Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Tuesday, February 5th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, it's getting more expensive for Google to make money.

Facebook turns 15.

Choosing your own adventure is becoming a trend,

and one specific way Fort Knight is measurably bigger

than the Super Bowl.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

I think we're basically done with tech earnings season. It is a compressed week every time. I think

those SNAP Spotify and Twitter are still to go so there could still be some

surprises. Is there anyone else I'm forgetting? Anyway, Alphabet reported Q4 revenue yesterday

of $39.3 billion, which was up 22% year over year.

But there were a few little concerns.

Google's ad business was up 20% year over year to $32.6 billion.

And Google's Cloud Services Hardware, Play Store, and other businesses generated $.5 billion in revenue, a 31% increase year

over year. But by and large, Google is still an advertising one-trick pony. It's a very fine pony, it's a cash machine pony, metaphor

getting mixed. Problem is, the cost of making money off of that advertising business also rose 25% year over year.

As courts put it, it's getting expensive for Google to be Google.

Quoting Quarts.

Much of those costs were from the fees Google pays to companies like Apple

to be the default search engine on iPhones and other devices

which are called traffic acquisition costs.

Traffic acquisition costs.

...