This reminds me of a talk I watched with Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt. I know Thiel is controversial, but he was well-meaningly digging at Google for running out of ideas and no longer innovating.
The criticism was something like "You have so much cash on hand but no ideas to invest in. However, you can't pay a dividend because the second you do, you're admitting you've run out of ideas and are no longer innovating".
I think that may be somewhat of an overstatement, but given news like this, Thiel's got a point? Buying back their own stock (As mentioned by another commenter in [1]) is a better investment of that cash instead of investing in newer technology? Please prove me wrong with a good counterpoint because I don't want to believe its true.
The specter of technological and scientific stagnation that Thiel/Weinstein (Right and Left wing individuals) talk about so much really scares me.
The criticism was something like "You have so much cash on hand but no ideas to invest in. However, you can't pay a dividend because the second you do, you're admitting you've run out of ideas and are no longer innovating".
I think that may be somewhat of an overstatement, but given news like this, Thiel's got a point? Buying back their own stock (As mentioned by another commenter in [1]) is a better investment of that cash instead of investing in newer technology? Please prove me wrong with a good counterpoint because I don't want to believe its true.
The specter of technological and scientific stagnation that Thiel/Weinstein (Right and Left wing individuals) talk about so much really scares me.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-25/alphabet-....