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Comment by influx | Hacker News Reader

Worst CEO in tech.

I legitimately don't understand why the board hasn't forced him out yet. Does he have any successes at all during his tenure?

Cloud is doing pretty well. YouTube started making serious money. Pixel is a long term product line. Avoid metaberg-esque pivots towards crypto or VR

Very few businesses in the last 20 years that can compete with Google ad tech in scale and margins.

You are proving the point that google is just an ad company

If you’re in denial about that, it’s a you problem

He’s presided over a CAGR of the shares of nearly 20%. That’s a success that the board, representing the shareholders, cares a great deal about.

Yes, but what was the growth in similar companies? What if we compare GOOG to MSFT and a few others?

I see a lot of missed opportunities and wasted potential.

That was from the lock-down sea that lifted all the boats , pretty much every tech company on the planet thrived during that period.

It was a CAGR of over 21% for his first 4 years (all pre-pandemic). Don’t get thrown off looking at a linear chart. On a semi-log chart, you can see the performance was strong throughout and even somewhat stronger pre-COVID.

I wonder if there’s any chance they see the AI stuff as bluster. They decided it wasn’t a viable business continuously for years. Now competitors debut tech they already had and sat on. Are they suddenly like, oh god we’ve been wrong for years, or are they like, alright we’ll play along. If it’s the latter their non drastic actions could make sense (not saying I agree with them necessarily though if that is that case).

(Where the purpose of playing along would be to not appear to be behind to the public)

Google Cloud has made profit first time in history. Youtube revenue keep increasing. Other bets like self-driving car may payoff. Ad business is suffering less than competitive ad businesses.

Two things investor are recently asking for is reduction in workforce and rationalizing compensation. First one is done to an extent. Second one likely be agenda in coming months and years.

So all in all Google is doing fine and board or investors have no need to be concerned with CEOs. It may change though if competitors do hurt google business in material ways in future.

Cloud under their previous accounting policy is still losing money. (I.e. the change in depreciation rates to lower how much is expensed each year)

Google 2022 net income was nearly 60B. 20% down from 2021, when there still was a pandemic, but in 2020 net income was 40B. They still are making a tons of money while trying very hard to cripple their future of every product but search ads, and everybody says Google search worsened last years. ChatGPT is still a niche, but when many people will have used it at work they may very well use it at home.

I sort of thought he was just a puppet though?

I mean, this was the case for Japanese CEOs too and you can see how Toshiba and Fujitsu are doing as a result.

Shadow emperors don't make for good governments.

More like shadow oligarchy in this case I think.

Who is he a puppet to?

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