Google Shows First Cracks in Years

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

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.

Nope. Any other way around ?

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

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.

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

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