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If last week Apple was in the spotlight because of its annual earnings report, this week it was Alphabet that caught our attention. That’s because the company broke the $200 billion barrier in revenue for the first time. Meta, on the other hand, experienced the largest single-day loss in value ever suffered by an American company to date. In this week’s Winners and Losers we have another episode of Big Techs opposing sides.
But before we move on to the best and worst of the past seven days, check out some of NextPit’s top headlines from the past week below:
Winner of the week: Alphabet
A, B, C
Easy as 1, 2, 3…
Alphabet, which owns Google, reported a 41% jump in revenue in 2021, with earnings of $257 billion. According to the latest annual report, the company had revenue of $75.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, which was a 32% increase over the same period a year earlier.
This means that among the months of October, November, and December 2021 alone, Alphabet raked in the same amount as in the 12 months of 2015, when the annual earnings closed at $75 billion.
According to Alphabet (and Google) CEO Sundar Pichai, this strong growth in the fourth quarter was directly influenced by the company’s advertising business and a record quarterly sales of the Pixel series of smartphones, as well as Cloud services.
In reexamining Pichai’s statement, at least two things caught the eye: Pixel and advertising. Last year, Google invested like never before in advertising for the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. So it’s no surprise to hear that the Pixel series has broken sales records. However, since Big G doesn’t share the number of units sold, we don’t really know the size of the success of the new models in the series.
With regard to advertising, Google’s revenue was $61.24 billion for the quarter. Which indicates that, unlike companies like Meta, Twitter, and Snapchat, Google was less affected by the changes Apple made last year when it introduced App Tracking Transparency (or ATT) with iOS 14.5.
For those who may not remember, this new privacy setting on iPhones offers more control over which services use user data for targeted advertising purposes. Since Google has its own solution for collecting data on its search service and/or YouTube, for example, it seems that the company took clear advantage of this in 2021, ending the year with an impressive $257 billion in revenue.
Who should be really happy about this are Alphabet’s shareholders. As for Meta (Facebook)…
Loser of the week: Meta
That the social network Facebook has been losing ground to platforms like TikTok is no secret, especially among younger users. However, after Meta revealed the first decline in the number of daily active Facebook users, the market decided to listen up! In case you don’t remember, Meta is the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Meta Quest (formerly Oculus Quest).
On Thursday, Meta’s stock price plummeted, and as a consequence the company had a loss in value of $230 billion right after the markets closed. According to The Verge this was the largest loss ever suffered by an American company in a single day.
Besides being far from understanding what young people want to see on a social network, the impact of Apple’s new privacy policy was more profound on Meta than on Google. In fact, because of the iOS ATT, the company is predicted to continue losing money in sales, about $10 billion according to the company’s CFO.
And that record drop was enough to put Meta on the losing side this week, of course. However, it must be said that Mark Zuckerberg’s company is still worth about $671 billion, and in 2021 it made a profit of over $40 billion. I am curious now to see what the Q1 2022 revenue figures will show, aren’t you?
And with that thought, I close my case this week! But before saying goodbye, I would like to remind you that Samsung has an Unpacked Event on Wednesday, so I invite you to keep an eye on our coverage of the new Galaxy S22 series!
But before leaving this page, I would like to know what did you think of this week’s picks? Share your opinion in the comments of this article.
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