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Comment by throwaway894345

5 hours ago

Reminds me of the Microsoft days circa 2010 when Microsoft published half a dozen media players (Zune!), word processors, email clients, etc.

I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80% or higher, so you can plow all that extra money into superfluous headcount tasked with objectives of questionable business value. It’s a curse of riches, if you will. The rest of us living on 15 to 30% margins need to think a little harder about what we do and why.

  • It's worse when you consider these are the only companies that can afford it due to the tax implications of R&D, my understanding was that you still pay the full bill on a developer building something as if you were making profits, even though you're burning their entire salary and other resources on it.

  • > I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80%

    explain how GOOG's margin is 80%

    what methodology do you use to derive that number?

    just curious.