2. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 156
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) provides various products and platforms in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, and Latin America. On November 22, Google reported that Apple and Google came under additional scrutiny from worldwide regulators on Tuesday as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority launched a probe into the tech giant’s effective duopoly on mobile browsers and cloud gaming. Cuban is bullish on AI and has lauded the efforts of Alphabet for heavy investment in the space.
On November 15, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak maintained an Overweight rating on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock and lowered the price target to $120 from $125, highlighting that the company missed third-quarter ad revenue expectations and/or guided to slower than expected forward growth.
At the end of the third quarter of 2022, 156 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $19.3 billion in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), compared to 153 in the preceding quarter worth $22.3 billion.
In its Q3 2022 investor letter, Mayar Capital, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“In early January this year – which admittedly feels like eons ago – US President Joe Biden was pushing Americans to take up the government’s offer of free COVID tests to help tackle the surging omicron variant. How did Biden respond when citizens asked about the availability of these tests?
“Google it!”
This advice, undoubtedly well-meant, was roundly scoffed at by the press, however. It seemed too obvious to be very helpful.
Anyway, the anecdote serves to introduce you to one of our largest holdings, Alphabet; the parent company of Google. Note that first, Alphabet’s original and core product – its search engine – has entered our common vocabulary as a verb. ‘Googling’ something has the same meaning as ‘researching’ or ‘finding an answer to something. Second, the reason Biden’s advice was met with such opprobrium was that Googling something has become almost second nature to us now.
These two observations reveal a lot about Google’s strength in the search engine market, in which it has a share of over 90 percent. Because internet search is almost the prototypical network, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has benefitted from – and we think is also protected by – the huge competitive advantage its scale brings – both to those asking the questions and those providing the answers. The Google search platform becomes increasingly useful to anyone seeking the information as a greater volume of stuff becomes available. This starts a virtuous cycle that results in a colossal market share for Google itself. In the language of business strategists, Google benefits from vast network effects (read more)
