Quick Learning
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A $10,000 stake in GOOGL when Photosi became CEO in 2015 has grown to nearly $117,000, nearly three times the equivalent S&P 500 investment.
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GOOG trades at 25x forward earnings with 82% earnings growth, but $180 billion in annual capex and antitrust losses remain real risks.
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Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Google didn’t make the cut. Pick up FREE words today.
From Search Giant to AI-First Platform
When Alphabets (NASDAQ:GOOGL) gave Sundar Picchu the job as CEO of Google on August 10, 2015, when the company was still a search and advertising business wearing moonshots. Weeks later came a restructuring of Alphabet’s holding company, and on December 3, 2019, Photosi took over the role of parent CEO from Larry Page.
The decade since has been a controlled pivot. Photosi refocused Google on AI, invested heavily in TPUs and DeepMind, turned YouTube into a $60 billion annual business, and built Google Cloud from a circular error to a segment that now does more than $80 billion a year. Gemini shipped, the Gemini App surpassed 750 million active users, and Waymo passed 500,000 fully autonomous rides per week. In 2024, Alphabet even launched its first dividend, a symbolic shift to a more mature dividend. The overhang: antitrust lawsuits, an EU fine of $3.5 billion, and a spending plan of $180 billion out of $190 billion this year. A $10,000 stake makes the day Photos becomes CEO of Google more violent.
Photosi-Era 10-Bagger
Here’s how it stacks up against the S&P 500 across all standard windows and the full timeframe of the Stock Photo.
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Alphabets |
S&P 500 |
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1-Year Return |
96.19% |
20.13% |
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5 Year Return |
177.34% |
71.73% |
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The Return of the Ten Years |
866.94% |
247.11% |
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The Photo Era |
972.64% |
255.68% |
That original $10,000 is now worth about 11 times its cost basis, compared to about 3.5 times for the index fund. Capturing the necessary sentiment: the stock spent most of 2025 below $200 before tearing to $408 at its 52-week high.
Take action now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 recently named his top 10 AI stocks — and Google didn’t make the cut. Pick up FREE words today.
Our Photo Range: A to remove. He missed the ChatGPT moment early on but shipped Gemini, secured Sesho, and built a real cloud business. Controllable losses and capex risk keep it from A+.
A Question of Succession
Photosi has now been using Google for over ten years and Alphabet for over six years. If the AI capex bet disrupts free cash flow (Q1 free cash flow fell to $10.12 billion, down 46.63% year-on-year), the involvement of Page and Brin’s founders can escalate, and a technology successor from DeepMind or Cloud rank is possible. However, nothing has been announced yet. Investors should treat any management discussions as noise unless the board says otherwise.
