Research archive for GOOG

Yesterday, I wrote about Google and their fight with the US Department of Justice. Today I'm looking at the amazing power of Google search. This post on their in-house blog has the title 'Think with Google', and I was struck by how easily they can monetise their user data.

Google is currently in a battle with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) about default search slots. We have mentioned this in the newsletter before but here's a brief reminder of what's at stake. Basically, Google pays Apple over $10 billion a year to make Google search the default on Safari. So when you type in a word on your iPhone browser it automatically uses Google search.

When Google (aka. Alphabet) released its latest results, a lot was said about the strong advertising revenues at YouTube. The numbers coming from the video-sharing platform were just staggering.

Google reported earnings on Tuesday evening which pleased the market. The share price closed up a handsome 5.8% on Wednesday. Revenues came in better than expected, especially from YouTube and Search. Their Cloud business is also showing good form, growing 27% to $8 billion in sales for the quarter.

Selling clothes online is challenging because the customer can't try on the garments, to check the look and fit. Well, Google have created a virtual try-on feature using artificial intelligence image creation. Here is an extract from the Google blog that explains the service.

Alphabet Inc, also known as Google, reported better-than-expected first-quarter results last week with ad revenues of $58.07 billion, beating analysts' estimates of $56.98 billion. Total revenue came in at $69.8 billion, up 2.6% year-on-year.

With one tweet, Google managed to wipe about $100 billion off its market cap. On Tuesday night, the company tweeted a promotional video of their AI competitor Bard answering a question on interesting facts about the James Webb Space Telescope. Unfortunately, not all the facts given by Bard were accurate. It incorrectly said that JWST was the first to capture an image of a planet outside of our solar system. Hmm, I wonder why someone at Google didn't fact-check such an important announcement.

Yesterday I wrote that Google will launch a competitor to Microsoft's ChatGPT in the coming months. It turns out that the launch date is now. Google's version is called 'Bard', and is only accessible to a select few trusted users, while it does some more testing. The plan is to release it to the public in the next few weeks.

On Thursday evening Alphabet (also known as Google) reported their latest quarterly numbers. Unfortunately, the company missed top and bottom line expectations, and the stock dropped by 3% on Friday. It's worth noting that Alphabet was up 7% on Thursday, so the share price still gained over the week.

On Tuesday the US justice department sued Google, alleging that the company has a monopoly over the digital advertising market. In reality, they are probably correct, as the FT points out with this image below, Google dominates almost the entire value chain of the industry.

Back in May, I described Google as a money-making, near-monopoly that is the gateway to the Internet, and you're nuts if you don't own their shares.

Google announced that as part of a $1 billion Africa investment plan, they will set up a cloud services business called Google Cloud Africa. The infrastructure will be based here in Mzansi. It will give users, developers, businesses and educational institutions across Africa, more information and tools online.

YouTube announced plans to insert adverts on Shorts, its service which aims to compete with TikTok. The streaming giant said that ad sales will be shared with creators of the bite-sized videos. Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said, "We want YouTube to be the place that gives creators the greatest support in the digital landscape."

A few days ago Paul wrote about a time, some years ago, when the market underappreciated Apple. Then it enjoyed a massive rerating, and a lot of shareholders made good money. I feel like Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube) is in the midst of a similar phase, oddly unloved.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, reported a second-quarter top line that met analysts' expectations, showing how resilient the internet giant's business model is amid all the macroeconomic pressures that are weighing on the digital ads market. The shares rose as much as 5.7% in after-hours trading before cooling off to 4.9%.