NEW YORK, March 25, 2026, 11:59 EDT
Alphabet’s Class A shares didn’t join in on Wednesday’s tech rally, edging down 0.2% to $289.90 around midday in New York. On Tuesday, the stock finished at $290.44, shedding 3.85%. The Nasdaq, by comparison, climbed more than 1% on Wednesday.
It’s not hard to see why this is front and center. Google’s ad and search arms are under renewed scrutiny, while there are early hints that the company’s big bets on artificial intelligence might actually be starting to lift revenue. Then there’s Apple, getting ready to roll out paid ads on Maps in the U.S. and Canada later this summer—a fresh push into local advertising territory. D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria called the Maps launch an “incremental opportunity” for Apple’s services side. Reuters
Regulation remains a drag. EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera sat down with Sundar Pichai in San Francisco as Brussels turned its attention to the full AI stack — chatbots, training data, cloud infrastructure. Her message: dominant platforms might leverage AI to tilt the field, pushing their own services to the top.
Investors are still working through Alphabet’s February announcement: it’s planning to ramp up 2026 capital spending to $175 billion-$185 billion, a sharp move from $91.45 billion in 2025. Most of that cash targets compute muscle—the chips, servers, data centers essential for AI training and deployment. Sundar Pichai told analysts those hefty outlays are translating into broader business growth. Zacks strategist Ethan Feller put it bluntly, calling Google a “legitimate hyperscaler,” among the rare cloud players with true global reach. Reuters
There are some numbers to back it up. On Wednesday, Openreach announced it’s scaling up its use of Google Cloud AI for mapping fibre deployments and handling a fleet of 24,000 vans. Executive James Tappenden described the results as “practical, measurable benefits.” Reuters
The expansion doesn’t come cheap—and it eats up plenty of power. This week, Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer, pointed out that the United States isn’t “full throttle on energy” for AI. Her remarks highlight a new reality: data-centre expansion is running into the limits of the grid and hardware, not just software appetite. Reuters
Alphabet caught a break this week when a U.S. judge threw out a lawsuit from news publishers that accused Google of cornering the online news market. Still, the company continues to fight a different, high-profile decision in search as it moves forward with its appeal.
Here’s the bear case: Apple rolls out a new ad engine, regulation shakes up products, and Alphabet keeps pouring money into projects that haven’t paid off yet. Bulls, though, see it differently. Cloud’s posting wins, AI is juicing ad monetization, and the recent dip feels more like a bout of jitters than a fundamental shift.
Alphabet’s Class A stock put the company’s market cap near $2.94 trillion, going by the most recent quote. Class C shares slipped 0.3%. Apple ticked up 0.8%, while Microsoft edged 0.6% lower.
