Given its size, Google's growth rate is incredible. What's more, they still have a long way to optimise ads. I was recently shown a YouTube ad for cat food, but Google should know I don't have a cat because it has my entire photo stream for the last 3 years.

Alphabet is closing in on Apple's financial crown. At the current rate they'd likely surpass Apple in net cash in the next 12 quarters, barring a shareholder payout (which is likely).

Google, the subsidiary, is chasing down $40 billion in annualized operating income ($8.7 billion this quarter). To put that into perspective, that's equal to twice the operating income of Johnson & Johnson (a monster corporation with a $380 billion market cap). It wouldn't be far fetched for Google to reach $55-$60 billion in operating income in three years.

Alphabet now has $100 billion in cash and no meaningful traditional debt. Apple has about ~$160 billion in net cash, a sum that has mostly stopped increasing. Google should stay ahead of Apple in net tangible assets this quarter as well.

Given Alphabet's growth rate (and assuming it slows some), they should get near Apple's general $40x billion net income territory in three years.

By contrast, Microsoft also has an immense amount of cash, at $138 billion (cash or equivalents). However they're carrying $76 billion in long-term debt. Google presently has approximately 5x the net tangible assets of Microsoft.

Anything besides ads that actually make them money ? I am honestly curious if they still cannot find a way how to make money with anything else besides ads

One thing I am curious about from the finance perspective is - How does the revenue recognition (RevRec) happen in the internet ad business? If company A has committed $200 million in ads over 6 months to Google. How will Google book and recognize this as revenue?

Wow, that’s quite a bit, right?

It’s time for people in the valley to team up and create a real competitor to google ad. This has been lasting for too long.

G is for Alphabet! (poking fun at the legacy stock ticker)

I read this in another article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/amazon-alphabet-microsoft-in...

>In a call with CNBC, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat reiterated the company's theme of "products with AI [artificial intelligence] at their core," but the main function of that AI today seems to be optimizing ad revenue.

Are all the improvements to machine learning being made to just to show us more targeted ads?