[Judgmentality]

Google is very much a company run by PMs. It's just the PMs are rewarded for launching products, and not maintaining them. In other words, the larger the Google graveyard, the more bonuses are being handed out. People are doing what they're being incentivized to do.

Google's culture is fundamentally broken. I don't think it's possible for them to fix this. I'll probably take a short position on Google in the medium future.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

I wouldn't take a short position in a company based on the frequent closure of trivial, money-losing sub-ventures, especially if their main money-making businesses were healthy and growing. It'd be like shorting Apple based on the poor performance of the XServe business in 2009.

Also, it can be really expensive to hold on to a short position for a long time so it might not be a good idea even if there were more substantial reasons to take one.

[stinkytaco]

Especially when they have tons of counter examples: Android, Youtube, Gmail, Docs, Drive (and all the educational contracts those include), Cloud... I'd be willing to bet that if I wanted to use the Internet and not interact with Google I probably couldn't do it for long. At the very least I'm willing to bet that some organization I need to interact with is using Gmail for Business.

[CarelessExpert]

Eh, I'd hold on that short position for now.

To me the real question is: what will come of these antitrust investigations into their targeted ad business?

That's the cash cow upon which their stock price is ultimately based. They've been able to get away with a lot of failures because ultimately advertising is such a huge business for them.

But if there's any move to break apart that business or regulate it in a way to create more competition in the market, to me that could be the thing that could start to undermine their share price.

[Judgmentality]

I think a better question is how much of online advertising is just straight-up bullshit?

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/