Episode 32 – Alphabet, Facebook, Yahoo Earnings

As usual, we kick off this episode with our News Roundup. This week, we discuss Microsoft and Amazon's earnings briefly, including the rather counterintuitive investor reaction to each of them. Then we have a quick conversation about the positive video subscriber additions both Time Warner Cable and Comcast have reported recently, and why they shouldn't lead us to question the cord cutting trend. Our main topic today is Alphabet (formerly Google) and Facebook's earnings. We discuss Alphabet's new reporting structure and the performance of its "Other Bets" (something Jan wrote about this week on the Beyond Devices blog). We also talk about the fact that both these ad-centric businesses are investing heavily in non-ad businesses that have yet to deliver meaningful revenue, at significant cost, and why that might be. We also talk about the meaning of monthly and daily active user numbers, and the significance of each. To wrap up, we discuss Yahoo's earnings and the state of Yahoo, as well as the challenges facing the company and its failure to reinvent itself under Marissa Mayer over the last few years. As ever, you can find some links to related content and other information on the website at podcast.beyonddevic.es.