Josh Brown reveals largest stock position personally, expects benefit from autonomous boom
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The Verge
24 minutes ago
- The Verge
Jammin' out in a Waymo.
Posted Aug 13, 2025 at 10:13 PM UTC A new Spotify integration will let you connect your account to Waymo, allowing you to play your favorite tunes while the robotaxi takes you to your destination. Waymo also offers the ability to cast music, as well as listen to a selection of curated radio stations. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Emma Roth Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Emma Roth Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Autonomous Cars Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Spotify Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Transportation Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Waymo
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Google faces loss of Chrome as Perplexity bid adds drama to looming breakup decision
Perplexity AI's bid on Tuesday to buy Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion represents a dramatic moment for the internet search giant, a week before it celebrates the 20th anniversary of its IPO. Even if analysts aren't taking the offer very seriously, Perplexity's move marks a turning point. It's the first time an outside party has made such a public and specific effort to strip out a key piece of Google, which is currently awaiting a judge's decision on whether it must take significant divestiture steps following a ruling last year that the company has held a monopoly in its core search market. The ruling was widely viewed as the most important antitrust decision in the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than two decades ago. The U.S. Department of Justice, which filed the landmark case against Google in 2020, indicated after its victory in court that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy. Soon after that, the DOJ explicitly called for Google to divest Chrome to create a more equal playing field for search competitors. As is, Google bundles search and other services into Chrome and preinstalls the browser on Chromebooks. Google Legal Chief Kent Walker said in response to the DOJ that its "approach would result in unprecedented government overreach" and would harm the country's effort to maintain economic and tech leadership. With the remedies decision expected this month, investors have a lot to consider regarding the future value of Google and parent Alphabet. The company is shelling out tens of billions of dollars a year on artificial intelligence infrastructure and AI services while facing the risk that consumers will be spending a lot less time on traditional search as ChatGPT and other AI-powered alternatives provide new ways to access information. But while Alphabet still counts on search-related ads for the majority of its revenue, the company has been diversifying over the past decade. October will mark 10 years since the creation of Alphabet as a holding company, with Google as its prime subsidiary. "This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google," co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post at the time. Page moved from CEO of Google to become chief executive of Alphabet, promoting Sundar Pichai, who had been a senior vice president in charge of internet businesses, to run Google. Four years later, Pichai replaced page as Alphabet CEO. On Pichai's watch, Alphabet's market cap has jumped more than 150% to $2.5 trillion. With an increasingly dominant position on the internet, Pichai and team have had to continue looking for growth areas, particularly in AI, while simultaneously fending off an aggressive set of regulators in the U.S. and Europe. Analysts have taken the opportunity to place estimated values on Alphabet's various businesses, partly in the event that the company is ever forced into drastic measures. Some have even suggested it could be a good thing for shareholders. "We believe the only way forward for Alphabet is a complete breakup that would allow investors to own the business they actually want," analysts at D.A. Davidson have written in a series of notes this year. Alphabet didn't respond to a request for comment. Here's a breakdown of how some analysts value Alphabet's top non-search assets: The browser is key to Alphabet's ad business, which uses data from Chrome to help with targeted advertisements. Google originally launched Chrome in 2008 as an effort to "add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web." Perplexity's offer doesn't stack up to analyst estimates, but it's still much higher than Perplexity's own valuation, which reached $18 billion in July. Perplexity, which is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to inquiries, said investors are on board to foot the bill. However, the company didn't name the prospective backers. Barclays analysts called the possibility of a Chrome divestiture a "black swan" risk, warning of a potential 15% to 25% drop in Alphabet's stock should it occur. They estimate that Chrome drives around 35% of Google's search revenue. If a deal for Chrome is on the table, analysts at Raymond James value the browser at $50 billion, based on 2.25 billion users and Google's revenue share agreements with phone manufacturers that preinstall Chrome on devices. That's inline with where Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of rival search company DuckDuckGo, values Chrome. Weinberg, who testified in the antitrust trial, said in April that Chrome could be sold for up to $50 billion if a spinout was required. Weinberg said his estimate was based on "back-of-the-envelope" math, looking at Chrome's user base. Bob O'Donnell of market research firm TECHnalysis Research, cautioned that Chrome is "not directly monetizable," because it serves as a gateway and that it's "not clear how you measure that from a pure revenue-generating perspective." Google's cloud unit, which is third in the cloud infrastructure market behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, is one of Alphabet's key growth engines and its biggest business outside of digital advertising. Google began its big push into the market about a decade ago, even though it officially launched what was called the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in 2011. The unit was rebranded as just Google Cloud in 2016. Like AWS and Azure, Google Cloud generates revenue from businesses ranging from startups to large enterprises that run workloads on the company's servers. Additionally, customers pay for products like Google Workspace, the company's suite of productivity apps and collaboration tools. In 2020, Google began breaking out its cloud business in financial statements, starting with revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the first time Google included profit metrics for the unit, it recorded an operating loss of $1.24 billion. The business turned profitable in 2023, and is now generating healthy margins. In the second quarter of 2025, Google reported an operating profit for the cloud business of $2.8 billion on revenue of $13.6 billion. Demand is so high that the company's cloud services now have a backlog, a measure of future committed revenue, of $106 billion, CFO Anat Ashkenazi said on the earnings call. In March, Google agreed to acquire cloud security vendor Wiz for $32 billion, the company's largest deal ever. Analysts at Wedbush Securities value Google's cloud at $602 billion, while TD Cowen in May put the number at about $549 billion. For Raymond James, the valuation is $579 billion. D.A. Davidson analysts, who have the highest ascribed valuation at $682 billion, and TD Cowen analysts note that while Google still trails AWS and Azure, it's growing faster than Amazon's cloud business and has the potential for a premium valuation. That's based on its AI infrastructure, strong data analytics stack, and ability to capture more enterprise business. It would be "one of the best standalone software stocks," D.A. Davidson analysts wrote in July. Google's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006 is generally viewed as one of the best acquisitions ever by an internet company, alongside Facebook's $1 billion deal for Instagram in 2012. YouTube is the largest video site on the web and a big part of Google's ad business. In the second quarter, YouTube ad revenue increased 13% to $9.8 billion, accounting for 14% of Google's total ad sales. Valuation estimates vary tremendously. Dubbing it the "new king of all media," MoffettNathanson values YouTube at between $475 billion and $550 billion, arguing that it's larger and more powerful than any other player in Hollywood. At the top end of that range, YouTube would be worth about 22% of all of Alphabet. YouTube recently overtook Netflix, which has a market cap of $515 billion, as the top streaming platform in terms of audience engagement. TD Cowen analysts ascribe a much lower valuation at $271 billion. The firm notes that it's one of six Google products with more than 2 billion monthly users, along with search, Google Maps, Gmail, Android and Chrome. Raymond James says YouTube is worth $306 billion. For 2024, YouTube was the second-largest media company by revenue at $54.2 billion, trailing only Disney. The platform earns revenue from advertising and subscriptions. The TD Cowen analysts said in May that they expect ad revenue to climb about 14% this year, and they expect the unit to maintain a double-digit growth rate. There's also a fast-growing subscription side that includes YouTube TV, music and NFL Sunday ticket. Alphabet's self-driving car company, Waymo, is by far its most high-profile success so far outside of Google. Waymo currently operates the largest commercial autonomous ride-hailing fleet in the U.S., with more than 1,500 cars and over 100 million fully driverless miles logged. Rivals like Tesla and Amazon's Zoox are still mostly at the testing phase in limited markets. When Alphabet was formed as Google's parent company, it created an "Other Bets" category to include businesses that it liked to call "moonshots," a term that had already made its way into Google lexicon. "We won't become complacent, relying solely on small tweaks as the years wear on," the company wrote in its 2014 annual report, describing its moonshot projects. Waymo was spun out of Google in 2016 to join Other Bets, which on the whole is still losing billions of dollars a year. In the second quarter, Alphabet recorded a loss for the category of $1.2 billion on $373 million in revenue. In its most recent funding round in November, Waymo was valued at $45 billion. The transaction included outside investors Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Silver Lake, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price. Some analysts see the unit worth many multiples of that now. D.A. Davidson analysts estimated the valuation at $200 billion or more earlier this month. Oppenheimer assigned a base case valuation of $300 billion, on the assumption that it generates $102 billion in adjusted earnings by 2040. Raymond James values Waymo at $150 billion, with a prediction that rides per week will reach 1.4 million in 2027 and climb to 5.8 million by 2030. TD Cowen estimated Waymo's enterprise mid-point value at $60 billion. Waymo says it now conducts more than 250,000 paid weekly trips in the markets where it operates commercially, including Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. The company said it would be expanding to Philadelphia, Dallas and elsewhere.
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
Tesla Eyes New York City for Robotaxis With Test-Driver Job Posting
Tesla TSLA -0.43%decrease; red down pointing triangle is taking early steps to bring its robotaxis to New York City just weeks after competitor Waymo announced its own plans to test autonomous vehicles in the Big Apple. In a job posting this week, Tesla said it is hiring data collectors to drive vehicles around the country's most populous city. The job location is listed as Flushing in the borough of Queens. The company said it is looking for 'a highly motivated self-starter' who will work as a 'prototype vehicle operator.'
