Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction), especially its Google unit, has had a remarkable year, at least compared to the other Magnificent Seven companies. Its stock price is up 10% this year. That’s not a home run, but it’s better than Meta (NASDAQ: META) (down 15%) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) (down 22%).
Alphabet ranks third in market cap among the world’s public companies at $4.21 trillion, which is close behind Apple ($4.53 trillion). Founder Sergey Brin owns 3% but has shares that give him control of the company, along with Larry Page, who also owns 3%. Each has a net worth increase of slightly more than $25 billion this year.
Google’s search business is supposed to be crippled by AI, which is often used as a search engine. Alphabet’s overall revenue rose 24% to $119.8 billion in the most recent quarter. Google Search revenue rose 17% to $63.2 billion. Cloud operations were a home run, up 81% to $21.7 billion. Since the cloud industry is nearly as hot as AI among investors, the increase impressed.
YouTube is now the clear leader in video streaming and has moved into the premium streaming sector, threatening companies like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX). YouTube revenue rose 13.2% to $11.1 billion in the period. In its most recent quarter, Netflix’s entire revenue was $12.5 billion.
Google’s Gemini AI business has outpaced many estimates for other public companies and trails only OpenAI and Anthropic. The Guardian reports: “The source added, however, that Google still had the benefit of being able to combine its Gemini models with an impressive suite of products, from its all-conquering search product to its cloud platform and YouTube.”
On a much smaller scale, Google’s self-driving car division, Waymo, appears to have taken the lead over rival Tesla, particularly in the cities where it operates. This may matter in the future, but today, financially, it is only a small part of Google’s current success.
Brin and Page are each worth about $280 billion based on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Unlike some other people at the top of the list, 2026 has been a good year.
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