Alphabet just passed Apple as the world’s most valuable company

By Dieter Bohn



Wall Street seems to be as happy with Alphabet (and Google's) earnings as it was recently unhappy with Apple's. Minutes after Alphabet posted its most recent quarterly earnings, after-hours trading pushed the company's stock price up enough to make it the most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of about $570 billion vs Apple's $539 (or so) billion.

Whether or not that will hold into the opening price during regular trading is an entirely different story — stock prices move around a lot during times like these. Even so, as CNBC notes, this is the first time since 2010 that Google (well, Alphabet) has been worth more as a company than Apple. It might be temporary and as far as actual consumers are concerned, it's little more than bragging rights. But it's a moment for Alphabet, one worth noting.



The stock jump came even though Wall Street now has an entirely new section of red ink it needs to stare at inside the quarter earnings report from the search giant: the "Other Bets" that come out of Alphabet's non-Google divisions. The loss for those bets totaled about $3.5 billion for 2015 — but the company made $23 billion or so in profit for the same period, which apparently takes the sting out of it.