Market data and valuation figures are as of July 21, 2026. For years, Alphabet was the Big Tech stock investors described as “cheap.” Not cheap in the traditional sense, of course. Nobody looked at a trillion-dollar technology company and confused it with a clearance-bin toaster. Alphabet was cheap only by the peculiar standards of Big Tech, where a company could dominate global advertising, generate tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow, own several of the internet’s most valuable properties, and still trade at a lower valuation than another company selling phones, software, or artificial intelligence dreams. I understood the argument. Alphabet owned Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Google Cloud, and a collection of other products that billions of people used while occasionally claiming they wanted less Google in their lives. The company produced enormous profits, maintained a fortress-like balance sheet, repurchased stock, and eventually began paying a di...