Alphabet IncGOOGCOMMENTAug 28, 2015Stock 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.
The premise of what they are doing with Alphabet will benefit the shareholders. There have been a number of changes that have happened within the last 3-4 months. New CFO has made the company a little bit more investor friendly. They now have to justify how much money they are spending, as well as how much money they are losing on these ventures. They still dominate the search business. YouTube is becoming a bigger and bigger factor in the entertainment side of the business.