Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKNov 23, 2016Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jul 13, 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.
He tries to gravitate towards companies that have very good defensible businesses with dominant positions. This is definitely one of those, if you think of how much of the mobile ad market they dominate. Also, their participation in the oligopoly of the Cloud. Very rarely can you get exposure to a company like this, at a multiple that is close to the market multiple. They are demonstrating relatively resilient growth. Mobile ad sales growth is going to slow, which should be offset by an increase in Cloud spending which should go up quite significantly for the next 5 years. (Analysts’ price target is $967.70.)