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>... Alphabet only ever has ~120 Billion USD on hand at any given point in time. "Only".

• badRNG 5y ago
  I totally agree with your sentiment. It's sad that a 2.8 Billion USD fine should be considered a big win against a company, but in a regulatory environment where a 10 million USD fine often makes headlines (and is even more often overturned), 2.8B comes a lot closer to being meaningful than one would expect in our current situation.
• mikeyouse 5y ago
  And with insanely aggressive share repurchases: > The company is aggressively buying back stock, having repurchased a record $12.8 billion in the second quarter, bringing the total so far in 2021 to $24.2 billion. > The company is on pace to buy back around $50 billion of stock this year. It’s a testament to Alphabet’s earnings power that its cash and equivalents were down less than $1 billion in the first half of the year to $135.9 billion despite the heavy repurchases. So they "only" have $120 Billion on hand while already spending $25 billion of their cash buying back stock and planning on spending another $25 billion this year. https://www.barrons.com/articles/alphabets-voting-shares-are-now-in-the-buyback-program-the-stock-is-surging-51627482792 https://www.barrons.com/articles/alphabets-voting-shares-are...
  • remram 5y ago
    Looks like the fine is an order of magnitude too low too hurt, at least.