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Alphabet has surpassed Apple to become the most valuable company in the world

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Alphabet’s just-released Q4 earnings has seen its stock price rise in after hours trading, resulting in the Mountain View-based company passing Apple to become the most valuable company in the world. The company’s market capitalization was $517.6 billion at close, and while the price is still fluctuating after hours, Alphabet’s market cap will be over $540 billion tomorrow if these prices hold…

At market’s close, GOOG Class C stock was trading at $752, but immediately shot up to $813, an 8% jump. It is currently trading just shy of $800. Apple has held the title of most valuable company in the world since overtaking Exxon Mobil in 2011. In the weeks leading up to earnings season, however, many speculated that Alphabet could take the mantle with strong earnings.

When the markets closed today, Google had $517.6 billion market capitalization while Apple was at $538.7 billion. With the after hours valuation of more than 540 billion, though, this marks the first time since 2010 that Google has passed Apple in market cap.

In its Q4 2015 fiscal report, the company reported revenue of $21.3 billion, up 18%. Net income for Q4 2015 was $3.97 billion. Of its total revenue, advertising consisted of right about $16.3 billion, with Google’s own websites accounting for about $12.4 billion. Advertising revenue is up 17 percent year over year, while that of Google’s own sites are up 20 percent year over year. Aggregate paid clicks rose 31 percent year over year, while cost-per-click rates fell 13 percent compared to Q4 of 2014.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai also noted during Alphabet’s earnings call that Gmail now has more than 1 billion active monthly users.

As part of the Alphabet reorganization, the company now reports earnings from the core Google business and its “Other Bet” companies. To learn more about the company’s earnings check out the livestream of the call happening now.

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Comments

  1. I’m a bit confused, but I also don’t know much about the stock market, but this states that Google is at $517.6 billion market cap, and Apple at $538.7 market cap, wouldn’t that make Apple the most valuable company?

    Either way, I’m sure Apple will regain the title.

    • Aunty T (@AuntyTroll) - 8 years ago

      “Alphabet’s just-released Q4 earnings has seen its stock price rise in AFTER HOURS TRADING, resulting in the Mountain View-based company passing Apple to become the most valuable company in the world. ”

      I had to read it twice too :)

    • Stephen Hall - 8 years ago

      Updated the article to clarify.

    • Dave Howarth - 8 years ago

      That threw me off too, it’s not clearly stated. You need to go back to the first paragraph where he mentions that by tomorrow Alphabet will be at $540, so in the end they’d be higher “once all the dust settles”.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        And once the earlier investors sell off after the short run up, then it won’t.. :-) I’m wondering if this is a pump and dump scenario. LOL.

  2. minieggseater - 8 years ago

    Good healthy competition

    • Companies don’t compete on stock price, only in revenues and profits, where Apple destroys Google. ;)

      • giuseppe1111 - 8 years ago

        actually not, they “compete” only on short term stock performance. that was a main subject in the economic literature of the last decade.

    • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

      Actually, Alphabet and Apple are listed with the SEC in two completely different categories so they aren’t even lumped together in the same industry. Alphabet is considered internet services industry and Apple’s listed as a personal computer mfg. Two completely different industries and business models and revenue generation.

      If you were doing a comparison of Apple against their real competitor and the same industry. then Apple would be compared to companies like HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer. Even Microsoft’s listed with the SEC as a software company and they would be compared to companies such as Oracle, SAP, etc.

      if you took out the revenues/etc. with the actual part of Alphabet that directly compares to Apple, it would be just their Chromebook and Nexus phone sales. And they would look so pathetic it’s not even funny. Alphabet actually doesn’t really make any profits directly from the sales of Nexus or Chromebooks’ with Google’s name on them. they make money if you sign up for cloud services, which most don’t, and ads and ad clicks. They certainly don’t sell many Nexus phones, I think last year they sold maybe a couple of million Nexus phone at best. It’s not even a major selling smartphone even by Android standards. They don’t even come up on any Smartphone sales figures, they are part of “other”. It’s Samsung, Huawai, LG, HTC, and Xaiomi that sell far more smartphones and tablets than Alphabet.

      Heck, Alphabet is even pulling the Google car from California because the current law states that they have to have a competent driver behind the wheel at all times, so Alphabet pulled out of California, so much for all of that lobbyist money they now wasted. And whatever happened to GoogleGlass? That’s a no show.

      • Aunty T (@AuntyTroll) - 8 years ago

        You sound genuinely upset Rich. You’ve made a point of demolishing Google, as if you have taken it personally. Does it really make that much of a difference to you that Google have a somehow bigger market cap than Apple? Can guarantee you will completely forget the “two completely different categories so they aren’t even lumped together in the same industry…” statement you made when Apple regain their crown (which they will).

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        I’m upset because of crappy media reporting. If you look at Alphabet’s history in revenues, this last quarter just looks like a Christmas spike and the reason is none of these articles (not just 9to5Mac) are even discussing P/E ratio differences between the two companies. I think it’s media hype driven and there are a lot of people buying stock that go simply by the media hype and they don’t take into consideration anything else. That’s what makes me upset is the lack of telling people that there are things to consider before making an investment.

        If both companies were liquidated of everything in a FIresale, Apple has about 3+x times more cash, etc. etc. after they liquidated all of their withholdings and got all of their accounts receivables, which makes the P/E ratio of being 3.5x difference more important to consider. But they don’t explain that the P/E ratios are that far off from one another and that if both stocks were normalized with the same P/E, then Apple would be 3+x more valuable and that people should take that into consideration before investing in the stock.

        I just hope not that many people get suckered into this media hype. The stock is up $17+ right now, so people are buying the stock largely based on this media hype and I’m waiting for the sky to fall and people are gonna lose money in the short term. I know it’s not my problem, I just don’t like it when the media leaves out a lot of information when discussing valuations and comparing two stocks solely based on market cap and hyping it to death.

        I have a finance background and I hate giving people misleading advice, even if it’s not my place. I just don’t like the media doing it because some of these articles are written by journalist with no finance background or a certified stock analyst and they probably don’t care if people lose money on these media hyped stocks.

  3. Dave Howarth - 8 years ago

    I love the idea of Apple “taking over Exxon” but I think you may have meant “over taking Apple”.

  4. rogifan - 8 years ago

    And in a few hours no one will care as the news will be all about Iowa.

  5. usmansaghir - 8 years ago

    Apple is a victim of its own success.

    • RP - 8 years ago

      ..and its failures.
      Its built its reputation on the the iPhone and product excellence that was inanely great. The iPhone 6 was not. It was good. Not as ugly as people said. Its industrial design with tan lines and bulginging camera in an overly large case not as terrible as some say. But it was not great.
      Surely didnt look like a product from the same company that released the iPhone 5 or the MacBook Air.

      Based on that, its main producer of its income, why wouldn’t investors worry for its future?

      • twelve01 - 8 years ago

        Except iPhone 6 was a massive success that gave Apple the largest yoy increase since 2011.

    • Robert - 8 years ago

      Indeed!

      Google’s revenue, profit and profit/share ratio are nowhere near as good as Apple. Apple makes more than twice as much money as a percentage per share than Google. Yet, all the market cares about is ever accelerating growth, they don’t understand that the move to bigger screens created huge growth last year that is impossible to significantly beat with the 6s. Hence the market sees growth stalling and they think Apple are not innovating. Blind fools! Growth is still on track. The mammoth iPhone 6 year was off track with double the normal growth, this created the illusion of a hump now that growth is back on the linear path.

      The funny thing is that almost all Google profit come from it’s ads and as we learnt last week – Apple gets a cut as part of a deal to have google as the default search engine. So strong Google ad sales means free profit for Apple that has no overhead.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        Hey, maybe Apple should charge them $2 Billion to keep Google as the default search engine. :-) What they hey, they NEED to keep that deal going.

  6. o0smoothies0o - 8 years ago

    That’s what Apple gets for only marginally breaking records and only selling 75 million phones.

  7. samuelsnay - 8 years ago

    Fucking Tim Cook.

  8. whodakat - 8 years ago

    The stock market totally makes sense! One company reported revenues of $21.3 billion, the other reported PROFITS of $18.4 billion. One company has a billion free email accounts, the other has sold a billion devices at about $600 a pop. One is worth $540 billion on paper, the other one – the lower valued one – has $250 billion in cash. Welcome to America baby!

    • 89p13 - 8 years ago

      And what “Product” does Google make? Money fro advertising and harvesting their customers data and monetizing it.

      I’ll take Apple over Alphabet any day.

      • Aunty T (@AuntyTroll) - 8 years ago

        How do you think Apple makes a substantial amount of their money? Why do you think Apple take great pleasure in telling listeners during their presentations exactly how many Apple ID’s there are? Those Apple ID’s include your demographics and credit card details. Those details are used when you purchase an app from the store (which Apple get a cut of), and your demographic information is used when developers pay Apple money so that they can incorporate TARGETED adverts in their Apps. That is using the information Apple has on you to make money. In other words it’s monetization. The very thing you are criticising Google for.

        They ALL do it – the difference between Google and Apple is that Apple has full, totalitarian control, so stop pretending that Apple are in it for our benefit because trust me on this – they aren’t.

      • Darrell - 8 years ago

        @AuntyTroll interesting that you press Apple on their role in advertising when they themselves admitted they weren’t good at it and are dropping the iAd platform.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        Aunty T I now know why you call yourself Aunty Troll. It’s a fitting name. You seem like Google does things to benefit you. Unless you work for Google and earn a paycheck, they don’t. What has Google done that you benefit from? Companies are for profit, they aren’t non profit. Apple has control over their hardware and software so they can better support their product instead of some kludge that two companies threw together that neither can really support that well. Why do you think Microsoft now makes their own smartphones, tablets and laptops? Because they are realizing they have to take the Apple business approach. Why does Google have their Nexus phones, because they know they have to do that to better support their users so they can push out new OS versions in a timely manner.

        And you forget that Google didn’t want to fix known security problems with their Android OS for many years putting their hundreds of millions of customers at risk of getting hacked. Wow, how nice of Google to hide that from everyone and avoiding to fix the problem they knew existed, but didn’t want to fix. Shame on Google. They still have a business model that does not get the latest OS version in your hands if you buy a 3rd party phone, that doesn’t benefit the customer.

        I think Apple’s Mac business is actually successful, they managed to stay in business and still grow that business, which yields about $25 Billion a year, and decent Net Profits. HP Inc, makes as much as they do primarily because of their printer division and ink cartridge sales, without that HP computer division would probably be heading for Chapter 13. Dell had to go private due to falling sales. Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer don’t make hardly any profits, I’ll bet Apple is more profitable from their Mac sales as ASUS, Acer and some of these other PC mfg. They are closing in on Number 3 in the US and within the top 5 on a Global level and Apple doesn’t need to be greedy in obtaining 90% market share to be successful. Remember, Microsoft and Google need to have 80% market share to be successful, if they lose too much market share, they won’t be successful.

        Google has targeted ads too, they are the ones that created that method of monetization.

    • Tom@L (@Wild_hunt_) - 8 years ago

      yap and when Apple was the highest valued company, stock market made total sense. See the bias?

      • Robert - 8 years ago

        It’s never made any sense! By any measure Apple consistently makes far more money than any other company in the world. It’s always been vastly undervalued and it’s stock price has been volatile. It never made any sense! The market is driven by greed and emotion as much as company performance.

    • rnc - 8 years ago

      One makes products that are ALWAYS a succes.

      The other one always makes failure after failure (that’s why their revenue is advertising only practically).

      • Aunty T (@AuntyTroll) - 8 years ago

        Do you think the AppleTV is a success? What about the iPod shuffle? The Macintosh TV (yes really)? What about the failed Apple games console or the Apple III? Would you say the Macintosh line is a success when after 30 years it has less than 10% of the PC market? Would you say the same about OSX – an operating system much better than Windows, yet again holds a terrible market share? Is that a success?

        Open your eyes boy.

      • Michael Harwell - 8 years ago

        Exactly what products has Google made since Maps and Android that have been great successes? Google Glass? Self Driving cars? Where can we get these products? Consider how sneaky the Apple Watch sales have been in comparison to Android Wear. Apple has made lots of successes that overshadow their “competition.”

        And I’m pretty sure the AppleTV and iPod Shuffle were big successes based on the market they’re in.

    • mytawalbeh - 8 years ago

      Stock Market.. those idiots of WS.
      I still don’t get it, how could that be possible where Apple profits is the highest in the world and google’s is more than normal (advertising company HS).
      Can apple buy some stocks off the market to raise its value..

    • greenbelt2csp - 8 years ago

      Talking way too much sense @whodakat. Just look at the pretty flowers and go with the herd…. mooooooooo.

  9. Honestly Enterprise Value is the more meaningful metric. Someone should check those to see if Google or Apple’s is higher. Seriously. Market Cap really isn’t a good measure.

  10. iali87 - 8 years ago

    I am shocked with the ignorance in the comments! Some people see google only in android and thats it! Google is the dream land for any STEM grads and researchers. Google is like what IBM used to be( did you guys see what Google’s deep-mind department do last week?). IBM succeeded when it left the consumer market and worked on crazy projects(like Deep blue, Watson). Yes apple makes more profit than google but apple is a consumer product company and thats it! This is obvious to happen and I personally expect IBM, Microsoft, and even Hp to surpass Apple.

    • Robert - 8 years ago

      Which dream world do you live in?

    • rnc - 8 years ago

      Yeah, they make pretty cool demos fording journalists to write about.

      Let me know when they actually compete in the market, then we will see what they are worth.

      Mostly zero

      • iali87 - 8 years ago

        “Mostly zero” = a blind fanboy.

      • rnc - 8 years ago

        Come back when I can buy a Hoogle car, when the Project Loon comes into tuition, etc… they can’t even manage smaller projects, much less advanced ones…

        They keep depending on their main (96%) source of income: ads, while they do, they won’t do anything else right.

    • greenbelt2csp - 8 years ago

      Right because Apple spending 2.5 billion dollar PER QUARTER on R&D means that no STEM grads and researchers can possibly find a job at Apple. Get a clue JR. Google is not like IBM, they are an advertising company advertising how cool they are by making unsustainable products and buzz. I’d say Apple is like IBM and Google is more like Hollywood. Think deep, search your feelings, you know it to be true young padawan.

  11. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    The market cap is a fluctuating number and it’s based on shares outstanding multiplied by stock price. What number they aren’t talking about is whether or not a company’s market cap or share price is overvalued or not. If you compare Apple to Alphabet, their P/E ratio is vastly different and Apple is trading at a much more realistic share price than Alphabet, which means that Alphabet is overvalued. If you normalized both stocks to the same P/E ratio, then Apple is vasty higher value. It’s just the stock price that’s pushing Alphabet higher and it’s because of whatever media hype or what people think is going to happen.

    If you broke down each business, how much cash does each company have? Apple has vastly more cash than Alphabet. How about sellable inventory? How about yearly net Profits? Apple, has vastly more than Alphabet. How about buildings? Apple. Basically, based on the current valuations, Let’s say someone bought Apple at current market value and bought Alphabet at current market value. It would take far less time to recoup your initial price paid for the company.

    So, Alphabet is trading at 35x it’s earnings, Apple is trading at 10x it’s earnings. Essentially Alphabet is 3.5x overvalued compared to Apple. Plus, Apple pays dividends, Alphabet doesn’t.

    Since Apple has committed to buying back it’s stock, they will increase the share price when they do, which is what happened last year when they had that big spike in share price. I’m sure Apple is going to do that this year and when they do, up goes the share price.

    What I don’t like is these articles that are very misleading and not very comprehensive in terms of how to evaluate two different companies. There is a LOT more to figuring out which stock to invest in other than market cap. Market Cap is just a snapshot number that constantly fluctuates and unless you are planning on buying the company, it’s not a number I would be looking at to determine if I would invest in that stock or not.

    • iali87 - 8 years ago

      Overvalued?!
      Based on what did u come up with this?!
      Off course the amount of trust in the company will play a rule on its market value. That doesn’t do anything to it’s current value because IT IS THE COMPANY’S CURRENT VALUE.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        There are ways to figure out if the company is over or under valued and they typically look at the P/E ratio for this. In comparison to Apple that’s trading only at P/E of 10 vs P/E of 35. That’s how many times earnings the stock is trading at. But what is the company REALLY worth? Well, you have to assign a number to what the book value is. Share price is based on what shareholders THINK it’s worth. Look at the cash reserves, value of the business from a standpoint of buildings, sellable inventory, cash receivables, debt, etc., etc.

        Think in terms of this. Let’s say you wanted to pay current market value for both companies, how many years would it take you to recoup the investment of their respective market cap? If you don’t consider the cash reserves of each company, it would take only about 10 years to recoup your money if you bought Apple for $540 Mil because they get how many billions in net profit per year, currently? $53 Bil based on fiscal year 2015, if you bought Alphabet, based on their earnings, it would take more like 35 years. Oops. so you would buy Alphabet and want to wait 35 years at their current earnings to recoup your money vs 10 for Apple at their current earnings? I don’t know about you, but Apple is priced a lot lower to what the company is worth if someone actually had the money to buy them out at current market value. Obviously, with over $200 Bil in cash it would take a lot less than 10 years because you’re paying $540 Bil for a company that has $200 Bil in cash with $53 BIl a year in net profits. That’s one way to look at it.

        The thing is, the shareholders, right or wrong are pushing the share price up because they THINK that Alphabet has a higher growth rate based on their numbers/business model. That’s all the share price is essentially based on. What people think is a good investment. Whether it pans out or not is a different story and that’s when the stock might go up or down as time moves on. The problem with these high profile companies that get a lot of media attention, some people just buy it because they believe the media hype and they don’t really take the time to really understand what they are buying and the potential risks involved.

        The thing with Apple is that people get nervous when Apple’s iPhone sales aren’t a big increase YtoY, because it’s their cash cow right now. So, the Alphabet shareholders are just betting that Alphabet will continually grow faster than Apple, which is why they are paying the higher value with the higher P/E ratio. Some people just get caught up in the hype without really doing thorough investigating. They forget that Apple pays dividends and it’s been a transition stock from a high growth to more of a low growth stock, so people that want to be in a high growth stock go elsewhere. I don’t know how much Alphabet will actually grow since most of their revenues seems to be tied to ad/ad clicks, which fluctuates, especially around Christmas time, which just ended, so they might have just had a Christmas spike but people don’t realize that. That’s all. I just get cautious with this Who had the higher market cap between Alphabet and Apple. In so many ways, Apple crushes Alphabet from just a financial perspective, that’s all.

        Every stock has their high and low with regards to their P/E ratio, when it reaches their 52 week high, then they consider it overvalued, and when it hits a low, then they consider it undervalued. A P/E for Apple at 10, is undervalued for Apple, when they’ve traded in the last year as high as I believe 16 or maybe even a little higher than that. A P/E of 10 for Apple is freaking low and it spells “undervalued”.. I haven’t checked what the high and low for the last 12 months is for Alphabet for their P/E, but generally 35 is kind of high since Alphabet hasn’t had super high growth rate consistently through the years, they’ve had their ups and downs and based on their business model, having so much tied to ads/ad clicks just makes me a little nervous, it’s not that tangible of a product if you will. I just don’t like that type of revenue generation. But that’s just me. So if it’s at a high point for the P/E, then it might be considered overvalued. If you were to buy a stock, isn’t the rule to buy low and sell high? The P/E ratio will help you determine if it’s under or over valued as you can see the low and high in terms of stock price to earnings. I know other companies are trading at ridiculous P/E ratios and I just would never personally invest in those because at some point in time, the bubble will burst.

        Go read up on P/E ratio, it’s a good metric to consider as it will help you determine if the stock is trading at a relative low point or high point based on earnings, not media hype.

  12. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    How much revenue does Gmail bring in? I’ve paid ZERO for Gmail. How about you? If the service brings in ZERO revenue, why talk about it? That makes no sense. Where did their revenues actually come from? Advertising? WOW. Alphabet’s actually more of an Ad agency than anything else.

    • iali87 - 8 years ago

      gmail! really!? is that how you evaluate a company as big as google!
      Google’s deepmind is solving AI (they solved go last week), Google is solving self driving cars, google is building crazy robots, google is brining super fast internet to the market, google is open sourcing their dig data research, google is into quantum computers, google is into elevators in space, google is into clean energy, google is into cancer treatments and anti-aghaing, etc.
      Of course it is a matter of time and google will hold more value that any other tech giant.

      • Robert - 8 years ago

        Apple doesn’t reveal anything about what it’s researching. So how can you compare?

        But your comment reflects the thinking of the market, they think Apple is not innovating.

      • flaviosuave - 8 years ago

        Google *is* figure skating! BOOM!

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        No, but they made a bid deal in these articles and Alphabet did mention it like it was something special. They were making it a big deal when it’s not.

        Alphabet just pulled their self driving car from California recently because California law states that they have to have a competent driver behind the wheel. I don’t know about you, but that’s a HUGE blow if they pull the car from California, especially since most high tech companies are based in California and they are making such a big deal.

        The thing is that the auto industry, in general, has been slowly releasing new models of cars with self driving type features, whether it’s self parking, automatic lane changing, braking. I just don’t see how Alphabet is making money on a car that’s still in prototype mode, when other mfg like Mercedes, Volvo, Tesla, etc. etc. are also working on self driving cars or at least releasing current models with self driving features.

        The robots? Robots are only great if they are sold in huge quantities. How many robots is Google making that are in high production? They are making a robot for NASA, which means they might get a couple sold. BIG F’ing deal. Now, if they had some truly unique robot that was getting sold in the 10’s of thousands, that’s a different story. GoogleGlass, as far as I’m concerned, is a flop. But there was much hype around it for several years. Now, they don’t talk about it, since no one is really buying them.

        All of what you’re saying is great if they can monetize it and recoup their R&D, and actually see some profits, but right now, they are just R&D expenditures for things that may not actually pan out. Whatever happened to the balloon idea? That was a dumb idea, but they are wasting money on it. Clean Energy? Tesla, I believe, is way ahead of Google in clean energy stuff. Cancer Treatments? Anti-Aging? Come on, anything that has to go through FDA trials can take 12 years or more until the product actually hits the market. Go look up the average time to market for prescription drugs. I believe the average time frame is 12 years. And even products that make it to market get pulled or companies get sued over it. The medical industry with prescription drugs is NOT a quick to market guarantee.

        If they are going to into all of these directions, they have to be very careful. It’s great they want to do all kinds of things, but some of them simply aren’t going to be that big of a deal and some may take a LONG time before they even see any results. Do you want to buy a stock where it might take 12 years to see some real growth, when the fact is that they are STILL, reliant on mostly ad clicks and ad sales, not smartphones, or laptops, or tablets or anything that tangible. It’s a ad click company spending gobs of money that may not pan out.

        There are plenty of medical drug companies also working on cancer treatments and anti aging products and are probably far ahead of Alphabet in development and have vastly more experience. So even if they come out with something doesn’t mean because it’s Alphabet, that another product from another company isn’t better and more successful. I have a difficult time buying a smart phone from a company called Google or Alphabet, let alone a cancer treatment drug. It’s not just coming out with the product, but also being successful in marketing distribution and sales. GoogleGlass was heavily marketed and it tanked. OOOOOPS.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        Think of it this way. I can cite several Fortune 500 companies that are ditching Windows for Apple products, whether it’s OS X and/or iPad/iPhones. When a large corporation makes the decision to ditch one platform to another, that’s a big decision they are making and they don’t switch platforms like a consumer does. Consumers switch platforms almost like they change underwear, Fortune 1000 companies don’t. they make a HUGE investment in purchasing the hardware, but also in software development, training, etc. that goes along with a platform change. So, these decisions are LONG term decisions to solidify Apple in the Enterprise market, which is largely owned by Microsoft and the Windows platforms. That’s TANGIBLE business, not some maybe pet project that may or may not pan out. So, Apple is MUCH easier to determine future growth and stability than some project that has a long development/test cycle that Google/Alphabet has no experience actually selling products.

        Even with Apple investing in a future car, I still am not sure it’s the best idea for them. It may turn out to be a major winner and they have 3x more cash to invest in it than Google has, and they have more than 3x the profits coming in on a regular basis to continue funding development.

        But don’t you think that after all of the media hype, that pulling their smart car from California based on a law is a major blow to them? If they can’t sell their product in California, they might as well fold up shop and stop development. California is probably their biggest potential market for smart cars.

    • Smigit - 8 years ago

      Only if your measure of a company is based on what area on their profit and loss statements pull in the profit. Otherwise it’s a very narrow perspective. If Google as a provider of internet services didn’t offer a very good search engine, email client, mapping tools etc then their advertising revenue would drop off sharply. Sure, their revenue is from ads but it’s their services that allow them to sell those ads effectively in the first place.

  13. Liam Deckham - 8 years ago

    This is amazing news! Maybe now Apple will start listening to what customers want again.

  14. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    after the initial after hours trading peaked Apple is at $539..71 billion and Google $538.08 billion. So Apple is again has the largest market cap in the world.

    The article title is wrong to me based on “value”. Google’s stock is over valued being mostly an advertising company. Apple makes many products and has enormous cash on hand. Google is mostly a service company with little physical products. Not to mention Appl’e Scruge McDuck mountain of cash.

    Yes Google was temporary ahead of Apple after hours in market cap, but that does not make it a more valuable company. Now Appl’s market cap is back over Google after the initial surge after trading hours.

  15. leifashley - 8 years ago

    Since when does the stock market have anything at all to do with the value of a company?

    Based on revenue and liquid cash I’d say Apple has the cats meow.

  16. RP - 8 years ago

    It’s because Google and Amazon are almost institutional in its domination of their categories. Apple is seen as cyclical and subject to the whims of the consumer.
    Googles Advertising and Amazons business seem impenetrable.
    “Seem” being the word that it all hinges on.

  17. incredibilistic - 8 years ago

    Interesting how Apple continues to break historic records in business revenue but somehow Google is able to overtake them.

    I’m not sure how much this really matters beyond the fact that both companies are making scandalous amounts of money but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m enjoying these two titans go at it.

    I also believe that Apple’s foray into television will be a ‘yuge’ turning point for the company as ad revenue will likely skyrocket and last time I checked Google’s bread ‘n butter is in web ads, not television ads.

  18. pdixon1986 - 8 years ago

    Alphabet — i’ve never heard of this company…what do they do?

    • cdm283813 - 8 years ago

      Need to visit more non-Apple sites once and a while. That was announced months ago.

      • pdixon1986 - 8 years ago

        Thst still doesnt help — plus i do read 9to5 google :-P

        i just dont have an awful lot of time to read everything or follow everything…

        but after doing some research it appears they are part of google, or at least related to them, and kinda started last year — so they are still pretty new.

    • Chris Cooper - 8 years ago

      @incredibilistic https://abc.xyz/ here is a good description

      • pdixon1986 - 8 years ago

        thank you…very informative :-)

  19. uniszuurmond - 8 years ago

    They deserve it. Google’s software is very polishede and coherent lately, whereas Apple’s is showing more and more bugs. And even Apple’s hardware has gone from excellent to just good, And sometimes even questionable. Some defend it, but The stock market shows the true sentiment.

  20. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    $18.4 billion in q1 profits for Apple and $4.9 billion for Google.

  21. mahmudf2014 - 8 years ago

    It’s not that hard to express true feelings. Apple’s doing nothing other than selling new iPhones, new iPads and not-so new Macs (think of 15″ MacBook Pro with two generations old Intel Haswell processors) while Google is at the focus of so many things and they are doing great job whatever they do nowadays. Can you think what would happen to Apple if they don’t sell as many iPhones as they sell today? It’s always great to try new things and build new things like Google did and while Apple Watch is a good example of that, it’s not enough to become a “new thing”

    If you want to enrich people’s lives, try to make every person to be connected to the web, again, like Google did. And do not take any money for those things. Apple is building new things based on existing things like cell phones, watches or computers and revolutionize them, Google is trying new things like autonomous cars. Anyway, let’s see what Apple is going to bring this year.

    • taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

      Google lost $3.5 billion in its Other Bets projects. Google + and Hangouts both are not that good.

      Broadwell chips got delayed and were not providing Anything much better then the Haswell chips. That’s why Apple is now moving to Skylake and skipped Broadwell. Apple can’t help that Intel faced delays.

      Hopefully on the base models of some of its laptops Apple moves to its A Series chips.

  22. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    I’m wondering if upper management within Alphabet tells their employees to click on as many ads on YouTube as humanly possible, because it’s REVENUE for the company. That would be an easy to create revenues without doing anything productive. I wonder how much revenue an Alphabet employee can create just by sitting around clicking ads in YouTube and Google search.. What a scam and a half if they did that. Any ex-Alphabet employees care to shed some light on this?

    • Chris Cooper (@clcooper) - 8 years ago

      As someone that works in online marketing and PPC ads, I can tell you there is enough fraudulent ad clicks so there is no need for Google/Alphabet employees to do so. A competitor of an advertiser will click on the advertiser’s ad, 1) which costs the advertiser money, and of course the competitor will not buy something the ad’s conversion rate will suffer. Since Google Algorithms uses the ad’s conversion rate as one of their factors in deciding where to display the ad in the sidebar, an ad with a lower conversion rate will mean it will be shown lower on the page, which the advertiser doesn’t want. Hell, Ad agencies will click on their own clients ads simply to show an increase in clicks on their ads. Sorry for the that long answer, hope it made sense.

      TL;DR – there is no need for employees to engage in click fraud, enough already exists.

  23. doesn’t matter at all, just like it didn’t matter when Apple held the top spot.

  24. Alphabet is the most valuable public company in the world. Saudi Aramco is far-and-away the most valuable company of any kind, worth many trillions of dollars.

  25. Eric Levi - 8 years ago

    Apple had a valuation of over 730 billion just 6 months ago. Are you saying Apple lost 200 billion dollars in market valuation ion 6 months???????????

  26. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    I think Alphabet should go into the kid’s cereal and soup market, they certainly have the right company names that attracts little children. That might be more of their speed. Plus, if they need to dump some Nexus phones/tablets, they can always put one inside a case of cereal or soup to boost sales. LOL.

  27. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    I have a perfect way for Alphabet to hire kids (young adults) for $15 an hour and bring in tons of revenue to help put these kids through college. Just hire these kids to click on ads all day long from their home or while they are walking around aimlessly. If they can generate $100 an hour in revenue, that’ll help Alphabet. Imagine that.. I can see it now when a kid puts that down on their resume for a future job and goes on a job interview afterwards.

    Q. What did you do for Alphabet?
    A. Clicked on ads.

    Q. Great. You’re hired! You’re our kind of employee.

    It’s certainly a far better idea than any of the half baked ideas they are dumping billions into and they could see revenue increases immediately. :-)

  28. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    No headline for Apple closing ahead of Google’s market cap Tuesday? Even in Tuesday’s premarket Apple was ahead, google just had a huge surge after its earnings and market cap was back below Apple’s when after hours trading closed Monday.

Author

Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.