To The Moon

As of mid-January 2026, $Alphabet(GOOG)$ has cemented its position as a dominant force in the global technology landscape. It’s series of strategic AI breakthroughs and partnerships, prove to critics that the company is still innovative and remains the undisputed "King of Search" while pivoting toward an "AI-First" future. Let’s start with its latest victory. AAPL Partnership: On 12 Jan 2026, $Apple(AAPL)$ officially announced that it has selected GOOG’s Gemini as the primary foundation for the next generation of Siri. (see below) This piece of ‘good’ news has fundamentally shifted the competitive landscape of consumer AI, This multi-year collaboration follows what APPL described as a "careful evaluation" of various Large Language Models (LLMs), including those from Anthropic and OpenAI. While AAPL maintains its existing integration with ChatGPT for certain broad-knowledge queries, Gemini will serve as the core infrastructure for Apple Foundation Models providing the low-latency, multimodal capabilities required for Siri's new "On-Screen Awareness" features. This partnership grants GOOG access to AAPL’s massive ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices, allowing Gemini to process a significant portion of the 1.5 billion requests Siri handles on a daily basis. Reports also suggest that AAPL may be paying GOOG a whopping $1 billion annually for this integration to cover API compute costs, although the true/real value lies in the unprecedented data and distribution reach Gemini now commands. GOOG vs Magnificent 7 Peers. Based on past 12 months performance, GOOG has emerged as the clear winner among its "Magnificent 7" peers. (see below) As of 16 Jan 2026 end day Year 2025 has been a volatile year for the Magnificent 7. Only 3 members (GOOG, $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ & $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ ) managed to beat the $S&P 500(.SPX)$ index, which ended the year with a respectable +24% gain. Again, only GOOG left its 2 rivals "in the dust." (see above) By end 2025, GOOG had surged by approximately +63% - +70%, significantly outperforming the 2nd-best performer, NVDA, that gained roughly +36% - 38% in the same period, as the latter faced tough YoY comparisons and supply chain normalization. GOOG resurgence was fueled by a "re-rating" of the stock as investors realized that GOOG Search’s "moat" remained intact despite the rise of generative AI, and that its Cloud division had reached a profitable inflection point with operating margins finally expanding toward the 30% mark. Market Cap and Valuation. On 12 Jan 2026, GOOG achieved a historic milestone by crossing the $4 trillion market capitalization threshold. (see below) During intraday trading, shares hit a peak of approximately $334, briefly pushing its valuation to $4.01 trillion before settling near $3.98 trillion. What is significant about 12 Jan 2025’s intraday rally is that it enabled GOOG to overtake AAPL in total market value for the first time since 2019, positioning it as the 2nd-most valuable publicly traded company in the world, after NVDA. This valuation leap represents an addition of nearly $1.5 trillion in market value over the preceding year, an amount roughly equivalent to the entire market cap of $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ at the start of 2024. Rating and Price Target. Wall Street has turned increasingly bullish about GOOG, with the consensus rating shifting from a "Buy" to a "Strong Buy" in late 2025. Below are five latest ratings on GOOG: 12 Jan 2026 — Canaccord Genuity’s Maria Ripps has a “Buy” rating and a price target of $390. 12 Jan 2026 — Wells Fargo’s Ken Gawrelski has assigned an “Equal Weigh” rating and a raised price target of $350. 09 Jan 2026 — Scotiabank’s Nat Schindler has a “Outperform” rating and a raised price target of $375. 07 Jan 2026 — Cantor Fitzgerald’s Deepak Mathivanan assigned an “Overweight” rating and a new affirmed target of $370. 22 Dec 2025 — Goldman Sacs has rated the IT titan a “Buy” rating with a price target of $350. While the median target currently sits around $324 to $330, some aggressive analysts have modeled a path to $381 or even $416 if current AI momentum continues and if YouTube's ad-revenue acceleration persists. There is growing speculation that GOOG could be the next $5 trillion valuation company by late 2026. Personally, I will focus more on 2026’s ratings and price targets, given the latest GOOG’s events. Q4 2025 Earnings Forecasts: GOOG is expected to report its Q4 2025 earnings on Wed, 4 Feb 2026 after the close, with the earnings call in early February 4–5. Consensus estimates are as follows: Earnings Per Share (EPS) : is expected to be between $2.59 - $2.64. It will be a significant increase from Q4 2024’s $2.15, marking a +17.78% YoY gain. Revenue : is expected remain robust at $111.13 billion vs Q4 2024’s $96.45 billion, making it a +15.22% YoY gain, with drivers in advertising and YouTube subscriptions that have seen a surge following the global crackdown on ad-blockers. (see above) Headwinds. Despite record-breaking performance, it is not all fine and dandy. GOOG faces notable headwinds in this new year too. Case in point: (1) Cloud Services: Google Cloud revenue jumped +34% in Q3 2025, reaching $85 billion annualized run rate. However, it remains the smallest of the "Big 3" hyperscalers, trailing Microsoft Azure and AWS. GOOG’s primary challenge is maintaining margins (currently around 30.5%) while matching the massive capex of AMZN and MSFT, estimated at over $50 billion annually for AI infrastructure. There are also concerns regarding "on-demand" growth vs. "backlog" growth. This as GOOG needs to ensure that its $155 billion contract backlog converts into recognized revenue at a consistent pace. (2) Regulatory Scrutiny: Although a late-2025 ruling allowed GOOG to avoid divesting Chrome, GOOG still faces ongoing antitrust monitoring in both the US and EU regarding its advertising technology stack and its default search engine agreements. Technical Analysis. From a technical standpoint, GOOG displays a remarkably constructive profile: (see below) As of 16 Jan 2026 end day Simple Moving Averages (SMA): GOOG is trading comfortably above its key levels of 20-day, 50-day and 200-day. As of 16 Jan 2026, the 50-day SMA is at $310.05, and the 200-day SMA is at $226.91, indicating a strong, sustained long-term uptrend, often referred to as a "Golden Cross" environment. MACD: With the MACD line (+7.29) sitting above both zero line and its signal line (+6.41), the positive divergence (0.88) confirms strong, expanding bullish momentum. This setup indicates an immediate upward trajectory, with the stock poised to challenge its recent record highs. RSI. As of 16 Jan 2026, RSI (14 days) was 63.43, still shy of the “overbought” threshold of 70. This suggests that upwards trend is strong. Formation: As of 16 Jan 2026 end day GOOG has spent much of mid-to-late 2025 forming a massive "Cup and Handle" formation. It successfully broke out of in October 2025. Following the breakout, it formed a "Bull Flag" before the most recent surge sparked by the AAPL announcement. This classic bullish continuation pattern suggests the rally has further room to run. What Else ? One of the most compelling signals for value and growth investors alike was the revelation that Warren Buffett’s $Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.B)$ initiated a massive position in GOOG. In Q3 2025, BRK.B purchased approximately 17.8 million shares of GOOGL, a stake valued at nearly $5.7 billion. Buffett, known for his preference for companies with "wide moats" and durable competitive advantages, clearly views GOOG’s dominance in search and its burgeoning AI capabilities as a "forever business", akin to his long-standing bet on Apple Inc. My viewpoints: (mine only) Alphabet is no longer just a "search company"; it has evolved into the foundational layer of the AI economy. By securing the Apple-Gemini deal, GOOG has effectively "taxed" the mobile AI ecosystem, ensuring that its models are the ones answering the world's questions. GOOG is positioned for a historic 2026: With a $4 trillion valuation. Backing from the world’s most famous value investor. A technical chart that screams "strength". Seriously what is there not to like about GOOG ? I will be holding onto my existing GOOG stocks for a wee while longer. What about you ? Remember to check out my other posts. (See below). Help to Repost ok, Thanks. INTC's MBLY Rally ? It's A Broken Dream ! COIN & HOOD Fell -25%. Buy, Skip or Wait ? US Jobs Reports: NVDA's Breakout Catalyst ? Do you think AAPL made a wise choice to partner with GOOG instead of OpenAI, a pioneer but still a baby, nevertheless’? Do you think it is too ambitious to think GOOG will be able to cross the $5 trillion mark by end 2026 ? If you find this post interesting, give it wings! ️ Repost and share the insights ? Do consider “Follow me” and get firsthand read of my daily new post. Thank you. @Daily_Discussion @TigerPM @TigerStars @Tiger_SG @TigerEvents