Research archive for GOOG

The scope of Google's businesses never ceases to amaze me. I read that Google Chrome has 66% of the global browser market. That would be a huge business on its own. The browser fits perfectly into Google's model with their search platform as the default start page and all the Google browser apps like gmail, meet and maps visible in the top righthand corner.

Google had quarterly results out on Tuesday night, and they were excellent. The stock price rose 2.8% on Wednesday, repairing some of the damage done since July by the US Government's annoying antitrust suit.

Google's self-driving taxi business, Waymo, just raised $5.6 billion in a series-C round. This is the second capital raise that includes outside investors. It previously raised $3.2 billion in 2020, reducing Google's shareholding from 100%.

Google has made a groundbreaking deal with Kairos Power to purchase energy from small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Google has a rapidly growing electricity demand, especially for AI-related operations.

A recent report revealed that 26% of marketers globally are using YouTube for influencer marketing, with another 25% leveraging it for organic content marketing.

The return of Noam Shazeer to Google marks a major moment in the race to dominate AI. Shazeer was the co-author of the pivotal AI research paper "Attention is All You Need," but he left Google in 2021 after the company refused to release a chatbot he had developed.

Last month Alphabet reported an impressive set of numbers. Part of the earnings release revealed that Alphabet is investing an additional $5 billion into the driverless taxi company Waymo.

In a judgement delivered two weeks ago, a federal judge found that Google has a monopoly over the online search market. Now, news reports are surfacing that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) may be seeking to "split up" the company, to remedy the situation.

In a disappointing ruling last night, Judge Amit P. Mehta found Google guilty of violating antitrust laws by maintaining a monopoly in the search engine market. This was the first major antitrust victory against a tech giant since the 1990s Microsoft case.

Google Cloud has been growing steadily and is finally contributing some solid operating income. Take a look at the picture below. Up until the first quarter of 2023, the business was loss-making. In the latest quarter, it raked in $1.2 billion.

Sometimes, it is a tough day in the office. On Tuesday night, Google posted results that handily beat analyst exceptions on both revenue and profits. Disappointingly, the stock dropped 5% yesterday. The only letdown in Google's results was that YouTube's revenue grew slightly slower than expected, by 13% instead of 16%.

Alphabet is in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for around $23 billion, which would be its largest acquisition ever. This acquisition comes amid intense antitrust scrutiny on Alphabet and aims to boost its cloud computing efforts, where it lags behind competitors.

You can now take driverless taxi rides in San Francisco with Waymo. The company, which is part of the Google group, has a fleet of self-driving white Jaguars (see below).

According to App Economy Insights, YouTube is still the king of streaming in the US. The best thing about their model is that they get most of their content for free.

Recently revealed court records from the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Google unveiled some intriguing details. Google's parent company, Alphabet, shelled out a hefty $20 billion to Apple in 2022 to secure its position as the default search engine on iPhones.