"Google is an advertising company, with some hobby businesses in cloud or self-driving cars. It doesn't get much more middleman than that."
1) Where a company derives it's revenues, is not necessarily where it creates value.
2) Search is not a side-show, neither is mapping, Chrome, v8, Android, Google Cloud, Go, Flutter etc. - and frankly neither is advertising.
3) Advertising is valuable. Only really those who've never worked in business don't realize this. Companies don't spend gazillions on it for no reason. Lack of efficiencies in marketing are obvious, but so are they in other fields.
... also:
"China has plenty of capital, it's not as if we're in the 1970s and the US is the only way to go."
This little sense as China has it's own central bank, which is politicized, and Xi makes his own capital out of thin air.
China never needed 'US Dollars' for anything. They needed 'US Buyers' and to steal 'US knoow how and tech' - but they never really needed foreign direct investment.
"Xi is cracking down in other areas that are not a plausible threat to the CCP, like bitcoin miners"
No, BTC is one of the biggest threats to the control of the CCP (and other financial institutions) because it puts economic activity completely out of his control - especially trans national control.
'Crypto Currencies' - or any for of economic freedom outside the purview of the CCP - is probably the #1 threat to the CCP - more than military, or social upheaval. BTC is obviously too small right now to be a problem, but it balloon quickly putting everything outside his power, and the rest would follow.
1) Where a company derives it's revenues, is not necessarily where it creates value.
2) Search is not a side-show, neither is mapping, Chrome, v8, Android, Google Cloud, Go, Flutter etc. - and frankly neither is advertising.
3) Advertising is valuable. Only really those who've never worked in business don't realize this. Companies don't spend gazillions on it for no reason. Lack of efficiencies in marketing are obvious, but so are they in other fields.
... also:
"China has plenty of capital, it's not as if we're in the 1970s and the US is the only way to go."
This little sense as China has it's own central bank, which is politicized, and Xi makes his own capital out of thin air.
China never needed 'US Dollars' for anything. They needed 'US Buyers' and to steal 'US knoow how and tech' - but they never really needed foreign direct investment.
"Xi is cracking down in other areas that are not a plausible threat to the CCP, like bitcoin miners"
No, BTC is one of the biggest threats to the control of the CCP (and other financial institutions) because it puts economic activity completely out of his control - especially trans national control.
'Crypto Currencies' - or any for of economic freedom outside the purview of the CCP - is probably the #1 threat to the CCP - more than military, or social upheaval. BTC is obviously too small right now to be a problem, but it balloon quickly putting everything outside his power, and the rest would follow.