Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKDec 14, 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.
Presently about 35% of advertising budgets are allocated for online, and that is going to increase over time. This is the largest search engine out there, so they are going to garner a certain percentage of any advertising budget. There has been a pullback in the large cap tech stocks, but that has been recovering. The valuation on this is a very reasonable. (Analysts’ price target is $968.94.)