{"id":37989,"date":"2013-05-16T15:19:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T13:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=37989"},"modified":"2013-05-17T09:11:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T07:11:58","slug":"how-high-can-google-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/37989\/how-high-can-google-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"How high can Google fly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a>‘s shares have climbed over 25% since the start of the year, breaking through the $900 mark after its I\/O presentation on Wednesday (15 May 2013).<\/p>\n

This places the world’s largest Internet company in a solid second position behind Apple when looking at the world’s largest tech companies by market capital.<\/p>\n

Google now has a market capiutalisation of $303.1 billion, while Apple<\/a> still commands the top position with a market cap of $402.5 billion.<\/p>\n

Top 10 tech companies by market capital<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/strong><\/td>\nCompany<\/strong><\/td>\nMarket Cap (US$mn)
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nApple<\/td>\n$402,539.63<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nGoogle<\/td>\n$303,166.94<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nMicrosoft<\/td>\n$282,643.22<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nGeneral Electric<\/td>\n$240,304.39<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nIBM<\/td>\n$225,440.08<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nChina Mobile<\/td>\n$224,846.69<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nAT&T<\/td>\n$203,525.19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nSamsung Electronics<\/td>\n$197,823.02<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>\nVodafone<\/td>\n$146,036.17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>\nAmazon<\/td>\n$121,349.49<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Market cap data taken from Bloomberg. Accessed: 16 May 2013<\/small><\/p>\n

Apple and Google have shown contrasting trends over the course of 2013 so far, with the tech company leader having lost over 20% of its share value since the start of the year.<\/p>\n

Apple’s shares are currently trading at $428.85, down from $549.03 at the start of the year – and almost 40% lower than the company’s 52-week high of $705.07.<\/p>\n

Google, on the other hand, has seen its share price climb to an all-time high of $915.89 – up 26.6% from its $723.25 start in 2013.<\/p>\n

In its last quarterly reporting, Google said that it generated net revenue of $9.83 billion – up from $8.13 billion a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Google’s successes<\/h3>\n

Google is involved in a multitude of areas – from fibre broadband and Internet services, to mobile software, handsets and futuristic gadgets and technology.<\/p>\n

Google’s Android<\/a> platform currently dominates the mobile phone operating system market, running on over 750 million mobile devices. Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, expects that number to climb past 1 billion by next year.<\/p>\n

Then there’s Google’s online video service, YouTube<\/a>, which sees over 1 billion eyes on its pages each month, watching over 4 billion hours of video. While the service is free, and remains free, the internet giant recently launched subscription channels on the platform in a bid to bolster production quality.<\/p>\n

Of course, where Google is most prolific is in its ad and search space, where the company goes largely unchallenged, dwarfing the competition from Microsoft<\/a>, Yahoo<\/a> and AOL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still some troubles<\/h3>\n

On the down side, Google faces its own problems: the company is under scrutiny in Europe as its rivals tackle it over anti-competitive behaviour and tax concerns – and that’s on top of a number of patent disputes taking place involving the company’s mobile arm, Motorola Mobility<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Google acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012 for a massive $12.4 billion – and the company has continued to drag on Google’s financials, with another loss of $271 million in the first quarter of 2013 being the latest to weigh in.<\/p>\n

While these concerns clearly haven’t made much of an impact on Google’s results, there are other concers as well.<\/p>\n

With a P\/E ratio of 26, Google’s stock is an expensive purchase – especially in comparison to Apple’s P\/E ratio of 10. According to reports from CNN and MSN, there are also concerns amongst US investors that, like Apple’s peak in September 2012, the company’s stock is over-owned.<\/p>\n

Despite this, however, analysts have stated that Google has the potential to hit $1,000 per share.<\/p>\n

Though CNN’s Paul La Monica is quick to remind us that many said the same about Apple after it broke $700 last year.<\/p>\n

More Google stories<\/h3>\n

Can the whole world be connected by 2020?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google rivals get chance to ramp up pressure<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google seeks to settle antitrust battle<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google Glass startups get big support<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google injects millions into EU data center<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google’s shares have climbed over 25% since the start of the year, breaking through the $900 mark after its I\/O presentation on Wednesday (15 May 2013).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":37990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[51,2378,53,5467,26,1126,4270,1246],"class_list":["post-37989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-apple","tag-cnn","tag-google","tag-google-glass","tag-headline","tag-motorola-mobility","tag-msn","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37989"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37994,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37989\/revisions\/37994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}