Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKDec 17, 2014Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jul 10, 2026. Market Open.
Fears that AI would eat its lunch. Harder for Anthropic to monetize a new tool than for GOOG to take AI and apply it to a business model that it already monetizes. Muscle memory of the populace gravitates to GOOG to find information. Probably thrives in the new AI world, until something more disruptive comes along.
AI monetization is happening, and AI Mode has been a game changer. Stronger cloud growth (revenue grew 63% YOY last quarter, tremendous), broader monetization across platforms. Search and advertising remain strong, lots of cashflow. Also a great ecosystem.
Good growth, but relatively decent valuation. Yield is 0.25%.
A year ago, consensus was that Search was going to die. Seems ridiculous now. Gemini is overtaking ChatGPT. Data centre business is growing faster than before. Still not that expensive. He hasn't sold any shares yet, but may take some off the table from the long-term holding and put toward one of the Mag 7 laggards.
A very impressive company. Preeminent in search and preeminent software for mobile devices with their android software. They are the “go to” for advertisers who want to get their message out on any kind of computing device, including mobile devices. You also get what he calls lottery tickets, with the driverless car or whatever they might be developing. This company has almost $100 per share in cash and trading at probably 19X or so 2015 earnings. If you take away the cash, it is trading more like 15X or 16X. Doesn’t pay a dividend but are sitting on $62 billion, which will be burning a hole in their pocket. Feels they are either going to start to pay a dividend or are going to start to buy back shares.