Alphabet on Friday traded with an equity value of $500 billion which is only 10% less than Apple's value. With Apple's growth slowing it is expected Google will take Apple's place as most valuable company. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/b...king-apple-as-most-valuable-company.html?_r=0 However since 90% of Google's revenue is from ads, should Google lose a chunk of it's digital ads market share [to Facebook or other competitors] Apple still will be the world's most valuable company for some indefinite time.
I would bet on Google. Display ads are here to stay since they are far the best and easiest way to monetize any website that consists mainly of text. And if you want videos, well then youtube ( also Google ) is the winner. As ´old ´as it seems, there just is nothing better or easier... TV still makes most of its money from 30 second commercials after 60 years, there is nothing in the immediate horizon that makes me think anything can overtake display ads. Apple on the other hand. I think we are just a generation or two of cellphones away from people realizing they do not need to upgrade the first day a new model becomes available. I think the hamster wheel has run it´s full course, especially outside the USA where more and more people seem content with last generation. I have first hand experience with Google both as a buyer ( adwords ) and seller (adsense) and there just is no other company that can compete with display ads. There also is nothing that appears to be able to dethrone Google from search, which is where a lot of adwords ads get displayed.
I didn't know that Alphabet is already up and running until now. The last time I wrote a thread about Alphabet is when Alphabet was still being introduced to come out by the end of 2015. With Google's popularity and tried and tested money-making techniques, I think it wouldn't be a surprise anymore if it will replace Apple as most valuable company soon.
The only difference is that you can install adblock into pretty much any device. Takes less than a minute and you are pretty much free of ads when surfing the internet, youtube etc. Can't really do that with tv but it's really simple with internet browsers. As ads get more and more intrusive, more and more people will do this. I know that I was against adblock since quite frankly I think that websites should get some ad revenue if I visit there frequently. It's win - win for both, I get the information that I'm looking and they get some cash. The day everything changed was when there was an ad with sound. My first ad with sounds. I said fine, screw this and installed adblock and it's been active ever since. But alphabet of course knows that they need diversification and that is why they have lots and lots of interesting things they are working on. I wouldn't be surprised if one day they would be the most valuable company.
Well, I would hazard a guess that the majority of people in the world use google every day, so this makes perfect sense. It may not be the only ball game in town but it is certainly the most attended ball game...and the success of google alphabet is just a reflection of this.
This is interesting, considering all of the predictions I have been reading about how many feel Google, Apple, amazon etc will all lose a lot of momentum this year and Alphabet not being able to gain momentum as a result. A lot of folks will def be ready to pullback from APPL, unless they have something major up their sleeves, which I don't foresee.
Apple has more money than the US Government (if printing more is not an option for them), but I'd bet that Google can hang with and outlast them because Google is buying up so many other companies like Boston Dynamics and diversifying themselves at alarming rates. They have so many sub-markets like what they do with Android, the ad marketing and subscription services through Youtube, the search engines, and the contracts they have outbid even Lockheed Martin and Boeing for...I'd invest in Google because they have so many more ways to stay afloat even if Apple becomes a sinking ship. Apple is still strong enough that they can make you plenty if you invest, but over time that may change in Google and another company's favor. The Alphabet change to Google is just really odd to me, but we'll see where things go.
The percentage of people who use adblockers is less than 2%, and some research says less than 1%. The majority of people who do use adblockers are also very weighted to being tech-savvy, who are people who probably don´t click on any ads anyway. It really depends on the content of your site. My most popular site is health and nutrition oriented.. about 0.4% of my ads are blocked. I would guess a blog about Chrome extensions would have a very high percentage of ads blocked.
I have owned both companies for many years - there's no rule that says you have to pick one, and that the other sucks and is horrible and must be shorted on its way down to zero - probably not gonna happen.
On the latest news, Alphabet has now overtaken Apple by $33 billion. It is now worth $568 billion compared to its rival Apple which is worth $535 billion. The share price of Alphabet is now up by 9% in after-hours trading. Good news for those who already own shares of the company. Here's a link to the latest news: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35464599
