Cloud's losses ($1.8B in H1) are about 4% of the operating income of the money-making parts ($46B in the same timeframe). Sure, a billion here and a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money. But it's hardly "sucking the company dry of its profits".

Much of cloud's real costs are hidden in other parts of the budget, such as global infrastructure expansion.

So you're suggesting that the accounting is fradululent, and nobody figured it out except you? Not the auditors with actual access to the raw data. Not the hedge funds who could have made a pretty penny by shorting the stock and then releasing this information. Not even any whistleblowers who would presumably be eligible for an award.

Or maybe, just maybe, you've just made that up.

The thing that is bizarre to me is that Google has absolute shitloads of money. 120B+ in the bank. Megabillions in profit each quarter. Like, they could buy Nintendo for less than half of their cash on hand.

I understand that the market demands infinite growth but internally it feels like horseshit to see the ridiculous numbers and also get told that basically nothing is high priority enough to get funded.

Nothing is high priority enough to get funded because they have a firehose of money coming out of ads, compared to which nothing looks like a good enough opportunity.

Exactly. The IRR in investing more into ad platforms for Google is still higher than any other project so they keep investing in it and increasing their ad revenue. Alongside Meta, they have a duopoly (monopoly?) on that market for now so they are just milking it for all its worth.

You don't just build stuff for the sake of it. It has to be a better investment than what you currently have, and Google doesn't have anything better than doubling and tripling down on ads.