Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 4
... for me are both firms in the category "unavoidable", "huge moat", shares I'd love to put full of trust longterm under my matress (under which only Berkshire resides up to now). Price-wise both were absolutely uninteresting for me, but that's changing lately.
What are the thoughts of my fellow posters?
No. of Recommendations: 4
Between the two, I like prospects of Alphabet a lot more.
Plus, it has been trading today at 16 times (admittedly out of date) 2025 earnings estimates, depending on what time you look. Despite the possibility of a slowdown, that seems pretty reasonable for such a nice looking business.
Amazon is a formidable firm, but I the price has always included a fair bit of prepayment for good things that haven't happened yet. If (when) multiples fall to what a normal company would see, then the price could be stagnant for several years even as earnings and cash flow and "Amazon cash flow" grow at the impressive rate that everyone expects.
Jim
No. of Recommendations: 1
the GOOG board is fairly active if you want to join in the coversation.
tecmo
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No. of Recommendations: 0
Thanks for the tip, I will look there and at the Amazon board.
(Though maybe the conversations are biased as naturally only people are on a specific stock board who are in principal positively interested in that stock, e.g. you won't find Berkshire haters on the Berkshire board.)
No. of Recommendations: 0
Between the two, I like prospects of Alphabet a lot more.
Why? (I mean not why compared to Amazon but why you like the prospects at all.)
Xerox was once a common verb. Google is one now. If/when an LLM company starts their own search engine, will "googling" continue to be a thing?
No. of Recommendations: 1
tecmo´s tip is good. Informative discussions regarding this on the Amazon board.
No. of Recommendations: 0
On the Alphabet board of course, sorry.
No. of Recommendations: 5
@knighttof3
If/when an LLM company starts their own search engine, will "googling" continue to be a thing?
I'm not Jim, but fwiw, I doubt the above will be an issue:
Google has been doing deep research in AI for a long time. Hinton, 2024 Nobel prize in Physics, was at Google. Hassabis et al, 2024 Nobel prize in Chemistry is at Google and now working on drug discovery by leveraging his Nobel prize work. Their Deep Mind subsidiary is producing quality AI research. I can't point to anything specific, but it seems unlikely that the idea of AI summarized search escaped them, and they do do a bit of it now. Hopefully they're working on cleaning up the 'hallucination' problem of LLMs and really making them ready for prime time. I bet (meaning that I have bet i.e. put money on the table) that whatever direction AI goes , Alphabet will be at the forefront in research and in commercialization.
No. of Recommendations: 0
It's not that they aren't in the game, it is that they are not dominant like they were with google. Anthropic, openai, and xai are all ahead of them.
No. of Recommendations: 7
It's not that they aren't in the game, it is that they are not dominant like they were with google. Anthropic, openai, and xai are all ahead of them.
If you are basing your investment decision on Google's AI strategy suggest you do a bit more digging. You are right that currently there is no single dominant firm; you are incorrect in that Anthropic, OpenAI and Xai are all ahead. Google just released Gemini 2.5 and its currently ranked as the best model (not surprising since it was the most recently released). They are also doing an excellent job of integrating it with their Google suite; making it more accessible.
Our company just cancelled our OpenAI subscription and are now using Gemini - it works great.
tecmo
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No. of Recommendations: 0
Our company just cancelled our OpenAI subscription and are now using Gemini - it works great.
Curious, how much does your company pay for Gemini?
My biggest concern is they will not be able to replace all of the revenue lost from search.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Curious, how much does your company pay for Gemini?
My biggest concern is they will not be able to replace all of the revenue lost from search.
1. I think we get it included in our Google Workspace subscription
2. Why do you assume its replacing search as use-case? They are different products. I don't use "search" to generate an image for a presentation (as an example).
tecmo
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No. of Recommendations: 0
Why do you assume its replacing search as use-case? They are different products. I don't use "search" to generate an image for a presentation (as an example).
My own behavior and others I have asked all confirm that we are "googling" less and less. We are using AI to get answers to questions we used to google. As AI continues to get better and built into products we use, I suspect this trend will increase.
I do agree that Gemini will be great, but its hard to see how they are as dominate in AI market share as they are in search.
No. of Recommendations: 3
My biggest concern is they will not be able to replace all of the revenue lost from search.
My observation was they were moving away from traditional search already, in the sense that instead of pointing you to a website they often just give the results. For example, this happens when you search for the weather or stock tickers. Google search already has an AI feature that gives you a generated result each time. I believe the key is learning your preferences rather than displaying websites.
No. of Recommendations: 2
My observation was they were moving away from traditional search already, in the sense that instead of pointing you to a website they often just give the results. For example, this happens when you search for the weather or stock tickers. Google search already has an AI feature that gives you a generated result each time. I believe the key is learning your preferences rather than displaying websites.
I have noticed that as well, but two things.
1. For a lot of my searches, I am just using an AI app so I never go to the website. I expect this to increase as AI improves.
2. When you search on the web and get the answer, you aren't clicking on those revenue generating sponsored links.
Don't get me wrong, I want to own GOOG for youtube and other assets, but I fear if they lose a big chunk of that search revenue, the price will be in a downtrend for a while.
No. of Recommendations: 3
For a lot of my searches, I am just using an AI app so I never go to the website
On my Surface Pro I installed WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android) which emulates Android under Windows. Though I set it to run "Continous", after not using an Android app for a while WSA seems to shut down and needs to start again (that takes a long time) when using an Android app again.
Yesterday I googled for an hour to find the cause. No success. It was as if nobody else had that problem. Always only links to why Microsoft shuts down support for WSA, which is completely different.
Then I somehow had the idea to - for the first time - ask "Copilot", Microsoft´s AI. It presented me with 3 possible causes and one of it was it indeed (Though I set WSA to run "Continous" I nevertheless additionally had to set the Windows app setting "Run in Background" for the WSA process to "Always" (Default is "Energy optimized")).
Would have saved me this hour of googling, so I will use it more from now on --- and assume that's the thinking of everybody after trying such.
