What’s The Second Most Valuable Company In The World?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 28, 9:35AM EDT

What’s The Second Most Valuable Company In The World? — © JHVEPhoto / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

In July 2025, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) became the most valuable company in the world. It was the first to break the $4 trillion barrier. It was the first to break the $5 trillion barrier. It is still at the top of the list at $5.15 trillion.

But what company is in second place and why? That company is Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction), owner of Gemini, YouTube, Waymo, and Google. Its market cap is $4.67 trillion, just ahead of Apple’s $4.55 trillion.

Alphabet, it can be argued, has an arsenal of major products that can’t be matched. According to some sources, Google has a 92% market share in the search industry. (It is not clear if this includes Russia and China.) YouTube accounts for 9.7% of total TV viewership time among US viewers. That is ahead of second-place Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), which is at 7.6%. YouTube visitors watch five billion individual videos per day. No other video platform is close.

In its most recent quarter, Alphabet’s total revenue was $109.8 billion. Google’s search revenue was $60.3 billion. YouTube’s total was $9.9 billion.

The Alphabet ecosystem is huge. Gmail is the most widely used free email platform, with 1.8 billion users worldwide. Google Maps owns 68% of the world’s map software.

One key to the Alphabet system’s power is Android. Android has 70% of the mobile OS market. Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iOS sits at 29%. Android gives Alphabet an edge for putting its other software products on smartphones.

AI could have damaged Google’s search business. It turned the tables on the industry by making its Gemini AI product part of Google Search. The first results for many searches are Google’s AI Overview, powered by Gemini.

It appeared that Google AI market share had been buried by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. By some measures, however, it holds second place in market share among these AI downloads today. By other measures, it ranks first. The race for primacy in the AI business is not over. Geminia, however, is in an enviable position.

Alphabet has built a suite of products that touch billions of people around the world every day. They have been woven together, which is what business school professors call a “moat.” Warren Buffett coined this term to describe the companies he likes to own. Their competitive advantages are extremely hard to overcome.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.