GOOG - Alphabet Inc.
1,150.01 -1.28 (-0.11%)
After hours: 7:54PM EDT
| Previous Close | 1,189.53 |
| Open | 1,181.99 |
| Bid | 1,148.25 x 900 |
| Ask | 1,151.60 x 800 |
| Day's Range | 1,147.75 - 1,193.84 |
| 52 Week Range | 970.11 - 1,289.27 |
| Volume | 1,688,271 |
| Avg. Volume | 1,509,245 |
| Market Cap | 798.413B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 0.96 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 23.24 |
| EPS (TTM) | 49.53 |
| Earnings Date | N/A |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | N/A |
| 1y Target Est | 1,389.00 |
- CNET
Google ditches Android dessert code names, iPhone may go Pro
In today's top stories, the mystery is over: Android Q has an official name, but it's not a sweet treat. Meanwhile, a report says we may see Pro models of the iPhone in September.
- TechCrunch
Watch a Waymo self-driving car test its sensors in a haboob
Waymo, the self-driving car company under Alphabet, has been testing in thesuburbs of Phoenix for several years now
- GuruFocus.com
Michael Burry Buys 4 Stocks in Addition to GameStop
Big Short investor also shutters former largest holding JD.com Continue reading...
- MarketWatch
Google tells workers to cool it on politics at work
Alphabet Inc.'s Google has issued "community guidelines" that discourage employees from debating politics in the workplace, an about-face from its previously open policy. The new rule is an effort to tone done "disruptive" conversations, and hold employees responsible for what they say, the company said. Google is also designing a tool that lets workers flag objectionable internal posts, it said. The move comes after more than a year of protests from conservative politicians and commentators who claim Google has shown liberal bias in digital searches and in its corporate culture, culminating in a Congressional hearing on the topic last month.
- American City Business Journals
Apple, Silicon Valley chip stocks hammered after Trump's 'shot across the bow'
Shares of Apple and Silicon Valley's semiconductor companies were pummeled on Friday as President Trump responded to new tariffs from China with a tweet saying he's demanding that American companies "immediately start looking for an alternative to China."
- Market Realist
Can Knewz by News Corp Challenge Google’s Ad Business?
News Corp (NWSA), a longtime Google (GOOGL) critic, wants to take Google on in the online news distribution space. Here's how.
- Bloomberg
Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore
(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc.’s Google posted internal rules that discourage employees from debating politics, a shift away from the internet giant’s famously open culture.The “community guidelines” tell employees not to have “disruptive” conversations and warn workers that they’ll be held responsible for what they say at the office. Google is also building a tool to let employees flag problematic internal posts and creating a team of moderators to monitor conversations on company chat boards, a spokeswoman said.“While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not,” the policy states. “Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do.”Google has long encouraged employees to question each other and push back against managers when they think they’re making the wrong decision. Google’s founders point to the open culture as instrumental to the success they’ve had revolutionizing the tech landscape over the last two decades.But the free-wheeling culture has led to a rash of problems for Google management in recent years. Some employees have used internal chat boards to rally other workers against some Google projects, helping push the company to end work on a censored search engine for the Chinese market and an artificial intelligence contract for the U.S. military.“I think it’s specifically intended to silence dissent,” Irene Knapp, an engineer at Google, said. “This is the end of the important parts of Google’s open culture.”Listen to the Bloomberg Decrypted podcast "Google Workers Rise Up: Inside the Protests"“Ultimately, business interests will always win out over ethics in terms of what we’re allowed to say,” Knapp said.(Updates with comment from employee in sixth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Robin Ajello, Giles TurnerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Market Realist
Google Doesn’t Want Hong Kong Protests to Trigger YouTube Boycott
Google said yesterday that it would be shutting down 210 YouTube channels pumping out misinformation about the Hong Kong protests.
- Motley Fool
3 Top Artificial Intelligence Stocks to Watch in August
AI will be huge, and these companies are getting in on the ground floor.
- IPO-Edge.com
P&G Veteran’s SPAC to Merge with Digital Marketing Agency, Renamed Blue Impact
Blank-check company Legacy Acquisition Corp. has agreed to purchase a global digital marketing company to be renamed Blue Impact Inc., clearing the way to grow organically and through M&A. Legacy, which raised $300 million almost two years ago, is led by former Procter & Gamble executive Edwin Rigaud but the new company will be […]
- American City Business Journals
Google releases new internal guidelines to curb workers' political speech
A copy of the guidelines obtained by Recode discourages Googlers from “disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story.”
- Zacks
DICK'S Sporting (DKS) Beats on Q2 Earnings, Raises View
DICK'S Sporting (DKS) posts better-than-expected second-quarter fiscal 2019 results driven by solid same-store sales performance. Also, it raises its bottom-line view for fiscal 2019.
- Investing.com
Alphabet A Falls 3%
Investing.com - Alphabet A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) fell by 3.05% to trade at $1,155.22 by 14:03 (18:03 GMT) on Friday on the NASDAQ exchange.
- American City Business Journals
Survey: More than 80 percent of employees at Adobe, Intel, Cisco see cost-cutting at work
A vast majority of employees queried at Cisco Systems and several other big Silicon Valley tech employers say they've noticed cost-cutting at work.
- Motley Fool
Is Microsoft the New Safe Haven Stock?
"Tech" and "blue chip" aren't mutually exclusive...
- Market Realist
Venezuela Talks Could Impact Google and Facebook
This week, we learned about ongoing efforts to end the political crisis in Venezuela. We think that tech companies could benefit if the talks are successful.
- TheStreet.com
Augmented Reality, Via Google and Apple, Will Be the Biggest Star of 5G
Telecom carriers need a win. The smartphone business is stagnant. Consumers have become complacent with good enough devices. But 5G, coupled with amazing new AR experiences, changes everything.
- Bloomberg
The EU’s Next Bad Idea? A So-Called Sovereign Wealth Fund
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- If you are searching for the EU’s next bad idea, look no further than the “European Future Fund.” The 100 billion euro ($110 billion) pot, first reported in Politico, would be a way to boost strategic sectors which are seen as lagging behind China and the U.S.It’s not a formal policy plan, and the details are still scanty. But Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European Commission, would be wise to ignore the proposal. Europe needs to pool resources in other areas, starting, for example, with a fund to help euro-zone member states stabilize their economies when they face shocks. It’s best to leave most of industrial policy to national governments, making sure they do so fairly.The “European Future Fund” has been dubbed a sovereign wealth fund – except that it isn’t. The EU is not a sovereign state and will not become one for the foreseeable future. The EU would not be tapping any existing “wealth” or natural resources. A sovereign wealth fund like Norway’s – which uses income generated by its oil and gas reserves – is a way to ensure that such riches are not wasted on current spending, but invested to guarantee future prosperity. The EU would simply be using existing budget resources to create such a fund in the hope of attracting money from the private sector.Any help for Europe’s so-called strategic sectors should be handled with care. There is merit in launching joint R&D initiatives, such as the partnership France and Germany have set up to develop electric car batteries. But it is less clear why the EU should intervene to stop takeovers of individual firms by foreign companies, which seems to be at least one of the reasons to set up this fund. Does the Commission have the ability to manage a stake in a fast-growing tech firm? With what objectives? At what price will the acquisition take place? The risk is that fewer European start-ups will grow if they fear they can’t be sold to a deep-pocketed foreign rival. Take no offense, but Google can be a much more attractive buyer than any “European Future Fund.”The Commission is going at the problem the wrong way. Several member states – France and Germany in particular – have decided that the reason why Europe is not fertile ground for innovation is that companies are not allowed to develop to an adequate size to compete with rivals from China and Silicon Valley. They argue that competition policy needs updating, which is really a polite way to say it needs to be watered down. This argument is misplaced in several ways. Economic studies have found no direct relationship between how large and how innovative a business is. Moreover, the Commission rarely blocks mergers between companies that operate in similar industries. If a state wants to step in and buy a company at its market price and manage it in a competitive manner, there is no reason why it can’t.Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s departing competition commissioner, has offered some meaningful resistance to this Franco-German push, for example blocking the rail merger between Alstom SA and Siemens AG. But it’s unclear that any new commissioner, assuming she moves on to another role, will be as combative. The EU needs a strong enforcer of competition more than any lofty new fund.To contact the author of this story: Ferdinando Giugliano at fgiugliano@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Baker at stebaker@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Ferdinando Giugliano writes columns on European economics for Bloomberg Opinion. He is also an economics columnist for La Repubblica and was a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
Google warns workers to tone down political rhetoric
Google has warned its workers to tone down the divisive political debate and ideological feuding that have caused severe ructions at the technology company — or risk seeing tighter controls imposed on internal discussion. The call for employees to be more circumspect in their internal communications marks a belated attempt by management to regain control after a series of explosive internal feuds. struck by Google’s workers prove that it has an inbuilt anticonservative bias.
- Bloomberg
Huawei Puts a Price on Trump’s Aggression
(Bloomberg) -- Huawei Technologies Co. expects U.S. export restrictions to reduce annual revenue at its consumer devices business by about $10 billion, as the company is banned from buying American components like semiconductors and software.China’s largest technology company is seeking ways to replace key U.S. suppliers such as Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Synopsys Inc., Deputy Chairman Eric Xu said Friday. The overall damage to the company will be a “little less” than billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei’s initial estimate, Xu added.Huawei is seeking to develop alternatives after coming under intense pressure from the Trump Administration, which has argued its technology represents a security threat. On Friday, it introduced its most powerful artificial intelligence chipset, the Ascend 910, which is poised to rival some of the best offerings from Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp. Earlier this month, it offered the first glimpse of an in-house software -- HarmonyOS -- that may someday replace Google’s Android.The company is also researching ways to replace chip-design software tools offered by Cadence and Synopsys, Xu told a news briefing in Shenzhen without elaborating. “There were no chip design tools 10 years ago, but the industry still developed chips,” said Xu, who argued that Cadence and Synopsys were not must-haves for design. “Intel started to develop chips in the 1970s, when those companies didn’t exist.”Since May, Huawei has occupied the uncomfortable position of being both an established global brand and a member of the U.S. Entity List, which bars it from trading freely with American suppliers. Despite a series of 90-day reprieves, the latest of which came this week, the uncertainty caused by American sanctions has already cost the company a great deal.Even if Huawei is eventually brought in from the cold, the impact of this summer’s upheaval will be widespread and painful. Already, it reported slower sales growth in the second quarter compared to the first as the ban started to bite, especially into a consumer business encompassing smartphones and laptops. That in turn is accelerating Huawei’s effort to become self-reliant.One area in which the Chinese company is rapidly developing in-house expertise is semiconductors, propelling Beijing’s ambitions of weaning itself off foreign chips. HiSilicon -- Huawei’s chip design subsidiary -- has been developing its capabilities for a long time, and it’s recently grown into the second largest customer (after Apple Inc.) for the world’s biggest chip manufacturing contractor Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Huawei has also elevated the presence of home-grown technologies throughout its product line -- from base stations to smartphones and servers -- as a key step to limiting the damage of the U.S. ban.The Ascend 910 processor unveiled Friday is a show of technological prowess. It will be used for AI model training, and Huawei says it outperforms all existing competition. Xu proclaimed that “without a doubt, it has more computing power than any other AI processor in the world.” The company also unveiled MindSpore, an AI computing framework that -- along with the 910 -- is supposedly twice as fast as Google’s TensorFlow.”The May 16 sanctions incident had no impact on the execution of Huawei’s AI strategy nor commercialization of AI products,” said Xu. “Our R&D project related to AI is building up steadily.”(Updates with Ascend’s specs from the third paragraph)To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Gao Yuan in Beijing at ygao199@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Edwin Chan, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
DeepMind co-founder’s leave of absence signals transition
When Mustafa Suleyman co-founded artificial intelligence wunderkind DeepMind in 2010, along with his childhood friend and neuroscientist Demis Hassabis, he was driven by wanting to solve real-world problems. The company, which was acquired by Google in 2014, has always maintained a dual goal: to “solve” or replicate human-level intelligence in machines and use it to fix huge social challenges. “Our toughest social problems are solved by groups of motivated people thinking in novel ways about organising impact at scale by being pragmatic and non-dogmatic,” Mr Suleyman told the Financial Times in a previous interview.
- Bloomberg
Prince Harry’s Shaming Is Bad News for Private Jets
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Given the swelling ranks of the world’s billionaires, you’d have thought the past 10 years would have been fabulous for private jet suppliers.In reality, the period since the great recession has been a “lost decade” for the industry’s manufacturers, analysts say. A glut of second-hand aircraft sapped demand for new models, while shared ownership and renting became popular alternatives to buying a plane outright. Meanwhile, large corporations that once thought nothing of jetting their execs around in comfort started scrutinizing budgets and worrying about conspicuous excess. In 2017 General Electric Co. said it would sell its fleet after unflattering reports about its former boss, Jeff “two planes” Immelt.The industry seemed to have turned a corner recently thanks to the U.S. economic recovery, a fresh lineup of bigger models, plus tax giveaways from President Donald Trump that made it much cheaper to purchase a plane. North America is expected to account for more than half the global market for private jets in the next five years, according to Honeywell International Inc.Yet suppliers face another looming threat: Our rapidly heating planet might make boarding a fuel-guzzling jet seem unconscionable. In Sweden there’s even a word for this new aversion to flying: flygskam or “flight shame.” Are the super-wealthy 1% susceptible too?It’s not just climate campaigners who think the industry has an image problem. Warren East, chief executive of the jet engine-maker Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, said recently that aviation as a whole “is built on setting fire to hydrocarbons” and needs to wean itself off that “quite quickly.” Bombardier Inc., owner of the Learjet brand, warned in its annual report that “the impact to us and our industry from legislation and increased regulation regarding climate change is likely to be adverse and could be significant.”The globe-trotting business elite and A-list celebrities who once made private jets such desirable status symbols certainly aren’t helping the industry’s image problem, with the media increasingly taking issue with those who preach the environmentalist faith while turning up at events in their Gulfstreams.The British royal Prince Harry has been dubbed the “Carbon Footprince” by his country’s press after taking several private flights to the Mediterranean this summer despite his outspokenness on ecological issues. It’s doubly ironic that one of those journeys was to Alphabet Inc.’s four-day climate change summit in Sicily, where an epic queue of private jets rather undermined the well-intended activism.You can see what the critics are getting at from a “do as I say, not what I do” perspective. Travelling by private jet produces several times more carbon dioxide than purchasing an economy seat on a commercial flight (precisely how much depends on how many people are on board and whether the jet flies home empty). The average American is responsible for about 16 tons of CO2 emissions per year. That’s already three times the global average, but it’s only a fraction of what private jets produce in a typical year.As such, the tax advantages for private jets are very hard to justify. Nor is it helpful that many operators will be exempt from the aviation industry’s commitment – known as Corsia – to cap net emissions at 2020 levels and to halve these by 2050.(1)Banning private jets, as some have suggested, wouldn’t do much to curb climate change as there are only about 20,000 of them operating today. The aviation industry accounts for about 2%-3% of global emissions and private jets perhaps pump out as little as 0.04% of the total, according to industry groups.But symbolism matters in the climate debate. If private jet users aren’t seen to be doing their bit, they can’t reasonably expect poorer folk to make sacrifices either. While the purchase of carbon offsets to make up for the impact is worthy and rational, intellectual justifications are a hard sell on this topic.Of course, private jets aren’t just frivolous toys, they have their uses too as a time-saving device for executives. As such, their users and makers will be eager to combat any burgeoning environmental backlash through the development of cleaner technologies. Carbon efficiency no doubt will become as important as time efficiency in selling planes.Startups such as Eviation, as well as incumbent manufacturers and suppliers, are already plowing money into hybrid and electric aircraft. The industry is also trying to encourage operators to use non-petroleum fuels, although they’re expensive and hard to get hold of. Because of the limited energy density of batteries, it’s probable that smaller aircraft will be the first to go electric. In the meantime, my guess is that rich folk will think twice before posting a shot of their plush planes on Instagram. The Swedes have a word for that too: smygflyga – “flying in secret.” (1) Planes with a maximum takeoff weight of below 5700kg and operatorswith fewerthan 10,000 tonnes of annual carbon emissions are excluded. The private jet industry says it will pursue voluntarily the same goals anyway.To contact the author of this story: Chris Bryant at cbryant32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies. He previously worked for the Financial Times.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Investopedia
10 Most-Loved Stocks in Hedge Funds: Goldman's VIP List
Goldman Sachs’ “Hedge Fund VIP List”—containing the 50 most popular stocks among hedge fund portfolios—has outperformed the broader market for the past 18 years. The Hedge Fund VIP basket has beaten the market by an average 50 bps in every quarter since 2001. The list is a tool that investors can use to “follow the smart money,” wrote Goldman’s analysts in their most recent Hedge Fund Trend Monitor report, which analyzes a group of 835 distinct hedge funds.
- CBS MoneyWatch
Biden campaign accuses Trump campaign of poaching donors
A Google search for "donate Joe Biden" turns up a Donald Trump campaign contribution link at the top of the page
- Reuters
WRAPUP 8-Hong Kong families form peaceful human chains ahead of airport protest
Thousands of chanting Hong Kong protesters joined hands to form human chains on Friday in a peaceful protest, with almost three months of anti-government demonstrations showing no sign of let-up across the Chinese-ruled territory. Demonstrators, families young and old, some people masked, some using hand wipes to stay clean, linked hands across different districts as others held up banners thanking overseas nations for supporting "freedom and democracy" in Hong Kong.
