This is simply a great performance: Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a huge statement for the digital economy, hitting $56.9 billion revenue for its 2020 fourth quarter. Advertising drove it with YouTube and Google Search the blood and spinal cord of the Google central nervous system of generating alpha.

Of course, what is also missing there is that Google devalued many ad clicks for publishers. If you were paid $1 for 1,000 views on Dec 31 2019, by Jan 1 2020, Google required you hit 2,000 views. That power and capacity to change the “ad currency” is the reason why Google could hit these numbers. 

I am nearly confident that Google did not serve more adverts on absolute volume. Rather, it cut the hands of its partners, especially publishers because of its superior positioning in the market as the super aggregator.

Yet, it is all free market – and Google should be celebrated for putting itself in this position to win.

Google rode a surge in online holiday spending to record revenue in the fourth quarter, even though it disclosed for the first time continued losses in its closely watched cloud division.

The internet titan’s earnings, released Tuesday afternoon, reflected a continuing recovery in global ad spending that took a hit in early 2020 when people paused travel plans and other purchases in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. posted a record $56.9 billion revenue, up from $43.2 billion a year ago. The company’s advertising units pulled in $46.2 billion, up nearly 22% from a year earlier. Analysts had forecast $52.7 billion in revenue, including $42.3 billion from advertising, according to FactSet.

Alphabet’s profit also rose, to $15.7 billion, from $9.3 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected $11.9 billion.

Ruth Porat, Google’s financial chief, said the company’s search and YouTube units drove its performance in the quarter. “It was a great end to a challenging year,” she said.

Tekedia Mini-MBA will have a session on China and how businesses can do business and grow with the world’s manufacturing factory. A global strategist on China who helps multinational companies find paths in China, and get them to build and grow with China, has joined our Faculty. He will speak from Beijing,  and we hope our members will get insights and perspectives to help them THRIVE.

To those African traders learning Mandarin to help them cut-off the middlemen in China, as they import things, buying directly from factories, we hope to expand your playbooks. Henry Chan will be available to provide guidance.

Tekedia Mini-MBA continues registration; class begins Feb 8 (Monday). Learn from the best and experience a transformation on market systems. Register here.

According to Amazon Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, “The three big ideas at Amazon are long-term thinking, customer obsession, and a willingness to invent,”. With that mentality, he pioneered new industrial sectors and changed the ordinance of commerce. Amazon pioneered renting cloud computing infrastructure after bringing ecommerce to Americans.

To a large extent, these are orthogonal domains but he executed and operated them brilliantly. The end result: Amazon’s shares have risen 225,233% since the web retail pioneer went public in 1997!

Amazon now employs 1.1 million around the world. In the United States, it comes behind Walmart as the private sector largest employer of labour. Today, Amazon is a digital conglomerate with tentacles in ecommerce, web cloud services, robotics, logistics and voice recognition. And in these domains, it is one of the top three, if not the category-king.

Jeff Bezos is stepping down for a new boss, to take over this big ship: “I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will relinquish his role as the retail behemoth’s chief executive this summer, passing the baton to Andy Jassy, the current chief of Amazon’s hugely profitable cloud computing division. Bezos, who in recent years had already “stepped back from much of the day-to-day business,” will take on the role of executive chairman once Jassy transitions into the CEO role. “Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition,” Bezos told employees in a statement reflecting on his 27 years at the helm. (INNews)

For Amazon to have picked Andy Jassy, the Board saw its future via cloud computing, and not necessarily ecommerce. The cloud computing unit of Amazon provides one of the largest margins in the digital conglomerate.

Jeff Bezos announced his departure as CEO of Amazon earlier this week, tapping Andy Jassy as his successor. Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services and a longstanding member of the S-team — a group of Amazon’s top executives — will step into Bezos’s shoes in the third quarter of this year. Jassy has led AWS since before its launch in 2006 and he has been widely heralded for transforming Amazon into a leader in the cloud infrastructure market. Jassy being tapped as Bezos’s heir highlights “how important the cloud is becoming to our economy.”

Nations rise when pioneering entrepreneurs emerge. America has Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc. Nigeria needs such for the nation to rise.