16 ms·

Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

272 points by oulipian 13y ago

fear91 13y ago
I guess the June search-algorithm updates really worked. (Kicking out everyone that earns without giving Google it's piece of the pie). Google keeps removing small business websites from its results, forcing them to use Ad-Words. This strategy cannot be sustained unless they want 100% commercial / 100% junk results. I wonder what will they do in the future.
- hartator 13y ago
  We notice some changes too since june, you think it's too push people to buy adwords? I feel too that small websites have trouble to rank against bigger ones.
  - drzaiusapelord 13y ago
    This is no conspiracy. Ignoring that larger sites have better page rank, they can also spend more on SEO. Ma and Pop's widget shop is a wordpress clunker built by their teen son. He's not spending 20 hours a week watching metrics and messing with SEO. $big_shop_webmaster certainly is.
    - judk 13y ago
      That's a bug. Google claims that quality content wins over SEO. And WordPress is professionally written software.
      - Jtsummers 13y ago
        > And WordPress is professionally written software. So are many web servers, why would this affect ranking? Content, not platform should be the determiner (though some hosted content might get penalized because of others using the same host).
- NathanKP 13y ago
  I'm no Google fanboy but what you are saying is a pretty strong accusation. Where is the data to back what you are claiming Google is doing?
  - sharkweek 13y ago
    I'm not going to defend the overall conspiracy here but I totally buy into the theory that Google would prefer a big brand ranking over several small businesses... The logic in my mind is -- Google wants the rankings to be unequivocally trustworthy, e.g., if I'm searching for an espresso machine, would I trust a small ecommerce shop where the experience could be terrible or do we just throw an Amazon or Bed Bath and Beyond result at the top because those are vetted companies. Sure, the little guy has to grind to get a better ranking and free traffic, but it should in the long term encourage better behavior by companies as they attempt to earn that trust.
  - anon1385 13y ago
    http://i.imgur.com/eBtzYic.png http://i.imgur.com/eBtzYic.png see any organic search results there?
    - notatoad 13y ago
      this bullshit example gets trotted out every time somebody tries to prove this point, but it never gets any more relevant. yes, google shows a lot of ads for a vague, contextless search query. but nobody ever searches for anything so vague unless they're trying to prove how google search results are going down the toilet. if you search for the name of a category of information, it's impossible to know what aspect is relevant to you and you're either going to get ads or irrelevant results, and google has chosen to serve ads instead of irrelevant results.. try searching for bitcoin mining, bitcoin exchange, etc, and you'll see relevant results.
      - mehster 13y ago
        Try this one: flights from los angeles to las vegas Not sure if the organic results are relevant, because I can't see any.
- krelian 13y ago
  You have some examples? I'll be happy to see because as someone who searches I'm pretty happy with the results I'm seeing.
- hugofirth 13y ago
  Anti-competitive lobbies, hugely funded by Google's competitors, have tried to make that stick in the US and EU. They have largely failed to do so both times. Prove it :)
  - fear91 13y ago
    I guess since Google got a court verdict stating that their search results are their "opinion" and thus "free speech", they cannot be really attacked from this point. Add to that the fact that their algorithm is top-secret and probably heavily compartmentalized and it becomes even harder. I am not arguing whether Google breaks a law or not, I simply say that they hurt the smaller players. Getting rankings is getting harder and harder with each update. Soon, paying for AdWords will be the only affordable option.
    - agilord 13y ago
      You do realize, that because of the increase of content publishers, getting ranking becomes harder anyway (independent to Google).
      - iamhungry 13y ago
        This is true but when Google's ad clicks increase by 20+% a quarter what you said is irrelevant, Google is keeping almost all the clicks for Adwords. So you're competing with Google's Youtube, Google Local, Google Images, and the whole shebang. Guess who's winning?
        hugofirth 13y ago
        As far as I see it there is something of a chicken and egg problem here. Google has often maintained, publicly, that its search algorithm is only interested in providing the most utility to end-users. To an extent (and in some cases, I except that there are exceptions) this holds true: If I google for a video streaming website I want Youtube to be at the top of the list. Semantically that is the correct answer to the "question" implied by the search. So: Are google services popular because they are highly represented in google's search results? -OR- Are google services highly represented in google's search results because they are popular. I absolutely do not believe that google should feel pressured to artificially demote its own offerings over fears of anti-competition litigation/legislation. On the other hand I can see an argument for clearly marking a result that points to a google service as 'belonging' to google.
- hvass 13y ago
  And this is based on what? If people are 'forced' to use AdWords it would be because of the move towards 100% not provided keywords in natural search, thus nudging you to go into AdWords to see the full search report.
  - tonfa 13y ago
    I really don't understand that. What is the relation between AdWords and not having keywords provided? Won't the search query report in adwords have actually less data than what you get for free with webmaster tools? (With adwords you will only see the traffic from the keywords you decided to bid on, while webmaster tools will show all the organic traffic, including segments you didn't know about).
- 90002 13y ago
  Can you provide any data support this claim? I haven't recognized massive removal of small business websites, but I may be wrong.
- moultano 13y ago
  Google does not make ranking changes based on revenue. We don't even collect statistics about that for ranking changes. Worrying about the fate of small sites in Google's rankings is a reasonable concern, and one that we share. But whatever you think we are doing incorrectly in ranking, it has nothing to do with making more money.
  - iamhungry 13y ago
    We don't even collect statistics about that for ranking changes. Who's "we"? Are you Larry Page to speak with such confidence? Nope, just a lowly engineer being observed by hundreds of Stanford and ivy League MBAs as your changes impact Ad Clicks, the golden eggs.
    - moultano 13y ago
      I know you're basically just trolling, but I'll reply seriously anyways. I'm one of the people who makes changes to Google's rankings. As a result, for any change I want to make, I have to collect the statistics to justify it. This is done with the help of an analyst who has a different reporting chain from the ranking engineers in order to ensure that they remain unbiased. These statistics include things like what results people click on, how often people hit "next page," how humans rate the results before and after the change, etc. (None of these statistics involve ads or revenue in any way.) Once we've collected those statistics, the analyst writes up a report about the change summarizing their findings and pointing out any areas of concern. This report is then presented at a weekly launch meeting, where the ranking leads review each change both for its metrics and for its complexity, ongoing infrastructure cost, etc. and make a decision about whether to launch it. You can view an example launch meeting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      FWIW, for most engineers the entire Search org chart, all the way up to Larry, is engineers. Larry was an engineer, Alan Eustace was a hardware engineer, Amit Singhal is an engineer. In my management chain there are two people with an M.S. in computer science (Larry is one of them), zero with MBAs, and everybody else has a Ph.D in CS. If your mental model of Google is a bunch of MBAs who tell engineers what to do, you're quite incorrect. That's Microsoft.
- cylinder 13y ago
  I started with adWords and then quickly got into the first page for organic. It doesn't matter, I still get negligible organic traffic, it's almost all paid. Seems like consumers have been trained to go to adwords results when they're looking for a service or good they want to pay for, and organic when searching pure information (free).
JonSkeptic 13y ago
I think this is interesting because it matches my user experience with Google products in a very inverted way. Google search has gotten worse and worse lately, forcing me on to other search engines with worse UIs just so that I can get useful results. Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads. But the stock value hit $1000. I guess they're doing something right, it's just not something that affects me in any positive way. [EDIT]:'affects', not 'effects'
- lawdawg 13y ago
  This is because Google has started optimizing for the 99% use case, which most HN'ers usually don't fall under. They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.
  - golergka 13y ago
    I'm a bit confused about that. Doesn't their algorithm take the user's profile into account?
    - nonchalance 13y ago
      >Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads. Those concerns are completely unrelated to their algorithm. I doubt they want to maintain many Youtube UIs.
    - antsar 13y ago
      Some of their algorithms, yes. But that doesn't mean that users who fall into the "elite and whiny" bunch get the privilege of using the service ad-free and in a format that doesn't work as well for their business.
    - pilsetnieks 13y ago
      I'm not in any way affiliated with Google but a Google employee has strongly and empathetically suggested to me that the ad people (and algorithms) have absolutely no access to user account data. That is the reason why AdWords location targeting is kinda broken currently (at least on non-mobile devices it relies on IP geolocation). If one day AdWords start serving geographically correct ads for everyone, that's the day when the ad people got access to account data.
TomGullen 13y ago
A nice 10 ball if you got in on their IPO.
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  or the 900 calls last night
  - AtTheLast 13y ago
    I wish I would have bought some calls. Google always seems to smash earnings and jump up a nice percentage.
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      ...except for the last two quarters, where it missed earnings and the stock took a huge tumble after they came out. GOOG tumbled from $813 -> $774 in April when earnings came out, and from $923 -> $882 in July. That's probably why calls were affordable this earnings season; after the last couple quarters, the street didn't expect Google to blow out earnings.
- giarc 13y ago
  Would you still be holding onto those shares at this point? I would hope so but perhaps many sold earlier.
wehadfun 13y ago
I found an article from 2007 that predicted this. May be some even earlier. http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/06/google-hits-all-time-high-but-it-could-hit-1-000/ http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/06/google-hits-all-tim...
- hdevalence 13y ago
  Such predictions are only relevant if we also see all of their other past predictions, of course.
Theodores 13y ago
Advertising sales is a good indicator as to how well the economy is doing - if times are good then people advertise, if everyone is screaming recession then there is not so much money around to advertise. Hence, if Google does well does that mean the economy as a whole is doing well? Is the Google share price a good indicator, perhaps a better indicator than conventional metrics such as employment level or the FTSE?
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  No, GDP growth and unemployment are better measures.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > No, GDP growth and unemployment are better measures. GDP alone is a sufficient statistic, since the definition of a recession is very precise, and is based on GDP growth.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    Grandparent poster is looking for leading indicators, since that's where you make your money. GDP growth, by definition, tracks how the economy is doing today. Unemployment is a lagging indicator, tracking how the economy did a few months ago, because it takes businesses time to hire. Bond yields and stock market prices are considered leading indicators, because traders try to anticipate how the economy will do in the future. To beat the market you need reliable indicators that are more leading than the stock market. Some of the ones people look at are advertising spending (companies only advertise when they expect consumers will have money to spend in the near future), capital investment (companies invest in new productive capacity when they expect demand will be higher in the future), and R&D spending (companies can only afford to spend on speculative goals when they have cash burning a hole in their bottom line).
- brymaster 13y ago
  No, dollars are scarce so there's more competition for those dollars. Advertising has become more relevant but that's not an indicator that "times are good." Tactics are used to get people to spend money they don't have.
debt 13y ago
It seems Google has entered a stage where the data is starting to really pay off. They seem to be using it not only to help consumers but also tweak their own business decisions. That's some powerful stuff.
- brymaster 13y ago
  No, Google is merely squeezing organic results off their SERPs and replacing them with ads. That's not helping consumers as they prefer organic results. They have to continuously stuff more ads into the model to keep the growth machine running, making tweaks here and there. Google is probably only a few years away from adding "paid inclusion" into the results like Yahoo used to have, where you could literally pay to have your result listed at the top of the page where it wouldn't look like an advertisement. "Google said that paid-for clicks increased by a quarter during the July-to-September period, from a year earlier, the highest rate of growth in the past year." How Google is Killing Organic Search https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971560 Forrester: Consumers Prefer Organic Search, Not Search Ads, For Discovery http://searchengineland.com/forrester-consumers-prefer-organic-search-not-search-ads-for-discovery-164112 http://searchengineland.com/forrester-consumers-prefer-organ...
dragontamer 13y ago
The value of a company is not measured in its individual stock price, but instead measured in its market cap. The real headline should be: Google hits $330 Billion market cap, making it the 3rd most valuable company in the world.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  True that. Too many people are obsessed with the stock price, when really it's just marketcap/outstanding shares...
  - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
    If a person owns share of GOOG, then I think its allowable.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      I trade stocks, it's a large part (majority?) of my income. The only metric I care about is the market value of my shares over the book value (ie. percent increase). It's the only thing that counts (since it directly reflects my profit). Edit - milestones are nice, they're a bit of a psychological boost - but ultimately are worthless (except for said psychological boost they give to other traders, thus potentially driving up price).
- nonchalance 13y ago
  $1000/sh seems like a more momentous headline than $330B market cap. On the other hand, It's more likely that we see the headline "$1T company" than "$3030.30/sh"
  - astrodust 13y ago
    They could've hit this years ago by doing a 10:1 stock consolidation. Fetishizing over share prices is meaningless. What if they had only six shares? Market cap is what matters.
trevmckendrick 13y ago
Share price is relatively meaningless. It needs to be paired to total shares outstanding. It's arbitrary by itself because it's a function of shares outstanding and total market value, one of which the company can (relatively easily) control via stock splits.
- smoorman1024 13y ago
  Well GOOG added $36 billion dollars of market cap overnight. To put that into perspective that is 9 BBRYs (RIMM), 1.5 TSLA's, 1.5 LNKD's, or 0.5 UNP's (Union Pacific).
  - xentronium 13y ago
    How come LNKD is so expensive?
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      LNKD is expensive because it participates in the social-networking stock bubble.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  I don't think stock splits usually result in "X stock price plummets by 50%" headlines.
  - guiomie 13y ago
    I don't think this is what he was insinuating either.
- ketralnis 13y ago
  Nobody is denying this. It's an all-time high for this company. Where do you see people claiming that the $1k number is meaningful on its own?
  - 13y ago
ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
This anecdotally proves that focusing in on your core business can result in stronger earning potential. It's not a new concept, but it is somewhat easier to explain to my boss (who needs to learn focus).
fersho311 13y ago
Chipotle hit $500 for the first time ever: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACMG&ei=R15hUrCcG6i2iAL_jgE https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACMG&ei=R15hUrCcG6i2i... As we head towards a strong earnings season, I feel that we might see many companies hitting their highest ever stock price, especially now that the government shutdown has been resolved (sort of)
- adventured 13y ago
  54 PE ratio, growing at 6%. Welcome to another extreme Fed bubble, round three. A round of POMO shots on the house! What happens to stocks with 60 and 80 pe ratios, growing at 6% to 12% when the music stops? Same thing that always happens. Need a Dr. Koop example? How about RetailMeNot (SALE). By the time this bubble is done, they'll probably have a $2.5 to $3 billion market cap, with not even the slightest of fundamentals to support that. Yellen's dove policy will see this stock market pushed to the limits, and then see it crash spectacularly, again. Repeating asset bubbles is the only trick they know.
  - fersho311 13y ago
    Good point. But till the crash, lets ride the wave and make some money.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      But how do you know when to get out?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - sgustard 13y ago
        Just before everyone else does.
robryan 13y ago
I think this is on the back of product listing ads which are now aggressively pushed, these combined with regular ads crowd out the organic results on ecommerce bases searches. Unlike text based ads which require significant time/ tech investment to create a campaign across a large number of products, product listing ads just require a merchant to upload a feed.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Google historically left a lot of money on the table (not using every spot on the page for ads, giving away services with real value, etc.) They decided to stop doing that when they decided they were a 'peer' of Apple's. The shareholders love it because it means Google will finally be pulling in as much cash as they 'can' vs as much as they needed. Users seem to be somewhat divided on the issue. Sophisticated users and people who are long time observers (like Danny Sullivan) have noted that Google is squeezing the value proposition at the expense of people who can ill afford it. ('Ranking' on Google is very much a pay to play kind of thing these days with their page layout). As others have mentioned they have gone all in as an exploiter of their demographic data. And "thinking big" as Larry would always exhort people to do, includes thinking about how much money you could get for the sorts of things that only someone who has Google's knowledge of the activity stream can get. Now historically this has often been associated with fading influence and success (the old 'killing the goose that lays the egg' kind of thing). It will be interesting to see if Google is an example of this or they manage to grow into actually being a peer of Apple.
- iamhungry 13y ago
  For those not keeping track, it really started with Larry Page's ascent to the throne. Panda, Penguin and god knows what made it extremely hard for small sites (read non-advertisers) to rank. Google's PR people kept saying this and that but their ad clicks were increasing by 20-30% a quarter. How stupid do they think we are? Ads are much more relevant in most cases (anecdotal but try it) of high value CPC words. Now for most commercial searches you see dozens of ads and a few organic results, almost always from sites that also advertise on Google (Amazon, eBay, HP, Dell and the likes.) So the credibility of Google search results for those looking carefully is zero. Search is a blackbox and we're suppose t trust them, but if the trust goes, they're toast. Historically it takes a while for the truth to trickle down to the masses, but it does.
- md224 13y ago
  > 'Ranking' on Google is very much a pay to play kind of thing these days with their page layout Could you expand on this? Are you referring to how AdWords content is visually privileged over organic search results?
blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Sure wish I'd bought some when it first came out at $180.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  $85, actually!
qdog 13y ago
Google doesn't pay dividends or give public shares voting rights, while I get it that people believe the intrinsic value will appear at some point, this is not how I would like to invest money in a company, regardless of what price the stock hits.
- vpeters25 13y ago
  I think the same and wonder why aren't shareholders pressuring Google to start paying dividends.
  - jpadkins 13y ago
    because goog is a type of tech startup fund. Its a bet that google can identify, acquire, and integrate high quality tech companies and get better returns than any etf or hedge fund can. Some investors want google to take those profits from the cash cows and spend it on tech ventures instead of dividends.
  - qdog 13y ago
    Shareholders don't have voting rights, how can they pressure Google to do anything? I don't know if they should be paying a dividend at the moment, but their stock conveys no power to the stockholder. It's like paying taxes without getting to vote. Their stock price might go up for the next decade for all I know, and it's not like they don't make money or something. I just don't want to invest my money without getting something in return other than the ability to convey my investment to someone else.
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      > Shareholders don't have voting rights, how can they pressure Google to do anything? Shareholders do have voting rights at present. The problem is that Google Class B shares carry 10x the voting rights of Class A shares. Thus, even an overwhelming majority of market cap would still be unable to outvote the insiders. Google is in the process of introducing a nonvoting C share class. This innovation was passed despite a mere 12% support among Google's Class A shares, because the insiders voted all of their Class B shares in favor. From now on, new shares created through stock options will no longer dilute insider control of the company.
atlanticus 13y ago
So I guess the Snowden leaks collapsing US internet dominance didn't materialize.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Well, two issues. First, there hasn't really been much time for viable replacements to be constructed, so who knows? Second, people who thought that was a likelihood as opposed to a faint possibility were deluding themselves.
- largote 13y ago
  Only a very small proportion of the population cares about this.
dm2 13y ago
Would a reverse stock split or stock merge encourage more people to buy the stock or less, or no effect?
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  More people would buy it, because small portfolios would be able to afford a share without ridiculous risk imbalances.
fersho311 13y ago
Fun fact: If you had bought a call yesterday for $300, it would now be worth $3100. 1000% return on investment. Yesterday I bought a chipotle call (because of earnings release) for $600 and now its worth $3600 Now that the political budget debate is over, I think we will see a spectacularly volatile movement upwards and strong earnings will push stocks to absurd prices way over any reason. The best thing to do is to ride the wave and make some extra cash. It doesn't make any sense (price vs earnings), but as long I'm making money thats okay. Do keep in mind that Google did not jump $130/share because its earnings was spectacularly better than ever. It made this huge jump because the market is headed for another bullish run and the market is crazy. I trade stocks on the side for fun, and I blog about my trades here: http://songzmoney.quora.com/ http://songzmoney.quora.com/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- junto 13y ago
  Newbie here. How and where can you 'buy these calls'?
  - fersho311 13y ago
    Any trading platform will let you buy calls and puts. They are called options. Here's a few examples: scottrade, ameritrade, etrade. I personally use ameritrade.
  - dennisgorelik 13y ago
    Don't buy, unless you want to gamble away some of your cash.
- Hermel 13y ago
  Google has a tradition of jumping up to 10% in either direction after quarterly releases. It might be worthwhile to buy both, put and call options before a release and then profit from the one that goes into the money.
  - 13y ago
znowi 13y ago
And no privacy issues, NSA revelations, services shutdown, Google+ coercion, and further exploitation of users have any effect on the bottom line. You can get away with anything when you're big and important.
elwell 13y ago
wow, they went up over $100 today. https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1382126400000&chddm=1955&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:GOOG&ntsp=0&ei=doxhUgGL69EB6XM https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
jluxenberg 13y ago
P/E remains pretty stable at 30-ish http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+p%2Fe+and+price+NASDAQ%3AGOOG+between+01%2F01%2F2008+and+10%2F19%2F2013 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+p%2Fe+and+price+NA...
keepkalm 13y ago
Wonder if people actually went out and spent on AdWords when the organic keyword data went to 100% not provided. Has to account for at least some of it.
- tonfa 13y ago
  Why would they? Using adwords doesn't give you the data that used to be provided. The search query report does the same kind of aggregation as webmaster tools.
ashray5 13y ago
Its interesting how $1000 is a psychological number for a lot of people, $1000 number makes the Google stock join some "prestigious" $1000 club according to CNBC. Some people now think its too expensive because of its $1000 and Facebook is in $50s. If Google decided to split the stock early on, it wouldn't have seen this day, and all the news that comes with crossing the $1000 mark. So much for all the financial models that assume investors are rational.
yeukhon 13y ago
I am always surprised at how much Google can make. I always see ads but I barely ever clicked on ads. I might click on one or two ocassionally. I might click on a few ads before Youtube content is loaded for me. But that's it. I can understand a few clicks * two billion users is a lot of clicks. Remember those days when adsense was crazy on everyone's page. Somehow, Google's ad marketing works so well (and probably pretty expensive by now) that it just works. Plus, since everyone is moving to the Internet, ads are just a norm to do for businesses.
alraiah 13y ago
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272 points by oulipian 13y ago

I guess the June search-algorithm updates really worked. (Kicking out everyone that earns without giving Google it's piece of the pie). Google keeps removing small business websites from its results, forcing them to use Ad-Words. This strategy cannot be sustained unless they want 100% commercial / 100% junk results. I wonder what will they do in the future.

hartator 13y ago
We notice some changes too since june, you think it's too push people to buy adwords? I feel too that small websites have trouble to rank against bigger ones.
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  This is no conspiracy. Ignoring that larger sites have better page rank, they can also spend more on SEO. Ma and Pop's widget shop is a wordpress clunker built by their teen son. He's not spending 20 hours a week watching metrics and messing with SEO. $big_shop_webmaster certainly is.
  - judk 13y ago
    That's a bug. Google claims that quality content wins over SEO. And WordPress is professionally written software.
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      > And WordPress is professionally written software. So are many web servers, why would this affect ranking? Content, not platform should be the determiner (though some hosted content might get penalized because of others using the same host).
NathanKP 13y ago
I'm no Google fanboy but what you are saying is a pretty strong accusation. Where is the data to back what you are claiming Google is doing?
- sharkweek 13y ago
  I'm not going to defend the overall conspiracy here but I totally buy into the theory that Google would prefer a big brand ranking over several small businesses... The logic in my mind is -- Google wants the rankings to be unequivocally trustworthy, e.g., if I'm searching for an espresso machine, would I trust a small ecommerce shop where the experience could be terrible or do we just throw an Amazon or Bed Bath and Beyond result at the top because those are vetted companies. Sure, the little guy has to grind to get a better ranking and free traffic, but it should in the long term encourage better behavior by companies as they attempt to earn that trust.
- anon1385 13y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/eBtzYic.png http://i.imgur.com/eBtzYic.png see any organic search results there?
  - notatoad 13y ago
    this bullshit example gets trotted out every time somebody tries to prove this point, but it never gets any more relevant. yes, google shows a lot of ads for a vague, contextless search query. but nobody ever searches for anything so vague unless they're trying to prove how google search results are going down the toilet. if you search for the name of a category of information, it's impossible to know what aspect is relevant to you and you're either going to get ads or irrelevant results, and google has chosen to serve ads instead of irrelevant results.. try searching for bitcoin mining, bitcoin exchange, etc, and you'll see relevant results.
    - mehster 13y ago
      Try this one: flights from los angeles to las vegas Not sure if the organic results are relevant, because I can't see any.
krelian 13y ago
You have some examples? I'll be happy to see because as someone who searches I'm pretty happy with the results I'm seeing.
hugofirth 13y ago
Anti-competitive lobbies, hugely funded by Google's competitors, have tried to make that stick in the US and EU. They have largely failed to do so both times. Prove it :)
- fear91 13y ago
  I guess since Google got a court verdict stating that their search results are their "opinion" and thus "free speech", they cannot be really attacked from this point. Add to that the fact that their algorithm is top-secret and probably heavily compartmentalized and it becomes even harder. I am not arguing whether Google breaks a law or not, I simply say that they hurt the smaller players. Getting rankings is getting harder and harder with each update. Soon, paying for AdWords will be the only affordable option.
  - agilord 13y ago
    You do realize, that because of the increase of content publishers, getting ranking becomes harder anyway (independent to Google).
    - iamhungry 13y ago
      This is true but when Google's ad clicks increase by 20+% a quarter what you said is irrelevant, Google is keeping almost all the clicks for Adwords. So you're competing with Google's Youtube, Google Local, Google Images, and the whole shebang. Guess who's winning?
      - hugofirth 13y ago
        As far as I see it there is something of a chicken and egg problem here. Google has often maintained, publicly, that its search algorithm is only interested in providing the most utility to end-users. To an extent (and in some cases, I except that there are exceptions) this holds true: If I google for a video streaming website I want Youtube to be at the top of the list. Semantically that is the correct answer to the "question" implied by the search. So: Are google services popular because they are highly represented in google's search results? -OR- Are google services highly represented in google's search results because they are popular. I absolutely do not believe that google should feel pressured to artificially demote its own offerings over fears of anti-competition litigation/legislation. On the other hand I can see an argument for clearly marking a result that points to a google service as 'belonging' to google.
hvass 13y ago
And this is based on what? If people are 'forced' to use AdWords it would be because of the move towards 100% not provided keywords in natural search, thus nudging you to go into AdWords to see the full search report.
- tonfa 13y ago
  I really don't understand that. What is the relation between AdWords and not having keywords provided? Won't the search query report in adwords have actually less data than what you get for free with webmaster tools? (With adwords you will only see the traffic from the keywords you decided to bid on, while webmaster tools will show all the organic traffic, including segments you didn't know about).
90002 13y ago
Can you provide any data support this claim? I haven't recognized massive removal of small business websites, but I may be wrong.
moultano 13y ago
Google does not make ranking changes based on revenue. We don't even collect statistics about that for ranking changes. Worrying about the fate of small sites in Google's rankings is a reasonable concern, and one that we share. But whatever you think we are doing incorrectly in ranking, it has nothing to do with making more money.
- iamhungry 13y ago
  We don't even collect statistics about that for ranking changes. Who's "we"? Are you Larry Page to speak with such confidence? Nope, just a lowly engineer being observed by hundreds of Stanford and ivy League MBAs as your changes impact Ad Clicks, the golden eggs.
  - moultano 13y ago
    I know you're basically just trolling, but I'll reply seriously anyways. I'm one of the people who makes changes to Google's rankings. As a result, for any change I want to make, I have to collect the statistics to justify it. This is done with the help of an analyst who has a different reporting chain from the ranking engineers in order to ensure that they remain unbiased. These statistics include things like what results people click on, how often people hit "next page," how humans rate the results before and after the change, etc. (None of these statistics involve ads or revenue in any way.) Once we've collected those statistics, the analyst writes up a report about the change summarizing their findings and pointing out any areas of concern. This report is then presented at a weekly launch meeting, where the ranking leads review each change both for its metrics and for its complexity, ongoing infrastructure cost, etc. and make a decision about whether to launch it. You can view an example launch meeting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    FWIW, for most engineers the entire Search org chart, all the way up to Larry, is engineers. Larry was an engineer, Alan Eustace was a hardware engineer, Amit Singhal is an engineer. In my management chain there are two people with an M.S. in computer science (Larry is one of them), zero with MBAs, and everybody else has a Ph.D in CS. If your mental model of Google is a bunch of MBAs who tell engineers what to do, you're quite incorrect. That's Microsoft.
cylinder 13y ago
I started with adWords and then quickly got into the first page for organic. It doesn't matter, I still get negligible organic traffic, it's almost all paid. Seems like consumers have been trained to go to adwords results when they're looking for a service or good they want to pay for, and organic when searching pure information (free).

JonSkeptic 13y ago

I think this is interesting because it matches my user experience with Google products in a very inverted way. Google search has gotten worse and worse lately, forcing me on to other search engines with worse UIs just so that I can get useful results. Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads. But the stock value hit $1000. I guess they're doing something right, it's just not something that affects me in any positive way. [EDIT]:'affects', not 'effects'

lawdawg 13y ago
This is because Google has started optimizing for the 99% use case, which most HN'ers usually don't fall under. They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.
- golergka 13y ago
  I'm a bit confused about that. Doesn't their algorithm take the user's profile into account?
  - nonchalance 13y ago
    >Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads. Those concerns are completely unrelated to their algorithm. I doubt they want to maintain many Youtube UIs.
  - antsar 13y ago
    Some of their algorithms, yes. But that doesn't mean that users who fall into the "elite and whiny" bunch get the privilege of using the service ad-free and in a format that doesn't work as well for their business.
  - pilsetnieks 13y ago
    I'm not in any way affiliated with Google but a Google employee has strongly and empathetically suggested to me that the ad people (and algorithms) have absolutely no access to user account data. That is the reason why AdWords location targeting is kinda broken currently (at least on non-mobile devices it relies on IP geolocation). If one day AdWords start serving geographically correct ads for everyone, that's the day when the ad people got access to account data.

TomGullen 13y ago

A nice 10 ball if you got in on their IPO.

pyrrhotech 13y ago
or the 900 calls last night
- AtTheLast 13y ago
  I wish I would have bought some calls. Google always seems to smash earnings and jump up a nice percentage.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    ...except for the last two quarters, where it missed earnings and the stock took a huge tumble after they came out. GOOG tumbled from $813 -> $774 in April when earnings came out, and from $923 -> $882 in July. That's probably why calls were affordable this earnings season; after the last couple quarters, the street didn't expect Google to blow out earnings.
giarc 13y ago
Would you still be holding onto those shares at this point? I would hope so but perhaps many sold earlier.

wehadfun 13y ago

I found an article from 2007 that predicted this. May be some even earlier. http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/06/google-hits-all-time-high-but-it-could-hit-1-000/ http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/06/google-hits-all-tim...

hdevalence 13y ago
Such predictions are only relevant if we also see all of their other past predictions, of course.

Theodores 13y ago

Advertising sales is a good indicator as to how well the economy is doing - if times are good then people advertise, if everyone is screaming recession then there is not so much money around to advertise. Hence, if Google does well does that mean the economy as a whole is doing well? Is the Google share price a good indicator, perhaps a better indicator than conventional metrics such as employment level or the FTSE?

yetanotherphd 13y ago
No, GDP growth and unemployment are better measures.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > No, GDP growth and unemployment are better measures. GDP alone is a sufficient statistic, since the definition of a recession is very precise, and is based on GDP growth.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Grandparent poster is looking for leading indicators, since that's where you make your money. GDP growth, by definition, tracks how the economy is doing today. Unemployment is a lagging indicator, tracking how the economy did a few months ago, because it takes businesses time to hire. Bond yields and stock market prices are considered leading indicators, because traders try to anticipate how the economy will do in the future. To beat the market you need reliable indicators that are more leading than the stock market. Some of the ones people look at are advertising spending (companies only advertise when they expect consumers will have money to spend in the near future), capital investment (companies invest in new productive capacity when they expect demand will be higher in the future), and R&D spending (companies can only afford to spend on speculative goals when they have cash burning a hole in their bottom line).
brymaster 13y ago
No, dollars are scarce so there's more competition for those dollars. Advertising has become more relevant but that's not an indicator that "times are good." Tactics are used to get people to spend money they don't have.

debt 13y ago

It seems Google has entered a stage where the data is starting to really pay off. They seem to be using it not only to help consumers but also tweak their own business decisions. That's some powerful stuff.

brymaster 13y ago
No, Google is merely squeezing organic results off their SERPs and replacing them with ads. That's not helping consumers as they prefer organic results. They have to continuously stuff more ads into the model to keep the growth machine running, making tweaks here and there. Google is probably only a few years away from adding "paid inclusion" into the results like Yahoo used to have, where you could literally pay to have your result listed at the top of the page where it wouldn't look like an advertisement. "Google said that paid-for clicks increased by a quarter during the July-to-September period, from a year earlier, the highest rate of growth in the past year." How Google is Killing Organic Search https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971560 Forrester: Consumers Prefer Organic Search, Not Search Ads, For Discovery http://searchengineland.com/forrester-consumers-prefer-organic-search-not-search-ads-for-discovery-164112 http://searchengineland.com/forrester-consumers-prefer-organ...

dragontamer 13y ago

The value of a company is not measured in its individual stock price, but instead measured in its market cap. The real headline should be: Google hits $330 Billion market cap, making it the 3rd most valuable company in the world.

Mikeb85 13y ago
True that. Too many people are obsessed with the stock price, when really it's just marketcap/outstanding shares...
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  If a person owns share of GOOG, then I think its allowable.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    I trade stocks, it's a large part (majority?) of my income. The only metric I care about is the market value of my shares over the book value (ie. percent increase). It's the only thing that counts (since it directly reflects my profit). Edit - milestones are nice, they're a bit of a psychological boost - but ultimately are worthless (except for said psychological boost they give to other traders, thus potentially driving up price).
nonchalance 13y ago
$1000/sh seems like a more momentous headline than $330B market cap. On the other hand, It's more likely that we see the headline "$1T company" than "$3030.30/sh"
- astrodust 13y ago
  They could've hit this years ago by doing a 10:1 stock consolidation. Fetishizing over share prices is meaningless. What if they had only six shares? Market cap is what matters.

trevmckendrick 13y ago

Share price is relatively meaningless. It needs to be paired to total shares outstanding. It's arbitrary by itself because it's a function of shares outstanding and total market value, one of which the company can (relatively easily) control via stock splits.

smoorman1024 13y ago
Well GOOG added $36 billion dollars of market cap overnight. To put that into perspective that is 9 BBRYs (RIMM), 1.5 TSLA's, 1.5 LNKD's, or 0.5 UNP's (Union Pacific).
- xentronium 13y ago
  How come LNKD is so expensive?
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    LNKD is expensive because it participates in the social-networking stock bubble.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
I don't think stock splits usually result in "X stock price plummets by 50%" headlines.
- guiomie 13y ago
  I don't think this is what he was insinuating either.
ketralnis 13y ago
Nobody is denying this. It's an all-time high for this company. Where do you see people claiming that the $1k number is meaningful on its own?
- 13y ago

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago

This anecdotally proves that focusing in on your core business can result in stronger earning potential. It's not a new concept, but it is somewhat easier to explain to my boss (who needs to learn focus).

fersho311 13y ago

Chipotle hit $500 for the first time ever: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACMG&ei=R15hUrCcG6i2iAL_jgE https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACMG&ei=R15hUrCcG6i2i... As we head towards a strong earnings season, I feel that we might see many companies hitting their highest ever stock price, especially now that the government shutdown has been resolved (sort of)

adventured 13y ago
54 PE ratio, growing at 6%. Welcome to another extreme Fed bubble, round three. A round of POMO shots on the house! What happens to stocks with 60 and 80 pe ratios, growing at 6% to 12% when the music stops? Same thing that always happens. Need a Dr. Koop example? How about RetailMeNot (SALE). By the time this bubble is done, they'll probably have a $2.5 to $3 billion market cap, with not even the slightest of fundamentals to support that. Yellen's dove policy will see this stock market pushed to the limits, and then see it crash spectacularly, again. Repeating asset bubbles is the only trick they know.
- fersho311 13y ago
  Good point. But till the crash, lets ride the wave and make some money.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    But how do you know when to get out?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgustard 13y ago
      Just before everyone else does.

robryan 13y ago

I think this is on the back of product listing ads which are now aggressively pushed, these combined with regular ads crowd out the organic results on ecommerce bases searches. Unlike text based ads which require significant time/ tech investment to create a campaign across a large number of products, product listing ads just require a merchant to upload a feed.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Google historically left a lot of money on the table (not using every spot on the page for ads, giving away services with real value, etc.) They decided to stop doing that when they decided they were a 'peer' of Apple's. The shareholders love it because it means Google will finally be pulling in as much cash as they 'can' vs as much as they needed. Users seem to be somewhat divided on the issue. Sophisticated users and people who are long time observers (like Danny Sullivan) have noted that Google is squeezing the value proposition at the expense of people who can ill afford it. ('Ranking' on Google is very much a pay to play kind of thing these days with their page layout). As others have mentioned they have gone all in as an exploiter of their demographic data. And "thinking big" as Larry would always exhort people to do, includes thinking about how much money you could get for the sorts of things that only someone who has Google's knowledge of the activity stream can get. Now historically this has often been associated with fading influence and success (the old 'killing the goose that lays the egg' kind of thing). It will be interesting to see if Google is an example of this or they manage to grow into actually being a peer of Apple.

iamhungry 13y ago
For those not keeping track, it really started with Larry Page's ascent to the throne. Panda, Penguin and god knows what made it extremely hard for small sites (read non-advertisers) to rank. Google's PR people kept saying this and that but their ad clicks were increasing by 20-30% a quarter. How stupid do they think we are? Ads are much more relevant in most cases (anecdotal but try it) of high value CPC words. Now for most commercial searches you see dozens of ads and a few organic results, almost always from sites that also advertise on Google (Amazon, eBay, HP, Dell and the likes.) So the credibility of Google search results for those looking carefully is zero. Search is a blackbox and we're suppose t trust them, but if the trust goes, they're toast. Historically it takes a while for the truth to trickle down to the masses, but it does.
md224 13y ago
> 'Ranking' on Google is very much a pay to play kind of thing these days with their page layout Could you expand on this? Are you referring to how AdWords content is visually privileged over organic search results?

blisterpeanuts 13y ago

Sure wish I'd bought some when it first came out at $180.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
$85, actually!

qdog 13y ago

Google doesn't pay dividends or give public shares voting rights, while I get it that people believe the intrinsic value will appear at some point, this is not how I would like to invest money in a company, regardless of what price the stock hits.

vpeters25 13y ago
I think the same and wonder why aren't shareholders pressuring Google to start paying dividends.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  because goog is a type of tech startup fund. Its a bet that google can identify, acquire, and integrate high quality tech companies and get better returns than any etf or hedge fund can. Some investors want google to take those profits from the cash cows and spend it on tech ventures instead of dividends.
- qdog 13y ago
  Shareholders don't have voting rights, how can they pressure Google to do anything? I don't know if they should be paying a dividend at the moment, but their stock conveys no power to the stockholder. It's like paying taxes without getting to vote. Their stock price might go up for the next decade for all I know, and it's not like they don't make money or something. I just don't want to invest my money without getting something in return other than the ability to convey my investment to someone else.
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    > Shareholders don't have voting rights, how can they pressure Google to do anything? Shareholders do have voting rights at present. The problem is that Google Class B shares carry 10x the voting rights of Class A shares. Thus, even an overwhelming majority of market cap would still be unable to outvote the insiders. Google is in the process of introducing a nonvoting C share class. This innovation was passed despite a mere 12% support among Google's Class A shares, because the insiders voted all of their Class B shares in favor. From now on, new shares created through stock options will no longer dilute insider control of the company.

atlanticus 13y ago

So I guess the Snowden leaks collapsing US internet dominance didn't materialize.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Well, two issues. First, there hasn't really been much time for viable replacements to be constructed, so who knows? Second, people who thought that was a likelihood as opposed to a faint possibility were deluding themselves.
largote 13y ago
Only a very small proportion of the population cares about this.

dm2 13y ago

Would a reverse stock split or stock merge encourage more people to buy the stock or less, or no effect?

thrownaway2424 13y ago
More people would buy it, because small portfolios would be able to afford a share without ridiculous risk imbalances.

fersho311 13y ago

Fun fact: If you had bought a call yesterday for $300, it would now be worth $3100. 1000% return on investment. Yesterday I bought a chipotle call (because of earnings release) for $600 and now its worth $3600 Now that the political budget debate is over, I think we will see a spectacularly volatile movement upwards and strong earnings will push stocks to absurd prices way over any reason. The best thing to do is to ride the wave and make some extra cash. It doesn't make any sense (price vs earnings), but as long I'm making money thats okay. Do keep in mind that Google did not jump $130/share because its earnings was spectacularly better than ever. It made this huge jump because the market is headed for another bullish run and the market is crazy. I trade stocks on the side for fun, and I blog about my trades here: http://songzmoney.quora.com/ http://songzmoney.quora.com/

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
junto 13y ago
Newbie here. How and where can you 'buy these calls'?
- fersho311 13y ago
  Any trading platform will let you buy calls and puts. They are called options. Here's a few examples: scottrade, ameritrade, etrade. I personally use ameritrade.
- dennisgorelik 13y ago
  Don't buy, unless you want to gamble away some of your cash.
Hermel 13y ago
Google has a tradition of jumping up to 10% in either direction after quarterly releases. It might be worthwhile to buy both, put and call options before a release and then profit from the one that goes into the money.
- 13y ago

znowi 13y ago

And no privacy issues, NSA revelations, services shutdown, Google+ coercion, and further exploitation of users have any effect on the bottom line. You can get away with anything when you're big and important.

elwell 13y ago

wow, they went up over $100 today. https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1382126400000&chddm=1955&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:GOOG&ntsp=0&ei=doxhUgGL69EB6XM https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...

jluxenberg 13y ago

P/E remains pretty stable at 30-ish http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+p%2Fe+and+price+NASDAQ%3AGOOG+between+01%2F01%2F2008+and+10%2F19%2F2013 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+p%2Fe+and+price+NA...

keepkalm 13y ago

Wonder if people actually went out and spent on AdWords when the organic keyword data went to 100% not provided. Has to account for at least some of it.

tonfa 13y ago
Why would they? Using adwords doesn't give you the data that used to be provided. The search query report does the same kind of aggregation as webmaster tools.

ashray5 13y ago

Its interesting how $1000 is a psychological number for a lot of people, $1000 number makes the Google stock join some "prestigious" $1000 club according to CNBC. Some people now think its too expensive because of its $1000 and Facebook is in $50s. If Google decided to split the stock early on, it wouldn't have seen this day, and all the news that comes with crossing the $1000 mark. So much for all the financial models that assume investors are rational.

yeukhon 13y ago

I am always surprised at how much Google can make. I always see ads but I barely ever clicked on ads. I might click on one or two ocassionally. I might click on a few ads before Youtube content is loaded for me. But that's it. I can understand a few clicks * two billion users is a lot of clicks. Remember those days when adsense was crazy on everyone's page. Somehow, Google's ad marketing works so well (and probably pretty expensive by now) that it just works. Plus, since everyone is moving to the Internet, ads are just a norm to do for businesses.

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