Alphabet is ahead of its competitors in several industries at once
Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) forces it to compete with many companies from different industries at once; the technology giant manages to maintain leadership in several areas. For example, Alphabet is a leading seller of digital advertising, and it is this direction that remains the flagship for it. In 2021, the company’s advertising business generated $209.5 billion in total revenue, about 82% more than its competitor Meta Platforms (the owner of the Facebook platform).
In the field of video streaming, Alphabet is also rapidly increasing sales. The company’s revenue from YouTube for the whole of 2021 amounted to $28.8 billion, which is 46% more year-on-year. For comparison, Netflix’s revenue for the same period amounted to a comparable $29.7 billion, but this is only 19% more year on year. Moreover, in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, YouTube’s revenue was $8.6 billion compared to Netflix’s $7.7 billion.
Faster revenue growth shows that YouTube is the main competitor in the streaming market. In part, the rapid growth is due to the pandemic factor, but in general, YouTube’s superiority over Netflix shows how successful Alphabet’s investments in original content have been. In addition, with its Google Cloud platform, Alphabet is competitive in cloud computing, although it lags behind the leaders in terms of sales. The cloud services market by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. In 2021, Alphabet’s cloud platform generated revenue of $19.2 billion, 47% more than last year.
For comparison, AWS earned three times more during this time: $62.2 billion. In addition, Alphabet’s cloud business is not yet profitable — the operating loss last year exceeded $ 3 billion. The central positive aspect for Alphabet is the growth of profitability. In 2021, net profit increased to $76 billion with total revenue of $257.6 billion. That is, profitability was about 30%. At the same time, a year earlier it was 22%. Thus, Alphabet has a strong position in almost all industries and is a leading player in some cases.
