Given a Gromov hyperbolic domain $G\subsetneq \mathbb{R}^n$ with uniformly perfect Gromov boundary, Zhou and Rasila recently proved that for all quasiconformal homeomorphisms $\psi\colon G\to G$ with identity value on the Gromov boundary, the quasihyperbolic displacement $k_G(x,\psi(x))$ for all $x\in G$ is bounded above. In this paper, we generalize this result and establish Teichmüller displacement theorem for quasi-isometries of Gromov hyperbolic spaces in a quantitative way. As applications, we obtain its connections to bilipschitz extensions of certain Gromov hyperbolic spaces.

We investigate the translation lengths of group elements that arise in random walks on the isometry groups of Gromov hyperbolic spaces. In particular, without any moment condition, we prove that non-elementary random walks exhibit at least linear growth of translation lengths. As a corollary, almost every random walk on mapping class groups eventually becomes pseudo-Anosov, and almost every random walk on $\mathrm {Out}(F_n)$ eventually becomes fully irreducible. If the underlying measure further has finite first moment, then the growth rate of translation lengths is equal to the drift, the escape rate of the random walk.

We then apply our technique to investigate the random walks induced by the action of mapping class groups on Teichmüller spaces. In particular, we prove the spectral theorem under finite first moment condition, generalizing a result of Dahmani and Horbez.