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Comment by Brystephor | Hacker News Reader

I imagine their businesses are more resilient due to more income streams. Snap is pretty dependent on advertising income. I have no idea what Google's dependence on advertising income is, but I'd assume the ratio is less. Apple has multiple sources of income and I would be surprised to see them do layoffs.

I'm more curious about other companies such as Meta. Especially since Zuckerberg has openly stated there's probably people who shouldn't be there.

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> I have no idea what Google's dependence on advertising income

Over 80% of Google's revenues are from advertising [0]

Also, I can't find a source for it now, but I remember reading from a trusted industry journalist that roughly 25% of this advertising revenue is from startups and high-growth businesses. Seems too high to me, but I would expect at least 10% to be from startups.

0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093781/distribution-of-...

Investing in stuff like self driving cars should be independent of current market conditions due to the size of their war chest.

The profitable parts of the business are so profitable that would would take massive drops in advertising to really impact the bottom line.

That's been true for every big company that faded away into obscurity. Or at least lost its erstwhile dominance. They usually have a product or division that does so well that it completely dominates the organization. Every part of the business becomes designed, organically or intentionally, to support this division. Innovation falters and new trends catch the incumbent off guard.

While its not even close to dire straits for Google yet, the Gen-Z shift away from search is clearly a red flag and a sign that there's an entirely new trend that has caught Google off guard. Luckily they have YouTube, otherwise I'd be way more bearish on Google's future. Text-based search isn't going to grow by leaps and bounds, at least not in developed markets.

Google seems fairly diversified compared to many large companies. At least if you separate Search, YouTube, and other web properties from AdWords. Android and Chromebook is largely self sufficient via the play store, it’s really just Chrome that’s designed to support the rest of the business.

https://fourweekmba.com/google-subsidiaries/

None of them really make any money. At least not anywhere close to the scale that could justify a $2T valuation.

It’s 1.4T with a 20.5 P/E ratio and 0.12T in just cash in hand. Considering their past growth curve that really looks undervalued. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl...

Anyway take away any single element and it’s still a 1T dollar company, it’s not like search needs Ad Words they could use a different advertising network.

Gen-Z doesn't use search is a weird argument to me. They are teenagers. Of course they won't do anything useful online. Their behavior should change once they enter adulthood.

They'll need plumbers too and no they won't hire them through TikTok.

I hypothesize that Google's Ad business is much less prone to fluctuation than Snap's as well as Meta's. With Google's ads targeted so heavily towards search and remarketing, there is significantly more purchase intent baked into the audience compared to social ads. It's also able to have more diversity since Facebook and Instagram are a lot more similar than Google Search and YouTube are. There's so much D2C on social and those types of businesses have really rode the COVID economy rollercoaster.

Would you agree that you and I are "aware" of growth projects Apple is working on, but not necessarily aware of what growth projects Google is working on?

> I have no idea what Google's dependence on advertising income is

basically 100%. Cloud makes a little, but mostly it is all paid for by ads

Cloud has yet to turn a profit, but they are on the path to extract blood from stone.

Cloud is high margin, its just that the battle with Azure and AWS is really bloody

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