GOOG - Alphabet Inc.
| Previous Close | 1,086.35 |
| Open | 1,086.50 |
| Bid | 1,080.37 x 800 |
| Ask | 1,087.49 x 800 |
| Day's Range | 1,072.24 - 1,092.81 |
| 52 Week Range | 970.11 - 1,289.27 |
| Volume | 1,810,869 |
| Avg. Volume | 1,503,845 |
| Market Cap | 749.824B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.14 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 27.09 |
| EPS (TTM) | 39.86 |
| Earnings Date | N/A |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | N/A |
| 1y Target Est | 1,275.00 |
- Yahoo Finance Video•14 hours ago
Trump: Big Tech is trying to 'rig the election'
The calls are growing louder for Washington to do more to rein in big tech. This as President Trump continues to escalate attacks on Google, Facebook and Twitter. Yahoo Finance's Tech Editor Dan Howley joined 'The Final Round' to discuss.
- Yahoo Finance•16 hours ago
Aggrieved businesses are lining up against Google
Businesses are starting to be more vocal about having beef with how Google puts information above the search results — and keeps traffic on Google.
- Engadget•18 hours ago
Google now lets you auto-delete your location history
Google is following through on its promise to let you auto-delete your activity and location data. It's now rolling out location history deletion tools to Android and iOS, giving you a relatively simple way to limit the scope of Google's location tracking. You can only choose between deleting data after three or 18 months, but it beats leaving an extensive trail of info that you might not want Google or others to see.
- Engadget•22 hours ago
Facebook, Google and others come together to set benchmarks for AI
A consortium of 40 tech companies, including the likes of Facebook and Google, have come together to release a set of evaluation benchmarks for AI . By measuring AI products against these benchmarks, companies in the field will be able to identify optimal product solutions and, according to the consortium, MLPerf, "take confidence" that they're deploying the right solutions.
- American City Business Journals•14 hours ago
Googlers lobby SF Pride to exclude their employer over its handling of YouTube controversy
Disappointed with their company’s handling of gay harassment on YouTube, a group of 100 Google employees today lobbied the organizers of San Francisco Pride to kick their employer out of the parade.
- MarketWatch•15 hours ago
U.S. companies fear falling profit margins as trade tensions, deflationary forces persist
A growing number of large U.S. companies are expressing concerns over falling profit margins and that could spell trouble for stock-market valuations.
- Bloomberg•16 hours ago
Trump Says U.S. Should Sue Facebook, Google in Latest Complaint
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump complained again about supposed bias against conservatives at social media companies and said the U.S. government should sue Google and Facebook Inc. for unspecified wrongdoing.Trump complained in an interview with Fox Business Network on Wednesday that social media companies are run by Democrats and that Twitter has somehow made it difficult for people to follow his @realDonaldTrump account, from which he tweets prolifically.“What they did to me on Twitter is incredible,” Trump said in the interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo. “You know I have millions and millions of followers but I will tell you they make it very hard for people to join me at Twitter and then make it very much harder for me to get out the message.”Twitter said that followers of high-profile accounts may have been deleted as part of an effort to remove fake, abusive and malicious accounts.For More: Trump Accuses Twitter of Political Bias in Culling His FollowersThe White House said Wednesday it’s planning a Social Media Summit July 11 to “bring together digital leaders for a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.”Trump also complained about the European Union targeting U.S. technology companies in the interview. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has fined Google billions of dollars for antitrust violations and has opened an early-stage probe into Amazon.com Inc.‘s potential use of data on smaller rivals’ sales.“I won’t mention her name but she’s actually considered to take Jean Claude’s place because Jean Claude at some point is retiring,” said Trump, referring to the possibility that Vestager could succeed European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker. “She hates the United States, perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met. What she -- what she does to our country -- she’s suing all our companies.”For More: Faltering German Hands Vestager Chance to Claim Europe’s Top Job“You know, look, we should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, which perhaps we will, okay,” Trump said, without saying what he thinks the U.S. should sue the companies for. “They’re suing everybody, they make it very -- almost impossible to do two-way business.”Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, Facebook and Twitter Inc. shares dipped on the news before recovering. Google was down 1.2%, Facebook fell less than 1% while Twitter gained 1.4% to Wednesday afternoon in New York.Representatives for Google and Facebook didn’t comment.Social media companies have sought to more aggressively police their sites for what they consider hate speech and fraudulent accounts, but say they have no policies targeting conservatives.Trump’s threat comes after Project Veritas, a conservative organization known for deceptively edited hidden-camera videos, released footage this week allegedly depicting a Google employee saying the company wants to prevent Trump’s re-election.In a blog post, the woman from the video said the notion Google is trying to sway the election “is absolute, unadulterated nonsense.”She said she was explaining that her former team at the company “is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016.”House HearingAll three companies were scheduled to testify before a House committee Wednesday on efforts to combat terrorist content and misinformation.Representative Mike Rogers, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee holding the hearing said he had “serious questions” about Google’s ability to be fair given the Project Veritas video.“This report, and others like it, are a stark reminder of why the founders created the First Amendment,” Rogers said in his opening statement. “We are in trouble” if the views in the video represented Google company policy.Google’s global director of information policy testified Wednesday that no single employee could skew search results based on her political beliefs.“We are in the trust business,” the executive, Derek Slater, told Rogers. “We have a long-term incentive to get that right.”Big technology companies are coming under heightened scrutiny in Washington from the government and Congress. Trump’s Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have taken the first steps toward investigating four big platforms for antitrust violations by splitting jurisdiction over them. The Justice Department has taken responsibility for Google and Apple Inc., while the FTC will oversee Facebook and Amazon.The House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, led by Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline, has launched a broad investigation into the nation’s biggest technology companies starting with a focus on how companies like Google and Facebook have impacted the news industry.For more: House Panel Kicks Off Antitrust Probe With Focus on News MediaSeparately, state attorneys general, including Nebraska’s Doug Peterson and Louisiana’s Jeff Landry -- both Republicans -- are advancing a broad inquiry into whether the biggest U.S. technology platforms are violating antitrust and consumer protection statutes.(Updates with additional Trump quotes in seventh paragraph)\--With assistance from David McLaughlin.To contact the reporters on this story: Alyza Sebenius in Washington at asebenius@bloomberg.net;Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at btenerellabr@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, ;Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters•16 hours ago
Canada teams up with tech giants to counter extremist content online
Canada announced funding and other initiatives on Wednesday to counter violent extremist content online by teaming with major technology companies Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet's Google. Public Safety Canada said in a statement the government will commit up to C$1 million ($762,428) to the Tech Against Terrorism program to create a digital database that will notify smaller companies when terrorist content is detected and help eliminate it. The initiatives follow the Christchurch Call to Action, a non-binding agreement formed after the Christchurch shooting in March to "eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online." Canada joined the Christchurch Call to Action in May.
- Market Realist•17 hours ago
US-China Trade War: Does Trump Have a ‘Feel for the Market’?
Last year, when the Federal Reserve was raising rates even as financial markets signaled that rate cuts would jeopardize economic activity, President Donald Trump tweeted in December that the Fed didn't “have a feel for the Market.”
- MarketWatch•17 hours ago
Crypto investors favor this stock over any other, and it’s not even close
Tesla certainly has its share of haters, with short-sellers continuing to pile into the stock, but when it comes to the crypto community, Elon Musk’s still the man, according to a recent report from Abra.
- Benzinga•17 hours ago
Trump: Social Media Companies 'Trying To Rig The Election'
Conservative activist James O'Keefe released a video Monday that purports to show an Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) executive openly stating the company has plans to prevent a "Trump situation" in 2020.
- Bloomberg•17 hours ago
YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism
(Bloomberg) -- YouTube said it will let users override automated recommendations after criticism over how the online video service suggests and filters toxic clips."Although we try our best to suggest videos you’ll enjoy, we don’t always get it right, so we are giving you more controls for when we don’t," Essam El-Dardiry, a product manager at YouTube, wrote in a blog on Wednesday.Users will now be able to tell YouTube to stop suggesting videos from a particular channel by tapping the three-dot menu next to a video on the homepage or Up Next, then choosing “Don’t recommend channel.” After that, viewers should no longer see videos from that channel, El-Dardiry said.The move comes after Susan Wojcicki and other YouTube executives were criticized for being either unable or unwilling to act on internal warnings about extreme and misleading videos because they were too focused on increasing viewing time and other measures of engagement.While YouTube is introducing the feature now, this kind of tool is pretty common place on other digital services. Spotify Technology SA has a version for artists people don’t want to hear from.YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, will also try to explain how videos are recommended."Sometimes, we recommend videos from channels you haven’t seen before based on what other viewers with similar interests have liked and watched in the past. When we’re suggesting videos based on this, you’ll now see more information underneath the video in a small box," El-Dardiry wrote. "Our goal is to explain why these videos surface on your homepage in order to help you find videos from new channels you might like."To contact the reporters on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.net;Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Molly SchuetzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg•17 hours ago
Google Staff Petition SF Pride to Exclude Company From Event
(Bloomberg) -- About 100 Google employees urged the organizer of this weekend’s San Francisco Pride parade to kick the company out of the celebration, escalating pressure on the internet giant to overhaul its handling of hate speech online.“Whenever we press for change, we are told only that the company will ‘take a hard look at these policies,’” the employees wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to the board of directors of San Francisco Pride. “But we are never given a commitment to improve, and when we ask when these improvements will be made, we are always told to be patient. We are told to wait. For a large company, perhaps waiting is prudent, but for those whose very right to exist is threatened, we say there is no time to waste, and we have waited too long, already.”The petition, which was also posted online, asks that Google be dropped as a sponsor of the parade as well as excluded from having a presence at the event.A Google spokeswoman said the company participates in Pride to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, and that employees in Google’s "Gaygler" community are divided on the controversy, with some circulating a counter-petition in support of Google being represented at the event. Participating in Pride is meaningful to many employees, she said.In a statement Wednesday, the San Francisco Pride Celebration Committee said Google will still participate in the parade. The non-profit said that the company "has historically been a strong ally to LGBTQ+ communities."Google has been under fire over how it responded to homophobic and racist jokes made on its YouTube video service by conservative comedian and commentator Steven Crowder. YouTube said earlier this month that Crowder’s clips did not violate its policies. After criticism from some Google workers and others online, the company suspended his channel’s ability to make money from advertising, but did not remove the videos.Google and YouTube "can and must do more to elevate and protect the voices of LGBTQ+ creators on their platforms," the San Francisco Pride Celebration Committee said. Still, the company has "acknowledged they have much work to do to promote respectful discussion and exchange of ideas," the group added.Listen to Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast: Google Workers Rise Up: Inside the ProtestsYouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki said she knew the company’s actions had been “very hurtful to the LGBTQ community,” but that banning Crowder would have put it in a bind, with millions of people asking “what about this one?” for other provocative clips.That hasn’t swayed some Google employees. As long as Google’s video service “allows abuse and hate and discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons, then Pride must not provide the company a platform that paints it in a rainbow veneer of support for those very persons,” the employees wrote in the letter.Some co-workers were concerned that kicking Google out of Pride could deny them the ability to march in the parade. So the employees floated a compromise: visibly protesting against YouTube while marching in Google’s parade contingent. But Google management told staff that this would violate the company’s code of conduct, according to the letter.“They claim the contingent is their official representation, and we may not use their platform to express an opinion that is not their opinion. In short, they rejected any compromise," the employees wrote.The Google spokeswoman said Wednesday that employees are welcome to protest at Pride parades, but only in a personal capacity, not while marching with Google’s contingent.Signature-gathering for the petition began late Monday, according to a person involved, after one of Google’s LGBTQ+ community inclusion leads informed an activist employee that staff would not be allowed to protest while participating in Google’s Pride contingent.That prohibition may violate federal law protecting workplace activism and California law protecting employees’ political activity, according to legal experts. That’s especially true if the employees “feel like tolerating hate speech on the platform makes them feel vulnerable or disrespected at work,” said University of California, Berkeley, law professor Catherine Fisk.Almost all of the employees’ full names were published with their letter. “We have considered the possibility that our employer will punish us for signing this letter, or that supporters of these very hatemongers will attack us personally, online or otherwise, simply for speaking out against them,” they wrote. “Despite these risks we are compelled to speak.”The petition continues a wave of activism by some staff at Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. Read about the protests here, here and here.For more on employee activism at Google, check out the Decrypted podcast:(Updates with SF Pride response in fifth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Josh Eidelson in Washington at jeidelson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Benzinga•21 hours ago
Trade Winds, Fed Still In Focus, But Strong Micron Results Might Help Semiconductors
With President Trump and President Xi meeting in just a few days, Mnuchin’s words sparked some optimism in a market that’s lacked it the last few days. The positive thing is that Mnuchin talked about the two countries being 90% there. Yesterday’s slide came as hopes for a dramatic 50 basis-point rate cut next month got talked down by Fed officials (see more below).
- Reuters•21 hours ago
UPDATE 3-Trump suggests EU out of line in suing U.S. tech firms
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested the European Union was out of line in suing U.S. technology companies like Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google, saying legal action against those firms should be the purview of the United States. "She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I've ever met," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network in an apparent reference to EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
- Market Realist•22 hours ago
Is Not Buying Slack among Microsoft’s Big Regrets?
Back in early 2016, there were talks of Microsoft buying Slack (WORK) out for $8 billion. However, the deal was shelved in favor of building Skype for business. Fast forward three years and Slack was valued $22 billion on its public debut.
- Bloomberg•22 hours ago
The Next Silicon Valley Is … Los Angeles?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- I was in San Francisco last week, and most of my conversations eventually turned to the same topic: Could some other region supplant the Bay Area as America’s tech hub? San Francisco, after all, has sky-high rents and taxes — not to mention dirty streets, unpleasant strip clubs and numerous homeless. The towns of Silicon Valley are more livable than San Francisco (though rents are still high), but they are dull and not ideal for attracting highly educated young singles.I have a nomination for a potential rival for America’s main tech hub: Los Angeles. Increasingly, I am beginning to wonder whether the Bay Area’s position is truly secure.First, consider the virtues of the Los Angeles area. It has splendid weather — warmer and sunnier than San Francisco — and a deep pool of talent. It is America’s second-largest city, with many nice neighborhoods to choose from (some of them, to the east, even affordable). It even has a subway, albeit an underdeveloped one. I would argue it has much better food, and of course a much larger and more diverse entertainment scene. You might reasonably conclude that top talent might prefer to live in or near Los Angeles rather than the Bay Area.Southern California already has produced some important startups, including Snap, SpaceX and Tinder. No, they haven’t come close to the impact of Google or Facebook, but they show that a tech scene can develop. Caltech, USC and UCLA are not the equal of Stanford, but still they provide a powerful talent base, and Stanford remains not so far away.How could L.A.’s tech scene develop even further? Imagine that virtual reality is the “next big thing” and the gamification of just about everything, including education, proceeds apace. For the next generation of startups, that might throw the balance of power in the direction of expertise in entertainment and design — a sense of the theatrical, in other words, intermediated through tech. That could favor the culture of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Southern California also has a strong background in aerospace and military contracting, two areas that could produce a spillover effect for the next tech booms, especially if they involve transportation. The region also remains the leading U.S. manufacturing center, and that too could be a source of future synergies.Of course, it is unlikely that Google, Facebook or Apple would leave the Bay Area. But over some time horizon they will take on less relative importance. They may become legacy companies that cease to innovate, or they may face legal and regulatory pressures and penalties. That would open up room for Southern California to be the leader for the next generation of tech companies.One huge advantage for Southern California, compared to say New York City or Austin, Texas, is simply that it is so close to Northern California. If you want to set up meetings with Silicon Valley titans, or lure talent to move, the Los Angeles area is a pretty good base of operations in terms of proximity and ease of access.Northern California had an original advantage over Southern California as a center of free thinking and thus as a tech hub. Think back to Haight-Ashbury, the 1960s, Beatniks, LSD and the Whole Earth Catalog, the psychedelic movement, the bohemian and gay cultures of San Francisco. All of that bred an atmosphere of rebellion, and it helped birth the personal computer and a large movement of non-conformist hippie programmers, often working out of their proverbial garages.But those cultural roots have largely faded, and if anything today San Francisco and the Bay Area are better known for political correctness and a conformist culture of scolding and groupthink. That can’t be good for the region’s long-term creativity.Traffic is a big problem for Los Angeles, but the same goes for San Francisco, where it seems to get worse each year. And an underrated benefit of Southern California is that travel is usually more predictable (if slower) on the surface roads than on the freeway. At any rate, some of L.A.’s tech companies are already clustering between LAX and Santa Monica, for (relatively) easy access to each other. You can imagine other companies moving further south or further east to enjoy different intellectual micro-climates, and perhaps for more space and cheaper rents.Oh, and did I mention that Peter Thiel moved his operations to the Los Angeles area last year? Thiel, the venture capitalist who was one of the founders of Paypal, helped to discover and mobilize Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hofmann and Elon Musk. He was also one of the first major business leaders to recognize the importance of Donald Trump.I’m not yet sold on the idea of Los Angeles displacing the Bay Area. But I’m seeing more signs pointing in that direction.To contact the author of this story: Tyler Cowen at tcowen2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance Video•21 hours ago
Tech giants find loopholes in Trump administration's Huawei ban
Some of the country's biggest tech names are finding ways to still do business with Chinese tech giant Huawei, even as the White House calls the company a security risk. Yahoo Finance's tech editor Dan Howley joins The First Trade to break down how Micron, Qualcomm, Intel, and other companies are getting around the ban.
