail to understand how lucky they got with doubleclick and culturally the entire project evaluation criteria is based around the assumption that they can do another computer science rain dance to make it rain ads-level cash.
verall 2y ago
This is interesting because I think the opposite. What is amazing about Google seems to be their incredible ability to squander their lead in absolutely every area. Maps used to be the absolute best and now I frequently get baffling driving directions in a US major metro area. No improvements within the last 10 years. New pixel phones are worse than latest Samsung. Some huge lead in AI absolutely totaled, their investment in anthropic their only hope. Inference HW accelerators that noone uses. They are becoming like M$ - I expect M$ to be this terrible at product development - but at least M$ is fantastic at making money despite terrible products. Google has allowed search experience to slide so much people would rather use some slow-ass unreliable chatbot. Are they really losing the war on SEO or have they decided that the internet-of-shit (i.e. affiliate marketing) is more valuable?
- tim333 2y ago
  Maps are still pretty good. I use street view and the reviews and opening hours a lot. Which competitor can I use for that? I think the driving directions may have got messed up by merging with Waze.
  - verall 2y ago
    Yes, the reviews are still very good, but I think this is more due to users (as a 6-point local guide myself) and less due to google. I am seeing bot-generated reviews more and more often, and when I look at what happened to search, I don't have a lot of faith in google to do a better job with maps. But I sure hope they do, because I'm with you - I really do rely on maps reviews.
malthaus 2y ago
just having the right ingredients doesn't make you a great cook
littlestymaar 2y ago
Google has massive technological assets, but as an organization it has shown repeatedly that it is completely unable to leverage pretty much any of it as a viable business. On the tech side they are excellent, but on the management/business/corporate culture side they have repeatedly proven that they are much less competent than pretty much everyone else. Fortunately for them, they have a very prolific cow to milk with their ads business, and that's where they get their valuation from, but there tech is legitimately undervalued because they have repeatedly shown that they don't know how to convert that into business.
Beijinger 2y ago
I think they hired the wrong people for too long. At least this is my impression. (no, I did not apply). Based on P/E the US stock market is overvalued. So I would be careful with "undervaluation". Most undervalued tech stocks are probably in China. Google also lost a lot to LLM. I use perplexity now 50% of the time, where I would have used Google. I also read a lot of "degoogeling" and "going off Amazon". My impressions of both companies are not the best. I have a gmail account I never got access back, even with the right password. And Amazon defrauded me of 40 USD. Claimed in a chat that they would reimburse express shipment after they f. up but then did not and called it a "misunderstanding". I have somewhere list of the most valuable companies. And it changed every decade. So, past performance is not a guarantee for future performance :-)
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  The Chinese stock market is still a crapshoot, so even if stocks are undervalued, if you don't have inside information you can't make much money beyond trying to ride the waves of those who do. So the undervaluing makes sense to a degree (the stock market can't operate very efficiently).
  - Beijinger 2y ago
    You can buy a tech Chinese ETF.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      Chinese tech ETFs haven’t done very well, basically as anemic as emerging market funds are now (which are heavy into Chinese tech companies anyways). You aren’t making money with these right now, which might mean they are undervalued, but they seem to go boom the bust too quickly to be long term holds.
      - Beijinger 2y ago
        Well, they are of performing well, this means they might be bad or they might be undervalued. It was asked, what is undervalued? Not what did perform well (and might be overvalued). Bust is unlikely with an ETF. They rebalance without you having to do anything. Most tech might come from China in the future.
baq 2y ago
In addition to all that they also own a lot of starlink shares...
xp84 2y ago
I think all those are basically true, but I still don’t see them actually dominating any space besides their “gross monopolist” categories - ads and their dominant Chrome and Android that enhances those ads. In everything else (look at GCP) they’re performing worse than their products merit. I think what keeps Google up at night is knowing that their ads business which pays all of the bills could be upended by regulation or by disruptive consumer AI of some kind and they’d then have approximately nothing in terms of revenue.
tim333 2y ago
>lacks is excitement and hype They have due to circumstances a different business model to OpenAI, Claude, Grok etc. Open-Claude-Grok: "our AI is so cool, AGI next year" but we are losing money so invest in us at a $crazy bn valuation Google: We are swimming in money from ads so no need to hype anything. If anything saying we will dominate AI as well as search, email, video, ads, browsers, phones etc would just get us broken up. So advance quietly.
- cvhc 2y ago
  Agree. A majority of people on HN are in a startup mood so they feel a company should market aggressively to attract investments and expand. But I don't think Google would achieve more than marginal gain were they to aggressively make Gemini/Imagen/Veo available to Search/YouTube/Workspace users, and the cost could be terribly high. Gemini has been one of the most cost-efficient models. Probably this is exactly what Google needs for productization.
andruby 2y ago
Google is an Engineering company. What they're really bad at, in my opinion, is productizing their technology. Google Cloud is decent, again in my opinion, because they can more or less copy the product vision from AWS and focus on the technical excellence. When were you last excited to use a Google product or service? Part of the problem is also their internal incentives that lead to lot's of products being retired waay too soon, leaving behind a lot of users and hurting their reputation a lot.
htrp 2y ago
Fire Sundar
candyman 2y ago
First of all if you are going to talk about valuation then that should be included here. And Google has always been terrible at developing and managing products. The list is too long to begin writing down. One funny example is the Pixel. I had a meeting with a slew of Google managers regarding mobile strategy (maps, reservations) and every single one of them had an iPhone. I doubt any of them ever even tried a Pixel. Same with the dozens (hundreds?) of software products that have died off or languished over the past 20 years.
mvdtnz 2y ago
What? Have you ever used Gemini? It's awful. Like, unusable.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

BoredPositron 2y ago

They faked a lot of the showcases in the last years and their public offerings are just weird. Ever heard of https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx/ https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx/ or https://labs.google/fx/tools/video-fx https://labs.google/fx/tools/video-fx ? Because these sites are the consumer facing video and image model UIs and literally no normal person knows.

LeoPanthera 2y ago
That's because normal people are supposed to use the Gemini chat interface, which has access to the same image generation model as ImageFX, and I'd imagine video is coming.
moffkalast 2y ago
> VideoFX isn't available in your country yet. That's why nobody knows about it.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> ImageFX isn't available in your country yet > VideoFX isn't available in your country yet Maybe that's why? I still maintain the reason they're playing catch-up with everyone else wrt. LLMs is because their Gemini models were not available in the EU until recently. Back when they were doing their releases, years ago, like everyone else here I took one look, saw the "not available in your country" banner, and stopped caring at all.

thefourthchime 2y ago

This is all true, but at the end of the day, the shareholders care about return on value, and they get that from selling ads. All this amazing tech doesn't generate any revenue.

simpaticoder 2y ago
People said the same thing about Bell Labs and they were profoundly wrong. There is nuance. Saying A about B and being wrong does not imply saying A about C means you're wrong. It is indeed possible to lose focus on revenue and die. But it is also possible to focus too much on revenue and die. It is unclear if Google will achieve anything from it's "pure research" investments, but certainly they have room to try, and I personally am glad they are doing so.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > People said the same thing about Bell Labs and they were profoundly wrong. They were profoundly wrong, but not about Bell Labs' ability to create value from their research. That, they were absolutely dead-on about. AT&T and Bell Labs were absolutely awful at reading the room about what their technology could do and how it could be monetized. Some of that was just packaging things the right way, and some of it - like charging absolutely insane license fees for UNIX in the 80s and 90s during the beginnings of the personal computing revolution - was because of lazy execs who didn't want to really put in any effort. Either way, I'm not using a Bell Labs LabsBook Pro to write code for a UNIX OS, and I'm not using Bellgle to search for information. AT&T ultimately thought the best way to create value from Bell Labs was to sell that division. We're in a long, hot AI summer, but we've had winters too. Who knows which hemisphere they're in at Google right now.

renewiltord 2y ago

[flagged]

BbzzbB 2y ago

None of this will matter if the actual business (search) suffers.

shrewduser 2y ago

Google make almost all their money from search, an extremely lucrative property, which is under threat from all the new ai players. So while they have a bunch of cool tech on the possibility horizon the only thing the market cares about is the ability to make money and there's some uncertainty on that front.

spankalee 2y ago

On one hand, I agree with you, on the other, as a former Googler I think that "just needs better coaching" is a huge barrier in Google's current corporate culture and environment. Google as a whole has a long history of not being able to successfully build great products out of great tech. That seems wrong from looking at search, Gmail, Maps*, Docs*, etc., but I think these are cases where a single great insight or innovation so dominated the rest of the product qualities that it made the product successful on it's own (PageRank, AJAX, realtime collaboration). There have been so many other cases where this pattern didn't hold, and even though Google had better tech, it wasn't so much better on one axis as to pull the whole product along with it. That's the problem I see here. Maybe they have a better model. Can they make it a better product? OpenAI and Anthropic seem to ship faster, with a clearer vision, and more innovation with features around the model. Is their AI hardware acceleration really going to be a game changer if it's only ever available in-house? I do believe in Waymo, but only because they've been incrementally investing and improving it for 15 years. They need to do that with all products, instead of giving up when they're not an instant hit. *Maps, Docs, and YouTube were acquired with their key advantages in place, so I wonder how much they even count.

causal 2y ago
Yeah and even Gemini only seemed to come about because OpenAI forced their hand and gave them a product vision to follow. If OpenAI didn't exist I bet Google would still be fumbling over how to make a product out of transformers.
- zitterbewegung 2y ago
  Even OpenAI wasn’t going to release ChatGPT because the product internally was that it wasn’t that good but with some obvious internal pressure we are where we are at now.
  - sgerenser 2y ago
    I thought at the time OpenAI were clamoring that they couldn't release it because it was "too dangerous?"

swyx 2y ago

ah, HN, where a $2,000,000,000,000 market cap company (#5 in the world) is undervalued

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
antognini 2y ago
Its PE ratio is by far the lowest of the FAANG/MANGA/Magnificent 7 tech companies.

soperj 2y ago

Sounds like Xerox, they had cutting edge everything in the 70s, did nothing with it. Or AT&T, with Bell Labs inventing Unix. Or Kodak inventing the portable digital camera in 1975.

causal 2y ago
Was thinking the same thing. In some ways OpenAI is the Apple to Google's Xerox.
- synergy20 2y ago
  really? just unsubscribed OpenAI today, was one of the first to subscribe, now it lost all its edge to me, so many options elsewhere, paid or free to use. OpenAI is fading away fast. Plus all major leaders left, Microsoft is leaving too, I don't feel its future is promising anymore.
  - causal 2y ago
    That's fair. I would argue that OpenAI capitalized on transformer tech in a way that Google was late to do, but we shall see if Google will adapt faster than Xerox could
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      So far OpenAI has done nothing other than spend billions of Microsoft's dollars.
      - falcor84 2y ago
        As anecdata, I would offer that the conversations I've had with ChatGPT over these couple of years have been incredible for me. Even just for relieving loneliness, it's been worth the monthly subscription a few times over. Maybe the company and their business model are doomed to fail, but I'm grateful for what they enabled so far.

ra7 2y ago

Agreed. Google isn't aggressive enough to productize many of their ideas and their existing products feel like they're developed by N different companies with no unified experience.

chrisweekly 2y ago

Slightly off-topic, but why is it still referred to as "Google" and not "Alphabet"?

mrWiz 2y ago
Because the meaning of "Google" is clear while "Alphabet" is not.
- browningstreet 2y ago
  ...and the link is to a .google domain They foster the confusion themselves.
anp 2y ago
Same reason Facebook is still Facebook to me, probably.
infogrind 2y ago
Names stick, it’s as simple as that. In most practical situations (such as this discussion), the distinction between Google and Alphabet doesn’t matter. I once tried to rebrand an in-house, purely dev facing product. I failed.

wendyshu 2y ago

So how much GOOG have you bought?

kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago

[dead]

UncleOxidant 2y ago

Only problem is that Google has been terrible at follow-through in recent years.

synergy20 2y ago

It hired a project manager to be the CEO, who has zero charisma comparing to other big companies(Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI,Oracle,AMD, Apple, etc), that made the company "boring"

gessha 2y ago

Confusing "having the tech" with "having product-market fit" is huge here. If the company was so undervalued they wouldn't try juicing their search profits at the cost of enshitiffying their product. > Google lacks is excitement and hype People(me) used to look up to Google and the projects they had. 80/20 work/project time, moonshot projects, all the google perks, etc. It felt like the place to be. Fast forward 10 years, I just want antitrust to shatter it into smithereens. > that veneer is just dusty The problem is systematic, affecting the whole org from top to bottom and especially the top. They either get a new CEO that turns things around or become another IBM.

inetknght 2y ago

Google also has a shit reputation for privacy, a terrible (or worse) reputation for customer safety or resolution of issues, and all of that on top of psychopathic executives. All of the technology in the world doesn't make up for that.

mhh__ 2y ago

The difference might be that Google isn't run by a founder.

smileson2 2y ago

Eh the government is about to nuke them They are a roadblock to a lot of the startups backing the current administration

mark_l_watson 2y ago

I agree with you, but even though OpenAI is much lower in my esteem than Google, I would give OpenAI slightly better scores in general on productization. In the last day I have played with Gemini functionality (see https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs) that I have not tried before, and I also played with OpenAI's just released openai-agents-python library. OpenAI's examples seemed a little easier to play with; that said Gemini product manager Jason Stephen reached out to me yesterday on social media in a very helpful way after I commented on Gemini's code execution sandbox. On other similar products like Google's NotebookLLM and Open AI's GPT 4.5 Research Mode: both products are awesome.

logicallee 2y ago

>Google is probably the most undervalued tech company there is currently, by far: [reasons] The only thing you left out of this analysis is their valuation. The market values Google at $2.05T (just over $2,000,000,000,000) which is 21 times their earnings (net profit). They are valued at $250 per person on Earth while selling, annually, $43.75 per person on Earth (sales) of which $12 per person is their profit. How much would you pay to own a golden goose laying $12 in gold per year? Like, $250? If so you are the proud buyer of Google right now. (There is a buyer on every sale of every stock and this is the price they are paying right now.)

airstrike 2y ago
$12 in gold this year and $12 * (1+x) next year != $12 flat every single year
- kibwen 2y ago
  While keeping in mind that x might be a negative number.
xmprt 2y ago
If the goose is likely to live for significantly longer than 20 years and has potential to lay $15 or $20 in the future then yes I'd probably buy that goose for $250. Of course there's risk with it (eg. Google might significantly lose business to competitors) but that's why you diversify. A PE of 20 for a mature company like Google isn't crazy. Even Coca Cola has a high PE at 28.
SeanAnderson 2y ago
An alternative viewpoint is the consideration of the P/E of all of the Mag 7. These numbers might be slightly off since there's been a lot of market movement lately, but... Apple (AAPL): 34.07 Microsoft (MSFT): 35.07 Amazon (AMZN): 36.69 Alphabet (GOOGL): 21.82 Meta Platforms (META): 24.49 Nvidia (NVDA): 41.33 Tesla (TSLA): 87.87 from this perspective Google, and to a lesser extent Meta, stand out as being valued quite conservatively. Do I think Microsoft is performing 50% better than Google? Not really, no.

bflesch 2y ago

Sounds like Xerox. They have everything, some employees will become multi-billionaires within 10 yrs after they leave the company and create their own startup. But I have zero conviction this corporate moloch will be the one to productize any of it.

tediousgraffit1 2y ago

I'm ignorant, what do they have in 3) cutting edge robotics?

SeanAnderson 2y ago
I think OP is suggesting that because Alphabet purchased Boston Dynamics in 2013, and then sold in 2017, that they were able to take their learnings from the acquisition and integrate it in-house, but haven't shown the world the extent of their capabilities. Potentially supported by the Gemini Robotics announcement highlighting extremely dexterous robots.
gertlex 2y ago
It's somewhat debatable based on lack of results that have made it to market. In addition to the other comment mentioning Boston Dynamics, they are also the employers of a lot of folks that were formerly at the Open Source Robotics Foundation(?) (OSRF) (it's more complicated than that) which is behind the ROS1/ROS2 framework that are widely (not universally) used; They also have an internal division or whatever, Intrinsic Robotics (or is it Intrinsic AI? too lazy to check). Plenty of smart people that I've met are involved there! But I remain skeptical of the top level comment's take, given the lack of any robotics product execution of note by Google for a very long time now.
- robotresearcher 2y ago
  The OSRF people went to Intrinsic, not Google proper.
  - gertlex 2y ago
    Thanks for the correction. Discussing with a coworker yesterday, they also pointed out the distinction I'd missed, which is that there are separate robotics groups doing research (Gemini) and applied work (Intrinsic? physicalintelligence.company; these are under the Alphabet or X projects umbrella, I infer? Really haven't paid attention.)

ein0p 2y ago

You forgot: has an active antitrust investigation which could in theory split the company in unpredictable ways.

SeanAnderson 2y ago
This is the biggest cloud looming over Google right now, for sure. The stock will have a lot of interested buyers the moment this issue is resolved and evaluated.
Rastonbury 2y ago
They also forgot GCP!

karmasimida 2y ago

Their AI strategy is just baffling. It lacks direction and vision. They have a thinking model way back ago, which is pretty good with clean CoT and good performance close to R1. But it never gets any marketing whatever. Veo2 has really good performance too, yet it is so slow in its rollout now Chinese competitors are getting all attentions because it is just easier to access. It feels to me that Google is reliving its experience with messengers where you they have multiple competing roadmaps from different parties. The execution is disoriented and slow. They will have to catch up in 2025, the fact grok is this good in one year is a wake up call to everyone, especially Google. If they failed to do so, Gemini is going nowhere, it already has no tractions outside of Google, nobody’s first instinct when it comes to AI is Gemini

Rastonbury 2y ago
I think its 2 things, but Google is big and slow but also they do not need to monetize the models like OAI. If they believe models get commoditized (Meta's plan), heavy investment is wasteful. AI summaries keeping Search strong and people using the Google bar instead of chatgpt is probably their priority. They have Gemini and rolled out AI in Workspace and I believe they still have the most capability million token model
- karmasimida 2y ago
  I don’t think it is do not need to, it is mainly they can’t at this moment. None of their LLMs are better than competitors, then it is not monetizable. ChatGPT is already top 5 websites people visit, it is behind Google, but it will eat into its business very soon. That will happen regardless.
numpad0 2y ago
The Transformer LLM came from Google's NLP research and input method(phone keyboard) development. Prompt processing and next word prediction is exactly what CJK keyboard software always did for past 30+ years, only datacenter sized now. Doesn't ring a bell that very few, if any, of "AGI achieved" people seem to have backgrounds with or exposures to either classical NLP, or Google, and/or cultures that make heavy use of IME? To me the situation looked like that Googlers "have seen that trick" previously, and are doing bare minimum to defend the company from losing presence in this AGI hype storm.

SequoiaHope 2y ago

And yet I worked on a Google X robotics project which was later canceled and doesn’t even appear in this announcement despite those machines notionally going to Google brain for research purposes. They have a very hard time capturing value with any innovations that aren’t ads.

nitwit005 2y ago

Google had a revenue of $348 billion in 2024. For a new product to generate 1% more revenue, it needs to generate $3.48 billion annually. Even extraordinary products are rarely going to do that. Their AI products could be a huge success, and still not significantly change how valuable the company is.

falcor84 2y ago
Following up on the Factorio metaphor from the other thread, the bigger your factory is, the more difficult it is to change it to get to the next organization level needed for long-term success.
gowld 2y ago
Investors should demand that Google spin off AI, so they can invest in the high-growth part separately form the stable part.

beefnugs 2y ago

Imagine working there : you could create the best thing you always dreamed of... but you know they will cover it in ads and violate every ones privacy, and sell it to isreal to kill, then use your hard work to create an AI to replace you and fire you. why work hard to be a part of that?

tinyhouse 2y ago

Your assumptions are actually not correct. They are behind in many AI areas. Their LLM models for example are not in the same level as the frontier models. The main reason Flash 2.0 is so popular is that it's good enough for most things and is 30 times cheaper from Sonnet 3.7 for example. They definitely have pricing power and also a large stake in Anthropic, so I'm not worried about them.

tdb7893 2y ago

My experience there was that good tech was held back by an inability to have a consistent long term vision. My and many of my friends were on lots of projects that would get abruptly "reprioritized", often after yet another re-org. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what the solution is but it didn't give me confidence in their ability to execute on a long term vision, it was very demoralizing and my work ended up feeling sorta pointless (which having talked to someone recently about the state of the projects I worked on it sorta was pointless). Though that being said it's a big company so it's very possible that other orgs will execute more effectively.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

Google had really great products, that almost everyone I knew used, then they scrapped them for new shiny thing that competed. The one that angers me most is Google Talk, it used to work with any XMPP client, until it did not, and now its long since dead. They made their own version of tinychat (hangouts) and then mostly killed that too. Obligatory overview of things Google has killed, because its easy to forget some of the gems: https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/

tim333 2y ago
You'd think they'd be better off spinning them off rather than killing them?
- vaindil 2y ago
  I think if they make a product, they should support it long-term (within reason of course). Hangouts was great, for example. It could do SMS, voice and video calls, and regular web-based text chat. It was everything you need from a messaging client, all in one app. It was so close to being a real iMessage/FaceTime competitor, but instead they killed it and launched Allo/Duo instead, which was an incredibly baffling decision. Sure it could've used a bit of a facelift and some other tweaks, but they have a history of launching new, half-baked products instead of just maintaining the existing ones.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I think GTalk being spun off into its own thing might have seen Google Talk succeed beyond whatever Hangouts became. Google Talk had a native client plus it had native clients that supported its protocol. I even messaged from my GTalk to my Facebook as a test, which worked because both were Jabber. Both companies closed both services off to anyone else. Sadly.

summerlight 2y ago

And I think this is the problem. They have all the necessary pieces and are not yet very successful at stitching them together. Google has a very strong foundation and execution skills but failed to effectively govern it. Not sure if this is "vision" or "management" or whatever, it feels like that they're just self shackling in every single possible direction. There are something like 50 different teams involved at a major launch and they make some process/infra requirement/review/integration or whatever, from good will. Imagine how much time, effort and compromises you would need to appease all of them. I think the recent memo from Sergey shows that the leadership finally acknowledges this problem at heart. But solving it is a different story of course. But a long time disconnection between IC, managements and leadership has been the culprit of this problem and at least some awareness might not hurt.

shanemhansen 2y ago

I disagree. As a former googler, that company has never had a problem creating IP. It has a problem executing on that tech to create great products. It has a real problem with canning any project that doesn't have a billion users within a year. Honestly they fail to understand how lucky they got with doubleclick and culturally the entire project evaluation criteria is based around the assumption that they can do another computer science rain dance to make it rain ads-level cash.

verall 2y ago

This is interesting because I think the opposite. What is amazing about Google seems to be their incredible ability to squander their lead in absolutely every area. Maps used to be the absolute best and now I frequently get baffling driving directions in a US major metro area. No improvements within the last 10 years. New pixel phones are worse than latest Samsung. Some huge lead in AI absolutely totaled, their investment in anthropic their only hope. Inference HW accelerators that noone uses. They are becoming like M$ - I expect M$ to be this terrible at product development - but at least M$ is fantastic at making money despite terrible products. Google has allowed search experience to slide so much people would rather use some slow-ass unreliable chatbot. Are they really losing the war on SEO or have they decided that the internet-of-shit (i.e. affiliate marketing) is more valuable?

tim333 2y ago
Maps are still pretty good. I use street view and the reviews and opening hours a lot. Which competitor can I use for that? I think the driving directions may have got messed up by merging with Waze.
- verall 2y ago
  Yes, the reviews are still very good, but I think this is more due to users (as a 6-point local guide myself) and less due to google. I am seeing bot-generated reviews more and more often, and when I look at what happened to search, I don't have a lot of faith in google to do a better job with maps. But I sure hope they do, because I'm with you - I really do rely on maps reviews.

malthaus 2y ago

just having the right ingredients doesn't make you a great cook

littlestymaar 2y ago

Google has massive technological assets, but as an organization it has shown repeatedly that it is completely unable to leverage pretty much any of it as a viable business. On the tech side they are excellent, but on the management/business/corporate culture side they have repeatedly proven that they are much less competent than pretty much everyone else. Fortunately for them, they have a very prolific cow to milk with their ads business, and that's where they get their valuation from, but there tech is legitimately undervalued because they have repeatedly shown that they don't know how to convert that into business.

Beijinger 2y ago

I think they hired the wrong people for too long. At least this is my impression. (no, I did not apply). Based on P/E the US stock market is overvalued. So I would be careful with "undervaluation". Most undervalued tech stocks are probably in China. Google also lost a lot to LLM. I use perplexity now 50% of the time, where I would have used Google. I also read a lot of "degoogeling" and "going off Amazon". My impressions of both companies are not the best. I have a gmail account I never got access back, even with the right password. And Amazon defrauded me of 40 USD. Claimed in a chat that they would reimburse express shipment after they f. up but then did not and called it a "misunderstanding". I have somewhere list of the most valuable companies. And it changed every decade. So, past performance is not a guarantee for future performance :-)

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
The Chinese stock market is still a crapshoot, so even if stocks are undervalued, if you don't have inside information you can't make much money beyond trying to ride the waves of those who do. So the undervaluing makes sense to a degree (the stock market can't operate very efficiently).
- Beijinger 2y ago
  You can buy a tech Chinese ETF.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Chinese tech ETFs haven’t done very well, basically as anemic as emerging market funds are now (which are heavy into Chinese tech companies anyways). You aren’t making money with these right now, which might mean they are undervalued, but they seem to go boom the bust too quickly to be long term holds.
    - Beijinger 2y ago
      Well, they are of performing well, this means they might be bad or they might be undervalued. It was asked, what is undervalued? Not what did perform well (and might be overvalued). Bust is unlikely with an ETF. They rebalance without you having to do anything. Most tech might come from China in the future.

baq 2y ago

In addition to all that they also own a lot of starlink shares...

xp84 2y ago

I think all those are basically true, but I still don’t see them actually dominating any space besides their “gross monopolist” categories - ads and their dominant Chrome and Android that enhances those ads. In everything else (look at GCP) they’re performing worse than their products merit. I think what keeps Google up at night is knowing that their ads business which pays all of the bills could be upended by regulation or by disruptive consumer AI of some kind and they’d then have approximately nothing in terms of revenue.

tim333 2y ago

>lacks is excitement and hype They have due to circumstances a different business model to OpenAI, Claude, Grok etc. Open-Claude-Grok: "our AI is so cool, AGI next year" but we are losing money so invest in us at a $crazy bn valuation Google: We are swimming in money from ads so no need to hype anything. If anything saying we will dominate AI as well as search, email, video, ads, browsers, phones etc would just get us broken up. So advance quietly.

cvhc 2y ago
Agree. A majority of people on HN are in a startup mood so they feel a company should market aggressively to attract investments and expand. But I don't think Google would achieve more than marginal gain were they to aggressively make Gemini/Imagen/Veo available to Search/YouTube/Workspace users, and the cost could be terribly high. Gemini has been one of the most cost-efficient models. Probably this is exactly what Google needs for productization.

andruby 2y ago

Google is an Engineering company. What they're really bad at, in my opinion, is productizing their technology. Google Cloud is decent, again in my opinion, because they can more or less copy the product vision from AWS and focus on the technical excellence. When were you last excited to use a Google product or service? Part of the problem is also their internal incentives that lead to lot's of products being retired waay too soon, leaving behind a lot of users and hurting their reputation a lot.

htrp 2y ago

Fire Sundar

candyman 2y ago

First of all if you are going to talk about valuation then that should be included here. And Google has always been terrible at developing and managing products. The list is too long to begin writing down. One funny example is the Pixel. I had a meeting with a slew of Google managers regarding mobile strategy (maps, reservations) and every single one of them had an iPhone. I doubt any of them ever even tried a Pixel. Same with the dozens (hundreds?) of software products that have died off or languished over the past 20 years.

mvdtnz 2y ago

What? Have you ever used Gemini? It's awful. Like, unusable.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]