20 October 2020: US sues Google over search dominance
The Justice Department and eleven states filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit accusing Google of illegally maintaining its monopoly in search, including through deals that made it the default on phones and browsers. It was the biggest US antitrust case against a tech company since the Microsoft case two decades earlier. Alphabet's stock actually rose that day, as investors assumed the legal fight would take years.
The lesson: Markets often discount slow-moving legal threats until a judge actually rules.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Google / Alphabet at the start of 2020 → $2,941 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the year it happened. That is 2.9 times the money, and $849 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
- 10 August 2015: Google reorganizes itself as Alphabet
- 19 August 2004: Google goes public by auction
- 4 September 1998: Google is incorporated
- 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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