[HN Gopher] Alphabet reports big earnings beat as revenue grows 34%
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Alphabet reports big earnings beat as revenue grows 34%
Author : whitepaint
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-04-27 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Their revenue goes up as their search degrades in quality. Looks
| like a ripe opportunity for someone to take on the long tail
| search market. Duckduckgo seems poised to do this. Or perhaps
| some kids in a garage?
| whitepaint wrote:
| > their search degrades in quality
|
| Are you 100% confident that this is the case? I personally have
| a completely different experience (their search results have
| gotten much better than they used to).
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Google search results have been gradually getting worse for
| me as well.
| version_five wrote:
| For me it depends on what I'm searching. For more obscure
| stuff, I find google better. Sometimes I accidentally use
| bing (it's a default on one of my machines) and I usually
| eventually have a "oh right, this isn't Google" moment when
| I can't find what I'm looking for.
|
| OTOH, if it's anything that has been SEO'd, I find google
| has gotten really bad. Last week I tried to google for what
| frying pan to buy, and everything I saw was a un-
| trustworthy ad.
|
| Incidentally, it's the same for python: you google some
| very common thing like how to sort a list, the first few
| links are spam (but the docs are still high in the list
| usually). You google something obscure and usually get the
| relevant stack overflow first.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Personally I've felt that useful results have been pretty
| consistently on the first page for a while, and some of the
| specialized widgets have even improved that, but over the
| last ~3 years more and more of that has become an exercise
| of dodging the ads to find the actual result. Feels like
| the frog getting boiled.
| [deleted]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Looks like YouTube and Google Cloud Platform drove the gains,
| not search.
| nr2x wrote:
| Assistant has gotten mind-blowingly good, I recently started
| using it after having given up on Siri and the amount of lead
| Google has on complex spoken queries is insane.
|
| Otherwise, DDG is basically privacy chrome on top of Bing's
| results.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Im kind of amazed at the lack of search engine innovation. Why
| can't we explicitly rate results and have them be personalized
| to us(goodbye quora and wikihow)? Why can't we add tags to
| results, such as "ad bloated" and have that be taken into
| account for rankings?
|
| It seems like such an obvious next step, but google is too rich
| for its own good at this point and doesnt need to do anything.
| wolpoli wrote:
| For the last three decades, search engines have been
| presenting results in descending order. While a lot of
| innovations have happened with the sorting algorithm, it
| hasn't fundamentally move forward from that.
|
| From a user point of view, it's frustrating to look through
| the result, finding a list of ads, a commercial site, a few
| videos, a definition, a wikipedia link, a commercial site,
| and so on.
|
| Instead, users have a pretty good idea of what kind of result
| they want. It would make it so much easier if the results are
| grouped together.
|
| For example, a search engine could group results under
| individual tabs, separating results from user generated
| content sites, forums, commerce and commercial blogs,
| Wikipedia, content farms, and so on. Within each tab, there
| could be subtabs grouping results under each domain.
|
| This would make searching the web a much less frustrating
| experience.
| osrec wrote:
| YouTube has become difficult to watch because of the ads. It's
| almost as if they're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
|
| I've reluctantly switched to NewPipe, and can watch videos ad
| free. I'm all for supporting a business that provides a free
| service, but now it feels like they're just abusing their
| position, which is why I switched.
| gnivol wrote:
| There is clearly a significant increase in ads on youtube. It's
| now as bad as old cable TV channels, its disgusting, personally
| started reducing youtube consumption. They must've turned on the
| "milk youtube" knob. Hoping there will be a youtube competitor,
| they are pretty much a monopoly .
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I whole heartedly refuse to use the youtube app or youtube on a
| vanila browser. If I use youtube it is typically because
| someone sent me a link. I used to open it in firefox with
| ublock (both on desktop and Android).
|
| Youtube has gone one level beyond with the auto play nuissance
| and the new hostile EU consent forms. I am at a point that I
| will just refuse to engage with the platform and only play a
| video by copying the video id into the url:
|
| www.youtube.com/embed/<video-id>
|
| And then just open it in ff or mpv
|
| They could have extracted a fortune with banner ads and the
| like. But it is never enough for shareholders, they wanted to
| scale this further and keep hogging data and profiling
| everyone.
|
| Targeted advertisement should be as illegal as robocalls.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| >I am at a point that I will just refuse to engage with the
| platform and only play a video by copying the video id into
| the url:
|
| n.b. that if you have `youtube-dl` and `mpv` built with lua
| support, mpv
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...`
|
| Just Works. Also handy for red-band trailers.
|
| Further, you can also do things like mpv
| --no-video https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=5qap5aO4i9A #
| chilled cow
|
| which is very nice inside a tmux pane or something.
| pvorb wrote:
| uBlock Origin works pretty good on YouTube. I've no idea why
| video ads are built in a way that can be blocked quite easily.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| At a guess, for the same reasons visual ads are - they've got
| some kind of targeting logic that needs to pick from a pool
| of ads and send them to the viewer. Though of course if YT
| started serving them all from indistinguishable sources, or
| composited them together on the fly, or ... I'd be sad.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| Those competitors will also need to cover their costs somehow,
| they'll either resort to ads or subscriptions. YT premium is
| just 12$/month, it's the best 12$ I spend every month, YT music
| is a bonus.
| jiehong wrote:
| "This video is sponsored by xxx". You can't escape that.
|
| Well, almost (https://sponsor.ajay.app/)
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| For those who don't want to support YouTube or Google, an app
| called NewPipe can be installed with F-droid that lets you
| watch videos without ads.
| what_ever wrote:
| > don't want to support YouTube or Google
|
| AND the content creator as well.
|
| Disc: Googler.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| This 'think of the creators' argument is a low-effort
| appeal to emotion that deviates from the core issue.
| Neither youtube premium or youtube ads value my privacy.
|
| I am happy to support content creators through patreon or
| whatever monetization platform they choose.
|
| What I am not ok with is having every single click and
| watching period profiled and stored. I would happily not
| block your ads if you weren't building up user profiles.
|
| A business model with generic vanilla ads based on the
| video I am watching instead of my profile would still
| provide millions upon millions for Google and
| shareholders.
|
| Targeted ads only benefit Google by selling the illusion
| of advertisement metrics to marketers. Neither users or
| content creators stand to benefit from targeted
| advertisement quite the contrary.
| milkytron wrote:
| I'm not familiar with how content creators get paid by
| YouTube. If it's by views or view duration, does NewPipe
| not increase those on YouTube when a video is viewed via
| NewPipe?
|
| And there are other ways to support creators if someone
| were to insist on it. A lot of channels that I support
| have moved to Nebula, other channels have Patreons, or
| push their own products.
| [deleted]
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| YouTube doesn't support the content creators I watch,
| they've mostly been demonetized or had their viewership
| hit by random algorithmic changes. I use patron or
| streamlabs to support the people who make what I like,
| not the monopolies who control the infrastructure and try
| to influence the overton window of society.
| inthewoods wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing.
| bubblicious wrote:
| ...or you could go ad-free with youtube premium?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| based on the responses from the past stealing, I mean not
| paying is easier for many of the replies youll get.
| taylodl wrote:
| I have YouTube TV - which is great by the way - but the fact
| it doesn't include YouTube Premium for free _or_ the ability
| to add YouTube Premium for something like $5 /month just
| sticks in my craw. So being the stubborn mule that I am I
| refuse to pay the $12/month for YouTube Premium and now I'm
| watching less and less of YouTube as a result.
| goseeastarwar wrote:
| That's an odd hill to die on. YouTube without ads is a
| lovely experience for what I'd consider a very reasonable
| price.
| haunter wrote:
| I download every video with yt-dl before watching. Started
| doing since the enforced age verification, won't give my CC or
| ID to Google for sure
| jandrese wrote:
| Google is heavily pushing YouTube premium now, so they're
| trying to make the experience as crappy as possible for free
| users.
|
| I don't watch nearly enough YouTube to justify $12 a month, but
| I'm starting to consider ad blockers. Or just stop watching
| Youtube altogether, which wouldn't be all that hard. There are
| only a couple of channels I check out from time to time, and
| one isn't monetized so the ads are fairly reasonable. The other
| however had ad breaks every 5 minutes, which is just killing it
| for me.
| maneesh wrote:
| Pro tip from SWIM: Vpn into india just one time during signup
| and pay ~$1.50/mo
| taylodl wrote:
| > _" YouTube ads grew nearly 50% year-over-year."_
|
| And don't we know it! YouTube has quickly become unwatchable.
| Some of my favorite channels are now available on Nebula. I
| encourage more creators to go there. I think it's $30/yr, I got a
| promo and got it for $11.
| refulgentis wrote:
| for what it's worth, maybe it's compensating _too_ many people,
| you can also pay $10/month and have ad free YouTube (_and_
| YouTube Music, but if you're worried about compensating too
| many people avoid it, its model is just like Apple Music and
| Spotify)
| analogdreams wrote:
| Has Alphabet given up on the moonshot investments? The $50B
| buyback surprised me; surely they could do something better with
| the money at their scale.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I'm mostly interested in how Waymo is doing, as it has the option
| to clean up air quality by using electric cars, but sadly it's
| still a very secretive part of Alphabet.
| MarkMc wrote:
| I'm a Google shareholder partly because I find their ads are so
| poorly targeted at me.
|
| For example, I'm currently looking to buy a car - my recent
| search history includes "buy z4" and "merc c class". Yet YouTube
| is showing me generic ads for the local supermarket and off-
| track-betting (and I've never gambled in my life). So it seems
| Google has a lot of room to improve the algorithm that matches
| viewer to advertiser
| rawtxapp wrote:
| I have a similar approach to Amazon's stock, as long as my
| package isn't delivered within an hour, there's still lots of
| growth left (ignoring aws and all).
| dragontamer wrote:
| Once you buy the car, then you'll find that various ad agencies
| will start recommending you a car.
|
| Yeaahhhhh... people need to work on their algorithms for sure.
| guyzero wrote:
| Clearly these ads are simply bidding the most. Why show you
| "better" ads that generate less revenue?
| rawtxapp wrote:
| You also need to take into account user annoyance, would you
| rather show a 10$ ad today, but lose the user and never show
| another ad or show a 2$ ad every month until eoy. There's a
| lot more than just revenue that factors into these
| algorithms. And you also need to take into account
| advertiser's ROI, they want people who will convert.
|
| Source: used to work on prediction modelling in ads.
| jandrese wrote:
| > I'm a Google shareholder partly because their ads are so
| poorly targeted at me.
|
| What?
|
| Also, I'm fine with ads not being targeted at me. It's really
| annoying to look up information on a toaster and then get
| bombarded with ads for toasters.
| giarc wrote:
| I find it more annoying when you get bombarded _after_ buying
| the toaster. Surely they know I made that purchase and don 't
| have a need for multiple toasters.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| (disclaimer-I work at Google but have no hidden insights
| here)
|
| If you randomly show ads, what are the odds someone just
| happens to be in the market for a new one toaster? 1 in
| 1000?
|
| On the other hand, what are the odds that someone who just
| bought a new toaster ends up returning it and being in the
| market for a new one? Probably much higher.
| hiq wrote:
| This! All these comments about how bad ads are at
| targeting a proper audience really miss the point, you
| have to make comparisons to conclude anything. If an ad
| is relevant for x% of users and x is very small, that's
| still better than 0.5*x%.
|
| I don't think it's a mistake if after you bought product
| P, you get ads for P, it probably does work in practice.
| nolok wrote:
| He's saying they're leading the field, manage to stay ahead
| of competition, keep making bank, yet still have a gigantic
| amount of growth potential.
| [deleted]
| alberth wrote:
| @dang can you merge.
|
| Dupe from source
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961116
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(page generated 2021-04-27 23:01 UTC)