Charlie Munger on Google

[Mephistopheles]

I remember once Charlie said that Google has the biggest moat that he's ever seen, and he doesn't know how anyone would be able to compete with it.

 

But at the annual meeting this year, both he and Buffett said how they can't predict what either Google or Apple would look like in 10 years, like they can of IBM, and therefore they wouldn't invest in either.

 

Can anyone explain the contradiction?

[Guest valueInv]

So far Google has spent about $14-$15B on Android. They spent this despite the fact that they are making less than $500M from Android (We don't know what portion of it is cannibalized). The belief/rationale is that they did this because mobile is the future and Google needs to control mobile to control their destiny even though they won't make much on it. In other words, they have spent $15B defending their "moat".

 

I tend to believe that the latter is true. They really don't know what will happen to Apple or Google. If they did, it would be in the circle of competence and they would be investing in these companies. Imagine if WEB invested in Apple 10 years ago.

[oldye]

Where do you get your android numbers, Oracle is claiming they're making 10m a day, in the lawsuit they announced that they're predicting to make 1.2 billion in 2012 from the ads alone.  Currently the number of android devices is growing by about 100%/year...that will get them to about 500m devices by the end of 2012. 

[Guest valueInv]

Where do you get your android numbers, Oracle is claiming they're making 10m a day, in the lawsuit they announced that they're predicting to make 1.2 billion in 2012 from the ads alone.  Currently the number of android devices is growing by about 100%/year...that will get them to about 500m devices by the end of 2012.

 

See the slides at the bottom:

 

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974909/google-wanted-to-sell-10m-android-tablets-a-year-in-2011-have-33-percent-marketshare

 

[elltel]

read "In the Plex". that will answer your question. When google was 6 employees they set up a research lab to concentrate on other ideas. The rest, is history.