Apple first passed oil giant Exxon Mobil to become the world’s most valuable company in 2011. Alphabet’s market cap during that time reached a staggering $570 billion, in comparison to Apple Inc. Of these, $21.3 billion (€19.5 billion) were recorded in Q4, of which $4.9 billion (€4.5 billion) was net income alone.
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Google established Alphabet as its parent company last October to separate its more profitable suite of products like YouTube from its riskier projects such as self-driving cars and the Project Loon internet balloon system.
Based on that after-hours bump, Alphabet’s market value stood at $555 billion while Apple’s was at $533 billion, based on the most recent regulatory filings showing the company’s outstanding shares.
Profit was up 7% and revenue rose 18% compared with the same period in the previous year – before the restructuring that created a parent company that includes Google stripped down to its core.
The numbers were slurped up by investors, who saw scope for growth in the traditional business of Google, and were comforted to see that spending on new plans it calls “Other Bets” was not as profligate as some had feared.
The company said the drop in its effective tax rate reflected the “impact of certain one-time items in the US”.
The Guardian reports on Alphabet becoming the world’s most valuable company.
Ms Porat said the strong revenue growth was a return on years of investment in mobile search, YouTube and so-called programmatic advertising, which involves ads being sold automatically using software. On an annual basis, Alphabet made $16.3 billion but the figures show that the “Other Bets” lost $3.6 billion, while Google’s operating income rose to $23.4 billion, helped by online advertising gains. The segment revenues for Google, on the other hand, increased from $65,674 to $74,541.
Advertisers pay Google only if someone clicks on their ad.
Its aggregate paid clicks grew by 17% year-on-year, but aggregate cost-per-click fell by 5%.
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Gmail follows Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, YouTube and the Google Play Store in topping a billion users.
