Back to Anthropic S-1 Shocker, Greatest Business Ever? Google's $500B Wipeout, Midterm Predictions.
Why Did Google Lose $500 Billion?
Jason Calacanis says Google lost about $500 billion of market cap on Thursday, falling 10 to 15 percent, after Q3 earnings missed search revenue for two straight quarters. Searches are growing massively, but the people clicking the ads are not. Free cash flow is negative even while cloud doubled year to year to $30.7 billion. Overall revenue is still growing 25 percent year over year. Search, the business that pays for everything, grew 12 percent, down from 17 percent.
David Friedberg says the core Google ad business is a real challenge. The company trades at roughly 21 times operating income. Google Cloud operating income for this quarter went from three and a half billion dollars last year to over 11 billion. Core Google services grew from 33 and a half billion to 39 billion over the last year. That stretch may largely reflect a change in the ad pricing algorithm, and Google is in some cases over-earning on the clicks. Advertisers will see the pattern, reduce spend, and the ad business will not look as good. The open question is whether a consumer AI business ramps fast enough to replace core search revenue.
Anthropic S-1 Shocker, Greatest Business Ever? Google's $500B Wipeout, Midterm Predictions ·