Google Shows First Cracks in Years

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-posts-rare-misses-as-revenue-comes-up-short-11556569259

by spking • 7 years ago

28 17 7 years ago

wsj.com

skilled2• 7 years ago

Non paywall link:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google...

Another one for those downvoting:

https://pastebin.com/gYP39xTa

iamgopal• 7 years ago

Nope. Any other way around ?

skilled2• 7 years ago

Works fine for me.

mrb• 7 years ago

On desktop Chrome: switch to mobile view (ctrl-shift-j then ctrl-shift-m) AND browse to https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google... This works for me.

WSJ implements a "soft paywall" that looks at various signals to determine whether it should let you see the content. These signatures include among other things: IP address, User-Agent, cookies, etc. So if you switch one of these things it gives you one more chance to bypass the paywall (eg. mobile view changes the User-Agent). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703810 In my particular case switching to firefox, or trying icognito mode doesn't work. I really have to switch to mobile view.

gopher2• 7 years ago

WSJ article isn't long. This covers all the same stuff https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/29/alphabet-earnings-q1-2019.ht...

ycombonator• 7 years ago

For all its myriad arms and efforts to diversify, Google remains essentially an old-fashioned billboard operation with a high-tech gloss—and it now faces more rivals.

etaioinshrdlu• 7 years ago

Revenue only grew 17 percent year over year. Oh no!!

Gross margin looks a bit worse.

It does of course make sense for the share price to drop in response to slowing growth... but they seem like a healthy company to me.

It's funny to think, but if the current crop of tech companies all grew 10x from where they are now, there would be nothing left but tech... I don't think that's a realistic outcome, there have got to be limits to how big a company can grow given the size of the economy.

amolo2• 7 years ago

Me too. What do these so called "analysts" have ? The magic number ?

xbmcuser• 7 years ago

Google is just indicating a world economic slowdown. Compare its revenue growth numbers with the world's economy and you will find it has a similar pattern.

amolo2• 7 years ago

Crack? That's just what analysts think.

You never disappoint with the clickbaity headlines

merricksb• 7 years ago

This paywall bypass link works for me

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-posts-rare-misses...

justboxing2• 7 years ago

Nice! Thanks. The rss query string is a neat trick. Didn't know about that.

They've even blocked outline.com now...

lquist• 7 years ago

Google has so much gas in the tank it’s ridiculous. YouTube, Maps, Waze, Gmail etc are hilariously undermonetized. See the recent move to monetize Maps a bit more. They can flip revenue switches all over the place.

tschwimmer• 7 years ago

I'm not so sure.

Youtube: By what measure are they undermonetizing Youtube? They show ads (sometimes several per video and on banners over the vide), they have premium content that you have to pay for, they're branching into livestreaming with tips and subscriptions. They're running to into issues with big brand advertisers because they can't guarantee that their Tide ad won't play over some weird child exploitation video or conspiracy theory.

Maps/Waze: Definitely room for additional monetization here. However, it's tough to balance diminished utility against revenue. If I search for Arby and it gives me results for Taco Bell and Burger King, I'm going to get frustrated and give up. Do that too many times and I learn that Maps/Waze doesn't work and try to find another app.

Gmail: Google has actually rolled back some monetization there. For example, they turned off keyword scanning in 2017[0]. I think they run into a creepiness wall if they aggressively try to monetize.

Google has always stood out because they've offered products with tremendous _value_ where value is defined as providing a lot of utility for a low price. The fact that Gmail is free and highly functional is what differentiates it from Hotmail or Outlook. In the early days of Maps, it wasn't better than a dedicated Garmin unit but it sure was a lot cheaper (It's since become a market leader in terms of quality). Google Voice, Google Photos, Youtube, GSuite all have similar stories. If Google starts to decrease the value of their products by either decreasing quality (cost) or increasing price, then they potentially lose their differentiation.

Long term I'm bullish on G. Their bets on Self Driving, AI, and life sciences are particularly attractive. They've announced some medical stuff around early cancer detection via computer vision; depending on how it develops it could be extremely lucrative (catching cancer before humans do, or even with better accuracy than humans is worth billions). Self Driving will be self-evidently valuable over the next ten years and it seems like Google is a (if not the) leader of the pack in terms of research. Brain/AI is more open ended, but you only need one or two transformational successes in this area to revolutionize industries. There's absolutely no guarantee of success (in fact I think the odds are long) but if anyone is positioning themselves to achieve these long tail outcomes, it's Google.

However, the street doesn't think long term. They want alpha, full stop. If you're not performing like clockwork, there's an ocean of other schmuck companies happy to take the street's money. Nature of the beast I'm afraid. Short-termism is built into the system.

(non)disclosure: Neither I nor any close family members work for Google. I have no Google stock other than any that may be held as part of a run of the mill index fund.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

beart• 7 years ago

Isn't part of the reason they are so dominate in all these areas due to the fact that their product is high-quality and free? Once they start monetizing and either perceived quality goes down or price goes up, competition may be able to move in.

justboxing2• 7 years ago

Paywall bypass [credit @merricksb ]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-posts-rare-misses...

Google Shows First Cracks in Years

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