Google

One sentence overview: Google is the worldwide leader in search as well as Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google Ticker: GOOGL     (aka Alphabet)

May 22,2020 Stock Price: $1413 

May 22,2020 Market Cap: $963B

Total Shares Outstanding Recent Quarterly Report: 739 million shares

 Google Investor Relations Page

https://abc.xyz/investor/

Google SEC Page

https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?CIK=googl&owner=exclude&action=getcompany

Google Glassdoor Ratings

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Google-Reviews-E9079.htm

Google Overview

Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a California privately held company on September 4, 1998, in California. Google was then reincorporated in Delaware on October 22, 2002. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet’s leading subsidiary and will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page who became the CEO of Alphabet.

Products

Search
Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators.

Advertising
Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on google and YouTube, android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. The three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange generate advertising revenue.

Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid.

Consumer Services
Google offers Gmail for email, Google Calendar for time-management and scheduling, Google Maps for mapping, navigation and satellite imagery, Google Drive for cloud storage of files, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for productivity, Google Photos for photo storage and sharing, Google Keep for note-taking, Google Translate for language translation, YouTube for video viewing and sharing, Google My Business for managing public business information, and Duo for social interaction. In March 2019, Google unveiled a cloud gaming service named Stadia.

Software
Google develops the Android mobile operating system, as well as its smartwatch,television, car, and Internet of things-enabled smart devices variations.
It also develops the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, an operating system based on Chrome.

Hardware
In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own brand, “Nexus”. It spawned a number of phones and tablets under the “Nexus” branding until its eventual discontinuation in 2016, replaced by a new brand called Pixel.
In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, described as a “new kind of computer” running Chrome OS.
In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, that allows users to stream content from their smartphones to televisions.
The Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones with the Google Assistant, a next-generation contextual voice assistant, built-in.
Google Home, an Amazon Echo-like voice assistant placed in the house that can answer voice queries, play music, find information from apps (calendar, weather etc.), and control third-party smart home appliances (users can tell it to turn on the lights, for example). The Google Home line also includes variants such as the Google Home Hub, Google Home Mini, and Google Home Max.

Enterprise services
G Suite is a monthly subscription offering for organizations and businesses to get access to a collection of Google’s services, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, with additional administrative tools, unique domain names, and 24/7 support.
On March 15, 2016, Google announced the introduction of Google Analytics 360 Suite, “a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers” which can be integrated with BigQuery on the Google Cloud Platform. Among other things, the suite is designed to help “enterprise class marketers” “see the complete customer journey”, generate “useful insights”, and “deliver engaging experiences to the right people”.

Internet services
In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. Following Google’s corporate restructure to make Alphabet Inc. its parent company, Google Fiber was moved to Alphabet’s Access division.

Other products
In May 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments.

Business and Financial Drivers

Competition

Google’s main competitors are the big four – Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. However, apart from these main rivals, small and big rivalries in several areas can also be identified from clouds to streaming services and social media. Netflix and Hulu are leading competitors of Google’s YouTube.

Future Outlook

Google as big and as diversified  as it is, the future is hard to predict. I could imagine a future where is part of your life 24/7/365 with its myriad of products.

Risks

Google will be the target of regulators in the United States and Europe for anti-trust issues.

Google has data privacy and security risks associated with its business components.

Black swan events like COVID-19 can hurt their advertising business.

Disclaimer: I do not have any formal recommendation for or against this stock, so don’t buy or sell stocks based solely on what you read.

Interested in receiving a weekly recap of stocks which have been reviewed? Sign up.