Alphabet Reports First Revenue Decline In Company History

Google parent-company Alphabet beat expectations for its second quarter earnings Thursday, marking its first revenue decline in the company's history. CNBC reports: Here's how it did against Refinitiv consensus estimates:

EPS: $10.13 (non-GAAP), vs. $8.21 estimated.
Revenue: $38.30 billion vs. $37.37 billion estimated.

Although the company reported its first annual revenue decline in history (a drop of 2%), the stock rose slightly after-hours. As a result of the customer pullbacks and the general maturing ad market, Alphabet itself cut marketing spending by half and instituted hiring freezes for the second half of the year in anticipation of a slowdown, CNBC reported. Around that time, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google would be pulling back on some of its investments for the rest of the year amid the Covid-19 crisis, starting with hiring.

I hope this is the beginning of the end

[XY0]

In my experience, every tech company has a life span. I'd be overjoyed to see GooGooGaGa go the way of Yahoo.

Hollywood Accounting

[Lije Baley]

Maybe they just finally figured out how to look harmless while you profit, like Hollywood does.

Stadia

[gl4ss]

well, stadia. not much more to say than that.
That's couple of billion directly down the drain.

Maybe start treating your customers with respect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I control a middling Google Ads budget. Last week I got a call from my "account manager". She had a heavy Indian accent to the point where it was difficult to understand her, and I could hear her supervisor in the background giving her instructions.

I was prepared to give her a chance. She was working her way through a script, asking a series of generic questions that were irrelevant to my business. After 15 minutes, I'd had enough. She was almost pleading with me to stay on the phone, it was embarrassing.

Wh

with many more to come

[WindBourne]

Alphabet is being ran into the ground due to mismanagement.
I've been pointing to Pichai as screwing things up badly, and he continues to prove my points.
Google once was a company that actively sought to 'not be evil'. Now, Pichai is just as bad as Gates and Balmer were.

Bit surprising

[timeOday]

The US GDP decline of -32.9% last quarter is stunning and obviously a factor. Even so, where is it sending us all? Online.

For amazon, "North American sales were up 43% to $55.4 billion, while international sales grew 38% to $22.7 billion." Wow.

Here are a couple interesting google-related facts about amazon:

"Amazon, one of the biggest advertisers in the world, said it cut marketing expenses by about third in Q2"

Conversely: "Amazon ad revenue surging -> Amazon reports Q2 "other" category revenue, which mostly covers its ad business, of $4.22B, up 41% YoY and subscriptions services"

So, it would seem amazon's business is mushrooming, and they are taking in more ad revenue, and paying less to companies like you-know-who.

Re:

[kangsterizer]

Yeah, Amazon no longer need other companies as it's his own best advertiser. The difference with Google though is that while Google is also it's best own advertiser, Google makes no money from it's services in general other than GCP (and arguably device sales).

Amazon on the other hand directly benefit from being it's own advertiser because it gets a large cut on every single sale, in addition to it's own.

Basically what we're seeing is Amazon overtaking everyone as the biggest and fastest growing company the

Oh noes! Stability!

[BAReFO0t]

How will the company crash and burn now, when all the possible money is already leeched out of our pockets yet the shareholders still demand exponentially more??

They might become a stable process! Like something that actually survived for an infinite time! Ewwww! The horrors!
*pulls his cocaine-lined pointy Wall Street hair out*