The drop started last Friday, and continued over the weekend and on Monday. The big tech stocks, like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, which have been on a long upward trend, have dropped significantly.
The drop is considered possibly overdue given the high out-performance and positioning of the stocks.
Japanese telecom company Softbank (the 62nd largest public company in the world) is buying Boston Dynamics from Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Softbank also got Japanese bipedal robotics company Schaft as part of the deal.
Details of the deal weren’t published.
Google bought Boston Dynamics in 2013 but put it back up for sale again last year. There were questions about what Google could really make of the venture, and also there were questions about the effect giant metal dog-like robots, which might find applications in warlike settings, would have on the image of Google.
Japan is a country that has publicly made it known that they will not look to immigration to add labor to support their aging population of baby boomers. They will instead look to robots.
Alphabet’s exec Ruth Porat spoke on a conference call this week about the company’s Q1:
“Our revenues of $24.8 billion in the first quarter demonstrate our broad-based strength globally, with revenues up 22% year on year. In constant currency, our consolidated revenues grew 24% versus 1Q 2016. Growth in advertising revenues was again driven by mobile search, with ongoing strength in YouTube and programmatic. We also had substantial growth in other revenues from Play, hardware, and Cloud. … We realized a negative currency impact on our revenues year over year of $304 million or $87 million after the benefit of our hedging program.”
Now that Google is a sub-company inside Alphabet — which is run by founders Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin and Larry Page — Google is run by Sundar Pichai, and his earnings are up almost double from 2015.
In 2016, he made $199.7m. $650k is his base pay, and $198.7m was a stock award.
Google is reportedly more profitable under Pichai. It has boosted sales from its core advertising and YouTube business, and is working on cloud computing, machine learning, and hardware, including smartphones, VR headsets, routers, and smart speakers.
Alphabet is growing. GOOG’s stock rose above a $600b market cap this week for the first time.