After Amazon, Google shares hit record $1,000
06 Jun 2017
Shares of Google's parent company Alphabet hit a new record high above $1,000 yesterday. The Google/Alphabet milestone comes only a week after a similar movement in Amazon's stock, which entered the $1,000 club.
Alphabet stock was up over 25 per cent this year, with its market value now about $680 billion, second only to Apple, which was worth over $800 billion.
The success had a lot to do with the continued dominance of the Google search engine - and the ad dollars that came with it. The company was expected to report sales of nearly $108 billion this year. But YouTube and Android too were generating more sales and profits for the company.
According to commentators, Alphabet also had several other bets, including companies like driverless car tech firm Waymo, Fiber and connected device maker Nest, which were also generating more revenue.
With the success of Google, it's two co-founders had become extremely rich. Larry Page, who is also Alphabet's CEO, and Sergey Brin were each worth nearly $50 billion, according to wealth trackers on Forbes and Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, there was another company in that blue chip index that was approaching quadruple digits - Robot medical equipment maker Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) was trading around $920.
According to commentators, along with cloud-computing, Google had invested huge amounts into artificial intelligence, such as voice-computing. According to many investors the investment that brought about a shift in computing business positioned Google well to hedge against any threats to its web search business.
They point out that the one-time ''moonshots'' - the company's experiments in industries like health care and transportation, now called the ''Other Bets'' had looked brighter this year. Also Alphabet's medical business, closed a $800 million outside investment from Singapore firm Temasek and Alphabet cut investment in its fiber broadband service, a move investors had welcomed.