[linearrust]

> Imagine thinking a 0.5% return on investment is a good use of money

What is waymo's valuation? How much has alphabet invested in waymo? $10 billion? What could they sell it off for today? $30 billion? More? What would the ROI be?

> when treasury bonds return almost 5%

And yet alphabet invests in waymo? I wonder why? Oh that's right. Alphabet created waymo as tax write off scheme. Absolute genius.

It's insane how ingnorant hn commentors are when it comes to finance, investment and technology. Every earnings and every financial news, it's the most ignorant who rant about nonsense confidently. But then again, according to the geniuses of hn, tesla, meta, bitcoin, etc would have imploded years ago.

[mansoor_]

If it were publicly traded, it would have a P/E of 600.

I'll help you out since you don't read, a normal P/E is 20-30. To say it is not a great financial investment is unequivocal. It is effectively a write-off for the foreseeable future.

But that is not to say you shouldn't invest in difficult problems and try to solve them, even if they don't make money. This is one of them. I hope people do the same for other challenging problems.

[KoolKat23]

P/E is a good measure for value stocks, where you're looking for consistent returns. Waymo still has to scale, the number means nothing.

Tesla for example had a P/E ratio of 1000 two years ago. Okay it's still potentially overvalued and the share price has declined but their P/E ratio has dropped dramatically.

[mansoor_]

Waymo is 15 years old,

[KoolKat23]

And it's nascent.