Alphabet has long-term gains ahead

Article Excerpt

Alphabet’s shares have declined 4% since the start of 2018. That’s partly due to fears the recent Facebook data scandal will prompt governments to bring in new regulations on how Internet companies gather and use customer information. That could hurt the ability of the company’s Google division to sell targeted ads. However, Google’s targeted-ad features restrict themselves to tracking a user’s search history, rather than the user’s personal data. In addition, Google has already beefed up its data security to ban certain types of ads. Measures like that should help it maintain a dominant market share. Alphabet is also using its strong balance sheet to expand into new areas like cloud computing (the use of remote servers to store data). ALPHABET INC. (Nasdaq symbols GOOG $1,021 [class C: non-voting] and GOOGL $1,023 [class A: one vote per share]; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 694.9 million; Market cap: $710.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 6.4; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.abc.xyz) is the parent company…