10 August 2015: Google reorganizes itself as Alphabet
Google surprised investors by announcing that it would create a new parent company, Alphabet, with Google as its largest subsidiary and side bets like self-driving cars and life sciences as separate units. Shares rose on hopes of more financial discipline and transparency. In practice, search and advertising kept paying for almost everything. Changing the corporate wrapper did not change where the money came from, but it did make the moonshots easier to see.
The lesson: Corporate reorganizations rarely change the economics; follow the cash generated by the core business.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Google / Alphabet at the start of 2015 → $7,692 today, vs $3,301 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2015, the year it happened. That is 7.7 times the money, and $4,391 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Google / Alphabet teaches: Owning a toll road on a growing activity can be enough; Alphabet's search monopoly kept compounding through crises, lawsuits and repeated predictions of its disruption.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $26.00 | $7,692 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $55.00 | $3,636 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $68.00 | $2,941 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Google / Alphabet? Every starting year and the full story →
More Google / Alphabet history
- 12 January 2010: Google threatens to leave China
- 29 April 2004: Google files to go public, Dutch auction and all
- 19 August 2004: Google goes public by auction
- 4 September 1998: Google is incorporated
- 20 October 2020: US sues Google over search dominance
- 21 October 2004: Google's first report card as a public company
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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