This is a naive take. Companies want their book-profit to be as close to zero, because they make their income tax to the IRS close to 0.
Most companies intentionally waste money on expenses to help drive future growth, or atleast avoid taxes. This is why you hear constantly Amazon pays almost no taxes compared to their revenue.
Amazon was the exception actually. That's why it's the poster child for being perpetually break-even. The surge in AI capex spending of the last couple of years is partially because big tech has finally found something to shovel their billions into. Before that big tech just sat on their billions with no plan of what to do with it. But even AI spending doesn't really put a dent in the money pile because big tech is so astonishingly profitable. Apple makes $100 billion in accounting profit annually. Google and Microsoft each $75 billion. How can you reinvest that kind of money? You can't. It's too much. Even Amazon gave up and booked $44 billion in net profit.
The money Google spends internally either on development or on cross subsidies is no profit and is what most of the issues in this discussion are addressing.
Profits is just money they couldn't find a place to spend on growth.
(Also a maximum of 30% goes to app devs which isn't a majority any way you measure it)
ThunderSizzle|1 year ago
Most companies intentionally waste money on expenses to help drive future growth, or atleast avoid taxes. This is why you hear constantly Amazon pays almost no taxes compared to their revenue.
gizmo|1 year ago
triceratops|1 year ago
nl|1 year ago
The money Google spends internally either on development or on cross subsidies is no profit and is what most of the issues in this discussion are addressing.
Profits is just money they couldn't find a place to spend on growth.
(Also a maximum of 30% goes to app devs which isn't a majority any way you measure it)
bobviolier|1 year ago
__MatrixMan__|1 year ago
meiraleal|1 year ago