Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[emon87]

Blueman,

Why do you think that just because you started a thread you get to dictate what people talk about in it? Also, with a thread title as generic as GOOG it is hardly surprising that Google as a whole was discussed.

Sorry no one found your question interesting.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
way to those who wonder if google will face its demise, they will never become the dinosaur that msft is. their engineers devote 1 day a week, 20% of their time!!!, to any project they wish. some really really cool stuff comes out of that. thats how you get innovation.

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From a Valleywag comment:
"There's plenty to dislike at elGoog. Here's one thing: 20% time is pejoratively known as "120% time," since nobody really gets around to those projects for all their other work. And even if you did a project, your odds of it being a hit (on the Orkut or Gmail level) are basically zero. The growing layers of management and the stockholders they have to please are stifling a good bit of creativity within the company."

[maxtower]

[ QUOTE ]

anyway to those who wonder if google will face its demise, they will never become the dinosaur that msft is. their engineers devote 1 day a week, 20% of their time!!!, to any project they wish. some really really cool stuff comes out of that. thats how you get innovation.


[/ QUOTE ]
From an investment point of view this is a negative. Imagine two googles. They both have exactly the same revenue generating product, search ads. The only difference is that one has to spend 20% more on payroll because they have their engineers working on other projects. But its not just that simple. What if one of those projects takes off like google earth? Now you have to support a large non-revenue generating project that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. Of course it would be nice if one of these projects turns a profit, but it would be rare. It would be even less likely that one of those projects becomes an engine for growth on the scale of search related ads.
Of course the situation is probably closer to how someone described it above. People work hard at tech companies. No one is going to be staying late to really work on projects that they don't have to.

[ QUOTE ]

also they are so damned cash and stock rich now they they simply buy up any company that may create new and earth shattering innovations, before they have a chance to become 'the next google'. they will always continue to do this. see youtube.


[/ QUOTE ]
Paying too much for high growth low profit companies is a quick way to burn through a lot of cash. I see this as another negative, unless they can really find things that complement their business well. Right now the doubleclick deal is interesting, but I think some of their other purchases were too expensive and will become a drag on the bottom line. In the late 90s, every big tech company was acquiring new internet startups by the truckload only to have to write them off the balance sheet a few years later.

FWIW, I think the future search engines will have a digg style voting mechanism to boost rankings for certain sites with certain keywords. There are too many people out there gaming google now, so it doesn't always produce the best results.
A quick example of how this would work...
I just typed in "Zipps Chandler" into google, which is a sports bar in Chandler.
The first two results are not the bar's website, rather a review and a new article. The third result is the actual bar's site, and the one I was looking for. If google put a little vote button next to the result I could click that and get taken to the site I am actually interested and also add a vote to boost the rank of this site for the term "zipps chandler". After a few votes are registed, I would bet that the rankings would improve.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

anyway to those who wonder if google will face its demise, they will never become the dinosaur that msft is. their engineers devote 1 day a week, 20% of their time!!!, to any project they wish. some really really cool stuff comes out of that. thats how you get innovation.


[/ QUOTE ]
From an investment point of view this is a negative. Imagine two googles. They both have exactly the same revenue generating product, search ads. The only difference is that one has to spend 20% more on payroll because they have their engineers working on other projects. But its not just that simple. What if one of those projects takes off like google earth? Now you have to support a large non-revenue generating project that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. Of course it would be nice if one of these projects turns a profit, but it would be rare. It would be even less likely that one of those projects becomes an engine for growth on the scale of search related ads.
Of course the situation is probably closer to how someone described it above. People work hard at tech companies. No one is going to be staying late to really work on projects that they don't have to.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not going to take a position on whether or not allotting your employees free time is a good strategy because I'm not qualified to answer that. However, I'd guess that the simple analysis you've given is entirely incomplete to the point that it's likely misleading, even if the conclusions are correct.


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

also they are so damned cash and stock rich now they they simply buy up any company that may create new and earth shattering innovations, before they have a chance to become 'the next google'. they will always continue to do this. see youtube.


[/ QUOTE ]
Paying too much for high growth low profit companies is a quick way to burn through a lot of cash. I see this as another negative, unless they can really find things that complement their business well. Right now the doubleclick deal is interesting, but I think some of their other purchases were too expensive and will become a drag on the bottom line. In the late 90s, every big tech company was acquiring new internet startups by the truckload only to have to write them off the balance sheet a few years later.

FWIW, I think the future search engines will have a digg style voting mechanism to boost rankings for certain sites with certain keywords. There are too many people out there gaming google now, so it doesn't always produce the best results.
A quick example of how this would work...
I just typed in "Zipps Chandler" into google, which is a sports bar in Chandler.
The first two results are not the bar's website, rather a review and a new article. The third result is the actual bar's site, and the one I was looking for. If google put a little vote button next to the result I could click that and get taken to the site I am actually interested and also add a vote to boost the rank of this site for the term "zipps chandler". After a few votes are registed, I would bet that the rankings would improve.

[/ QUOTE ]
You are worried about people gaming Google and your solution is to make it more like Digg? Perhaps a human component to search is the next step (both Mahalo and Powerset are working on this in very different ways), but I think you're going to lose a lot of credibility by saying that making anything more like Digg will make it less susceptible to improper results.

[maxtower]

I don't know how the final implementation would work, but I think that taking human edited results into consideration is a next step. The wikia guy mentioned starting a search engine based on this, and I think its a good idea.
You are right that people game digg, but I think this is because digg doesn't have any kind of machine edited results. A good hybrid system would be necessary to prevent people from gaming it either way. I am sure this is difficult to do, or other would have done it already.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
The wikia guy mentioned starting a search engine based on this, and I think its a good idea.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wikia is doing open source search, not necessarily human-edited search. I don't think they actually have much code for the search algorithms yet, so I obviously can't tell you whether or not human input will make its way into the process, but that was not part of the stated search mission as far as I know. Jimmy Wales gave the first public presentation on Wikia to a class I was in in March and he didn't say anything about human rankings in search.

[maxtower]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

anyway to those who wonder if google will face its demise, they will never become the dinosaur that msft is. their engineers devote 1 day a week, 20% of their time!!!, to any project they wish. some really really cool stuff comes out of that. thats how you get innovation.


[/ QUOTE ]
From an investment point of view this is a negative. Imagine two googles. They both have exactly the same revenue generating product, search ads. The only difference is that one has to spend 20% more on payroll because they have their engineers working on other projects. But its not just that simple. What if one of those projects takes off like google earth? Now you have to support a large non-revenue generating project that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. Of course it would be nice if one of these projects turns a profit, but it would be rare. It would be even less likely that one of those projects becomes an engine for growth on the scale of search related ads.
Of course the situation is probably closer to how someone described it above. People work hard at tech companies. No one is going to be staying late to really work on projects that they don't have to.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not going to take a position on whether or not allotting your employees free time is a good strategy because I'm not qualified to answer that. However, I'd guess that the simple analysis you've given is entirely incomplete to the point that it's likely misleading, even if the conclusions are correct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another thing that I thought of, is that a lot of smart people joined google when the stock gravy train was rolling. If the stock price takes a few dips, those people are going to lose a lot of motivation, and the better ones will just leave for other opportunities. This same thing happened at the company I work for. Our options are worthless (and probably always will be) and the people who find better opportunities leave while the more average or lazy workers (I think I fall into the lazy group) stay.

[Sharking4Fishies]

Buy calendar spreads on GOOG that are 10% on each side from the current market price. Works like a charm evertime. Been making 20% per month with this strategy on GOOG for a few months now.