12 January 2010: Google threatens to leave China
Google disclosed that it had been hit by a sophisticated cyberattack originating in China and said it would stop censoring search results there, even if that meant leaving the country. It soon redirected Chinese users to its Hong Kong site. Google gave up a shot at the world's biggest internet market, and domestic rival Baidu took the lead. It was a rare case of a tech giant choosing principle over growth, and paying for it.
The lesson: Access to a huge market is only valuable if you can operate there on terms you can live with.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Google / Alphabet at the start of 2010 → $13,333 today, vs $6,071 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2010, the year it happened. That is 13.3 times the money, and $7,262 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | $15.00 | $13,333 | $6,071 |
| 2012 | $16.00 | $12,500 | $5,312 |
| 2015 | $26.00 | $7,692 | $3,301 |
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
- 29 April 2004: Google files to go public, Dutch auction and all
- 10 August 2015: Google reorganizes itself as Alphabet
- 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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