Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc, led by Sunder Pichai, has become the fourth public company in the US to hit a market cap of $1 trillion. The company hit the number just before the closing bell on Thursday with the day’s trading at $1,451.70 per share. Interestingly, it is the second US company under an Indian-origin CEO to touch the magic figure. Previously, Tim Cook-led Apple Inc., Jeff Bezos-led Amazon.com, Inc., and Satya Nadella-led Microsoft Corporation became $1 trilion companies.
The news comes a few weeks after Google CEO Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Alphabet, after Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who co-founded the company 21 years ago, relinquished control of Alphabet. All of them are said to share one common vision -- developing artificial intelligence to make tasks faster. For the unaware, Pichai was appointed the CEO of Google after the company reorganised into the Alphabet holding company in 2015.
Even though Alphabet has achieved the milestone, it has had its share of controversies and happier times. Google was mired into a controversy where employees complained of sexual misconduct by executives. It also faced allegations of discrimination, and a 20,000-person Google Walkout employee protest. Google was also pulled up, along with Facebook, Twitter and other companies, for handling its users’ data.
Last year, Google celebrated its 20th anniversary and the company announced that it processes over 3.5 billion Search queries each day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. The company also made waves by launching Pixel devices, especially Pixel Series of phones. The devices showed Google’s software prowess and proved to be a hit among those who do a lot of smartphone photography.
Further, the company also made inroads in the AI department where they successfully developed Duplex -- a technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out ‘real world’ tasks over the phone. In India, Google has been making a lot of investments to transform the country's digital economy. Alphabet is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings on February 3.
As mentioned, Apple was the first US company to hit a $1 trillion cap followed by Amazon later that year. Microsoft hit the magic number mark in April 2019. However, it was PetroChina that hit a $1 trillion market cap in 2007. Last year, Saudi Aramco became the first $2 trillion company. If analysts are to be believed, the next company to hit this milestone is Facebook Inc.
