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by bookofjoe 36 days ago
>... I think Google's business model is in trouble.

>Google parent Alphabet profit jumps 81% in Big Tech earnings roundup

https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/04/30/google-parent-a...

2 comments

Both could be true. I think Google is milking their main asset and tanking it, before the party ends.
This comment thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954579 is relevant.

TL;DR: Google is heavily stuffing more and more ads into every monetizable SERP, which explains the ever-increasing revenue.

But my theory (expanded in more detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47957708) is that its cash cow is heavily optimized towards its current anti-competitive, multi-sided chokehold of the online ad market -- look up the AdTech Antitrust findings around manipulating ad auctions, e.g. Project Bernanke -- which relies on ad volume.

With agents however, I suspect that volume will shrink drastically even if they stuff ads at each step of the conversation. Because it's only the final click that will matter, and those ads will be meaningless.

It's not clear that Google can charge enough for that final click to compensate for the loss of both, the value of all the ads that lead to it, as well as their ad auction manipulation premium.