Just expanded my biz into the global search industry. My competitors: Bing and that duck. (GOOGL)

GOOGL April 28, 2025 By Brad

Investment Thesis Buy

I'm extremely proud to announce that, today, April 28, 2025, my $10K stock market startup, Uncle Brad Enterprises, entered the search business!

Consider this my press release - Uncle Brad Inc. just bought Google! (well, about 0.0000000000001% of it, anyway)

Why?

Because Google has owned the search market for decades ... and I believe it will continue to own it for decades more.

The company's grip on global search traffic is so tight that "Google" isn’t just a company name anymore; it's a verb.

But dominance alone isn’t enough.

Google also checks every financial box I care about:

  • Revenue Growth: ~18% annually over the last 10 years.
  • Net Income Growth: ~21% annually over the same period.
  • Profitability: For every $1,000 I invest today, Google generates about $55 in net income just for me.
  • Debt Discipline: Google has no net long-term debt.
  • Owner Alignment: It’s actively buying back pieces of the business from other owners, steadily increasing my ownership share over time.

Oh, and did I mention that I got a stone cold crazy good deal? Consider the following two options that I could have bought with my $1,500 investment:

  • Option #1: Buy $37 of current net income from a business that:
  • makes basically everything in the U.S.;
  • has grown its earnings by 8.7% per year over the last 10 years;
  • has grown its revenue by 6.8% per year over the last 10 years; and
  • carries about $240 of long-term debt.

or

  • Option #2: Buy $55 of current net income from a business that:
  • utterly dominates its market (search);
  • has grown its earnings by 21% per year over the last 10 years;
  • has grown its revenue by 18% per year over the last 10 years; and
  • has no long-term debt.

It's a no-brainer. Even if Option #2's growth rate gets cut in half going forward, Option #2 will still be making almost 2x as much as Option #1 in five years.

  • Option #1: S&P 500
  • Option #2: Google

And the opportunity isn't just about search anymore.

  • Google Cloud is a serious contender in enterprise cloud services.
  • It’s quietly building the digital infrastructure layer for artificial intelligence — especially for businesses, not just consumers.
  • While AI headlines get gobbled up by flashier companies, Google is positioning itself to be the backend engine that powers a huge piece of the AI economy.

My new "search" line of business, representing about 15% of the total investment by Uncle Brad Inc., should grow substantially over the coming years. I'm excited to entrust it to the highly competent managers that are making bank for Uncle Brad Inc.

Investment Criteria
For Success:

Continued dominance of search; no meaningful shift away from Google and to ChatGPT and other A.I.s by consumers for their search needs

Risks to Consider:

People shift away from Google for their search needs and to a competing platform - e.g., TikTok, ChatGPT, etc.

Anticipated Hold Period:

Long-term (3-5 years)

Investment Amount

$1500

Decision

Buy

Conviction Level

High - This division gets a corner office. Glass walls. Real plants.

Your Share of Net Income

$29.53

Competitive Analysis
Competitive Advantage

My new search biz dominates all other search. So much so that it's a verb.


And it will continue to dominate search, so long as A.I. doesn't fundamentally shift users away from search and into ChatGPT and the like.

Key Non-Financial Metrics

Development of the A.I. Mode for its search ... and then monetization of the same.

Net Income Projections
Net Income
CAGR: 23.8%
Analyst Notes:

Hard to argue with ten years of results like this. That's quite the track record.

Operating Margin Analysis
CAGR: 2.2%
Analyst Notes:

None

What is Operating Margin?

Operating margin measures a company's profit from operations as a percentage of revenue. It shows how efficiently a company can generate profit from its core business operations, before accounting for interest and taxes. Higher margins typically indicate better operational efficiency.

Dividends
Analyst Notes:

  • Not much in the way of dividends - and that's a good thing.
  • When my new biz line makes returns on invested capital like this one does, there's no point paying it out, anyway - put that cash to work instead!

Payout Ratio
Analyst Notes:

I'm thrilled that my underlings whom I've put in charge of this line of my biz have decided to reinvest most of the cash - they're good at that.

Revenue
CAGR: 19.1%
Analyst Notes:

Demand shows no signs of slowing.

Avg Annual Growth Rate (10Y)
Balance Sheet Cash
CAGR: 4.5%
Analyst Notes:

Glad to have some cash in the bank. Glad it exceeds long-term debt.

Debt
CAGR: 28.3%
Analyst Notes:

My biz's search segment doesn't even need debt to fuel its growth.

Free Cash Flow
CAGR: 17.3%
Analyst Notes:

No comments provided by the analyst.

Cash Flow from Operations
CAGR: 20.3%
Analyst Notes:

Cha-ching

Conclusion

I'm thrilled to have added a new search line of business to Uncle Brad Enterprises.


  • Monopoly on search = dominant traffic source
  • 18% revenue growth, 21% net income growth (10Y averages)
  • No net debt = balance sheet fortress
  • $55 of net income for every $1K invested
  • Relentless buybacks = growing my ownership over time
  • Cloud + AI upside = second act already happening


To do: Let it compound.

Comments

5 Comments
Brad
January 08, 2026, 03:09 AM
Update 1/7/2026: I've now sold virtually all of my search biz (GOOGL). I still love the business, but the value of my investment has now increased literally 100% in only 8 months. Adjusting for one-time gains in the value of their AI holdings, it also now trades at an adjusted P/E ratio of about 38x. That's too rich for my blood, given that its core search business is going to struggle to grow meaningfully before long. Instead, I think it's more attractive to buy out some of my fellow owners of my social media biz (META), which has better growth prospects and trades at a TTM P/E multiple adjusted for the one-time tax hit of only about 22x. Here's my prediction for GOOGL's Q4 results - they will record MONSTER, RECORD earnings. And those will be driven by good operating results, sure, but also by MONSTER one-time gains in the value of their Anthropic and SpaceX holdings. Those one-time gains are artificially lowering that P/E ratio (same thing is happening at Amazon). When those roll off of results in 2027, GOOGL's P/E will spike. So I'm happy taking a 100% gain on an awesome biz and may consider again jumping back into the search biz if the price again approaches what I think is reasonable.
Brad
November 15, 2025, 05:45 PM
Update 11/15/2025: The value of Uncle Brad's search biz (GOOGL) has continued to surge, as have its revenues, earnings, and pretty much every other metric that matters. Things are going gangbusters! AND YET! I sold almost half of my search business! WHY? Here's a quick rundown - GOOGL is still a fantastic company growing revenue and earnings at an attractive, well-above-market rate. But META is also a fantastic company growing revenue and earnings at an EVEN FASTER rate. And, for reasons unknown to me, the market has temporarily decided that $1 of META's earnings are worth materially less than $1 of GOOGL's earnings. Because I think META has both (i) better growth prospects and (ii) a materially more attractive valuation, I have decided to invest more heavily in the social media arm of Uncle Brad Enterprises (i.e., buy more META). Time will tell whether that is the right move, but I feel pretty darn good about it.
Brad
September 12, 2025, 03:21 AM
Update 9/11/2025: A lot has happened in the last 3.5 months! First, the Google search business has become the largest one in my $10K stock-market startup. Since I bought it for Uncle Brad's startup in May: (i) it is up 49.24%; (ii) it "won" its search antitrust case (i.e., had very favorable remedies handed down by the court); and (iii) with that overhang gone from the stock, other investors are valuing each dollar of its earnings much more highly than they were before. It has also reported a great Q2 with solid growth and has come out with all sorts of AI-related tools that demonstrate that it is truly on the bleeding edge of AI. Think about tools like nano banana, VEO-3, Gemini - all of these are at the absolute top of the AI heap. And the fact that they get to keep their web browser / not be forced to divest is enormous. I'm going to keep my search business for a long time to come!
Brad
May 31, 2025, 03:38 AM
Update 5/30/2025 (cont'd): And there's one other area where it has a tremendous advantage - speed. One of the reasons I don't use ChatGPT to search for commercial things I want to buy (I still use Google for that) is that ChatGPT is slow comparatively speaking. You have to open the app ... takes a few seconds ... type your query and click enter ... wait a couple more seconds... and then watch as it populates the result, line-by-line ... takes another 10 seconds or so. Google is much faster. Type query. Click enter. BOOM - immediate results. I didn't think they'd be able to replicate that in AI Mode, ... but, I'll be darned, ... they seem to have done so. It is lightning fast. And it will only get faster. Which means people will continue using Google. I also think they can still win the AI war for consumer attention by launching soon (like ASAP) an app through the browser - or AI mode - that functions as a quasi-ChatGPT ... but that is free. It seems a lot of people are not subscribers to ChatGPT; they just use the free version. If Google can offer a better and more powerful free version, whether through Gemini or AI Mode, it is likely to keep its current user base, rather than have them leak over to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, etc. Bottom line - I think Google is another HUGE winner from AI. In 10 years, I could see it 5x the earnings power of where it is today. In 15 years, I could see another 10x from where it is today.
Brad
May 31, 2025, 03:34 AM
Update 5/30/2025: Well, today was a big day for my search business. Apparently, my business line is so powerful that a court has concluded it has a monopoly. And now the government a court to force me to divest of my Chrome browser. That would be highly problematic for my business, as that is likely the way that a lot of my business line's VERY powerful and TREMENDOUSLY impressive A.I. will ultimately be fed to consumers at large. But even in spite of that court case (which, for the record, I think will just result in my company not being able to pay fees to Apple and Samsung to be the default browser), the future is EXCEPTIONALLY BRIGHT. Gemini 2.5 is now probably the most powerful model out there. I've used it in COLAB for coding, and I can say beyond any doubt as follows: It is better than ChatGPT; it is faster than ChatGPT; and it is far more integrated that ChatGPT. They also have a TON of other AI that is just going to win, win, win. VEO3. AlphaEvolve. A.I. Mode search. And the list goes on. And here's something about the core business. People are freaking out like it's gonna go away. Uhh, no. Even if they lose some market share, there are a few truths here - (i) the total volume of searches, especially with AI Mode rolling out, will go way, way higher; (ii) no one I know uses ChatGPT and other LLMs as a way to buy most stuff - that mainly still goes through a Google search; (iii) none of the other LLMs have optimized for serving up ads, but Google will; and (iv) no other LLM has the ability to monetize via a huge base of existing advertisers like Google does. Google will still DOMINATE.