Alphabet joins the trillion dollar club (Update: Already booted out of club)

Update, February 4, 2020 (02:44 PM ET): After just over two weeks, Alphabet no longer has a valuation of over $1 trillion (via Reuters). After its earnings report yesterday failed to wow investors, Alphabet is now trading at “just” $1,422 per share, or over $993 billion.

It is likely Alphabet will eventually re-enter (and possibly re-exit) the trillion-dollar club at some point in the near future. For now, though, the club is back down to just three current members: Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Original article, January 16, 2020 (04:41 PM ET): Today, Google’s parent company Alphabet achieved something that very few United States firms have ever achieved: a $1 trillion valuation on the US stock market (via The Wall Street Journal). Alphabet oversees all of Google’s related properties, including DeepMind, Verily, Wyze, and more.

The new valuation marks a good start for the new year when it comes to large tech stocks, which are seen as highly profitable bets on the market.

Google started being publicly traded in 2004. In 2015, the company restructured itself as Alphabet but didn’t change its stock price or its ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL. The move from Google to Alphabet wasn’t even approved by a board member vote. Instead, the restructuring took place mostly at the behest of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Related: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin exit leadership roles at Alphabet

According to Page and Brin, Alphabet would allow Google to be “more accountable,” but it would also help prevent Google’s loss-leading ventures from negatively affecting Google’s stock price.

The only other US companies to ever see a $1 trillion valuation are Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Apple is by far the leader in this metric, with a current market valuation of $1.4 trillion.

Microsoft sits handily in second place with a valuation of $1.25 trillion. Although Amazon did hit the $1 trillion mark, it never closed at that level, and now sits at “just” a $930 billion valuation.