Google lost more than $3.5 billion on cars, robots and 'other bets' last year
C is for costly.
Google revealed for the first time Monday that it is losing billions of dollars a year on its many big bets, or "moonshots," which range from high-speed Internet and Nest smart home devices to robotics and self-driving cars.
The Internet giant, which is now on the cusp of becoming the most valuable company in the world, generated less than half a billion dollars in sales throughout 2015 from "Other Bets," a catch-all for the risky investments beyond its core Internet products, but lost more than $3.5 billion investing in these areas.
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Most of the sales from these bets came from Nest, Fiber (Google's high-speed Internet service) and Verily (its life sciences division), according to company comments. Fiber was also the chief expense, as Google goes through the costly process of creating the infrastructure for it in various big cities.
The never-before disclosed numbers were released as part of Google's earnings. The new revelations are a result of Google's decision to drastically overhaul its operating structure late last year and create a new holding company called Alphabet.
On a conference call with analysts Tuesday, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat explained the large investments by quoting her boss, Google founder Larry Page: "Incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time."
A key selling point of Alphabet for investors on Wall Street, beyond the promise of keeping Google nimble and innovative, is that the new structure comes with greater transparency for Google's various divisions.
Google and Page have long had an insatiable appetite to make longterm investments in risky categories that would seem to have little or nothing to do with its core business. Investors tolerated this largely because the search engine has been wildly profitable for years -- but many wanted more insight into those peripheral expenses and returns.
Now investors are finally getting what they wished for. Sort of.
Alphabet (we are obligated to call it that at least once) did not provide a breakdown of revenue and losses for specific divisions like Calico, its life extension research operation, or Google Capital and GV, its venture capital arms. Instead it lumped these and other investments together under the broad category "Other Bets."
Fortunately, Google is a company that almost literally prints money.
Google proper, which now includes search, ads, YouTube and Android, among other key "Internet" services, beat Wall Street estimates with earnings of $8.67 per share on sales of $21.32 billion for the holiday quarter of 2015.
On the conference call, Porat said Google's revenue benefited from "the increased use of mobile search by consumers."
Alphabet now has nearly $75 billion in its cash pile, up from $64 billion a year earlier.
Shares of Google surged by more than 8% in after hours trading, which should easily position it to overtake Apple as the most valuable business in the world by market cap when the market opens on Tuesday.
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Topics Google
Seth Fiegerman was a Senior Business Reporter at Mashable, where he covered startups, marketing and the latest consumer tech trends. He joined Mashable in August 2012 and is based in New York.Before joining Mashable, Seth covered all things Apple as a reporter at Silicon Alley Insider, the tech section of Business Insider. He has also worked as a staff writer at TheStreet.com and as an editor at Playboy Magazine. His work has appeared in Newsweek, NPR, Kiplinger, Portfolio and The Huffington Post.Seth received his Bachelor of Arts from New York University, where he majored in journalism and philosophy.In his spare time, Seth enjoys bike riding around Brooklyn and writing really bad folk songs.
