Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016

Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by Retric on Friday July 29, 2016 @07:49AM (#12186217)

In terms of internal projects gmail, and local maps comes to mind. If your going to call everything that did not work a moonshot then by definition no. However, it's only a failure when they give up so self driving cars are rather undecided at this point, and theses projects help recruiting which has non obvious benefit.

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Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by whack on Friday July 29, 2016 @07:58AM (#12186258)

By moonshots, I'm referring specifically to projects that came out of the "Other Bets" division. That division specifically invests in projects that are "out there." From what I hear, realistic products like gmail and maps came out of the 20% time and other product-divisions, not the "Other Bets" division.

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Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by kgwgk on Friday July 29, 2016 @12:32PM (#12187946)

Considering that the Other Bets division (and Alphabet itself) was created one year ago, maybe it's too early to evaluate what has it produced.

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Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by eli_gottlieb on Friday July 29, 2016 @07:53AM (#12186231)

The important question is whether something was designated a "moonshot" before it succeeded or failed, thus giving us an unbiased sample.

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Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by zaroth on Friday July 29, 2016 @11:14AM (#12187354)

I think moonshot, by definition, means 15+ year timeframe to full realization. Google is a very young company, they just haven't had piles of cash to invest in moonshots for long enough for us to have seen the results. X was founded just 6 years ago, Alphabet was founded just last year!

To be asking 6 years in where are all the moonshot successes already? I think this demonstrates exactly how problematic and pervasive short-term thinking is.

The question to ask is in 50 years, how many different $10B+ revenue streams will Alphabet have?

If we really think this R&D isn't going to pay off, at the scale Alphabet operates, that's almost like losing faith in humanity.

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Re:Alphabet Loses $859M on 'Moonshots' in 2Q 2016 by eli_gottlieb on Friday July 29, 2016 @06:54PM (#12190652)

I didn't say moonshots were a bad thing. I just stated the basic standard for collecting a sample of something in a halfway unbiased way.

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