Alphabet Inc.

Bullish:

• $GOOGL - Google is viewed as a dominant force in advertising, with unparalleled success in creating multiple billion-user products, maintaining leadership across technological shifts, and developing products based on core technological insights. Its acquisition of DoubleClick and success with Android have been particularly impactful.

  • “Every year for the last eighteen years, Google has been the number one seller of advertising of any kind in the world.”

    Ben·51:51

  • “DoubleClick bringing it into Google did really help with those fat money pipes, as I was saying, of dollar flows from ad agencies.”

    David·1:45:54

  • “Android was the mother of all wins. It was so big to win with Android. Nobody stretches a business model across technology eras. Nobody. And Google did it.”

    David·3:55:15

  • “Google is very weird to analyze for this because most of the way you think about Google is actually not where the economic transaction is. If you wanna analyze the business, it is why are advertisers spending a marginal dollar with Google versus spending it elsewhere.”

    Ben·3:45:14

  • “I can't think of another example of a dominant technology business and business model that has successfully survived and transitioned a major platform shift and thrived in that next platform as well.”

    David·3:01:48

  • “This period at Google is a run like nobody's ever had.”

    David·3:58:11

  • “Almost all of Google's successful products are based on a core technology insight that is underneath the whole thing. The type of insight that could be in an academic journal.”

    Ben·3:58:37
• $YOUTUBE - YouTube's growth trajectory is impressive, with its size potentially surpassing Disney's entire business in the near future.

  • “YouTube is already bigger than Disney's media business, and this year will likely become bigger than Disney's entire business.”

    Ben·25:26
• $BROWSER - Google's simultaneous development of Chrome and Android demonstrates their exceptional technological capabilities in browser technology.

  • “It's astonishing that they did both of these things [Chrome and Android] in the same year. And this isn't like, oh, I'm gonna start a browser the way that you can start a browser today.”

    Ben·55:02
• $CLOUD - Despite Google's missed opportunities in cloud computing, the sector is seen as important and potentially lucrative.

  • “Google should have been massively investing in cloud, and there are all sorts of reasons that they didn't. We're gonna save this for the next episode, but I was like, yeah. Especially think about where the impetus for this came from from Urs, from this memo, the Ursquake memo as it's known. Urs should have been focused on cloud.”

    David·3:30:39
• $AI - Google's foundational role in AI technology, particularly in developing transformers, positions them well in the growing AI sector.

  • “When I was talking to folks in the research for this episode, and AI came up. One of them said, you know, I have to remind people when I'm talking to partners out in the ecosystem that the t in chat, GPT, stands for transformer and that we invented that.”

    David·3:41:10
• $STEAMDECK - The Steam Deck is praised for its innovative approach to gaming, successfully bridging PC gaming and console experiences.

  • “What Valve has done with the Steam Deck, I didn't realize until buying it and using it, is incredible. They have abstracted a PC gaming machine into a console experience.”

    David·4:04:31

Bearish:

• $MSFT - Microsoft's strategic missteps in search and advertising, as well as missing out on the mobile market, have put them at a competitive disadvantage against Google.

  • “Microsoft getting the number two player versus the number one player slowed them down. We're heading right into Microsoft search efforts with Yahoo and then ultimately Bing and getting into the advertising business.”

    David·1:46:25

  • “If they don't buy Android and they don't get started, basically, in the month that they did, this market belongs to Microsoft.”

    Ben·3:38:07
• $SOCIAL - Social media products without core technological innovations are viewed skeptically, as exemplified by Google's failed attempts with Google Plus and Google Wave.

  • “Google Plus, Google Wave. These are, like, products. These are, like, user experiences that people come up with that don't necessarily have a breakthrough technology underneath them.”

    Ben·4:01:18