Is it really baffling that Google’s product marketing/business people have yet another failing initiative? Have they ever shone any ability to profitably diversify outside of advertising?
That said, there have been other successful products and acquisitions which improved their ad busines. GMail, Maps, Android, Chrome all products with giant user numbers, but whose main contribution is probably to improve ads.
Still, a system like Stadia relies on convincing developers that it has a viable future, and it's difficult to build momentum when developers feel burned by the shutdown of other platforms, e.g. Google Plus or Chrome Web Store, where they've sold developers on a bright future, mostly abandoned the platform within a year of launch, and eventually shut it down.
But they pay peanuts to creators, $1k - $3k/million views per monetized video. And they own their own CDN, so bandwidth is a cost they can control or share with other properties.
And not operating Youtube would mean another advertising company would have a foothold to compete against them.
Except, it’s not actually $15 billion. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat told investors during an earnings call on Monday afternoon that YouTube pays out a majority of that advertising revenue to its creators. Although Porat wouldn’t say how much of the $15 billion goes to its content makers, she did specify those payouts belong to YouTube’s “content acquisition” costs, which run around $8.5 billion.
Thats the real moat Google has, to replicate it would likely cost hundreds of millions a month in bandwidth, especially from places where they charge insane amounts (like GCP)
I never said developers have faith in Google. I said shareholders do. My point is Google doesn't really care what developers think.
Their business depends on developers just like Lehman brother's depended on the mortgage market. Pride before fall, etc.
You ignore facts on the ground at your peril.
Out of the major tech companies - Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.
Google is one of the least diversified and has been the least able to pivot over the past decade.
Also in the US and to a lesser extent other developed countries, the wealthier more lucrative users are using iOS. Google knows this. That’s why they pay Apple a reported 8-12 billion a year to be the default search engine for iOS.
Ads, GSuite, Youtube, Android, Chrome, and GCP, how much would it affect their profit?
Isn't that Waymo?
Disclsure: Work at Google, but opinions are my own.