Warren Buffett’s Primary Reason for Buying Alphabet is Mine and Should Be Yours

I keep hitting the buy button on Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) because the business behaves like a tollbooth on the entire internet, and every quarter the toll gets higher while the road gets wider. Warren Buffett appears to have arrived at the same conclusion. I got there first for my own account, and I am still adding.

The pitch is simple. Google Search is a self reinforcing flywheel. More queries feed better data, better data sharpens targeting, sharper targeting draws more advertising dollars, and those dollars fund the next turn of the wheel. Buffett views Alphabet’s moat through the search network flywheel and the capital scale that lets the company fund custom AI chips and global data centers straight out of cash flow. Smaller competitors cannot match that without crippling themselves. I want to own the tollbooth.

The Receipts Behind the Conviction

Start with the flywheel itself. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Google Search & other revenue reached $60.40 billion, up 19%, and Pichai told shareholders “queries at an all time high”. That is a two decade old business still compounding at scale.

Then the second engine. Google Cloud revenue grew 63% to $20.03 billion, and backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to over $460 billion. Cloud growth has climbed from 32% to 34% to 48% to 63% across the last four quarters. Backlog of that size is a customer signing a promise to pay Alphabet years into the future.

The economics of this machine are what keep me buying. Return on equity sits at 38.9%, profit margin at 37.9%, and operating margin at 36.1%. EPS of $5.11 crushed the $2.63 consensus, the fourth consecutive beat. Over the trailing year, the stock is up 83.14%, and I am still buying because the P/E is 26.

Why Not Microsoft or Meta

The obvious alternative is Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). Azure is a real cloud competitor, but I pass because Microsoft trades at a price to sales ratio of 9.39 against Alphabet’s 10.17, yet Alphabet is compounding cloud revenue at 63% versus Microsoft’s 18.3% overall quarterly revenue growth. I am paying a similar sales multiple for faster growth and a wider consumer moat.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is the other name I hear. It trades at a P/E of 23, cheaper than Alphabet on paper. My problem is concentration. Meta’s revenue is essentially all advertising, with no cloud franchise to catch the enterprise AI wave. Alphabet has ads, cloud, YouTube, and Waymo. Waymo surpassed 500,000 fully autonomous rides per week. That optionality is free with the ticker.

The Real Risk

The risk that keeps me awake is capital intensity. CapEx hit $35.67 billion in the quarter, up 107.44%, and 2026 guidance is $175 to $185 billion. Free cash flow fell 46.63% year over year to $10.12 billion. If AI demand disappoints, that spending becomes a stranded asset problem.

I stay long anyway because the backlog is real, operating cash flow still grew 26.67%, and the same capital scale that pressures near term free cash flow is the moat itself. Only a handful of companies on earth can write these checks from operating cash.

Alphabet owns the tollbooth, funds the next mile of road from the toll receipts, and pays me a dividend it just raised 5% to $0.22 while I wait. That is why the buy button stays warm.

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