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by gomox 23 days ago
Actually I believe Google is the one caught between a rock and a hard place here because their stock will reprice once the market realizes how much their position has weakened re: search ads.

They commanded an absurd premium on ads by virtue of being monopolistic leaders of search. They don't have a better product anymore, only a scale/distribution advantage.
2 comments
pbhjpbhj 23 days ago
They seem to have been actively making search worse for at least a decade. No surprise they made it worse, that's [seemingly] what they were trying to do.

They presumably were doing it to increase "engagement". More time spent getting infuriated with their worsening search meant more time seeing their ads.

They deserve to go under.

Meanwhile 1 minute unskippable ads on 30s YouTube videos, pop-ups on mobile that cover the video when you close an ad. I hope the UK TV ombudsman grows some balls and starts applying the law on advertising-to-tv-programming ratio. It needs to be applied when programs have ads in them too.

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duskdozer 22 days ago
No need to presume: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
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randysalami 22 days ago
Wow. Disgusting. The decline of the west in a nutshell.
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criddell 23 days ago
I have a hard time believing the stock price is based on anything other than vibes. It's up 125% from a year ago!
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saghm 23 days ago
Given how nowadays the payoff of a stock seems to just be from selling it later rather than having any direct correlation to the companies finances, it's all just a Ponzi scheme based on vibes.
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akerl_ 23 days ago
When was the payoff of a stock not from selling it later?
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Jensson 23 days ago
> When was the payoff of a stock not from selling it later?

This is such a funny comment, historically you bought stocks to extract profits, ie dividends. Now you make money from houses and stocks by value appreciation instead of rent and dividends, you can see how that leads to very different behaviours and how that is not very stable compared to buying based on rent and dividends.

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saghm 23 days ago
Yeah, I'm kind of in shock that anyone would think this is the normal way things always worked. I'm not that old yet, I was born in the 90s!
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gomox 23 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend
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