Google’s parent company Alphabet is the fourth U.S. tech firm to reach $1 trillion market value, joining Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in hitting the milestone, according to reports on Thursday (Jan. 16).
Apple and Amazon hit the trillion-dollar mark in the summer of 2018. Microsoft reached the target in April 2019.
Apple was the first tech giant to see its market cap top $1 trillion. Amazon hit the $1 trillion mark in September 2018, but never went beyond it and has since dropped below. Microsoft reached the $1 trillion target last April.
“Google is one of those critical, important leaders in multiple areas,” Michael Lippert, manager of Baron Capital Opportunity Fund, told the Wall Street Journal. “You almost can’t live your life without Googling things.”
Facebook could be the next trillion-dollar tech giant. Its current valuation is currently about $620 billion, a CNBC report said.
Google reached the milestone amid state and federal antitrust probes and leadership changes that saw Larry Page and Sergey Brin step down in December as CEO and president, respectively. The two men founded Google out of a Menlo Park garage in 2006. Veteran Google executive Sundar Pichai took the CEO reins last month.
Despite challenges, Google basically owns search and is the “on-ramp to much of the internet.” The company also brings in $137 billion, much of it from advertising.
Former Google scientist Jack Poulson, who exited the company in 2018, said the search giant has culturally changed and is all about Wall Street and growth.
“The ethical lines are being rolled back,” Poulson told the New York Times. He now heads a nonprofit, Tech Inquiry, that assists tech workers in bringing up ethical issues about the tech they’re working on.
“It’s really been a cash cow,” Dan Morgan told the WSJ. He is a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co., which owns Alphabet shares. “They’ve been steadily continuing to post 15 to 20 percent growth, which is pretty amazing when you consider how mature that model is.”
Earlier this month shares in Alphabet were up 2.7 percent, reaching $1,397.81 per share — a market cap of $964 billion. The new highs could signal that investors are — so far — not overly worried about state and federal antitrust investigations. Pivotal Research Group Senior Analyst Michael Levine upgraded the stock to a buy rating.