Comment by wenbin
1 day ago
Alphabet is the modern day berkshire hathaway.
Alphabet’s investment holdings (eg, spacex, anthropic..) are worth in the same order of magnitude of BRK’s (~$300B)
The track record of google’s M&A is pretty good.
Except for search and cloud, many of Google’s important products were from M&A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube , deep mind, etc.
The companies you listed have great synergy with Google's core business. What's Google's play with SpaceX? Data centers in space?
Google X was building Loon at least a decade ago to solve internet connectivity with laser-networked high-altitude balloons. They clearly benefit structurally from expanding access to the internet to the unconnected population.
So on that front, while I didn’t guess this, it does sound like a good investment.
Furthermore, while I am skeptical about the “DC in space” thing in the short term, and Musk’s timelines are, generously, something like P99.9 outcomes, it seems plausible that in 10 years it might make sense. And at that point Google will want to put their TPUs in orbit, too.
Presumably Starlink for routing throughout space. Google does under-sea cables and domestic internet access too.
They invested in SpaceX long before Starlink was a thibgy
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Having your exponentially more expensive fleet of satellites constantly burning up versus dedicated cables that rarely need replacing
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It's telecom infrastructure to increase the number of people who have internet in order to increase the number of people using Google. They might have been considering having satellite internet in Android phones.
They had a big early investment back when Google was doing more crazy out of scope things.
the investment happened 10 years ago
starlink cellular connection for android in future
Low cost payloads to space can unlock lots.
Similar of SpaceX and Twitter I guess
Google Cloud, low latency cross-continental links, etc.
I don't think gcp customers were hoping for higher latency, 5% packet loss, and modem speeds.
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One would presume connectivity and services in space as industry and services spread there. Asteroid mining, on orbit manufacturing, space colonies/tourism, data centers in space, centers for working outside traditional government jurisdiction.
Google has a strong interest in everybody getting better internet (see Fiber, Loon, Fi, etc), which lines up well with Starlink.
YouTube is probably one of the few companies that could benefit from data centers in space.
Rather than co-locating media servers into ISPs you can stick them into space so they're just closer.
Space in NYC isn't cheap. Space in space is free.
If a data centre is in space, its almost always going to be further away than a data centre on Earth.
Most people in the developed world are probably under 500km away from the nearest data centre, with most connections being established over fibre.
A space DC would require wireless communications, over longer distances. The latency is higher. Not to mention, Jitter, Latency and Packet Loss are pretty consequential to video streaming, specifically real time or live broadcasts.
> Space in NYC isn't cheap. Space in space is free.
... what?
Say what you want about starship etc etc, but space in space is far from free and will be for a long time.
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How is Alphabet the modern Berkshire Hathaway?
Google's return of invested capital has averaged 32% since IPO.
This may be a narrative violation on HN, but the quality of Google's management is exceptional.
That is true. It’s a big corporate so I understand why purists dislike it but as a business it has done well.
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Because Google, the business, is run so well, Google, the product, can be kinda shit for quite a long time before anyone who is only watching the business notices anything is wrong. Microsoft had the same situation, inspiring Bill Gates' famous email: https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/gates-sends-angry-e-mail-s...
I don't think anybody at Google has sent that email, yet. Maybe Sergey and Sundar don't use Google products, anymore. Maybe they have a special Google just for billionaires that doesn't suck.