The losses were more than offset by its core search and advertising businesses
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, racked up US$3.6 billion in losses last year on investments in "big bets" such as self-driving cars and Internet balloons.
The company was known to be spending heavily on these items but revealed actual figures for the first time Monday when it broke out results separately for its core Google business and for big-bet investments, which it also calls moonshots.
The losses for those items were much higher in 2015 than in 2014, when they totaled $1.9 billion. And they brought in just $448 million in revenue last year.
Still, Alphabet says it stands to reap rich rewards in the long term if any of those bets pay off. They also include its investments in smart thermostat company Nest, Google Fiber, and medical science, including efforts to build a smart contact lens that measures glucose levels.
The losses from Alphabet's big bets were more than offset by the profits made by Google and its core advertising and search businesses. Google generated $23.4 billion in operating income last year, on $74.5 billion in revenue.
Google reorganized itself last year under a holding company called Alphabet, which consists of Google and then other business units that place long term bets on emerging areas. It said the move would provide more visibility into how its core search and ad businesses are doing.
Alphabet as a whole reported strong results for last quarter. Revenue for the three months to Dec. 31 was $21.3 billion, up 18 percent from the year before and higher than the $20.8 billion analysts had been expecting, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.
Net profit for the quarter rose to $4.9 billion. On an adjusted basis, net earnings per share was $8.67, up 28 percent and much better than the $8.10 analysts had forecast.
As the ‘Asian century’ becomes ever more prevalent and the Fourth Industrial Revolution gathers speed, marketers are having to surf a tidal wave of creative destruction. The choice is stark: Embrace change, or resign yourself to a Darwinian fate.
Many marketers, agencies - and everyone in between - get caught up on bubble references and data points. They’ll use Facebook best practice as the only best practice for Facebook executions and only consider metrics and responses of the one channel they’re expected to deliver on.
A few weeks ago, our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison took it upon himself to tell companies and their CEOs where to go when it came to societal issues. It wasn’t an organisation’s place to get involved. Instead, he said it should be left to governments to solve societies challenges.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
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