Hacker News Reader

sales != revenue.

with the 30% commission, it would be at most $6B. From http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/google-earnings/i...:

> Alphabet posted nearly $15 billion in sales for the year from Google's "other revenues," which include cloud services and hardware products, like the Pixel phones and Google Home smart speakers.

View on HN

Even $6B is extremely far from the unprofitable claim.

Sales is, by definition, revenue. In this context, sales=revenue (although there is non-sales revenue, which is why the two words mean two different things).

I think you're getting at what is sometimes called "cost of revenue" and "net revenue" for businesses where it's important to report on sales channel costs.

Google doesn't break down the Play Store revenues this way, but for advertising there's a similar dynamic at play where it's "revenue" and "traffic acquisition costs"

Play Store sales != Google Revenue. Google gets a 30% cut, the rest goes to the app developer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com