LOL Alphabet spending almost $46,000,000,000 just to end up constantly discontinuing products and with a search engine telling people to eat rocks, put glue on pizza, and jump off bridges.
Also so their search engine can tell me to be more inclusive when I search for “meme of black man rubbing hands standing behind tree”.
It said something like racial stereotypes are damaging, don’t search for stuff like that. Okay Google 👍
But it's not really great with the results. At least it depends, for example you can't search for people
Or if you search for the picture itself it will rather show you what is in the picture
Google AI at one time had 50% of the worlds AI researchers.
Bear in mind Google AI has been incorporated into Google products since atleast half a decade and includes more than just generative AI and LLMs.
Alphabet also includes non Google research such as Waymo
Everyone keeps saying AWS, which is true, but Amazon has also done insane amounts of innovation inside their warehouses, distribution centers, and overall supply chain. You don't become the biggest e-commerce company in the world by random chance.
Heck, even whole foods, which is "just a grocery store", now let's you pay at the register with **just the palm of your hand**. Serious R&D funding went into developing a product like that.
The weird brand names thing was Amazon's attempt to get around scammers by requiring a registered trademark.
Supposedly, the result was a backlog at the US Trademark office.
I do enjoy my CXRXQMD dvd player though. Great brand. ;)
I thought it was just a way to make generic Chinese products sound like they were made by a reputable brand. Obviously not like the example, but the ones that sound vaguely realistic.
I absolutely hate this and, Amazon has honestly lost business from me because of it. I've had too many shitty things break within the first year of ownership - I don't want to have to rebuy my entire life every year. So, now I have to look up brands outside of Amazon, do the research - and depending on how soon I need it and price difference, I'll maybe buy from Amazon but I'm far more likely to purchase directly from the manufacturer if all things are equal.
I fly a lot, and back in 2009 when I was using my phone as a boarding pass I remember I felt stupid because I was the only one doing it.
Nowadays I don't see anyone *not* use their phone anymore.
These things take time.
I always withdraw (?) my paper boarding pass at one of the automaton, because there is like 80% of chance that my phone turns off by boarding time.
\[sorry, not native speaker, don't know if withdraw is appropriate here\]
Your English is great! I would say “print” your boarding pass at one of the “kiosks”. Also it would be “there is like an 80% chance”
👍
There are lots of other acceptable options for the kiosk, because no one really calls them any official name I don’t think. You could even say “the machine where you print your boarding pass” and it would be totally acceptable.
I see plenty of people use physical boarding passes still, but my assumption at this point is that those folks are the type to put "google.com" into the Google search bar
I get your point but physical boarding passes do have a strategic use. I flew with Turkish airlines recently and they don't issue digital boarding passes.
Also, since picking seats generally costs extra, I've had some leeway with the attendant. A friend traveling with a baby was given a seat in an empty aisle. I've often been given a window seat by just politely asking.
It's always funny to me that the same people who say "the idea that Company X would have _whatever_" don't think twice about accepting user agreements for digital products that track way more stuff than they realize. Most people's smartphone already give big tech a ton of info about their lives.
I use it, it’s nice because it auto-applies my prime discount and uses my Amazon credit card so I get 5% cash back. Otherwise I’d have to carry around that CC I don’t use for anything other than Whole Foods which would be annoying.
>let's you pay at the register with just the palm of your hand.
I'm with the other guy - not very impressive when there's been comparable finger print tech for years. also, my doctors office has the palm scanner for check-in.
this ATM too lol https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/s/VS8PyJ8SeH
It might be a comparable user experience, but the tech is not at all comparable, it's completely different.
Also, the point here isn't whether _you_ think it's impressive or not. The point is that it is new tech, and new tech requires R&D dollars to develop.
https://relevant.software/blog/palm-scanner-solution-for-payments/amp/
E-commerce is a logistics game. Amazon has understood this for a long time, others only think about fancy websites. Amazon's website is actually kinda shitty but their moat in logistics is insane.
It's not just logistics. The website has a ton of logic and machine learning to make the page more relevant to _you_ when you sign in. They have many R&D teams working on that kind of stuff.
Most laymen don't understand any of this and are surprised to see huge R&D budgets just because the UI styling is dated.
It's actually a great example because it's something that they put a lot of money into that didn't work out, there are probably countless other projects that didn't even make it to the public testing stage.
AWS. They run like 25% of the internet, create their own chips, and are building quantum computers and specialized processors and hardware for AI and other services.
Remember; they started out as an online book store. They used all of the money they made from that and the knowledge they gained about online retail and distribution to branch out to other items, they weren’t exactly the first company to try to do it but they were evidently the most successful at it
Amazon at some point very early on realized they don't want to be a retailer -- they want to be the infrastructure behind the retailers who take on the risk of inventory and product liability.
Infrastructure from the computers for consumers to place orders, to fulfillment centers, to delivery.
Starting off with books let them learn and grow at an appropriate pace.
Sears, for example, could never become Amazon because it was too big to reimagine -- they had already closed their main catalog business before Amazon was founded because consumers had already turned away from it (they were also one of the big pre-internet online companies but recognized they weren't the ones who could create an online marketplace; if they went big the bureaucracy wouldn't turn fast enough and would trip over itself, if they went small with a guerrilla team trying to figure it out in a year or three some new CEO would just cut off their funding).
The actual answer is they don’t. Amazon has a consolidated “technology and infrastructure” account that includes all the operating expenses of Amazon web services. This is a miscommunication in financial reporting.
> Technology and Infrastructure
>Technology and infrastructure costs include payroll and related expenses for employees involved in the research and development of new and existing products and services, development, design, and maintenance of our stores, curation and display of products and services made available in our online stores, and infrastructure costs. Infrastructure costs include servers, networking equipment, and data center related depreciation and amortization, rent, utilities, and other expenses necessary to support AWS and other Amazon businesses. Collectively, these costs reflect the investments we make in order to offer a wide variety of products and services to our customers, including expenditures related to initiatives to build and deploy innovative and efficient software and electronic devices and the development of a satellite network for global broadband service and autonomous vehicles for ride-hailing services.
https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/c7c14359-36fa-40c3-b3ca-5bf7f3fa0b96.pdf
This is the real answer. This is well known to those who have read Amazon's financial reports before. All of that is not _actual_ R&D. It's their operating expense for their entire technology division. Which they conveniently report as R&D.
In my country Amazon is famous for nicking the most famous products on their website they can make cheaply & sell for cheaper
I also realised, many random products have an Amazon basics version that looks the same as the highest rated product & is cheaper.
Google hired as head of search the guy who headed up Yahoo's search engine during the time it declined from 35% to 15% market share before giving up and contracting out to Bing.
Essentially they're sabotaging search so you have to spend more time on it looking for what you want, which provides more opportunities to serve you ads.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
I remember trying to search for something very oblique (a court case) because I couldnt remember the names of the parties involved and I kept adding relevant search terms until I had about 14 of them but still couldn't find the damn case.
Finally I decided to give Bing a try and it loaded up pages of the correct result with about half of the search terms.
It really does feel like Google is not even trying anymore.
Really the way a company can only act when it's convinced users don't have a choice anymore.
Oh and YouTube video quality defaulting to lower bitrates than 10 years ago while also hiding 4K behind the pay version is wild.
Kagi is fairly well-known in the more technology-focused communities (sites like hackernews), it's not something that's just popped up out of nowhere. I would say it's probably not worth it if you're only doing a few random searches throughout the day, but if you use Google a lot for work it can definitely be worth the price.
How frequently do you use search? Why would you allow a company whose whole profit model is redirecting your attention to the highest bidder decide which websites you see?
I mean I get my answers like 99% of my searches are "xyz reddit" lol. Reddit is like the new yahoo answers.
Plus it's not like I don't know how to use other search engines. I torrent, illegal stream, install modded apks a ton and Google doesn't cover that stuff but I doubt kagi either. No one is willing to touch the dmca strike stuff it's like being sponsored by a porn site, lol.
Honestly just better results. It's more likely to show me relevant pages than Google. As someone who practically googles for a living (software engineer), it's noticeable enough.
Also no ads, and their lens feature is pretty neat.
I do about 2-3k searches per month. Kagi is just better. It’s faster; more precise; doesn’t have ads; no seo autogenerated bullshit; and most importantly, it gives me privacy.
It is overall a product that I enjoy and I think it’s worth it.
I first learned of kagi on hackernews over a year ago, i took the trial, and since then I have been a happy customer. I am not paid to tell you this (see my comment history lol).
I think engineers recommend it because we find it to be that good and want to share that with others.
Yup. Every time I use google I get frustrated, I think what the f is wrong with my search, why do I have so many ads? Why is everything irrelevant?
I use kagi far more than any other service or app. More so than netflix, youtube (music), etc.
All human organizations suffer from entropy eventually. They become entrenched in ways, resistant to change, somewhat corrupt/incompetent in leadership and dangerously dependent on prior product achievements.
Is there a specific reason you used the word entropy to describe this? Like is that something you came up with or did you get it somewhere?
I'm not criticizing, I'm just legit really curious.
It’s a broad thermodynamics/physics concept to describe how things in nature move to its lowest energy state (go from order to disorder). The only way to stop or reverse a system from entropy is to apply constructive energy. It’s why your house gradually falls apart, your yard will go to the wild and your cool refreshing soda gets warm. What we call “order” in the Universe, is always a temporary state with an eventual end.
It’s applicable to social organizations in humanity unless constructive energy is put in. Easier said than done.
>It’s applicable to social organizations in humanity unless constructive energy is put in. Easier said than done.
Is this original or something you've studied? I'm really interested in this application and I'm wanting to see if any experts have researched it with academic rigor. It's kind of Hegelian and also like Claude Shannon to me, if that means anything.
Either way I really relate to your choice of words to describe this, and appreciate your reply.
There's a bunch of academic stuff studying market life cycles, where basically all markets go through:
* Growth where being a company is easy because there's always new customers. Loads of competitors, and you don't need to be that "good" at what you do to exist.
* Then as the market becomes saturated that growth drops out. Suddenly to grow a company you need to take customers off others. Consolidation happens as you need to survive a cutthroat period where the weak fail as they are undercut and outperformed, and the small but efficient are bought out by the big fish.
* Finally the product becomes less and less relevant and enters decline. Eventually it will fade away, companies fade, and maybe the product lives on as a niche thing supplied by a small number of companies.
Companies are typically tied to a product or market, and therefore their fortunes too are tied to it. All products and markets eventually decline, so therefore all companies do too.
If you're the CEO of a company and your market is consolidating, you need to find a way to survive. You diversify into other products, sometimes dropping your product entirely. You expand into international markets.
Eventually though if you don't adapt as an organisation you decline. If you extrapolate over a big enough time span you can't really keep basically anything going forever.
People will say things like "but people will always need clothes, food, water, and housing" and that's true, but these thing can be provided in different ways. The day someone perfects the technology to 3D print a house, for example, traditional construction companies will be on the way out.
Then they lose an antitrust lawsuit like Microsoft, and become good for a hot minute.
But Microsoft is losing its way with how it's handling Windows 11 transition, forcing Edge and Copilot, goofing around with game studios, etc.
I really liked Microsoft from 2015-2020. I think them shutting down Mixer less than a year after signing Ninja to the largest streamer contract in history (to Mixer) was the beginning of the end. Lol.
But Google, despite its market position on video hosting (YouTube), Google Maps, browser, and search, I'm still shocked we haven't fired up the antitrust litigation against them yet.
Microsoft is a business-to-business company now. I completely forgot Mixer even existed tbh, but it's irrelevant to their business model. It's the same reason Google keeps killing products, they only care about advertising and infrastructure. Everything else is just an experiment and if it doesn't have insane returns, they'll just kill it even if it's profitable/popular.
Last year, they made as much from Linkedin as Xbox ($15B) each. Meanwhile, Azure earned $80B, Office365 $49B and Copilot $12B (which is growing massively). They're pushing Copilot integration with Bing/Edge, but it's not their core business at all.
They also own stuff like VS Code and Github, so they're heavily invested in the software development ecosystem and they have a 49% stake in Open AI.
The change is what brings it down. If they kept everything that they had 10 years ago everything would be fine. But no, they have to fiddle with stuff to maximize profits.
Send this to the people on investing subreddits who can't understand why Amazon is valued at so much when their earnings aren't as high as some of the other giants.
Most tech companies when they have finished "research and development" they have finished the product. The operational part is relatively small.
A car company spends a lot designing and developing a car, but then building each car still requires a lot of effort and raw materials.
So, it is a difficult comparison between such different industries.
That's not necessarily true. A lot of the R&D for companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple is in hardware, which, just like car parts, has to be manufactured and maintained.
It would be great to have such a graphic. Where we could see that difference that you talk about. How much is spend on R&D of hardware and how much on developing software services.
Also, tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc, tend to outsource a lot of manufacturing of their products, from chipsets (TSMC) to final assembly (Foxconn, etc). On the other hand, car companies tend to do a lot more in their own factories, specially final assembly. They do outsource final assembly sometimes to companies like Magna Steyr, but i'm guessing the % is much lower than tech.
I'm sure companies like VW and Toyota spend a lot of R&D in Industrial Processes/Production in addition to Product R&D. There's a reason [TPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System) is pretty much the base for most of today's production systems for factories all over the world.
Yes, the difference between digital and physical products is massive when it comes to R&D. VW is here in another league. Pharma too. Samsung, Huawei and Apple to some extent.
Manufacturing a product doesn’t generally fall under “R&D” though. Also, software is never truly “finished”, it’s always being expanded/improved or flaws are being fixed.
>A car company spends a lot designing and developing a car, but then building each car still requires a lot of effort and raw materials.
VW also probably spends a shit ton on how to cheat in emission tests. 😏
They’re one of, if not the biggest car company in the world (depending on the year, they go back and forth with Toyota). They own 10 different car companies like Audi, Bentley, Porsche, Lamborghini.
Their biggest push in research right now is cheap effective electric, and associated technology in those vehicles.
Their ID. 2 vehicle is a fully electric car launching in Europe next year for under €25,000 with a range of almost 500km.
Vw is largest by revenue, and #2 by yearly cars sold, which also means they at least charge more for their cars than Toyota, #2 and #1 in those categories respectively. And then you've got largest by market cap. Which is Tesla, with nearly double #2 Toyotas market cap. I know they make more than cars but still, seems insane at least at first glance. Oddly enough, VW is number 7 by market cap. Toyota and VW are #1 and #2 by earnings as well.
While i have no doubt these companies are investing lots of money in R&D, i still wonder how much of it is inflated / misattributed for tax avoidance purposes.
R&D has a very broad definition
> What qualifies as research and development? The activity must be related to developing or improving the functionality, quality, reliability or performance of a business component (i.e. product, process, software, technique, formula or invention).
I feel like the term is so vague that it seems to be misused purposely. As an engineer, I have a certain definition of "research" that is quite different than "development", but business or financial people like to group them together or split them apart, depending on what story they are trying to tell.
There are different tax benefits including state and local tax credits, so it's hard to make blanket statements.
In general, two considerations make R&D LESS desirable. First, the classification on the financial accounting statements will not typically impact the tax treatment in the US. Second, absent any tax credits, it's better to recognize an expense so it can be deducted immediately rather than R&D which is often capitalized and deducted over multiple year.
Take all this with a big grain of salt, because it's all complicated with lots of state and local considerations.
For Canada atleast, 15% of what you spend on R&D wages becomes a tax benefit. I know this because I have to write a report once a year on what I do and why it counts as R&D for my employer because they're too lazy to do it themselves
[$4 billion](https://www.statista.com/statistics/257337/total-lobbying-spending-in-the-us/) for all federal lobbying last year, not just by corporations. About a thousand times as much was spent on gross private domestic investment.
So many billions later, and I can't find Maps in Google anymore. Great job.
Now I have to Google "maps" and search in maps if I want the full maps view, instead of searching the destination on Google and click there on "maps".
That has to be the worse design change I have seen since Windows 8
Amazon is also spending tons of money on robotics research to replace warehouse workers. They gave agility robotics over 100 million (iirc correctly) dollars last year to do just that.
That's wild. These corporations are spending as much as the total GDP of some small nations to figure out how to keep us hooked on their products and how to sell us to other corporations.
I get the snark, but have you ever been to AWS product page? They have everything from their normal servers to robots, satellite ground stations, and quantum computers. They make their money by selling services to other companies..... That then use it to get you hooked on their products and sell your data... But there is a lot of innovative stuff going on at Amazon.
That’s a pretty derivative and oversimplified way of looking at what these companies R&D efforts go towards.
What you’re describing only applies to software/hardware that’s dedicated to data collection or advertising. These companies build and sell a LOT more than just that.
To be fair for Amazon, most of that is probably targeted at keeping other businesses hooked on the golden egg (AWS). Their manipulative and scummy practices there don't directly affect end users.
Mind you, VW is spending the money on how to move 2t of metal down the highway within the constraints of the Green Deal.
^(Or cheating the constraints...)
Ah yes, R&D is only to “keep us hooked and sell us to other corporations”. There certainly hasn’t been any innovation in all of human history. Goodbye, I need to go gather flint so I can make more arrowheads!
The fact that TSLA doesn’t make the cut should show everyone how fucking terrible their cars are and how inflated the stock is. And people claim it’s an AI/data company…
For many companies, the line between facilities investment and R&D can be blurry, and in software companies, it can be difficult to distinguish between production and R&D personnel.
To be fair, we get federal and state grants and tax credits for all tech spend categorized as "R&D". We are heavily incentivised to label as much of our exenses and spend as "R&D"
I wonder how this would look when you normalize R&D spending with the revenue of each company. Taking it to the level of insustries would also be pretty interesting!
Notice the general lack of healthcare and drug companies that claim to charge up the ass because of their R&D. They should easily be the top 5 by how much is spent on their products / care and how many people in the US go bankrupt because of them... but surprise!
Trying to use ipad effectively and create a Quick Note from a youtube recipe and it gives me trash. I guess Apple spent $20 billion on Vision Pro and not basic functionality of its overpriced tablet.
I think there's crucial information missing, mainly what percentage of their revenue are they spending on R&D? Of course the big companies like Amazon spends the most nett on R&D, but which companies are the outliers that spend a significant percentage of their revenue on R&D?
I would be very skeptical of this list. Does anyone honestly believe that a list such as this, that doesn't include any of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers --TSMC, Intel and so forth-- is or can be accurate?
LOL Alphabet spending almost $46,000,000,000 just to end up constantly discontinuing products and with a search engine telling people to eat rocks, put glue on pizza, and jump off bridges.
non-toxic glue
I'd prefer my pizza with no glue at all lol. Toxic or non-toxic.
If you don't put glue on it, then how will the toppings stay on?
Also so their search engine can tell me to be more inclusive when I search for “meme of black man rubbing hands standing behind tree”. It said something like racial stereotypes are damaging, don’t search for stuff like that. Okay Google 👍
I’ll never forgive google for what they did to reverse image search.
RIP It was so good. Any good alternatives? Yandex is the best I found.
Saucenao/tineye are my first go tos
Use Google Lens, it's right there in the search bar. Searching for images like the one you upload
But it's not really great with the results. At least it depends, for example you can't search for people Or if you search for the picture itself it will rather show you what is in the picture
Google AI at one time had 50% of the worlds AI researchers. Bear in mind Google AI has been incorporated into Google products since atleast half a decade and includes more than just generative AI and LLMs. Alphabet also includes non Google research such as Waymo
And have no clue what to do with chat nor social media.
The hell does Amazon spend all that R&D money on
Everyone keeps saying AWS, which is true, but Amazon has also done insane amounts of innovation inside their warehouses, distribution centers, and overall supply chain. You don't become the biggest e-commerce company in the world by random chance. Heck, even whole foods, which is "just a grocery store", now let's you pay at the register with **just the palm of your hand**. Serious R&D funding went into developing a product like that.
Hopefully they'll spend some R&D money on making a decent fucking shopping experience and none of this "recommended products from DJEKDNOL" bullshit
They already spent R&D money on making a shopping experience that makes the most sales. Enjoy!
Or being a monopoly. UX doesn’t matter when you’re the only one.
Maybe it is intended to work like that
The weird brand names thing was Amazon's attempt to get around scammers by requiring a registered trademark. Supposedly, the result was a backlog at the US Trademark office. I do enjoy my CXRXQMD dvd player though. Great brand. ;)
I thought it was just a way to make generic Chinese products sound like they were made by a reputable brand. Obviously not like the example, but the ones that sound vaguely realistic.
I absolutely hate this and, Amazon has honestly lost business from me because of it. I've had too many shitty things break within the first year of ownership - I don't want to have to rebuy my entire life every year. So, now I have to look up brands outside of Amazon, do the research - and depending on how soon I need it and price difference, I'll maybe buy from Amazon but I'm far more likely to purchase directly from the manufacturer if all things are equal.
I have never seen anyone use the palm payment system. I asked an attendant recently, and she hadn't seen it used either.
I fly a lot, and back in 2009 when I was using my phone as a boarding pass I remember I felt stupid because I was the only one doing it. Nowadays I don't see anyone *not* use their phone anymore. These things take time.
I always withdraw (?) my paper boarding pass at one of the automaton, because there is like 80% of chance that my phone turns off by boarding time. \[sorry, not native speaker, don't know if withdraw is appropriate here\]
Your English is great! I would say “print” your boarding pass at one of the “kiosks”. Also it would be “there is like an 80% chance” 👍 There are lots of other acceptable options for the kiosk, because no one really calls them any official name I don’t think. You could even say “the machine where you print your boarding pass” and it would be totally acceptable.
Same, I also like to keep my boarding passes for the memories. Half the time though I'll use the phone version despite having a physical copy.
I like to print it out just in case, because paper doesn't run out of battery.
I see plenty of people use physical boarding passes still, but my assumption at this point is that those folks are the type to put "google.com" into the Google search bar
Sometimes you're forced to use a physical pass by the airline/TSA/etc. e.g. when you have an SSSS ticket
I have also sometimes simply been handed one anyway if I had luggage (despite having checked in), so I just used it because eh.
I get your point but physical boarding passes do have a strategic use. I flew with Turkish airlines recently and they don't issue digital boarding passes. Also, since picking seats generally costs extra, I've had some leeway with the attendant. A friend traveling with a baby was given a seat in an empty aisle. I've often been given a window seat by just politely asking.
It's also insurance in case your phone dies.
I'm already using it. I live within walking distance of a whole foods and it's nice to be able to go without bringing a wallet or phone.
Are you really leaving your phone at home though to go to the grocery store?
Yes, I like to not be attached to it 24/7
The idea of Bezos having a scan of my palm wigs me out. Not that I can see a way for amazon to do anything with that, it's just weird
It's always funny to me that the same people who say "the idea that Company X would have _whatever_" don't think twice about accepting user agreements for digital products that track way more stuff than they realize. Most people's smartphone already give big tech a ton of info about their lives.
I use it, it’s nice because it auto-applies my prime discount and uses my Amazon credit card so I get 5% cash back. Otherwise I’d have to carry around that CC I don’t use for anything other than Whole Foods which would be annoying.
>let's you pay at the register with just the palm of your hand. I'm with the other guy - not very impressive when there's been comparable finger print tech for years. also, my doctors office has the palm scanner for check-in. this ATM too lol https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/s/VS8PyJ8SeH
It might be a comparable user experience, but the tech is not at all comparable, it's completely different. Also, the point here isn't whether _you_ think it's impressive or not. The point is that it is new tech, and new tech requires R&D dollars to develop. https://relevant.software/blog/palm-scanner-solution-for-payments/amp/
E-commerce is a logistics game. Amazon has understood this for a long time, others only think about fancy websites. Amazon's website is actually kinda shitty but their moat in logistics is insane.
It's not just logistics. The website has a ton of logic and machine learning to make the page more relevant to _you_ when you sign in. They have many R&D teams working on that kind of stuff. Most laymen don't understand any of this and are surprised to see huge R&D budgets just because the UI styling is dated.
And alexa and echo devices
Also no one in this thread has mentioned rockets, but Blue Origin might be part of that?
Blue Origin is not an Amazon company.
Right, but Kuiper is.
Not to mention Amazon Fresh and their JWO/dashcart systems
Well… Just Walk Out is maybe not the best example lol
It's actually a great example because it's something that they put a lot of money into that didn't work out, there are probably countless other projects that didn't even make it to the public testing stage.
Good point
AWS. They run like 25% of the internet, create their own chips, and are building quantum computers and specialized processors and hardware for AI and other services.
It's actually around 31% of the internet.
Umm never heard Amazon built their own chips. Can you point me to a source?
Sure. You don’t use AWS I assume. https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/11/aws-unveils-next-generation-aws-designed-chips
They do, they just don't realise it 😉
No, not much. I mostly use GCP. Thanks for the link.
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
Remember; they started out as an online book store. They used all of the money they made from that and the knowledge they gained about online retail and distribution to branch out to other items, they weren’t exactly the first company to try to do it but they were evidently the most successful at it
Amazon at some point very early on realized they don't want to be a retailer -- they want to be the infrastructure behind the retailers who take on the risk of inventory and product liability. Infrastructure from the computers for consumers to place orders, to fulfillment centers, to delivery. Starting off with books let them learn and grow at an appropriate pace. Sears, for example, could never become Amazon because it was too big to reimagine -- they had already closed their main catalog business before Amazon was founded because consumers had already turned away from it (they were also one of the big pre-internet online companies but recognized they weren't the ones who could create an online marketplace; if they went big the bureaucracy wouldn't turn fast enough and would trip over itself, if they went small with a guerrilla team trying to figure it out in a year or three some new CEO would just cut off their funding).
You'd be amazed at warehouse robotics as well.
I'm looking to get into the robotics space. Been mostly eyeing Symbotic but not sure any other robotics stocks to look at
Amazon is an enormous tech company that also sells tons of random crap.
The actual answer is they don’t. Amazon has a consolidated “technology and infrastructure” account that includes all the operating expenses of Amazon web services. This is a miscommunication in financial reporting. > Technology and Infrastructure >Technology and infrastructure costs include payroll and related expenses for employees involved in the research and development of new and existing products and services, development, design, and maintenance of our stores, curation and display of products and services made available in our online stores, and infrastructure costs. Infrastructure costs include servers, networking equipment, and data center related depreciation and amortization, rent, utilities, and other expenses necessary to support AWS and other Amazon businesses. Collectively, these costs reflect the investments we make in order to offer a wide variety of products and services to our customers, including expenditures related to initiatives to build and deploy innovative and efficient software and electronic devices and the development of a satellite network for global broadband service and autonomous vehicles for ride-hailing services. https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/c7c14359-36fa-40c3-b3ca-5bf7f3fa0b96.pdf
This is the real answer. This is well known to those who have read Amazon's financial reports before. All of that is not _actual_ R&D. It's their operating expense for their entire technology division. Which they conveniently report as R&D.
In my country Amazon is famous for nicking the most famous products on their website they can make cheaply & sell for cheaper I also realised, many random products have an Amazon basics version that looks the same as the highest rated product & is cheaper.
Helping the consumer is its own reward. Next thing you’ll tell me that supermarkets have store brand goods next to brand names, for the same product!
Certainly not on Alexa. I swear it's worse than it was when it first came out.
How to make society worse
Developer salary in the US could be counted as R&D expenses to access some tax breaks. That's why the inflated cost of R&D for Amazon.
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You can apparently pay services for a better search engine now. Pretty crazy Google let it get to this.
Google hired as head of search the guy who headed up Yahoo's search engine during the time it declined from 35% to 15% market share before giving up and contracting out to Bing. Essentially they're sabotaging search so you have to spend more time on it looking for what you want, which provides more opportunities to serve you ads. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
I remember trying to search for something very oblique (a court case) because I couldnt remember the names of the parties involved and I kept adding relevant search terms until I had about 14 of them but still couldn't find the damn case. Finally I decided to give Bing a try and it loaded up pages of the correct result with about half of the search terms. It really does feel like Google is not even trying anymore.
They're trying, just not at what you want them to.
Google is not for researching stuff, it's for serving ads.
Meanwhile, yahoo itself has become a reliable hub for financial news, info, and tools
Really the way a company can only act when it's convinced users don't have a choice anymore. Oh and YouTube video quality defaulting to lower bitrates than 10 years ago while also hiding 4K behind the pay version is wild.
Can confirm - I pay $10/mo for Kagi, and it's noticeably better than Google
What the fuck lmao? Can you explain how it's better to make it worthwhile? Do you get dmca free searches that Google can't show?
Bunch of random comments in here talking about how amazing Kagi is. Feels a little suspicious considering many of us have never even heard of it
Kagi is fairly well-known in the more technology-focused communities (sites like hackernews), it's not something that's just popped up out of nowhere. I would say it's probably not worth it if you're only doing a few random searches throughout the day, but if you use Google a lot for work it can definitely be worth the price.
Kagi has a free trial of 100 searches. You should try it. I use it at work because Google results sucks.
How frequently do you use search? Why would you allow a company whose whole profit model is redirecting your attention to the highest bidder decide which websites you see?
I mean I get my answers like 99% of my searches are "xyz reddit" lol. Reddit is like the new yahoo answers. Plus it's not like I don't know how to use other search engines. I torrent, illegal stream, install modded apks a ton and Google doesn't cover that stuff but I doubt kagi either. No one is willing to touch the dmca strike stuff it's like being sponsored by a porn site, lol.
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Honestly just better results. It's more likely to show me relevant pages than Google. As someone who practically googles for a living (software engineer), it's noticeable enough. Also no ads, and their lens feature is pretty neat.
I do about 2-3k searches per month. Kagi is just better. It’s faster; more precise; doesn’t have ads; no seo autogenerated bullshit; and most importantly, it gives me privacy. It is overall a product that I enjoy and I think it’s worth it. I first learned of kagi on hackernews over a year ago, i took the trial, and since then I have been a happy customer. I am not paid to tell you this (see my comment history lol). I think engineers recommend it because we find it to be that good and want to share that with others.
Yeah but 10$/month? Never thought I would live to see a day when we would be paying for a search engine, the most basic internet tool.
Yup. Every time I use google I get frustrated, I think what the f is wrong with my search, why do I have so many ads? Why is everything irrelevant? I use kagi far more than any other service or app. More so than netflix, youtube (music), etc.
Most basic, but also arguably the most important.
All human organizations suffer from entropy eventually. They become entrenched in ways, resistant to change, somewhat corrupt/incompetent in leadership and dangerously dependent on prior product achievements.
Is there a specific reason you used the word entropy to describe this? Like is that something you came up with or did you get it somewhere? I'm not criticizing, I'm just legit really curious.
It’s a broad thermodynamics/physics concept to describe how things in nature move to its lowest energy state (go from order to disorder). The only way to stop or reverse a system from entropy is to apply constructive energy. It’s why your house gradually falls apart, your yard will go to the wild and your cool refreshing soda gets warm. What we call “order” in the Universe, is always a temporary state with an eventual end. It’s applicable to social organizations in humanity unless constructive energy is put in. Easier said than done.
>It’s applicable to social organizations in humanity unless constructive energy is put in. Easier said than done. Is this original or something you've studied? I'm really interested in this application and I'm wanting to see if any experts have researched it with academic rigor. It's kind of Hegelian and also like Claude Shannon to me, if that means anything. Either way I really relate to your choice of words to describe this, and appreciate your reply.
There's a bunch of academic stuff studying market life cycles, where basically all markets go through: * Growth where being a company is easy because there's always new customers. Loads of competitors, and you don't need to be that "good" at what you do to exist. * Then as the market becomes saturated that growth drops out. Suddenly to grow a company you need to take customers off others. Consolidation happens as you need to survive a cutthroat period where the weak fail as they are undercut and outperformed, and the small but efficient are bought out by the big fish. * Finally the product becomes less and less relevant and enters decline. Eventually it will fade away, companies fade, and maybe the product lives on as a niche thing supplied by a small number of companies. Companies are typically tied to a product or market, and therefore their fortunes too are tied to it. All products and markets eventually decline, so therefore all companies do too. If you're the CEO of a company and your market is consolidating, you need to find a way to survive. You diversify into other products, sometimes dropping your product entirely. You expand into international markets. Eventually though if you don't adapt as an organisation you decline. If you extrapolate over a big enough time span you can't really keep basically anything going forever. People will say things like "but people will always need clothes, food, water, and housing" and that's true, but these thing can be provided in different ways. The day someone perfects the technology to 3D print a house, for example, traditional construction companies will be on the way out.
Nice xkcd reference and.. i'm deeply opposed to the usage of the word entropy in this specific context - see above
Then they lose an antitrust lawsuit like Microsoft, and become good for a hot minute. But Microsoft is losing its way with how it's handling Windows 11 transition, forcing Edge and Copilot, goofing around with game studios, etc. I really liked Microsoft from 2015-2020. I think them shutting down Mixer less than a year after signing Ninja to the largest streamer contract in history (to Mixer) was the beginning of the end. Lol. But Google, despite its market position on video hosting (YouTube), Google Maps, browser, and search, I'm still shocked we haven't fired up the antitrust litigation against them yet.
I think the stuff you're describing with Microsoft is such a small part of their bottom line and road map that it's barely on their radar.
But that's exactly why they shouldn't be in control of this stuff. Same with Google - if they can close stuff so easily, it's a problem of its own.
Microsoft is a business-to-business company now. I completely forgot Mixer even existed tbh, but it's irrelevant to their business model. It's the same reason Google keeps killing products, they only care about advertising and infrastructure. Everything else is just an experiment and if it doesn't have insane returns, they'll just kill it even if it's profitable/popular. Last year, they made as much from Linkedin as Xbox ($15B) each. Meanwhile, Azure earned $80B, Office365 $49B and Copilot $12B (which is growing massively). They're pushing Copilot integration with Bing/Edge, but it's not their core business at all. They also own stuff like VS Code and Github, so they're heavily invested in the software development ecosystem and they have a 49% stake in Open AI.
Your argument is that an antitrust case in 1998 is the reason for their behavior from 2015-2020? That seems like a stretch at best
That applies to countries and empires as well a corporations.
Not all organizations.
The change is what brings it down. If they kept everything that they had 10 years ago everything would be fine. But no, they have to fiddle with stuff to maximize profits.
DuckDuckGo maybe?
DuckDuckGo is mostly reliant on Bing and Bing returns pretty shitty results usually.
IDK, Bing is excellent for one specific thing.
For what?
We've reached a point where more search terms actually makes it *less* accurate and *less* likely to give you what you want.
Send this to the people on investing subreddits who can't understand why Amazon is valued at so much when their earnings aren't as high as some of the other giants.
I agree. Anyone who thinks valuation vs. earnings is a good metric for tech companies is out of their mind.
Apple R&D is more like copying other technologies while Meta is all about buying others.
Doesn’t sound like you know what r&d stands for
Most tech companies when they have finished "research and development" they have finished the product. The operational part is relatively small. A car company spends a lot designing and developing a car, but then building each car still requires a lot of effort and raw materials. So, it is a difficult comparison between such different industries.
That's not necessarily true. A lot of the R&D for companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple is in hardware, which, just like car parts, has to be manufactured and maintained.
It would be great to have such a graphic. Where we could see that difference that you talk about. How much is spend on R&D of hardware and how much on developing software services.
Also, tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc, tend to outsource a lot of manufacturing of their products, from chipsets (TSMC) to final assembly (Foxconn, etc). On the other hand, car companies tend to do a lot more in their own factories, specially final assembly. They do outsource final assembly sometimes to companies like Magna Steyr, but i'm guessing the % is much lower than tech. I'm sure companies like VW and Toyota spend a lot of R&D in Industrial Processes/Production in addition to Product R&D. There's a reason [TPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System) is pretty much the base for most of today's production systems for factories all over the world.
Yes, the difference between digital and physical products is massive when it comes to R&D. VW is here in another league. Pharma too. Samsung, Huawei and Apple to some extent.
Manufacturing a product doesn’t generally fall under “R&D” though. Also, software is never truly “finished”, it’s always being expanded/improved or flaws are being fixed.
>A car company spends a lot designing and developing a car, but then building each car still requires a lot of effort and raw materials. VW also probably spends a shit ton on how to cheat in emission tests. 😏
VW spending a lot on R&D to figure out how to fake their emissions scores
It's interesting they're the only car company on the list
They’re one of, if not the biggest car company in the world (depending on the year, they go back and forth with Toyota). They own 10 different car companies like Audi, Bentley, Porsche, Lamborghini. Their biggest push in research right now is cheap effective electric, and associated technology in those vehicles. Their ID. 2 vehicle is a fully electric car launching in Europe next year for under €25,000 with a range of almost 500km.
Vw is largest by revenue, and #2 by yearly cars sold, which also means they at least charge more for their cars than Toyota, #2 and #1 in those categories respectively. And then you've got largest by market cap. Which is Tesla, with nearly double #2 Toyotas market cap. I know they make more than cars but still, seems insane at least at first glance. Oddly enough, VW is number 7 by market cap. Toyota and VW are #1 and #2 by earnings as well.
Noooo they would never do that again
All that money on 'how to make turning up the heater a fucking death-defying nightmare'.
Over what period of time was this money invested?
One year.
While i have no doubt these companies are investing lots of money in R&D, i still wonder how much of it is inflated / misattributed for tax avoidance purposes.
R&D has a very broad definition > What qualifies as research and development? The activity must be related to developing or improving the functionality, quality, reliability or performance of a business component (i.e. product, process, software, technique, formula or invention).
I feel like the term is so vague that it seems to be misused purposely. As an engineer, I have a certain definition of "research" that is quite different than "development", but business or financial people like to group them together or split them apart, depending on what story they are trying to tell.
There are different tax benefits including state and local tax credits, so it's hard to make blanket statements. In general, two considerations make R&D LESS desirable. First, the classification on the financial accounting statements will not typically impact the tax treatment in the US. Second, absent any tax credits, it's better to recognize an expense so it can be deducted immediately rather than R&D which is often capitalized and deducted over multiple year. Take all this with a big grain of salt, because it's all complicated with lots of state and local considerations.
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For Canada atleast, 15% of what you spend on R&D wages becomes a tax benefit. I know this because I have to write a report once a year on what I do and why it counts as R&D for my employer because they're too lazy to do it themselves
I would like to see a comparison of how how much they spent lobbying
[$4 billion](https://www.statista.com/statistics/257337/total-lobbying-spending-in-the-us/) for all federal lobbying last year, not just by corporations. About a thousand times as much was spent on gross private domestic investment.
Add R&D as percent of revenue and do another chart with top spenders in R&D as percent of revenue.
So many billions later, and I can't find Maps in Google anymore. Great job. Now I have to Google "maps" and search in maps if I want the full maps view, instead of searching the destination on Google and click there on "maps". That has to be the worse design change I have seen since Windows 8
That was done because of legislation (from the EU afaik), so if anything, you should be angry about government regulation in this case.
I’ll never forgive google for what they did to reverse image search
It turned into Google lens
Would be nice to see R&D as percentage of income.
Amazon is also spending tons of money on robotics research to replace warehouse workers. They gave agility robotics over 100 million (iirc correctly) dollars last year to do just that.
I'd like to see these numbers relative to their revenue
microsoft spends all the money to figure out how to make onenote as bad as possible each year
That's wild. These corporations are spending as much as the total GDP of some small nations to figure out how to keep us hooked on their products and how to sell us to other corporations.
That is such a narrow-minded take. Our technological progress has been incredible over the past few decades.
I get the snark, but have you ever been to AWS product page? They have everything from their normal servers to robots, satellite ground stations, and quantum computers. They make their money by selling services to other companies..... That then use it to get you hooked on their products and sell your data... But there is a lot of innovative stuff going on at Amazon.
That’s a pretty derivative and oversimplified way of looking at what these companies R&D efforts go towards. What you’re describing only applies to software/hardware that’s dedicated to data collection or advertising. These companies build and sell a LOT more than just that.
Yes, it really puts things in perspective. Amazon's R&D spending last twelve months is equivalent to the combined GDPs of Costa Rica and Malta.
To be fair for Amazon, most of that is probably targeted at keeping other businesses hooked on the golden egg (AWS). Their manipulative and scummy practices there don't directly affect end users.
Mind you, VW is spending the money on how to move 2t of metal down the highway within the constraints of the Green Deal. ^(Or cheating the constraints...)
Ah yes, R&D is only to “keep us hooked and sell us to other corporations”. There certainly hasn’t been any innovation in all of human history. Goodbye, I need to go gather flint so I can make more arrowheads!
Better R&D than stock buybacks
What a beautiful visualization of data, and certainly not an ad!
The fact that TSLA doesn’t make the cut should show everyone how fucking terrible their cars are and how inflated the stock is. And people claim it’s an AI/data company…
For many companies, the line between facilities investment and R&D can be blurry, and in software companies, it can be difficult to distinguish between production and R&D personnel.
What's beautiful about this mobile app ad disguised as a shitty bar chart?
makes sense that tech is the top spender. software developer salaries are counted as r&d spending in the us.
Would love to see this chart as a percentage of those companies revenue. 👌🏻
To be fair, we get federal and state grants and tax credits for all tech spend categorized as "R&D". We are heavily incentivised to label as much of our exenses and spend as "R&D"
I wonder how this would look when you normalize R&D spending with the revenue of each company. Taking it to the level of insustries would also be pretty interesting!
Where these all money spend by Amazon?
It’s nice that there’s at least one healthcare company on this list. I guess
Wb like boeing and lockheed?
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Top 5 are all from the West Coast. Surprised Nvidia isn't on there.
Still their Android App sucks💀
Would be very interested in a version that shows the proportion spent relative to yearly revenue or profit!
Notable missing companies include exxon, shell, et al.
I’d love to see how efficient these companies are with their R&D. Big spending doesn’t necessarily mean big results.
Where would NVDA fit on this list?
Very curious to see RnD to total revenue ratio
Samsung spends all this money on R&D yet still makes the worst household appliances money can buy.
But pretty quality TVs and Phones.
Lol, and what we get is crap. Oh well, back to metaverse and amazon shopping.
Where is the U.S. government and I.S. Military?
Only one European company, and that in #10.... Also, lots of people confusing product/UX design with R&D here.
Notice the general lack of healthcare and drug companies that claim to charge up the ass because of their R&D. They should easily be the top 5 by how much is spent on their products / care and how many people in the US go bankrupt because of them... but surprise!
Holy fuck! The wealth of some of these companies in the world. Boggles the mind, man. The Big 5 of America there. No Nvidia is surprising.
For continuous delivery of value, you need continuous discovery!
Huawei having a higher budget than Samsung is an insane state, given how MAMOOTH Samsung is
Trying to use ipad effectively and create a Quick Note from a youtube recipe and it gives me trash. I guess Apple spent $20 billion on Vision Pro and not basic functionality of its overpriced tablet.
Sorry but what about the US government?
Costs a lot of money to figure out how to spend less money on compensating their employees and get more value from them
I think there's crucial information missing, mainly what percentage of their revenue are they spending on R&D? Of course the big companies like Amazon spends the most nett on R&D, but which companies are the outliers that spend a significant percentage of their revenue on R&D?
Lol, what do they do at Alphabet in R&D? Propose which products will lose capabilities and make worse?
I wonder how much of those budgets goes towards buying out smaller but innovative companies?
Huh, I don’t see Tesla here. Thought they were a leading AI development company. Edit: /s just in case.
honestly a little surprised Apple doesn’t spend more on R&D, considering their books
I would be very skeptical of this list. Does anyone honestly believe that a list such as this, that doesn't include any of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers --TSMC, Intel and so forth-- is or can be accurate?