Alphabet earnings show Google Cloud on $10B run rate

Today after the bell, Alphabet reported its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results. The company’s revenue grew from $39.3 billion in 2018 to $46.1 billion in 2019. The firm’s net income also expanded from $8.9 billion to $10.7 billion over the same time frame.

The figures, when compared to expectations, were mixed. Alphabet beat analyst estimates on profit, but missed on revenue. Shares of the company are off around 4% in after-hours trading, following its disclosure.

Why do we care?

The company’s reported Q4 and full-year 2019 results are notable for several reasons. First, Alphabet broke out the value of YouTube’s advertising empire. And, the company disclosed discrete “Google Cloud” revenues. Both are new.

YouTube’s advertising heft was made clear today, with the video platform bringing in $15.1 billion in 2019 revenue, up from $11.2 billion in 2018.

The firm’s new “Google Cloud” line item appears to include all of the company’s cloud computing efforts. YouTube’s advertising haul will grab the most headlines, but the cloud revenue figure is what we’d like to drill into.

Cloud, Google-style

Google announced an impressive $2.6 billion round for all cloud revenue, which includes G Suite, the enterprise version of GMail/Docs/Drive/Hangouts and Google’s cloud infrastructure revenue. At $2.61 billion, that puts it on a run rate over $10 billion. In the year-ago Q4, the company’s Cloud revenue came to just $1.71 billion, a run rate of $6.84 billion.

Google’s Cloud run-rate, then, grew by 53.6% in the last year.

In February of 2018, then-Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene was happy to report $1 billion quarterly revenue for the group. Last July, the company’s Cloud revenue crossed $2 billion for that quarter, putting on an $8 billion run rate, double the previous report.

Former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian took over after Greene stepped down last year, and he brought on a number of industry veterans from Oracle and SAP to help sell Google Cloud to the enterprise. So far the results are certainly encouraging in a short amount of time.

In comparison

While Google is making some gains in the cloud, its chief competitors have been doing well at the same time.

To pick one example, Amazon’s cloud revenue totaled just under $10 billion in the same calendar quarter. In a direct comparison, Google is far smaller, but the search giant is working to make up ground and the results appear encouraging. It’s worth noting that Amazon’s comparable cloud figures are more focused on infrastructure than Google’s, which includes SaaS revenue, as well.

Turning to Microsoft, it reported a combined cloud revenue, which includes SaaS (Office 365, Dynamics, etc.) and cloud computing (Azure), of $12.5 billion for the quarter. All of this shows that while Google still has a long way to grow to match its rivals for scale, it’s at least picking up the pace.

Google Cloud’s new CEO on gaining customers, startups, supporting open source and more

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/alphabet-earnings-show-google-cloud-on-10b-run-rate/

Microsoft Teams has been down this morning

Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform that competes with Slack, has been down since about 8:30 am ET. Microsoft reports the outage was due to an expired certificate.

Microsoft first posted that an outage was in progress on its Office 365 Status Twitter feed about 9:00 am ET, stating the company was looking into the problem.

We're investigating an issue where users may be unable to access Microsoft Teams. We're reviewing systems data to determine the cause of the issue. More information can be found in the Admin center under TM202916

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 3, 2020

At approximately 10:00 am ET, the company posted the reason for the problem, an expired certificate, which frankly, has to be pretty embarrassing for the group responsible for keeping the Teams service running.

We've determined that an authentication certificate has expired causing, users to have issues using the service. We're developing a fix to apply a new certificate to the service which will remediate impact. Further updates can be found under TM202916 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 3, 2020

About an hour ago, the company updated the status again, indicating it had begun deploying the updated certificate.

We've initiated the deployment of the updated certificate and are monitoring service health as the fix progresses. Additional information can be found under TM202916 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 3, 2020

Microsoft has kept the status updates pretty business like, but has not apologized to its 20 million users as of publication. The company is in the midst of a battle for hearts and minds in the enterprise collaboration space with Slack, and a preventable outage has to be awkward for the company.

The company will no doubt do a post-mortem to figure out how this mistake happened and how to prevent this kind of issue from taking down the site in the future. While every site is going to experience and outage from time to time, it’s up to the company to understand why it happened and put systems in place to keep a preventable incident like this one from happening again in the future.

How you react when your systems fail may define your business

 

 

 

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/microsoft-teams-has-been-down-this-morning/

Smart TV hub Solaborate secures $10M Series A and a go-to-market partnership

When siblings Labinot and Mimoza Bytyqi fled the war in Kosovo in 1999, arriving as refugees on the West Coast of the US, they would have had no idea they’d go on to launch a technology company together.

But as adults, the pair set up attacking the $6.7 billion telepresence and video communication category which hasn’t evolved much since the older business systems form Cisco and Polycom. By integrating their Solaborate device with Smart TVs, the entrepreneurs have come up with a drastically cheaper device and platform.

Solaborate has now closed a $10 million Series A funding round from EPOS and Demant Group. EPOS is a newly established company under the healthcare tech company Demant Group in Denmark which makes high-end audio solutions designed for enterprise and gaming. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Solaborate’s new product line of all-in-one HELLO devices and its cloud communication platform.

After two successful Kickstarter campaigns, Solaborate will now work with EPOS to combine compute, microphones, speakers and Smart TVs with their technology to create products fully-owned by and branded under EPOS. These will include Solaborate’s patented auto echo-cancellation delay.

Labinot Bytyqi, founder and CE) said: “We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and that’s why we engineered HELLO devices with video and audio built-in hack-proof privacy controls and end-to-end encryption for everyone’s protection and peace of mind.”

A HELLO device require only two cables – HDMI and power – and then turns any TV into a voice-controlled open cross-platform communication and collaboration device supporting video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Meet, Zoom, Skype, Cisco WebEx, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, BlueJeans, Fuze, Unify, and several more.

The partnership will focus on video collaboration to deliver integrated audio/video solutions to the platforms of EPOS’ current strategic partners such as Microsoft.

They are pushing at an open door. The video conferencing market is predicted to grow from an estimated $1.8bn to more than $2.8bn by 2022, according to some studies.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/03/smart-tv-hub-solaborate-secures-10m-series-a-and-a-go-to-market-partnership/

Something’s more interesting than this

And now, that’s always true.

Whatever you’re doing.

No matter who you’re with.

Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.

And it’s in your pocket.

All the time. As long as the battery lasts.

There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.

Until infinity.

Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617480842/0/sethsblog~Somethings-more-interesting-than-this/

Watch this year’s tech-themed Super Bowl ads from Amazon, Google and more

Many of the companies spending big bucks on today’s big game have already released their ads (or teasers for those ads) on YouTube. So if you’re curious about what how tech companies will be promoting themselves tonight, this is the roundup for you.

Some of these ads come from tech giants like Amazon and Facebook, who have hired big stars to promote their products. Meanwhile, Dashlane found a fun way to remind viewers of the nightmare of life without a password manager, while Squarespace enlisted Winona Ryder to build a website on the platform.

The Super Bowl also provides an opportunity for automotive companies like Hyundai to put new technology front-and-center in their marketing, and for SodaStream to take viewers into space. And while voice assistants don’t seem to be as big a theme as they were last year, at least we’re getting a killer robot, courtesy of Pringles and “Ricky and Morty.”

You can watch the ads in alphabetical order below. And I’ll update this post as more ads become available online.

Amazon

Audi

Dashlane

Facebook (teaser)

Google

Hyundai

Microsoft

Pringles

SodaStream

Squarespace

T-Mobile

TurboTax

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/02/tech-super-bowl-ads/

Again and again and again

Ruts don’t dig themselves.

Most of the time, we’re in a rut because that’s precisely where we put ourselves.

Actions become habits, and habits get repeated because they feel safe.

The easiest way to make things more interesting is to simply stop repeating your habitual behavior.

And that often comes from reacting to triggers. Remove the triggers and you can alter the habits.

Tiny changes. Different ways to keep score.

Tomorrow comes daily. But we don’t have to take the same route to get there.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617454976/0/sethsblog~Again-and-again-and-again/

Greater than the sum of the parts

Some of the greatest buildings of all time were created by unskilled craftsmen using cheap and readily available materials. McMansions, on the other hand, are often created by highly paid workers and endless supplies of expensive materials.

Caviar isn’t required to make a great meal… but a talented, thoughtful chef definitely makes a difference.

Who is designing your system? Who is putting in an unreasonable amount of effort to make sure it’s magical?

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/617424156/0/sethsblog~Greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts/