Google stock spikes after reporting better than expected Q2 earnings

[aresant]

"On the conference call, Ms. Porat noted that mobile cost per clicks continued to strengthen, and that the gap between desktop and mobile is narrowing." (1)

It's no surprise that after the "mobilepocalypse" earlier this year we're seeing mobile profitability grow for Google.

Google effectively forced advertisers hands in bundling their inventory and is agressively raising min CPC in a number of categories (2)

And they are breaking many of their OWN rules about how aggressively one can promote advertising on mobile - excellent, and entertaining breakdown of that here -> http://www.seobook.com/google-goes-mobile-unfriendly

I don't have much of a point other than sharing some of the information behind what's actually driving these earnings, and the major changes I've seen / experienced as a guy that spends a lot with the GOOG.

(1) http://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-results-top-expectations...

(2) http://searchengineland.com/google-showing-fewer-ads-per-sea...

(3) http://www.seobook.com/google-goes-mobile-unfriendly

[stvswn]

You assert that Google is "aggressively raising min CPC in a number of categories" and then link to an article that speculates that this might be the case without evidence. They didn't even say "aggressively..."

As for the third link, search ads are not the same thing as mobile display ads from the user's perspective. Remember that in the other case (mobile display ads), Google is probably selling those ads, too.

[Steko]

That seobook post has some gems:

https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552/phot...

[choppaface]

There's an Adobe study that shows that Google appears to be cutting impressions (of bad ads?) to boost CTRs and CPC; the same report shows Facebook is handily clobbering Google in CTR / relevance:

* http://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-mobilegeddon-moves-hitt...

Perhaps Google is trying to boost CTR / relevance in order to attract/retain the more valuable advertisers (who would probably otherwise weight Facebook more highly for its better targeting). I really wonder how much of this growth is just Google (and Facebook) extracting more marketing dollars from the biggest spenders.

[justwannasing]

And the most expensive ads are Super Bowl ads as the TV networks aggressively force the hands ...

So, iow, business as usual.

[roghummal]

The golden rule! He who has the something something something something etc. Don't know, don't care.

[mythz]

Google also just became the 2nd most valuable company in the world behind Apple: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/16/google-q2-2015-earnings/#.e...

Which both look in great shape for the Post-PC future having control of the 2 most dominant mobile platforms.

[InclinedPlane]

There will be a future where the way people use computers looks very different from the way they did in, say, 2005. But calling that future "Post-PC" is purely ridiculous. There will still be PCs, people will still use them. Laptops didn't get rid of desktops and tablets/phones won't get rid of them either.

[adam12]

> Post-PC future

I'm still not convinced.

[threeseed]

I actually don't think Google is in particularly great shape. They are still overly reliant on search and advertising revenues and their hold over the Android platform isn't particularly strong (only via Google Play Services). They also haven't demonstrated really any skill at product management with so many failed efforts and overlap between apps/services.

It's also confusing where Google is going with some of their acquisitions e.g. Nest was expensive and arugably unnecessary and the self driving car is solid technology with very poor product positioning i.e. existing car manufacturers have their own technologies and don't want to bet their business on Apple/Google.

It seems like Google desperately wants to be a consumer company like Apple when in fact they would be much better servicing business and diversifying their revenue stream. AWS and Azure Cortana for example both should have been available from Google years ago.

[hkmurakami]

Note that both GOOGL (+12% AH as of writing) and GOOG (+11% AH as of writing) both exist and are distinct.

(The former has voting rights)

[r00fus]

Is there honestly any scenario where the two won't be so closely correlated as to not be equivalent?

[mandeepj]

Thanks for posting about GOOGL. I never knew there was such a thing. Learnt some good stuff today

[arthurcolle]

Hopefully GOOG won't lose its way with its unrelenetless search for profits as opposed to incentivizing its devs to make cool products. That being said, good job new CFO

[eitally]

I think the problem is fundamentally this: how do you decide what is a cool product, and whether to work on it or not? Subsequently, how do you sell it to the engineering & PM teams to get them to actually do it? Remember that Google doesn't really work in the same way as most product companies and these two things aren't necessarily straightforward.

[dchichkov]

Or "good job previous CFO"? (it takes some time for decisions to take effect) Or "good job employees"? Or just random?

[brazzledazzle]

Didn't the new CFO start in May? Can we really attribute Q2 numbers (April, May and June) to them?

[sokoloff]

[unrelentless] is not the word you're looking for.

unrelenting (or relentless) probably is.

[guelo]

As Youtube gets more and more annoying it makes Google more and more money. The advertising business sucks.

[jaydz]

I'm hoping Youtube implements a subscription model. I will gladly pay to skip the 15-30 seconds ads on every video.

[Nadya]

That's because marketers ruin everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_ec6XRYQA

[eitally]

I wish they split out revenue for their Enterprise (Google for Work) division.