strongpigeon

Google Ad revenue didn’t drop, but it also didn’t grow as much as the market anticipated (search grew 12% vs expectations of 16%)

The 520 and I-90 bridges in Seattle are built with floating concrete pontoons.

This is awfully unimaginative. I don’t see people using this. Where is the incentive to continue your conversation with the sponsored agent as opposed to, you know, the one you’re already talking to.

You’re partly right. It’s indeed mostly about AdX but also because Google owns all three sides of the equation (publisher-side via AdSense (and to a lesser extent DFP), AdX, and buy-side via Google Ads)

Sophisticated advertisers measure “incrementality”, which is exactly what you’re talking about. Alas, most advertisers are not sophisticated.

I thought this was pretty well known already. Being “overfat” is the problem, not being overweight (though they’re often correlated). BMI is really easy to measure, and is mostly accurate, that’s why it’s so pervasive. However it remains a pretty rudimentary metric (and really should use the third power or your height instead of the second).

> Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

When I worked on Google Ads (I left in 2020), I remember this one tripping a lot of people. As I remember it, the limit for a single day is indeed 2x daily budget, but over a month it will average to it. This is supposed to give more flexibility to the auto bidder.

Noteworthy:

- Negative free cash flow for the quarter

- $98B in unrealized gains on equity securities

- Cloud revenue are up 82% to $24.8B

What’s crazy is how Oracle’s free cash flows have gone from “money-printing machine” to deep in the red due to their data center investments. My guess is that some of those cuts are to try to balance that?

At the risk of sounding overly negative, these things are pretty much always vanity projects. Someone wanted a really cool boat and managed to get some investors onboard. It’s more about an aesthetic than a business case.

We’re talking here about a fairly large crew that will transport a small amount of cargo while taking a really long time. On top of that, these aren’t container ship so loading/unloading will take a long time. There is no economic case here.

The only way you can make this somewhat work is by selling the aesthetic/story. E.g.: this coffee was shipped by sailboat. But even then, notice how every company linked in the article of another commenter aren’t actually operating anymore…

Echoing the article, anyone who has experienced both will agree: it’s far easier to work with an under engineered code base than an over engineered one.

The second point is only true if you don't do any RL, right?

This is cool, but wasn't this a "Verily" project about 10 years ago? What is new here and what has happened since then?

It's a luxury tax that only affects people wealthy enough to have a second home in NYC. These people, by virtue of not living there, aren't paying income tax and thus don't contribute as much as someone who is.

> The rates sound a bit steep.

Agreed, but you also have to keep in mind that those people don't pay NYC income tax.

This specifically targets people who don't live in New York though (and thus don't pay income tax).

I really liked Google Domains, but alas…

I think some of it is due to the lay off, some of it due to the supply situation not being as bad as SF (though construction has slowed recently), and a lot of it due to interest rates making "effective prices" much higher.

> but it always was that way.

I don't think that's true. I remember the very early days of Stack Overflow and it felt much more fun and friendly than it did 6-7 years later. I have so many 15+ years question/answer that somehow get revisited by a "moderator" that decides that maybe we should close this.

But was that the cause of Stack Overflow's demise? I agree that it most likely isn't. It's most definitely because of LLMs.

> You don't have to worry about rent increases

I'd also argue there are financial advantages (on top of the psychological ones) to the price stability as you don't have to hedge against your housing cost shooting up as much.

HOAs can be a big variable cost, yes, especially in the case of underfunded condos associations with a lot of delayed maintenance. Insurance can vary a lot, but is usually a much smaller amount than your mortgage payment (though I only have experience with the PNW).

But yeah, for a single family home in a not-too-flood-prone area it'll be very predictable.

Unlike a startup that pays with illiquid RSUs, Meta paid its people extremely well for its bets though. I dont think Zuck is a great leader at all, but he’s definitely willing to pay for talent.

To add to this, I would assume that advertisers are more diverse and numerous than donors are, therefore reducing the influence any single one of them can have.

Calling it "just a speculative research project" is severely underestimating how big of an effort Fuschia was. At its peak it had a couple hundred eng IIRC.

Not that I disagree with you, but I’ve heard of such tactic being used in some orgs at both Google and Microsoft as well.

It seems like a common conclusion from a management that wants to push for AI adoption. I doubt it’s super effective, but we’ll see how it turns out.

Having worked in big tech, I can almost guarantee you you’re overthinking this.