By Keithen Drury, The Motley Fool
Publication Date: 2026-04-03 14:43:00
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) are two of the most prominent companies in the world. Alphabet is currently the third-largest, while Microsoft is in fourth place, although it’s a long way away from catching Alphabet’s market capitalization.
However, it wasn’t always this way. If you rewind to this time last year, the outlook on Alphabet’s stock was incredibly bearish. There were questions surrounding the future of the Google search engine due to illegal monopoly allegations, and there wasn’t a ton of confidence in Alphabet’s ability to deliver a leading AI model.
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Both of those questions were resolved in the second half of 2025, as Alphabet wasn’t required to make any massive changes to its current business to…
