Alphabet IncGOOGPAST TOP PICKFeb 23, 2023Stock 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.
All of tech has been trashed. Higher valuation multiples came down. Biggest area of growth has become online advertising, and this has become a lot more cyclical since it's a bigger part of the economy. This may be a risk in an economic downturn. Bigger issue is the whole move to AI. GOOG makes money on the clicks, so AI may make GOOG somewhat irrelevant. A new risk to be aware of. He's not going all-in on it anymore, because a couple of its businesses are facing some shorter-term risks.