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As a publicly traded company they are required to be concerned with shareholder value. These pet projects may not increase shareholder value in direct or obvi
by Tobani 11y ago
As a publicly traded company they are required to be concerned with shareholder value. These pet projects may not increase shareholder value in direct or obvious ways and there is a limit to the amount they can spend on unprofitable endeavors.
- jfoster 11y agoThey seem to me like projects that will increase shareholder value in very obvious ways. Curing diseases is one of the ways that huge pharmaceutical companies make money. They sell the cure to people who have no choice but to buy it. Great cell phone service would allow Google to have a huge advantage over other telcos, or enable dependence on Google from those telcos licensing the technology. Self-driving cars would potentially enable Google to operate a taxi-like service at massively lower costs than traditional taxi services. By passing a portion of the cost saving on to the consumer and having more reliable cars ensuring a safer ride, they would dominate that industry. I've not seen any evidence that these projects happening at Google are starved of funding in any way.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThe point is - I guess - that those are ways to increase shareholder value long-term, whereas people playing with money only care about short-term profits. So between more ads making money now and curing cancer next decade, shareholders will stupidly push for the former.
- eru 11y ago> As a publicly traded company they are required to be concerned with shareholder value. The directors of a publicly traded company are obliged to do the shareholders bidding. First, the shareholders can tell the directors to value arbitrary things, profit is just the default. Second, Google's two founders still have the majority of voting rights. So they are the shareholders directors care about.