Back in February, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, surpassed fellow Silicon Valley tech giant, Apple, to establish itself the as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world with a market cap well in excess of $500 billion. That was when Alphabet’s stock price was hovering at a shade under the $800 mark, and Apple had just lost over $200 billion in market cap over the previous few months because of all the doomsday predictions surrounding its latest iPhones, which have admittedly not quite set the sales charts on fire the way Apple’s smartphones traditionally have over the past few years. However, with memories of the chilly early-February days now just distant memories for Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley techies alike, Alphabet has now once again displaced Apple Inc. to take its pride of place as the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company.
That’s according to CNBC, which is reporting that Alphabet’s market cap hit a high of about $498.56 billion during today’s trading session at the NASDAQ, while Apple’s market cap hit a low of around $496.69 billion. Alphabet shares closed the day at $728.07, down from an intra-day high of $740.80, while Apple‘s stock ended the day 2.19% down at $90.22. For those not quite in tune with the stock market, Apple replaced Exxon Mobile in 2011 to become the most valuable company on U.S. bourses, and remained largely unchallenged at the top until recently, when coupled with comparatively lower demand for its latest smartphones, tablets and smartwatches on the one hand and the high growth in Google’s advertising revenues on the other, the two Silicon Valley rivals swapped positions on more than one occasion at the top of the ‘Most Valuable Companies’ list.
Either way, it remains to be seen for how long Alphabet’s reign at the top lasts, but many observers believe that Google’s service-oriented business model is better suited to the changing dynamics of the technology space than Apple’s obvious reliance on hardware sales. Google’s parent company also has a much more diversified portfolio of businesses, even though Google itself continues to contribute the lion’s share of the company’s revenues and profits; a scenario that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.