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Comment by solumunus | Hacker News Reader

So inflation adjusted they’ve experienced no growth.

Inflation is not at 7%.

Average global inflation was 8.7% last year, and in the US it peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. The calculation is obviously a lot more complex considering all the different jurisdictions Google makes revenue from and all the different kinds of measures, but adding it all up it won't be too far from the 7% number.

the inflation rate at June 2022 is not what you should use to normalize the growth of a company, YoY, at June 2023. You're off by a year. The US YoY inflation rate for this period was around 3% going off memory.

Idk what you define as "average" global inflation. I don't really agree that it's the correct term for what is largely an american company even if it does international business.

Inflation doesn't jump from 9% to 3% overnight but goes down day-by-day. It is only at 3% now, so it spent the majority of the last year at >6%. And Google makes 55% of its revenue from outside the US, so it makes sense to consider global inflation in the calculation not just US.

3% is the average rate over the past 12 months. "it spent the majority of last year at > 6%" is not a helpful metric because those past numbers are average of months prior to June 2022.

We are tracking growth from June 2022->June 2023. So what we care about is the inflation from June 2022->June 2023. Which is 3%.

It doesn't matter what inflation is in other countries if the vast majority of Google's earnings are in dollars.

> if the vast majority of Google's earnings are in dollars

They aren't.

True, but the word "currency" pops up 53 times in this report [1], mostly in regards to managing "foreign exchange risk", so they seem to be taking deliberate measures to stay on the inflation trajectory of the dollar.

[1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204423...

Every single number in this report is in dollars.

It is in many parts of the world.

There are many parts of the world though.

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