Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKNov 02, 2023Stock 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.
No one touches Google in online search while YouTube boasts 2.7 billion (with a B) active users as 52% of internet users click onto the app at least once a month. However, at 11% market share Google Cloud still lags far behind Microsoft (double the share) and Amazon (nearly triple) in the cloud business. Last month, Alphabet's overall revenue of $76.69 billion beat expectations, but its cloud business clocked at only $8.41 billion and missed the expected $8.64 billion.