[panarky]

It's one thing for a midsize company to grow revenue 41% but for a massive global corporation with 156,000 employees to do it is nothing short of astounding.

And this giant, mature company isn't sacrificing margins for top-line growth, they're actually increasing margins at the same time.

Truly breathtaking.

[kccqzy]

It's like they have a knob that they can turn: turning it to the left means fewer ads and a better user experience, and turning it to the right means more ads and more revenue.

My own experience from Search and YouTube is that they have massively turned the knob to the right. I don't know why they are chasing revenue growth with such craze. It makes me worried that the leadership don't know what's Alphabet's next big thing so they are just milking the cow while they can.

[ehsankia]

I just don't see how 40% YoY growth is sustainable. Before they were doing ~25% which was already insane, but 40% will now be "expected" and anything less will be considered a failure probably. There's a limit to how much they can crank that knob...

[sangnoir]

> I just don't see how 40% YoY growth is sustainable

2021 was like catching lightning in a bottle[1]: because of lockdowns and WFH, 2021 was a monster of a year for online platforms at the expense of brick-and-mortar and traditional platforms. A lot of consumer and marketing dollars were redirected to online retailers/ad campaigns. All that drive-time- and ballgame placement ads went to Google/Facebook/Youtube and a thousands of other ad networks

1. Not that Google wasn't going to grow, but the ad growth was absolutely juiced. At the beginning of the pandemic, a bunch of Ads that had been filmed ended up not airing because they showed happy people outdoors, unmasked and having fun.

[panarky]

> All that drive-time- and ballgame placement ads went to Google/Facebook/Youtube ...

Somehow Google captured a lot more of that lightning than Facebook did.

"Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. startled investors with a sharper-than-expected decline in profits and a gloomy outlook in its first earnings report since Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined a pivot to the metaverse."

"Meta shares plunged after the results were announced, dropping more than 20%."

"The company said it expected revenue growth to slow because users were spending less time on its more lucrative services. Meta cited inflation as a weight on advertiser spending ..."

https://archive.is/MOYi6

[panarky]

> There's a limit to how much they can crank that knob...

That limit is imposed by competitors who deliver a better user experience. So far most competitors are doing a much worse job.

Microsoft should be a much bigger threat, but they seem to rely on their ability to set defaults for Windows and throw obstacles in the path of users who want to change the defaults.

That's not a better user experience, it's abuse of their dominant market position.

[option]

They earned their monopoly position.

[panarky]

Real monopolies like Comcast and Waste Management lock up markets so consumers don't have a choice.

Google has to re-earn their position every day since competitors are only a click away.

[wonnage]

*a google search away