Google Alphabet Q1, 2019 Results, 17pct up, at $36.34bn

[engine]

Alphabet has reported its Q1, 2019 results which are up 17% to $36.34bn, with net income of $8,339. Its shares fell 7% as this was lower than $37.33 billion expectations, however, its shares are still up 22% this year.

Other bets revenues rise from $150 million to $170 million, with the operasting loss from $571 million rising to $868 million.

Paid clicks took a hit by slowing 9% in the quarter, with cost per click down 19% Year-on-Year.

[abc.xyz...]

[samwest]

Coincidentally, our revenue was down 17%.

[TinkyWinky]

If Google keep insisting that Amazon's results are way better than EVERYONE elses in the natural listings (which clearly they are not in 99% of the cases) then they will appear further up the SERPs and pushing other sites that may contain Adsense ads further and further back, then 7% will be the tip of the iceberg to come.

G need to urgently tweak that filter/algo now - which they may well do seeing as there is now a noted and marked migration from G towards Amazon.. I hope anyway as at least that would restore a tiny bit of the purpose of the search engine that is unfortunately over 85% of the UK's searches.

[glitterball]

Ruth Porat is blaming the disappointing results on changes to the YouTube algorithm.

Hmmm, how about the fact that they demonetised the majority of YouTube channels (all of the smaller channels)?
All of the genuine review channels were demonetised (i.e. all of the small channels where the reviewer actually paid real money for the item that they were reviewing), leaving only channels that receive all of the review items for free - and let's be honest, those channels are going to be kind so that the avalanche of free stuff continues.
Or how about the changes to the algorithm that favour 10+ minute videos? Now we have to sit through 10 minutes of waffle before YouTube videos get to the point - either waffle or boring slow motion footage of someone's shoes. Who's going to sit through a full ad, if you've got another 5 minutes of not getting to the point after that?

[JS_Harris]

gee, the money they make with my content is pretty impressive.

[mosxu]

And Mr. S-c-h-m-i-d-t is not seeking re-election on the board...

Big problem ahead amazon keeps organising more and more buyers direct to their properties avoiding Google all together.

It must be a miracle mobile screens only displays 20% of ads compared to old desktop. Mobile traffic has halfed the desktop traffic and will continue do grow plus the amazon getting more and more prime members.

[goodoldweb]

Adwords/Adsense are dying a slow death. Youtube bombarded with ads while they keep trying to shove Youtube premium down everyone's throat.. Google+ a monumental fail. Search just gets silly by the day, with more than half the web censored or buried down page 10005.

A dying comet...

[heisje]

You can only milk a cow so long.

[cnvi]

A dying comet indeed..

Google had it right until about 2010 when they told websites to stop linking with each other - or else their rankings are threatened. It was downhill from there.

As Google insisted on making websites play by their rules, they got greedy during their pubescence. With government unable to understand technology, Google played the greed card and allowed everything to run wild. Their biggest fail is allowing bot traffic to be counted towards fake clicks monetizing every robot or machine on the web. They could have chosen to take care of their customers - but they chose poorly knowing government in the US would not pay attention to their gross lawless ways. And they were right.. except the UK was paying attention to them. The UK has called them the biggest crook on the Internet - and its true (60 Minutes interview May 2018).

As website owner/operators get tired of throwing good $ after bad traffic, hopefully they will get back to good old linking between websites - the way the web was designed to be. Websites should feel comfortable linking to anyone they can get a relevant link back from and stop relying on one well known corrupt search engine for traffic.

It will take time (maybe another 5-10 years) but we are now headed in the right direction as long as website owner/operators start making decisions that is best for their future - and not what Google dictates.

[goodoldweb]

^^ i could not agree more. Well said!

[mosxu]

@cnvi

Well said!

Buyers are not “researching” as much as people think any more with Google. If you are a prime member why waste time researching?

Also brands have apps and big email subscribers lists.

The traffic that advertisers get for hours and days that does not convert for some reason should be easy for authorities to investigate but they do not do anything.

EU and US will not care for the small businesses

[awall19]

Mobile traffic has halfed the desktop traffic and will continue do grow plus the amazon getting more and more prime members.

The massive growth of mobile & the absurdly high conversion rate of Amazon on mobile has allowed them to bid more aggressively to own mobile traffic sources. Affiliates are more likely to promote a source that converts & RKG / Merkle have some blog posts they've published over the years where it showed Amazon was pushing harder on mobile PLAs / Google shopping ads than desktop search ads.

If Google keep insisting that Amazon's results are way better than EVERYONE elses in the natural listings (which clearly they are not in 99% of the cases) then they will appear further up the SERPs and pushing other sites that may contain Adsense ads further and further back, then 7% will be the tip of the iceberg to come.

IMHO that ship has already sailed. Google gets most of their ad revenues from their owned & operated sites. That ad revenue is both higher margin & faster growing than their partner network. And this has been true for a decade now.

Think of how many video games & mobile apps are added to the publisher network year after year, think of how fast the web is growing outside of western markets & yet year after year the entire partner network as a whole sees tiny gains while the broader online ad ecosystem is growing at about 20% a year with much of the growth going to owned & operated sites from Facebook, Google & Amazon.

Google is more likely to buy the likes of Target & Kroger to dive into a head on logistics competition with Amazon than they are to worry about AdSense to any material degree. And the big publishers with clean traffic are shifting away from ads toward subscription revenues.
[mediapost.com...]
"Print advertising revenue declined by 17.4% year-over-year. Digital advertising and marketing services revenue declined by 5.2% to $96.4 million, as did digital media advertising revenues, which fell by 5.4% to $61.1 million. However, the company reported a bright note within its subscriptions. Its digital-only subscriber volume grew 39% year-over-year, now totaling around 538,000."