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Alphabet Vs Apple

Pawan Fangaria

New member
Earlier this week Google's parent company Alphabet stood at a market value of $555 billion while the market value of Apple stood at $533 billion. At one point of time we were looking at Apple for 1 trillion dollar valuation in future, will it ever achieve?

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Alphabet's revenue is largely driven by Google business in advertising on various platforms. Google's revenue share in Alphabet is more than 99%, in fact Alphabet's other businesses are in loss on meager revenue. Still in the 4th quarter, Google's businesses have earned Alphabet 40% profit margin, operating profit of 6.8 billion on a revenue of 17.1 billion.

On the contrary, Apple's business is seeing a downturn in its smartphones. And that in my view will not see major jump in future as the smartphone market has saturated. Will Apple come in driverless cars, we are yet to see? How much can we expect from Smartwatch....

There will be a great tussle between the valuations of the two companies for some time. Who will be the winner? Looking at the current economy and the way we are seeing the digital business model growing, my bias it towards Alphabet.
 
On another note:

After using Google Analytics on SemiWiki for the past 5+ years I'm not a big fan of Google. The constitution guarantees us the fundamental right to privacy and Google walks all over that. They scrape everything they can about us then they monetize it in many different ways without our explicit permission. People are truly amazed when I tell them the type of information Google provides us webmasters and that I suspect is only the tip of the privacy breach iceberg. And FaceBook is a close second here, respecting our privacy in not even in their thought process.

Do you remember Google's first corporate motto "Don't be Evil"? Well that ship sailed a long time ago........

Apple on the other hand has privacy built into their business model: Privacy - Apple


[video=youtube_share;m6ieSYya8DU]https://youtu.be/m6ieSYya8DU[/video]
 
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Worth also remembering that (a) Google's most recent financials were helped by an unusually low effective tax rate (i.e. neither repeatable nor fundamental), (b) the market responded irrationally as always by boosting Google stock, thereby increasing enterprise value. But it's already started coming back down as the investor high wears off and they realize there was no good reason for that valuation.
 
Maybe Apple has a better privacy culture, but they've sucked all the profit out of the handheld device supply chain, and have bled out-sized profits from the R&D backs of technology innovators. They are great packagers of others' ideas, but unwilling to fairly compensate those whose components and IP they require.
 
They are great packagers of others' ideas, but unwilling to fairly compensate those whose components and IP they require.

Do you know this by experience or just what you have read? Because that has not been my experience inside the fabless ecosystem. We also did a deep dive on the ARM Apple relationship for our book Mobile Unleashed. The biggest problem with Apple that I have experienced is their secretive culture in dealing with suppliers.

When we wrote the book we did the first draft without participation of the companies involved. We then asked for corrections to make sure we got it right. Apple is the only company that didn't participate but several of their suppliers did so we definitely got it right.
 
I don't know about compensation for other companies, but it's a known fact that Apple invests almost zero in basic research , or giving back to open source like others.

As for Google , it's not fair to compare Google to Apple because they sell different products and make money in different ways. But if you want to run good search engines sell ads for a living(which are a requirement if we want Google and youtube) , you need to collect as much data as you can , otherwise someone else will take your business and will grab just as much data .

So if you want to judge Google, judge them not against Apple, judge them against how different things would have looked without Google. My guess: probably even worse, because Google did release Chrome as open-source and Android as partially open-source(some system API's are closed) , which led to some innovation in the ROM community with regards to privacy (like not sharing data with apps) , which maybe, more private than Apple in that regard.

But anyway, who among us doesn't use Google search ? is it even possible to be a good professional without using Google search ? and once you do that , what's the use of trying to be private from Google ?
 
It's google. There's a Vince Vaughn movie were he's redeemed by embracing google. If google wants a new star trek show or mad max movie they get it. I'm trying to find a way to make a living on my trade using google.
 
One thing we must understand, nothing comes for free. No one can do charity and survive for long, someone has to pay for that. With that perspective, I would commend the open source culture that unfolds so much innovation from anyone, anywhere in the world, and sharing of that in the world. Imagine, everyone who uses Google search had to pay explicitly for that, we wouldn't have come so far.

And I admire Google's spending on research in several areas - from driverless cars to curing cancer. Alphabet's loss of $3.6 billion in its other R&D intensive companies is a reflection of that.

Now google has to earn from somewhere, who are they who pay? They are advertisers who need info about how often, which of their products, from which region was searched most, where do they have potential to sell their products, how can they influence the potential visitors, and so on and so forth. In the digital marketing today, this kind of data gathering is the key for its success, that's the business model around it. Now how you do it can be debatable.

On the other hand Apple earns extraordinary profit on their products bumping up their book value. How much do they spend in expansion of research for society?
 
Now google has to earn from somewhere, who are they who pay? They are advertisers who need info about how often, which of their products, from which region was searched most, where do they have potential to sell their products, how can they influence the potential visitors, and so on and so forth. In the digital marketing today, this kind of data gathering is the key for its success, that's the business model around it. Now how you do it can be debatable.

If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product. So in that respect for Google and Facebook offering free services you are the product. Personally I have more trust in Google than Facebook. On Facebook I don't mind playing with privacy settings, I consider everything I do there public and in a naked fashion.
I do host my own ownCloud and email server so I don't rely on Google for services like contacts, agenda, email etc. The hoster of my server earns it's money by what I pay for the machine not with data collected about me.
I do run ad-blockers at home that by default block ads but also analytic sites etc.

My chance of ever using an Apple wearable is slim due to the locked-in you get with all their services. With Android I do have the choice, I can sideload apps, root the device if I want, install a custom mod, etc. True, it may need some fiddling here and there, but as an engineer it's something I like to do.

Personally I don't know if the Google and Facebook business model is sustainable in the long run if people would get the choice between cheap services but that not collect private data to sell and free services that you pay with private data exposure. If people would be like me it won't be sustainable; from the other side youngsters (and maybe also hipsters) are claimed to put less value on privacy. I don't know the latter is just ignorance or a real change in the values.
 
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If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product. So in that respect for Google and Facebook offering free services you are the product. Personally I have more trust in Google than Facebook. On Facebook I don't mind playing with privacy settings, I consider everything I do there public and in a naked fashion.
I do host my own ownCloud and email server so I don't rely on Google for services like contacts, agenda, email etc. The hoster of my server earns it's money by what I pay for the machine not with data collected about me.
I do run ad-blockers at home that by default block ads but also analytic sites etc.

My chance of ever using an Apple wearable is slim due to the locked-in you get with all their services. With Android I do have the choice, I can sideload apps, root the device if I want, install a custom mod, etc. True, it may need some fiddling here and there, but as an engineer it's something I like to do.

Personally I don't know if the Google and Facebook business model is sustainable in the long run if people would get the choice between cheap services but that not collect private data to sell and free services that you pay with private data exposure. If people would be like me it won't be sustainable; from the other side youngsters (and maybe also hipsters) are claimed to put less value on privacy. I don't know the latter is just ignorance or a real change in the values.

I couldn't agree more... If you don't know what the "product" is you are the "product"! Remember, Google was not the first search engine, they are the first to monetize a search engine thus their dominance.
 
Google has replaced television and the newspapers and makes money at their expense. Google is what the television channels used to be. I get the privacy concerns but the coding so complex and is used so much I doubt there's any accuracy or credibility to it. It's not like your personal search data is written in stone and really who gives a shit.
 
Larry Page is now CEO of Google's parent company, i.e. Alphabet. He looks after all other companies of Alphabet, such as Google X lab, Nest, Fiber, ....
 
Smart move on the board's part. Put adults in charge of running the business, give Larry a ceremonial role.

On re-reading, I guess still not entirely ceremonial, but it won't take long for shareholders to start question why the part Larry runs is losing so much money.
 
>>Apple on the other hand has privacy built into their business model: Privacy - Apple

Easy to do for Apple, which is entirely built on secrecy and need-to-know basis, from its R&D output about new products all the way to how their operating systems work. And I'm sure you can dig up a lot of dirt and "evil" about that company if you just dig deep and persistently enough (exploitation of workers in Asia, anyone?).

Google's services are open platform and provide open information, so they need to mine that information. I don't like using my very personal information more than anybody else, but I am fine with much of that information being used if I continue to get the best search engine with predictive results and videos on demand for free. It comes down to how much privacy everyone is willing to give up to get what they want and need for free, but you can't have both complete privacy and open information. A billion Facebook users demonstrate that privacy is perhaps not all that important, at least not for the less private parts.
 
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>>Apple on the other hand has privacy built into their business model: Privacy - Apple

Easy to do for Apple, which is entirely built on secrecy and need-to-know basis, from its R&D output about new products all the way to how their operating systems work. And I'm sure you can dig up a lot of dirt and "evil" about that company if you just dig deep and persistently enough (exploitation of workers in Asia, anyone?).

Google's services are open platform and provide open information, so they need to mine that information. I don't like using my very personal information more than anybody else, but I am fine with much of that information being used if I continue to get the best search engine with predictive results and videos on demand for free. It comes down to how much privacy everyone is willing to give up to get what they want and need for free, but you can't have both complete privacy and open information. A billion Facebook users demonstrate that privacy is perhaps not all that important, at least not for the less private parts.

Yes, you are right of course. You can't have your cake and your privacy too. I wonder what information LinkedIn is gathering on us? And at what point in time will the government declare "eminent domain" on internet domains in the fight against terror or whatever and take away what little privacy we have left?
 
The best way to fight this is not to pay attention to people that would use search information against us. If someone wants to slander me for my sports viewing they aren't worth my time.

People have committed suicide because of their social stigma on Google. The search engines have a social responsibility.
 
People have already voted to trade in their privacy for access to free services. Google and Facebook are proof of this. Most people's behavior leans towards accepting the intangible cost of less privacy over the very tangible cost of paying money. There is also the nuisance factor of paid services. With Facebook you do not have to worry about renewing or having to update your payment method every year. Anyone remember AOL monthly fees?

It is probably a lack of imagination on the part of the consumer that prevents them from realizing how much information about them is saved and stored. And, of course, we all like the convenience that comes from Facebook or Google using this information to 'magically' provide more and new services or help us find high school friends, etc. We all love maps, hangouts, search, photos, etc.

Let's face it, the internet is a very expensive thing to build and run. Right now the cost is distributed in such a way that the end user directly pays a small fraction of it. I'm sure indirectly that we all indeed pay the full cost. People seem to be OK with that.

Maybe one way of looking at the Google versus Apple discussion is that, yes Apple products cost more; but for that you are just paying a higher direct cost for what they provide, with the benefit of increased privacy.
 
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