According to Bankless Times, Alphabet has taken over from Amazon to be the most valuable US-based internet company. In the last year, Alphabet’s market cap has grown from US$1.39 trillion to $1.788 trillion. Meanwhile, Amazon has dropped from first to second as its market cap was virtually static at $1.592 trillion.
Alphabet’s valuation is more than 3x that of Facebook parent Meta. Its internet value dropped from $759 billion to $594 billion, putting it in third place. That decline continues to heap the bad news on Meta. Falls in its share price, revenues, and declining user numbers come as the company reinvents itself. It also faces increasingly stricter challenges over its use of European users’ data.
Some surprises in the numbers
There is a real mix of companies outside the top three, some whom you’d expect to see and some you might not. For example, Verizon Communications ($221B) and Netflix ($181B) are fourth and fifth, respectively.
However, in 6th place is a company most people probably wouldn’t think of as a major internet company, Booking Holdings ($104.6B). It is the parent company of Booking.com, Priceline.com, Kayak.com and several other travel and technology companies. Given how badly the travel industry has been impacted over the last two years, this is a great ranking. It will be interesting to see its cap next year as the travel industry recovers.
Snap ($67B), eBay ($36B), Twitter ($29B) and Pinterest ($16.6B) make up the rest of the top ten. It will be interesting to see how these businesses fare over the next few years. Newer platforms are appearing in the social media space and are beginning to challenge Twitter, Pinterest and Meta. How much longer can the incumbents hold on to their top ten status.
For the larger companies, there are also challenges. Netflix is seeing increasing numbers of other media streaming platforms gathering market share. In fact, it’s really surprising that Disney isn’t already in that top ten list. Disney+ has already built a subscriber base that is just over half that of Netflix and one that is growing faster.
Apple is another surprisingly absent player given its music and TV subscription base and global reach.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
This interesting piece by Bankless Times raises as many questions as it answers. There is no detail on its methodology for assessing the values of these companies. It is also surprising that it is missing out players such as Disney and Apple.
As the piece calls out, what is interesting for the future is the effect of web 3.0 on internet companies. Will these companies transition fast enough to stay in the top ten? Who is likely to drop out, and who will replace them?
It would also be interesting to see a global rather than a US-centric report. That might throw up more names people aren’t necessarily familiar with and show where the greatest growth is.
