Alphabet豪赌不休 华尔街捧场不止

A year after it surprised the world by announcing it would turn itself into tech holding company Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google is still working on its transformation.

在宣布将转型为科技控股公司Alphabet这个震惊世人的消息一年之后，这家曾叫谷歌(Google)的公司如今仍在致力于转型之事。

The job of reshuffling its portfolio of long-shot bets into a handful of more distinct, standalone divisions — and deciding which, if any, to shed — is incomplete. Nor have the financial foundations for such a restructuring been put in place.

重组业务的工作尚未完成，它要将那些看似不大可能实现的冒险赌注分别归入几个更清晰、更独立的部门，并决定是否舍弃其中一些项目。这一套重组计划的财务基础也还没有落实。

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with chairman Eric Schmidt and chief financial officer Ruth Porat, are still trying to work out the business models for some of the bets, and to set financial targets, according to people familiar with the process.

知情人士表示，两位创始人拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖•布林(Sergey Brin)以及董事长艾里克•施密特(Eric Schmidt)和首席财务官露丝•波拉特(Ruth Porat)仍在努力研究其中部分项目的商业模式，并制定财务目标。

It is also unclear if or when some of these projects, from driverless cars to a healthcare arm that is trying to slow ageing, will pay off, even though the oldest ones are nearly a decade old. And there is still no external indication of how Alphabet decides where to place its bets or how wide-ranging they will be.

此外也不清楚这些林林总总的项目中——从无人驾驶汽车到一个尝试延缓衰老的医疗保健子公司——是否会有几个项目能够成功，如果有的话，什么时候能看到，其中最早的项目至今已经快十年了。Alphabet也丝毫没有流露出打算把赌注下在哪些地方、这些赌注将涉及多广范围的迹象。

Mr Page himself has been investing privately in start-ups outside the company, most conspicuously in trying to build flying cars — an idea that is too far-fetched even for the former Google, which always prided itself on taking on the biggest and riskiest ideas.

佩奇本人私下里一直在投资外部的创业型企业，最引人注目的是一家尝试制造飞行汽车的公司。改名之前的谷歌，历来对自己敢于尝试最宏伟、最冒险的想法感到自豪，但飞行汽车的构想即使对谷歌而言也显得离谱。

But none of that has damped the mood among Alphabet’s investors. Wall Street has been more than willing to indulge Mr Page and Mr Brin; and the company’s shares have risen 45 per cent in the 13 months since the pair first showed signs of bringing tighter management disciplines to their sprawling set of “moonshot” projects.

所有这些都没有影响Alphabet投资者的心情。华尔街一直非常愿意纵容佩奇和布林；自从这两人表现出将对那些庞杂的“moonshot”项目（指疯狂的不太可能实现的计划，译者注）施加更严格管理纪律的迹象以来，该公司的股价在13个月里上涨了45%。

“The history of the internet is littered with people who didn’t make bets like these and destroyed shareholder value,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

“在互联网历史上，不下这样的赌注、从而摧毁股东价值的人比比皆是，”加拿大皇家银行资本市场(RBC Capital Markets)的分析师马克•马哈尼(Mark Mahaney)说。

Yahoo, AOL and eBay are among the companies from the first wave of the internet whose relevance has faded because they failed to think hard enough about their long-term future, he said.

他说，雅虎(Yahoo)、美国在线(AOL)和eBay就是第一波互联网浪潮中，由于不认真思考长远未来而逐渐变得无足轻重的公司。

Wall Street has another reason to indulge Google’s founders. Its core internet business has surged in recent quarters, unexpectedly boosting revenues and raising profit margins.

华尔街还有迁就谷歌创始人的另一个理由。该公司的核心互联网业务在近几个季度以来大幅增长，出人意料地提振了营收，提高了利润率。

Insiders say this is partly because of a fresh focus in the Google division under its new head, Sundar Pichai. Leading Google executives are no longer distracted by Mr Page’s personal interests — bordering on obsessions — in long-range ventures that have little connection with the internet advertising business that still generates more than 99 per cent of the company’s revenues.

知情人表示，这部分是因为谷歌部门在新老板桑德尔•皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)执掌下有了新的重心，谷歌主要高管不再为佩奇近乎执念的个人兴趣而分心，他那些远大冒险计划与至今仍为公司创造99%以上收入的互联网广告业务毫无关联。

Whatever the reason, Alphabet’s money-machine has been re-energised. In the second quarter of this year, Google overtook its old rival Microsoft in revenues for the first time, and Wall Street expects its revenues to surge past $100bn for the first time next year.

无论出于何种原因，Alphabet的赚钱机器已恢复了动力。今年第二季度，谷歌第一次在营收上超越了老对手微软(Microsoft)，而华尔街预计明年其营收将首次突破1000亿美元。

None of this, however, guarantees that its search for a long-term future beyond internet advertising will yield results — or that the roughly 3 per cent of revenues spent on what it calls its “other bets” will not be money poured down the drain.

然而，这些并不能保证Alphabet在互联网广告之外探索长远未来的行动就会有结果，也不能保证投入到“其他赌注”(other bets)上约占营收3%的资金不会打水漂。

“The history of these central R&D ventures is not good,” Michael Cusumano, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says of the research labs some of the biggest tech companies have run in the past.

“这些核心研发(R&D)冒险活动的历史并不理想，”麻省理工学院(MIT)教授迈克尔•库苏马诺(Michael Cusumano)在谈起大型科技企业过去设立的一些研究实验室时表示。

The lack of a precedent for the type of tech conglomerate Google’s founders are trying to create, and the vagueness of their aims for Alphabet, could add to the risks of failure.

谷歌创始人试图打造的那种类型的科技企业集团并无先例可循，加上他们对于Alphabet的目标也很模糊，可能增加失败的风险。

Mr Page has held up Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as a model, though Mr Cusumano says “comparisons to Berkshire Hathaway are totally inappropriate. It’s not an investment fund — that’s not what Google is.” To be worth Alphabet’s attention, its non-core activities must at some point relate to its original business, he adds.

佩奇把沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司(Berkshire Hathaway)视为榜样，但库苏马诺说，“与伯克希尔哈撒韦对比根本就不合适。它不是投资基金，那并非谷歌的性质。”他接着说，值得Alphabet注意的是，它的非核心业务需要在某个时候与其老本行产生联系。

A year into the experiment, there have been signs that the soaring costs at Alphabet’s non-core businesses have at least been brought under control, though Ms Porat has warned against reading too much into short-term variations in expenses.

试验了一年之后，已有迹象表明，Alphabet非核心业务的成本大增局面起码已得到了控制，不过波拉特警告不要对费用的短期变化做太多解读。

Inside the businesses, Ms Porat’s more rigorous approach to making investment decisions has had an effect. A mid-ranking employee at one of the divisions credits her with bringing greater certainty to the internal investment process, even if part of her job is to limit some of the spending.

在公司内部，波拉特对投资决策实行更严格的方法已产生了一定效果。一个部门的中层管理者称赞她为内部投资流程带来了更大的确定性，尽管她的一部分工作是限制支出。

But while the new Alphabet structure has brought more financial control, it is still unclear how the group’s divisions will be ultimately be managed as they become more freestanding. Though there are parallels between Alphabet’s investment approach and the Silicon Valley start-up ecosystem, it remains a corporate conglomerate.

但是，尽管Alphabet的新架构已带来更多的财务控制，由于集团旗下各个部门变得更加独立，目前仍不清楚其最终将对各部门采取何种管理方式。虽然Alphabet的投资手法跟硅谷创业型企业的生态系统有些类似，但它仍是一家综合性企业集团。

The individual ventures do not have their own boards, and Alphabet has not introduced any equity arrangements to tie employees’ rewards to the success of their units — the kind of incentives that are a big attraction in joining a start-up. The company has relied instead on big cash bonuses, paid out when the newer businesses hit significant milestones, though that may not keep talent in the long term. The driverless car division has shed some of its top engineers in recent months after making big payments like these, according to a person familiar with the business.

单个冒险项目没有自己的董事会，Alphabet也没有引入任何股权安排、把员工的报酬与他们所在部门的成功挂钩——在吸引人才加入初创企业方面，这样的股权机制是一种具有很大吸引力的激励手段。相反，Alphabet依赖高额奖金，在新业务达到重要里程碑时发放，不过，这或许不利于在长期内留住人才。知情人士表示，无人驾驶汽车部门在发放大手笔奖金之后，近几个月来流失了一些顶级工程师。

“This isn’t like being in a start-up — it’s like being in a family business, with mercurial venture-capital backers,” says an employee at one of the businesses.

“这不像是在一家创业企业工作，倒像在家族企业，有反复无常的风险资本投资者，”一家Alphabet旗下企业的员工表示。

In some cases, the more rigorous analysis of Alphabet’s disparate operations has also exposed the need for different business approaches. The company’s high-speed broadband division, for example, was set up to provide more competition to rival networking companies, and to prod them to invest faster in their own fibre-optic systems, something that would help the core Google internet business.

有些情况下，对Alphabet旗下各项迥然不同的业务进行更严谨的分析表明，该公司有必要采取不同的业务模式。比如，该公司成立高速宽带部门，是为了给其他网络设备公司造成更多竞争，促使它们加快投资建设自己的光纤系统，这有利于其核心的谷歌互联网业务。

Now, as a freestanding division, the broadband business is searching for ways to reduce its hunger for capital and find new, cheaper technologies than fibre that will make it a profitable business in its own right — a hunt highlighted by its acquisition in June of the wireless internet access company WebPass.

如今，作为一个独立的部门，该宽带业务开始想方设法减轻自己对于资金的饥渴，并寻找比光纤更低成本的新技术，以期成为一项独立的盈利业务——今年6月收购无线互联网接入公司WebPass，就凸显了其对技术的追逐。

As the search for sustainable business models continues, Alphabet has held back from making any promises about when bets such as this will pay off. That makes it very different from Facebook, which has been far clearer in outlining its long-range plans, says Mr Mahaney. The social networking company has grouped its bets into ones it hopes will pay off in three, five and 10 years’ time.

在继续寻找可持续业务模式的同时，Alphabet并未就诸如此类的押注何时可能成功做出任何承诺。马哈尼说，这一点跟Facebook完全不同，后者在概述长期计划时要清晰得多。这家社交网络公司将其赌注分成若干组，希望分别在3年内、5年内和10年内取得成功。

Speaking recently at the first shareholder meeting since its formation, Mr Schmidt gave the first indication that Alphabet is also trying to come up with a more rigorous timetable. It should at least be clear within three years which of the portfolio it refers to as its “other bets” will be worth pursuing, he said.

不久前在Alphabet组建后的首届股东大会上发言时，施密特首次暗示，Alphabet也在尝试拿出一份更严格的时间表。他说，Alphabet至少要明确，在其统称为“其他赌注”的所有项目中，在3年时间跨度内哪些项目将是值得推行的。

But even if the long-term outlines and goals for Alphabet remain unclear, Wall Street is more than happy to stay patient. And if shareholders ever start to feel restless, there is always the huge profitability of the old Google business to reassure them.

但是，即便Alphabet的长期发展框架和目标仍不清晰，华尔街也非常乐于保持耐心。如果股东什么时候开始感到不安，旧有谷歌业务的巨大盈利也总会让他们放下心来。