The march toward higher valuations and market capitalization resumed this week. On Monday, Alphabet (GOOG) shares rose after an analyst hiked its price target on GOOG stock. Adoption of Google’s Gemini AI also helped.
The worst is behind Google. The U.S. courts did not rule that the search engine owner would need to divest itself of its Chrome browser. In addition, it may continue to hold control of the Android mobile operating system. Those are two very favorable developments for Alphabet.
Had courts forced the firm to divest Chrome, AI competitor Perplexity could have bought the browser. That would have enabled Perplexity to gain nearly 90% market share for distributing its AI application.
Over the weekend, Google Cloud Chief Thomas Kurian announced that Google Cloud had surpassed $106 billion in RPOs, or remaining performance obligations. The company also enjoyed the title of Gemini, becoming the most popular free iPhone app on Apple (AAPL).
Nano Banana is an impressive image-editing tool that users want. As a result, Gemini could surpass ChatGPT in user count and user activity.
Image editors that use AI could hurt Adobe Systems (ADBE). Corporations could save on costs by cancelling their monthly subscription for video and image editing tools. Instead, they could use AI-based image editors offered by Baidu (BIDU), Alibaba (BABA), Microsoft’s (MSFT) CoPilot, and, of course, Google’s Nano Banana.
