Re:Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the ...
by jonknee on Monday February 01, 2016 @07:34PM
(#11016870)
They use AI to sell advertising and services (be it search relevancy, contextual awareness, filter out spam, etc)...
The reason why it's not incorrect to call Google an AI company is that Wall Street thinks they'll be able to shake out ever more cash from their machines in the future because of their position in ML and AI. It's their competitive edge and one that becomes more and more valuable as software continues to eat the world.
Re:Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the ...
by krakensden on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @12:03PM
(#11027630)
Eric Schmidt has been claiming that fiber is making good money. Which doesn't seem impossible.
Re:Alphabet Becomes the Most Valuable Public Company in the ...
by stvswn on Monday February 01, 2016 @05:53PM
(#11016291)
Your question is answered explicitly in the press release, if you wanted to Google it. But are you instead making a point about how that's bad or something? The business model is to give away services for free and then show ads to monetize, that's no secret. Do you contend this is a poor business model, or somehow immoral or something?
Search, Gmail, Android, Chromebooks, Nexus, Pixel, Youtube, Maps etc. everything is about selling advertisements after scanning user provided data.
The rest are either loss leaders or moats, or ones with unclear monetization scenarios like Fiber. One exception is GCE and GAE, but I don't know how much profit/revenue they're making. I would count Google Apps, but until recently they were scanning even paid Google Apps for Business accounts for ad tracking purposes.