If You Invested $10,000 In Google 10 Years Ago, Here's How Much Money You'd Have Today

Google has evolved from a small start-up into one of the great household names — and a stalwart of the U.S. economy. The darling stock is today a member of the legendary Magnificent Seven. In just over 20 years since its IPO in 2004, the Mountain View, California company has grown to an astonishing market cap of $2.41 trillion, per Nasdaq's Google stock page.

The knockout combo that drove Google in the last two decades centered on two essential factors. It benefited from the rapid expansion of the Internet into everyday global consumer and business lives. The firm's great success came from securing a growing share of the Internet search engine market.

Google stock (trading under its umbrella name Alphabet) has made a lot of long-term investors rich. If you had bought into the powerhouse Internet search engine behemoth 10 years ago, you would be sitting on a pile of money today. The stock price is up over 634% over the last decade.

Google originally made nearly all of its money from advertising sales. While the majority of its earnings still come from ad sales today, the company has expanded into various other enterprises along the way. The firm did so well that it split its stock in 2014, restructuring its business and altering its corporate holding name to Alphabet at the time. Google remains the biggest operating unit by far in the renamed outfit.

Google produces 99% of Alphabet's income today. Over 85% of this revenue comes from the corporation's online ad sales. The balance 15% derives partly from app sales, company content on its YouTube and Google Play, and cloud service fees along with additional licensing income. Google also reaps income from hardware sales of products such as the Pixel smartphone, Chromebooks, and a segment of smart home products including Google Home and Nest, per the Nasdaq Google investor page.

The company also made some long shot investments under what it calls its "other bets" segment. These technology endeavors include Google Fiber (delivering higher-speed internet to consumers), Verily (health enhancement), and Waymo (self driving cars). Nasdaq's Google page states that so far the "other bets" segment has operated at a loss.

For those who believed in Google stock over the past decade, the rewards have been tremendous. In only the first 15 years of its existence, Google had leapfrogged into the position of third-largest U.S. stock by market cap. The stock is continuing to do well today with EPS (earnings per share) consensus from 17 analyst forecasts calling for third quarter 2024 results of $2.12. This compares to last year's Q3 results per share of $1.64, per Zacks Investment Research. Google ends the year financially strong.

If you had sunk $10,000 into Google stock on January 2, 2015 you would have purchased it at $26.63. The common stock closed at $195.42 on December 17, 2024. Google stock has enjoyed a run of $168.79 in that time, amounting to an increase of 6.34 times an original investment. In other words, your seed $10,000 stake would be worth around $63,400 now, per the Nasdaq historical price chart on Google. Google may not be the world's most important stock, but it has done impressively well.

Whether Google stock will continue to outperform the broader market is unclear. Its 52-week high and low spread of $201.42 and $130.67 suggests that volatility has become an underlying part of the stock. This is a reason why time in the market beats timing the market. Analysts surveyed by Zacks have a one year price target of $212 on Google now, slightly higher than its $195.42 closing of December 17.