Which Tech Company Just Hit $1T In Value? Google It!

Google parent Alphabet became the fourth U.S. company ever to achieve a $1 trillion market value Thursday, punctuating a powerful rally in shares of large internet stocks to start 2020.

The Wall Street Journal reports the search-engine giant joins peers Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the only firms to reach the threshold. Apple and Amazon accomplished the feat in the summer of 2018, while Microsoft hit $1 trillion for the first time in April of last year. Amazon never closed above $1 trillion and has fallen well behind Apple and Microsoft, which have rocketed past that level recently.

The massive gains for technology stocks come with Silicon Valley companies ascending to the forefront of the world economy and flexing their muscles in new arenas such as health care and transportation. Despite concerns about stricter regulatory scrutiny, the biggest technology companies have continued soaring in value, highlighting how investors favor firms that steadily improve sales in a world with tepid economic growth and low interest rates.

Google faces investor concerns about antitrust probes into its dominance in advertising and rising costs. Those worries have put Alphabet shares behind the pace of many of its technology peers in the past year, but many investors remain confident the company can continue growing consistently.

Alphabet shares have surged since the company said in early December that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were stepping down from managing the parent company and ceding control to Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai. Analysts have suggested Mr. Pichai could further buoy the stock either by increasing buybacks or potentially instituting a dividend payment for the first time in the company’s history because a chunk of his bonus is tied to share performance.