andriy_koval

> main index has a good signal anymore

maybe (this could be discussed), but the problem there is nothing better..

> then we could each define our own 'index' to get the slice of perspective we find useful.

its too much work for 98% AI consumers. In reality, AA is best what we have as aggregated score..

> The ground-truth metrics would be forward ROA and ROIC.

that's not ground truth in environment when landscape (AI) dramatically changes every quarter, and investments are uncertain bets with huge win potential.

Your ground truth metrics are: 1. How healthy core business: operating income. 2. How aggressively company reinvest: net - operating income.

Its just interesting how wall street views ant and google as the same caliber companies, even google has way more stronger baseline and ant is way more under the water.

> but larger more staid companies will take a lot longer.

I still believe large spenders already advertise on multiple channels and balance budgets based on performance.

google still highly profitable, so operation income indicates how healthy is business, and eps/net income indicates how agressively they reinvesting.

meta earns lots of money too

Big spenders already do not bid on google directly, but balance budgets automatically between multiple platforms and channels base on performance

Ads is highly fragmented market, google has yt, display, mobile ads, there are tons of other platforms (meta, linkedin) where you can advertise.

That first price auction complain is bs, advertisers will just stop bidding $5 for top click and start bidding $1.1 in his example to hit their goals.

> what channel actually provides most of these ad buys that would satisfy their ad dollars?

advertisers decide which channel justifies.

They still bring 250B ads dollars to google search, meaning it provides more than 250B value to them,

Ok, this one happened because they invested into AI hardware build out. Actual operating income grew 30%+ q/q.

> that search/ad revenue actually grew 12%

it grew compared to q3 2025, but it is flat (0% grows) compared to q2 2026.

> Their earnings missed by almost 30%

which exactly earning number missed by 30%?..