Alphabet IncGOOGBUYApr 27, 2016Stock 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 core of their business grew 20%, but it was a miss and disappointed. $.85 of every advertising dollar is going into Google or Facebook (FB-Q). Google is really not competing on any of the enterprise levels. They are really starting to monetize YouTube, which they acquired 10 years ago. The new CFO is very well respected on the financial side. P/E ratio is around 19. They are growing 19%-20% a year right now.