The Yahoo Finance Live team discusses the rise in Google’s stock after Wednesday’s AI integration announcement.
video transcript
Akiko Fujita: Let’s move on to my choices here. It’s Alphabet. Investors have been jubilant with Google’s new artificial intelligence announcements, pushing the stock to its highest level since August last year. Well, Google announced Wednesday that it will integrate the technology not only into search, but also into Workplace tools such as Google Docs. Wall Street analysts are generally happy with Google’s plan, but are divided on whether they think it’s enough to give the company an edge over rival Microsoft.
I heard Oppenheimer say that yesterday’s presentation has largely calmed short-term investor fears about the lack of innovation compared to Microsoft and OpenAI. Wedbush’s Dan Ives said Google is still in massive catch-up mode. Well, yesterday at his I/O the question was what exactly is the product they are proposing. However, it remains complicated as to whether Google has the technology to compete with the likes of Microsoft.
Sheena Smith: Well, Akiko, I think it was pretty good overall. Personally, I was impressed with their presentation. Because when it comes to Alphabet, when it comes to Google, there’s been a lot of criticism that it’s gone even lower this year. Compared to the progress Microsoft has made concretely over the past few months, it falls further behind in the AI race. So I think the fact that they’ve made this clear is certainly a step in the right direction.
But folks, AI is really taking hold. I was at the Goldman Sachs industry conference just yesterday, and almost every fireside chat and every interview there covered this topic. So let’s talk about the future of AI and why it’s so important for companies to bet on it. Clearly, it makes a lot of sense for both Google and Alphabet to invest more in this area.
Josh Shaffer: And Alphabet also dominates the search space, which we’ve talked about many times. Where Microsoft wants to take this further is in the area of search.
Sheena Smith: Yes Yes.
Josh Shaffer: Alphabet should therefore still be considered well positioned in this area. But with all the street reactions I’ve seen over the past 24 hours, it’s easy to wonder why they gave a presentation like they did in February when they weren’t ready. There is also
Sheena Smith: yes.
Josh Shaffer: Yes, I feel like I walked yesterday. That felt like what she expected from Google in February, right?
Sheena Smith: Yes Yes.
Josh Shaffer: It’s a Google event. And it really worked and people are positive now. So perhaps it felt a little late to start, and ChatGPT probably launched sooner than anyone expected. So they kind of panicked and fell behind here, but I don’t know if they were actually as late as they thought they were in February.
Sheena Smith: yes.
Josh Shaffer: But time will tell, right?
Sheena Smith: Well, let’s see if they have the last laugh.
