Honestly, if you told someone back in 2023 that Alphabet would be flirting with a $4 trillion market cap by early 2026, they probably would’ve laughed you out of the room. Back then, the vibe was all "Google is losing the AI war" and "ChatGPT is the Google-killer."
Fast forward to right now, January 18, 2026.
The google alphabet stock price has been on an absolute tear, recently hovering around the $330 mark. It’s been a wild ride. Just last week, on January 16, the stock (GOOGL) closed at $330.00 after a slight dip from its all-time highs. But don't let a 0.8% daily drop fool you. This thing has surged about 65% over the last year, making it the king of the "Magnificent Seven" for 2025.
It’s weirdly cheap, too.
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Well, "cheap" for a tech giant. While the rest of the big dogs are trading at 35 or 40 times their forward earnings, Alphabet is sitting around 25 to 30. That’s why people like Deepak Mathivanan over at Cantor Fitzgerald are calling it the "king of all AI trades."
Why the Google Alphabet Stock Price Keeps Defying Gravity
The main reason? They stopped playing defense.
For a while, Google looked like a deer in the headlights with generative AI. Then they dropped Gemini 3 in December 2025, and suddenly the narrative flipped. They didn't just catch up; they integrated AI into every nook and cranny of their ecosystem.
Search isn't just a list of links anymore. It's "AI Mode." It's "AI Overviews." And despite the fear that these summaries would kill ad revenue, the opposite happened. Advertisers are actually seeing a 26% better return on their spend because the ads inside those AI answers are way more targeted.
Then you've got Google Cloud.
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For years, Cloud was the "third place" participant behind AWS and Azure. Not anymore. It's a powerhouse now, growing at 32% year-over-year. They’ve signed as many billion-dollar deals in the first half of 2025 as they did in all of 2024. Why? Because if you want to run massive AI models, you need the custom chips—the Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)—that Google built themselves. They aren't just buying Nvidia chips; they're making their own "Ironwood" chips that compete directly with the big guys.
The Apple Secret Sauce
One of the biggest catalysts for the recent price jump was the partnership with Apple.
Apple realized they couldn't build a world-class LLM fast enough, so they picked Gemini to power the high-end AI features on iPhones and a massive Siri upgrade. When the world's most valuable consumer brand chooses your AI, investors notice. It basically cemented Google's place as the "infrastructure of the future."
The Elephant in the Room: The DOJ and Breakup Rumors
You can't talk about the google alphabet stock price without mentioning the lawyers. It’s been a legal circus.
Last year, a judge ruled that Google basically had an illegal monopoly on search. People panicked. They thought Chrome would be forcibly sold off or that Google would be chopped into little pieces.
Here's the reality: The "punishment" wasn't nearly as bad as the headlines suggested. On September 2, 2025, Judge Amit Mehta rejected the forced sale of Chrome. Instead, Google has to share some search data with competitors and stop those exclusive "default" contracts where they paid Apple billions to be the only search engine.
Google actually filed an appeal just two days ago, on January 16, 2026, trying to pause these data-sharing requirements.
Investors sort of like this. Why? Because the "worst-case scenario" of a total company breakup is off the table for now. Uncertainty is the stock market's kryptonite. Once the rules of the game were set, even if they were tougher rules, the stock started climbing again.
Is it a Bubble?
Some people are worried. The stock is trading at roughly 10x price-to-sales, which is way higher than its 5-year average of 6x.
The governor of the Bank of England even recently warned about an "AI bubble." And honestly, if the $90 billion Google is spending on data centers this year doesn't turn into cold, hard cash soon, there could be a massive correction. We've seen it before—in 2022, the stock dropped 44%.
But the bulls argue that the revenue is already here. YouTube is pulling in $10 billion a quarter. Cloud is profitable. This isn't the dot-com bubble where companies had no earnings; Alphabet is a cash-printing machine.
What Most Investors Get Wrong About YouTube
Everyone looks at YouTube and thinks "ads."
But the real story in 2026 is subscriptions. "YouTube and Subscriptions" is now a $50 billion+ annual business. Between YouTube TV, Music Premium, and Google One (their cloud storage), they’ve created a recurring revenue stream that is much more stable than the volatile ad market.
Plus, YouTube Shorts has finally reached "parity." In plain English, that means they finally figured out how to make as much money from a 60-second vertical video as they do from a 10-minute horizontal one. This was a huge hurdle that took them three years to clear.
What to Actually Do with This Information
If you're looking at the google alphabet stock price and wondering if you missed the boat, you need to look at three things:
- Earnings on February 4, 2026: This is the big one. Analysts are expecting $2.62 per share. If they beat this, expect another rally.
- The "Ironwood" Rollout: Keep an eye on how many external companies start using Google's custom AI chips instead of Nvidia's. If Google becomes a hardware player, the valuation could double.
- The Ad-Tech Case: While the search case is mostly settled, a second case about their advertising technology is still looming. A ruling on a potential breakup of the "ad-tech" side is expected by mid-2026.
Most people focus on the daily price swings. Don't. Alphabet has transitioned from a "search engine" to a "world-scale AI utility." If you believe that AI is going to be as big as the internet itself, then a $330 price point might actually look like a bargain two years from now.
Keep an eye on the capital expenditure (CapEx) numbers in the next report. As long as they are spending money to build data centers and those data centers are filling up with Cloud customers, the growth story stays intact. If you're a long-term holder, the recent dip following the DOJ appeal might be exactly the entry point the "smart money" is looking for.
Start by checking your current portfolio's exposure to the "Magnificent Seven" to ensure you aren't over-leveraged in tech before the February earnings call. Use a simple P/E ratio comparison against peers like Microsoft and Amazon to see if Alphabet still fits your "value" criteria. You should also set price alerts at the $315 support level, as historical data shows the stock tends to bounce back strongly after hitting that floor during regulatory noise.