| This article makes it sound like Google frittered away $1b on the "X" lab last quarter. X lab includes self driving car, Goog Glass, Project Tango (editorializing here but Tango is badass!), more crazier bets (1) Ok, some crazy stuff there - pretty pretty risky. Wow $1b last quarter for that stuff. Geez corporate responsibility grumble grumble, stupid silicon valley assholes snark snark. But wait, spend 30 seconds doing research and in reality the $859m headline is actually referring to Alphabet's line item "Other Bets" "Other Bets" includes Nest, Google Fiber, Google Ventures, and Verily among others(2) Nest = iot + Tony Fadell (pre fallout) looked like a damn good way to beat Apple to a new important consumer market. Still holding out hope. Google Fiber = fast speed is fundamental to Google's biz, heck they could probably look at this as CapEx. Please come to my 'hood! Google Ventures = bought $258m of Uber stock @ $3.6b valuation. What's that a 20x so far? Pays for entire fund's lifetime by several multiples? Lots of other follow-rounds that make sense (3) Verily = profitable healthcare division. (4) So come on NYT spend 5 mins getting the story straight instead of writing a lazy click bait headline. (1) https://www.solveforx.com/ (2) https://www.engadget.com/2016/02/01/google-alphabet-q4-2015-... (3) https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-... (4) http://www.recode.net/2016/4/13/11586102/verily-alphabet-pro... |
Actually, NYT has syndicated an article originally written by a reporter of the Associated Press. It says so right at the top.
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029...