Comment by adamsb6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamsb6 | Hacker News Reader

> It’s impossible to both provide the best search results and try to optimize for the highest amount of ad-clicks. And if you’re a public company with an ad-based business model, you are legally required to optimize for the latter.

This is a widely held misconception, but there's no legal requirement to maximize profits. They're required to act in the interests of the corporation and its shareholders, but this is very broad and includes more than just wringing out every source of profit.

I'm a recent Kagi convert, and I'd say that Google's search product declining in usefulness is eventually going to impact its profitability.

Companies don't maximize shareholder value, no matter how much they talk about it.

Companies are run by and for the managers of said company, and what gets them promoted.

Sometimes that aligns with what the shareholders might want, often it does not.

For c-suite their comp is mostly awarded by the board which is controlled by largest shareholders. So therefore they are highly incentivized to make them happy which is usually achieved by stonk going up and to the right. For middle managers it’s more complex and is usually divorced from the stock price (and often reality too)

Can a stock go to the left? If they figured out time-travel, I'm sure the board would be even happier. /s

Hah, I’m going to start using “down and to the left” the way people use “up and to the right” now

You could do time times employees for the X axle.

  100 * 1000 = 100 000
  101 *  900 =  90 900

If they manage to screw up so bad as to get delisted, the stock will no longer go to the right

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