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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝 GOLD
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Number: of 21944 
Subject: Re: Is berkshire undervalued?
Date: 07/14/24 10:50 AM
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Is Google Search going to be the dominant way to grep for information on the web forever? Magic 8-ball says answer is unclear. That's Google's biggest revenue generator.

I'd rephrase a bit...

Remember that they are an advertising firm, not a search firm.

Their ad revenue depends on two main factors: volume of impressions, and the quality of their profiling data.
Obviously if their search market share were to fall, it would hit impressions in that segment, which is of course the largest segment. It wouldn't affect the other sources of impressions, though: Youtube, third party sites, Maps and so on. So the drop in overall impressions would be smaller than the search market share drop. They also have a few other revenue sources that would not be directly affected, notably the Google Play store with revenues in the neighbourhood of $50 billion at an operating margin around 65%.

I don't think it would affect the quality of their profiling data all that much. They still have lots of raw material for profiling, and it comes from a lot more data sources than most people realize. All the content of all messages to or from Gmail accounts, "login with Google" sites, Youtube history, and so on.

So if their profit is primarily the product of two numbers, I think one would drop a smaller amount than the search share, and the other would not be affected, so the hit to the product of the two factors would not be all that huge. Unless the search share dropped by half or some such thing, which is certainly possible but seems very unlikely.

Any strong business can weaken, but I don't see a clear and present danger.

Jim
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This community has written 21,448 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
BRK: Why Not XOM? · 62 recs · 2024
Second quarter comments · 60 recs · 2023
Berkshire's Profit Contributors · 57 recs · 2023
Summary of 2Q 2026 · 54 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
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