[mfav]

Subtly dishonest journalism in my opinion.

This article could just as easily be titled "Alphabet invests $859M on long-term projects".

In fact, that would be a more accurate title since that is precisely Google's intent.

[usrusr]

Or maybe "Alphabet invests $859M on brand maintenance"?

Some projects seem more like the Google-scale equivalent of putting the company name on the shirt of a sports team. Would we expect the Oracle boat to ever turn profitable?

[anjc]

There's nothing dishonest about it. It's a loss because these are explicit investments which haven't produced any earnings. When they produce any sort of revenue then their financial statements (and media reports of the financial statements) will say "Other bets showed an operating profit of $Xm". It's just a media report on a fact.

[mfav]

There's some intentional provocation going on with the title. Sure, it's factually correct, but choice of words really pulls the truth one way or another.

[dredmorbius]

There's nothing subtle, and everything dishonest, about this.