How to Buy Google Shares and Why
Google is without a doubt one of the most successful technology companies ever. It has a near monopoly on the search engine industry and has become so ingrained in modern life that the word itself has become a verb.
But is it worth investing in Google in 2024? In this article, we will examine in detail how to invest in Google. We will look at the stock’s recent performance, answer the question ‘should I invest in Google?’ and demonstrate how to buy Google shares.
Table of Contents
A Brief History of Google Stock
Since its creation, Google has become one of the best known brands in the world and one of the most visited websites on the internet. But how did it get to this stage?
Before we look at investing in Google and how to buy Google shares, let’s take a look at some key moments in the history of Google stock.
- 1996: Google begins as a research project, attempting to find a better system for search engines to find results
- 1998: The company is incorporated and raises $1 million from private investors, including a $250,000 investment from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
- 2001: Google records first profit
- 2004: Google goes public via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) priced at $85 a share
- 2006: Acquisition of YouTube and addition to the S&P 500 index
- 2011: Google handling 3 billion searches a day
- 2015: Google reorganises its interests into a conglomerate named Alphabet
- 2020: Google market capitalisation surpasses $1 trillion, the fourth US company ever to do so
Google Earnings Report– Q3 2023
Thanks to the strength of its core advertising business, Google stock has consistently reported strong results since its debut on the stock market.
It is important to remember that, when buying Google shares, you are buying a part of the company, meaning that the success of your investment is reliant on the continued success of Google. Therefore, before investing in Google, it is a good idea to take a look through their recent financial results.
In the table below, we have highlighted some of the key figures from Google's earnings in the first nine months of 2023.
Source: Alphabet – First Nine Months of 2023
Google Share Price History
In Google’s almost 20 year history on the stock market, Google shares have recorded phenomenal growth, rewarding investors with considerable returns along the way. Before we address the question of ‘should I invest in Google?’ let’s take a look at the Google share price history.
Between the beginning of 2016 and the end of 2019, Google Class A shares gained more than 72%. The year 2020 began with continued gains, however, at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in February, Google’s stock price fell sharply.
Nevertheless, Google was one of a number of technology stocks which actually went on to benefit from the lockdown measures implemented in response to Covid-19 around the world.
After closing at its lowest level in almost a year on 23 March 2020, Google embarked on a bullish streak which saw the Google share price gain more than 66% by the end of the year, adding a further 65% in 2021.
As with much of the stock market, in 2022, Google shares were negatively affected by economic uncertainty, which disproportionately affected tech stocks. By the end of 2022, the Google share price dropped 39%, compared to the wider S&P 500’s drop of 19% over the same period.
The year 2023 was far kinder to Google. As the global outlook has improved, the Google share price has recovered strongly, although, at the time of writing, remains below its all-time high recorded near the end of 2021.
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Google Stock Split
On 18 July 2022, Google conducted a stock split of 20:1, meaning that, for every one share owned by investors, they received an additional 19. Simultaneously, the Google share price was divided by 20 to account for the additional Google shares in circulation.
In the chart below, the most recent Google stock split date is indicated by the red line.
Should I Invest in Google?
Google has been one of the most successful technology stocks of the century, but will its success continue? Is it worth investing in Google in 2024?
Advertising Still Alphabet’s Bread and Butter
Alphabet’s business has diversified a lot over the years, however, advertising remains its main source of revenue, accounting for 80% of total revenue in 2022.
Google completely dominates the search engine industry, with a market share of around 91.5%. Consequently, it’s the most visited website in the world and processes trillions of searches each year. The second most visited website in the world? YouTube – which is also owned by Alphabet.
With such a wide global audience, it should come as no surprise that Google is an incredibly popular destination for advertisers. In fact, in 2023, Google is estimated to have generated 39% of total digital advertising revenue worldwide, a market which is forecast to continue growing over the coming years.
However, its reliance on advertising revenue does expose a vulnerability for the company. During an economic downturn, advertising budgets are usually one of the first victims of company cost cutting measures, which could negatively impact Google’s business.
Nevertheless, even in 2022, a year where digital advertising spending slowed worldwide, Google’s advertising revenue still rose by 7.1%. Okay, that’s a significant slowdown from the previous year’s growth of 43%, and one which alarmed investors at the time, but in a year marred by economic uncertainty, it highlights the resilience of Google’s core advertising business.
Two Opportunities for Growth
Furthermore, whilst advertising generates the lion’s share of Alphabet’s revenue, it has a couple of other potential opportunities for growth in the future.
Firstly, as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market has exploded this year, Alphabet has scaled up investment in the industry. Having already integrated AI into Google search results, Alphabet released its own chatbot earlier this year to compete with ChatGPT and plans to release a large language model named Gemini in 2024.
The second potential area of growth for Alphabet is in cloud computing. Although Google Cloud’s market share of 11% lags significantly behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which account for a combined 54% of the market, it’s important to remember that this market is still relatively young and is growing quickly.
Google Cloud’s revenue has grown impressively in recent years and, after several years of losses, appears to have turned a corner in 2023, reporting an operating profit of $852 million in the first three quarters of the year.
How to Buy Google Shares
With an Invest.MT5 account from Admirals, you can buy shares in Google and over 4,300 other listed companies from around the world! In order to learn how to invest in Google, follow these steps:
- Open an Invest.MT5 account
- Log into the Dashboard
- Open the MetaTrader web trading platform
- Search for Google stock and click the symbol to open a price chart
- Press ‘Create New Order’ to enter the number of Google shares you wish to purchase and click ‘Buy’ when ready to send your order to the market!
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With an Invest.MT5 account from Admirals, investors can buy shares in Google as well as more than 4,300 stocks and over 300 Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) from 15 of the world’s largest stock exchanges! Click the banner below in order to open an account today:
FAQ - Investing in Google
What price did Google stock start at?
The Google IPO price was $85 per share.
It opened its first day on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange at $100.00 per share and closed the session at $100.34 per share.
What is the difference between GOOG and GOOGL?
The difference between GOOG vs GOOGL shares comes down to voting rights. GOOGL (Class A) shares have voting rights in the form of one-share-one-vote, whereas GOOG (Class C) shares do not have any voting rights. For this reason, sometimes, you may notice that GOOGL shares trade at a slight premium to GOOG.
There is actually a third class of Google stock (Class B) which is not publicly traded and only held by founders. Google Class B shares come with 10 votes per share.
Should I buy GOOG or GOOGL stock?
The answer to this question depends on how important voting rights are for you as a shareholder. For those who want to be eligible to vote on shareholder issues, GOOGL (Class A) shares are likely to be the better option, as they have voting rights, whereas GOOG (Class C) shares do not.
Does Google pay dividends?
Google shares do not currently pay dividends and there are no public plans that the company intends to do so in the future.
How to Buy Google Shares in UK?
In order to buy Google shares in the UK, investors must register with a broker which offers access to the US stock market.
How many times has Google stock split?
In its history as a listed company, Google has split its stock on three occasions: 3 April 2014, 27 April 2015 and 18 July 2022.
When is Google stock split?
The most recent Google stock split was a 20:1 split, which occurred on 18 July 2022. In this split, Google shareholders received an additional 19 shares for every share they owned. At the time of writing, there are no public plans for a further Google stock split.
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