Hello, Thanks for signing up for MarketBeat Daily Ratings—we’re excited to have you on board. Every weekday, you’ll get a curated summary of new “Buy” and “Sell” ratings from Wall Street’s top-rated analysts, the latest stock news, and bonus investing content—all delivered straight to your inbox. You’re just two quick steps away from completing your sign-up: 1. Make sure our emails go to your inboxGmail users: Mobile: Tap the three dots (…) in the top right and select Move to Inbox or Move to Primary Desktop: Click the folder icon at the top and select Move to Inbox or Primary Apple Mail users:
Tap our email address at the top (next to From: on mobile), then select Add to VIP Other providers:
Reply to this message and add newsletters@analystratings.net to your contacts 2. Confirm your subscriptionClick this link to confirm your subscription. This verifies your account and ensures you receive your newsletters without interruption instead of getting stuck in your spam filter. Confirm your subscription here. After you confirm, feel free to download our popular free report, "7 Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever" with this link. Thanks again for subscribing—we look forward to being part of your investing journey. 
Matthew Paulson
Founder and CEO, MarketBeat. P.S. If you didn’t mean to subscribe, no problem—you can unsubscribe here.
Special Report
Forget Google Search: This Business Is Alphabet's Real Growth StoryAuthored by Ryan Hasson. Article Published: 4/10/2026.
Key Points
- Google Cloud is the fastest-growing major cloud platform in the world, with Q4 2025 revenue surging almost 50% year over year to $17.66 billion.
- A $240 billion cloud backlog, up 55% quarter over quarter, combined with Gemini's 750 million monthly active users, signals that demand shows no signs of slowing.
- With GOOGL down 12.5% from its 52-week high and trading at a forward P/E just above 22, investors who believe AI infrastructure spending will flow through to the bottom line may find the recent pullback enticing.
- Special Report: Elon Musk: This Could Turn $100 into $100,000
When investors talk about Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), the conversation usually starts with Search and advertising. Increasingly, however, many argue that Google Cloud is becoming the most important part of the Alphabet story, and the numbers increasingly support that view. The global cloud infrastructure market hit $119 billion in Q4 2025 alone, up almost 30% year over year. And when it comes to cloud infrastructure, three companies dominate the market: Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) with Azure, and Alphabet with Google Cloud. Together, they account for close to 60% of all enterprise cloud spending. Within that group, the growth trajectories tell very different stories. Where Google Cloud Stands in the RaceAWS remains the undisputed market leader, holding roughly 28% to 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market depending on the source. It's the largest, oldest, and most mature platform.
For a moment…
Forget about Trump’s ties to Israel.
Forget about reports of Iran’s nuclear program.
Because my research has led me to believe we’re risking World War 3 with Iran for a completely different reason. Click here to find out what it is.
Azure sits in second place at about 21% to 22% market share, helped by deep enterprise relationships and its partnership with OpenAI. Google Cloud occupies third, with roughly 12% to 14% market share. On paper, that may look like a distant third. But the growth rate is where things get interesting. In Q4 2025, Google Cloud revenue grew nearly 50% year over year, the fastest growth among major hyperscalers that quarter. AWS grew 24% over the same period, and Azure grew 39%. Google Cloud's Q4 revenue came in at $17.66 billion, well ahead of expectations, putting it on an annualized run rate of more than $70 billion heading into 2026. That roughly 50% quarterly growth is not a one-off. It reflects a sustained acceleration driven primarily by one factor: AI. AI Is Google Cloud's Biggest DifferentiatorAI workloads are a major driver of Google Cloud's expansion. Its Vertex AI platform and BigQuery ML capabilities have made it a preferred choice for enterprises building and deploying AI applications at scale. Gemini, Alphabet's flagship AI model, now has over 750 million monthly active users and processes more than 10 billion tokens per minute via its direct API. Google also enjoys a hardware advantage that is sometimes underappreciated. Its custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) offer a cost-effective alternative to NVIDIA GPUs for training large language models — a meaningful differentiator for enterprises managing AI infrastructure costs at scale. Alphabet has committed between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, more than double the prior year's level, signaling aggressive investment to maintain and extend that edge. The cloud backlog is perhaps the most forward-looking data point. At the end of Q4 2025, Alphabet reported that its cloud backlog surged 55% quarter over quarter to $240 billion, up from $155 billion the prior quarter. That figure represents committed future revenue and indicates where the business is headed, not just where it has been. What It Means for GOOGLGoogle Cloud is no longer a distant third chasing AWS and Azure. It is the fastest-growing major cloud platform globally, taking market share quarter after quarter and building a backlog that provides strong forward visibility. It has turned profitable, is expanding margins, and is increasingly viewed by enterprise customers as a leading AI-native cloud platform. The tech giant's stock is roughly flat year to date but has pulled back about 10% from its 52-week high. For investors who believe AI infrastructure spending will flow through to Alphabet's bottom line, that pullback may create an attractive entry point into one of the most powerful and fastest-growing cloud businesses in the market. |
Post a Comment
0Comments