Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKNov 10, 2017Stock 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.
On their latest report, they grew revenues 24% year-over-year. A very large company, but still growing very, very smartly. They are starting to monetize a lot of their supplementary initiatives. YouTube is really taking hold, with 1.5 billion monthly users watching at least an hour or more. A very real streaming opportunity for people in the over-the-top world in competition for eyeballs. They also have Waymo, a self driving car initiative, which is going to be amazing. Google has long been reputed to be behind the curve on the Cloud. Just as last week, they did a joint venture with salesforce.com, which is going to make a difference. At 28X earnings, this is a good solid holding for the long-term. (Analysts’ price target is $1180.)