Alphabet (GOOG) Dominates the Search Market with 80% Share

Loomis Sayles, an investment management company, released its “Global Growth Fund” investor letter for the fourth quarter of 2025.  A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The Fund prioritizes investments in high-quality companies that possess a lasting competitive advantage and long-term growth drivers, capable of generating attractive cash flow and sustained value for investors. The Fund returned -3.05% in Q4 2025 compared to 3.29% for the MSCI ACWI Index Net. As a patient investor, the firm maintains coverage of high-quality businesses to capitalize on meaningful price dislocations. Please review the Fund’s top five holdings to gain insights into their key selections for 2025.

In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, Loomis Sayles Global Growth Fund highlighted Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, offers various platforms and services operating through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments, and is a significant contributor to the fund’s performance in the quarter. On February 12, 2026, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock closed at $309.37 per share with a market capitalization of $3.742 trillion. One-month return of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was -6.35%, and its shares gained 65.55% of their value over the last 52 weeks.

Loomis Sayles Global Growth Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:

“Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a holding company that owns a collection of businesses, the largest and most important of which by far is Google. Google is the global leader in online search and advertising and also offers cloud solutions to businesses and consumers globally, with a goal of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. Google dominates the US and global traditional search market with a greater than 80% share of search volumes. As a function of seeing more searches, Google is able to provide better search results, resulting in a higher customer conversion rate for advertisers and enabling Google to capture a leading share of search revenue. Google’s large network of consumers, advertisers, and publishers is a powerful business ecosystem as third-party participants such as marketing affiliates and independent software vendors add value to the user experience. As a result, we believe consumers get their best and most relevant search results and advertisers get the best returns on their advertising dollars. Such a robust ecosystem attracts increasing numbers of participants and thereby creates a virtuous cycle for a sustainable business model and long-term growth. In its emerging cloud business, we estimate that Google captures less than 10% market share of the global market for public cloud services. We believe Google remains one of the few global companies that has the scale, research and development (R&D), and technical talent to effectively compete in this market over the long term. Non-Google businesses comprise less than 1% of Alphabet revenues and are held in the company’s Other Bets segment…” (Click here to read the full text)