Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTDaniel Sparks, The Motley FoolSun, July 5, 2026 at 8:14 PM GMT+2 5 min readA year ago, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) traded under $180 per share and carried a market value less than half of today's. As of this writing, the stock sits at about $360 -- a clean double in 12 months, achieved by a company that was already one of the largest in the world when the run began.A move like that leaves two groups of investors uneasy: those who own the stock and wonder whether to take profits, and those who don't and wonder whether they missed it. With shares about 12% below their 52-week high after an early July wobble in artificial intelligence (AI) trades, the question is worth asking properly. Is it too late to buy?Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »Image source: Getty Images.The important thing about Alphabet's run is that it wasn't only the stock that soared. The earnings power underneath it transformed, too.In the first quarter of 2026, Alphabet's revenue rose 22% year over year to $109.9 billion -- the company's 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Profits came with one caveat: earnings per share soared 82%, but a large slice of that jump reflected unrealized investment gains rather than operations. The cleaner signal was operating income, which rose 30% as operating margin expanded 2 percentage points to 36.1%.The main engine behind the stock's run, however, is Google Cloud."Google Cloud revenues grew 63% with backlog nearly doubling quarter on quarter to over $460 billion," said CEO Sundar Pichai in the company's first-quarter earnings release.A backlog isn't guaranteed revenue, and converting it will take years. But it gives Alphabet's growth a visibility few businesses this size can claim -- customers have effectively reserved hundreds of billions of dollars of cloud computing and AI infrastructure work in advance.The quarter also showed a strong consumer business. Alphabet said paid subscriptions, led by YouTube and Google One, have reached 350 million -- and management called it the company's strongest quarter ever for its consumer AI plans.And the core business has seen impressive momentum, too. Google Search and other revenue grew 19% last quarter, quieting the fear that hung over the stock through 2025 -- that AI chatbots would erode search advertising. So far, the opposite appears true, with search usage climbing alongside the new AI features.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info