
Google Reaches 1T in market value - ikarandeep
https://www.wsj.com/articles/alphabet-becomes-fourth-u-s-company-to-ever-reach-1-trillion-market-value-11579208802
======
myroon5
Current companies by market cap can be viewed here:
[https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?o=-marketcap](https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?o=-marketcap)

~~~
panarky
I hear the first trillion is the hardest.

------
K0SM0S
So,

> _Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are the first three publicly traded U.S.
> companies to hit $1 trillion in market value._

> _Google parent Alphabet Inc. became the fourth U.S. company ever to achieve
> a $1 trillion market value Thursday_

This is just a number obviously — E8D4A51000 in hex, 1110 1000 1101 0100 1010
0101 0001 0000 0000 0000 in binary (40 bits), 141981B87854 in the elegant
base-12 (duodecimal, or "dozenal" for amateurs).

It's interesting to look at a history of the biggest firms.

\- America's Top 50 Companies 1917-2017 [1]

\- A Century of America's Top 10 Companies, in One Chart [2]

\- Top 15 Largest U.S. Companies by Revenue (1954-2018) [3] (video 5')

(Note: the USA is best documented and as the world's #1 GDP for a century it's
a good sample of leading trends).

What we see is a clear shift from primary products to intragrators — makers of
final products. It's unclear to me whether "tech" should be seen as either,
because software can be very low-level or very high-level, it's pervasive
vertically to the whole pre-existing technology stack of civilization. Hence
why, perhaps, it's so mesmerizing to us now.

Among the 4 companies cited here, Google is strangely the one that I'm the
less confident about in terms of very-long-term prospects. Apple has clearly
become a luxury brand, and these last _centuries_ ; Microsoft is as strong as
it's ever been with all things enterprise; Amazon is, well, _Amazon_.

Google however, it's an engineer ethos at first (my first tech love), but it
seems like corporate drove that away enough to resemble other companies
(looking at Facebook, Tesla..). But said corporate management seems aimless,
opportunistic more than vision-driven, more about the what/how and not a clear
why. The moon projects counter-illustrate that fact but how many of those will
actually become Google's main drive to rock the 2030s, 2040s, and beyond?

And yet, as far as the heart goes, Google is the one I'd love to become
something more, it's the one I wish I had founded bar none but Musk's. I just
don't see it top 10 past 2030, if even that.

[none of this was financial or career advice ;-)]

[1]: [https://howmuch.net/articles/100-years-of-americas-
top-10-co...](https://howmuch.net/articles/100-years-of-americas-
top-10-companies)

[2]: [https://howmuch.net/articles/100-years-of-americas-
top-10-co...](https://howmuch.net/articles/100-years-of-americas-
top-10-companies)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6MSQ6n-3YA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6MSQ6n-3YA)

------
malvosenior
That's too bad. Out of the other $1T US companies (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft)
Google seems by far the most user hostile. I would say Microsoft once held
this position but lost their edge to be truly damaging. On the other hand
Google:

* Sells ads for a living

* Pushes AMP

* Removes features from Chrome that allow you to block ads

* Android littered with spyware

* Kills products randomly

* Kills platforms randomly (leaving developers high and dry)

* Horrible hiring culture cargo-culted by lesser Googles

* Privacy concerns with Google Home product

* Introduces politics into the workplace

* Introduces politics into their products

* Sexual harassing execs get big payouts

* Infantalized workplace culture

* Produces increasingly awful search results

* More...

~~~
panarky
Microsoft, Amazon and Apple also sell ads.

AMP may tie publishers into their standard, but as a user I'd much prefer an
AMP page to a dog slow publisher page on mobile.

Despite all the hype and FUD, ad blockers still work just fine in Chrome.

iOS has plenty of hidden spy apps, masque attacks, and iCloud backup attacks.

Apple, Amazon and Microsoft all routinely deprecate products.

Plenty of privacy concerns with Amazon and Microsoft. Remains to be seen if
Apple caves on the Pensacola iPhones.

Not sure how workplace politics or culture affects the user experience at all,
sounds like you might be confusing your own prejudices with users at large.

Microsoft censors their products in China, Google does not.

Amazon sells counterfeit products, Google does not.

Apple refuses to interoperate with industry standards, Google does not.

~~~
yladiz
While you may be technically right in many of these points, what you say
misses or purposefully deflects points from the parent. For example:

> [Google] Sells ads for a living

>> Microsoft, Amazon and Apple also sell ads.

Parent is not stating that the companies do not sell ads, parent is stating
that Google primarily makes its money by selling ads. Microsoft, Amazon, and
Apple do not.

> [Google] Kills products randomly

> [Google] Kills platforms randomly (leaving developers high and dry)

>> Apple, Amazon and Microsoft all routinely deprecate products.

There is a difference between deprecating and "killing" as the parent puts it,
and unlike Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, Google has a website dedicated to its
many killed products [1], primarily because Google has a pretty bad reputation
for killing a product randomly without much notice.

Beyond those, you're being disingenuous with at least these two points:

> Microsoft censors their products in China, Google does not.

> Amazon sells counterfeit products, Google does not.

You're technically correct but that's because 1) Google products aren't
accessible in China, and 2) Google doesn't really sell physical products like
Amazon does (if you don't count some devices like phones). That's like saying,
assuming Elmer's Glue isn't in China, that "Microsoft censors their products
in China, Elmer's Glue does not."

1: [https://killedbygoogle.com](https://killedbygoogle.com)

~~~
flokie
MSFT has deprecated 346 products to Google's 194...
[https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-
micros...](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft-
products)

