The DOJ Won't Breakup Google, But Google Should Breakup Itself
The DOJ is threatening to breakup Google, potentially forcing a divestment of GOOGL’s Android OS and its Chrome browser. Worst case in my view is that Google/Alphabet will pay a Federal Government fine, as the Government loves to shake down large companies - financial institutions in particular - rather than execute corporate breakups or put executives in jail. This is also the most likely outcome in my view whereby after years of back and forth, Google will write a big check to the U.S. Treasury sometime around 2034.
The DOJ won’t breakup Google. However, I would love to see Google spin-off business units a la John Malone’s Liberty Media.
YouTube: YouTube is large enough to swim on its own - allow it to do so.
YouTube would likely thrive as senior execs and employees tend to get more creative when they are no longer part of a larger company.
Further, as a standalone business YouTube could act with much greater speed concerning strategic and tactical decisions, unencumbered by Google’s bureaucracy.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Outside of the mothership I can imagine GCP augmenting organic growth with acquisitions.
Acquisitions of GenAI engines such as Anthropic would make sense.
Perhaps Groq founder and former Google TPU executive Jonathan Ross would be interested in some sort of Google partnership, JV or acquisition (Meta’s Llama is a better technology partner than Google Gemini).
GCP and Oracle (ORCL) could partner or merge and better compete with AWS and Azure.
I am brainstorming. The point is that with both YouTube and GCP, Google could unlock value by setting these assets (and potentially others) free.