Facebook owns two of the most engaging and largest social media apps in the world -- its namesake, Facebook, and Instagram -- as well as two of the biggest messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger.
It makes money by displaying ads to users while they browse through feeds of photos and videos. Amazon is the largest business-to-consumer e-commerce company in the world.
While e-commerce accounts for the bulk of its revenue, Amazon has found profit engines in cloud computing services and advertising. Apple is one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world. Netflix is one of the first internet-born media companies. In , it started to shift from a DVD-by-mail service to on-demand streaming, and, in , it started investing in its own original content for the streaming service.
Today Netflix is one of the biggest buyers of film and television productions in the world, serving more than million global subscribers. Google also encompasses a growing cloud computing business and a relatively small hardware business. Data source: YCharts. Google products, including YouTube and Search, benefit from their billion-plus users.
The lock-in effect of the Apple ecosystem creates significant switching costs for iOS users. That advantage is getting stronger as Apple develops more services such as Apple Music and Apple Arcade. Source: Getty Images. AI stocks FAANG companies are among those using artificial intelligence technology to leverage computers' ability to mimic human learning.
IoT stocks The 'internet of things' refers to the everyday objects that are increasingly connected to the internet. When companies go public, founders often lose control of their company when too many shares are issued. Alphabet has a determined belief in its mission to organize the world's information and a strong commitment to its founders' vision. Company visions can be compromised when companies go public as their vision is often forced to take a back seat to shareholders' interests.
Markets and investors can be short-sighted in their search for immediate results, even at the expense of long-term results. The stock split is one method that enables Brin and Page to take advantage of public-market liquidity while still retaining voting rights and not losing control of the company.
Class A shares are known as common shares. They give investors an ownership stake and, typically, voting rights. They are the most common type of shares. Class C shares give stockholders an ownership stake in the company, just like Class A shares, but unlike common shares, they do not confer voting rights to shareholders.
As a result, these shares tend to trade at a discount to Class A shares. These Class C shares should not be confused with the type of C-shares issued by some mutual funds. There are also Class B shares that have 10x votes per share, but these are held by founders and insiders and do not trade publicly.
Often, activist investors group together and accumulate shares to press companies into enacting shareholder-friendly initiatives that boost stock prices, such as cost-cutting, share buybacks , and special dividends. This process can become hostile, with activists engaging in public battles to win board seats and wrest control of the company from its owners.
These short-term-driven decisions are contrary to Alphabet's mission. Page and Brin wanted to preempt this possibility, particularly as Alphabet's stock price ascent slowed and growth in its core business declined.
When Alphabet was growing by leaps and bounds, it could do no wrong. Many investors thought of Alphabet as an internet ETF and considered it an integral part of stock market exposure.
All rights reserved. Charles St, Baltimore, MD On Nov. Google announced a 2-for-1 stock split way back in , and it finally took effect in early Shareholders, at the time, resisted this change. Confused about what the difference is and whether you should care?
Yeah, some stock splits just result in more shares of stock and thus a lower share price per share. Like we said, there are two different Google stock tickers to choose from. Well, the big differentiator is simple: voting rights. And the motivation was obvious: to help founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stay in control. Disclosure: Subscribers to The Arora Report may have positions in the securities mentioned in this article or may take positions at any time.
All recommended positions are reviewed daily at The Arora Report. Nigam Arora is an investor, engineer and nuclear physicist by background, has founded two Inc.
He is the founder of The Arora Report, which publishes four newsletters. Nigam can be reached at Nigam TheAroraReport. Home Investing Stocks. Opinion: Which stock is a better buy — Google or Amazon? Published: Oct. ET By Nigam Arora.
0コメント