Returning the money directly to the shareholder as dividend or buyback is an indication that management cannot find better use for the money, or unwilling to ta

Returning the money directly to the shareholder as dividend or buyback is an indication that management cannot find better use for the money, or unwilling to take the risk. Berkshire Hathway never declares dividend or does buybacks either. The profits are returned to you by giving you the choice to sell the shares when you want[1] Google for example could have really invested in Google Fiber or taken a similar capital intensive project instead of returning 100's of billions of dollars. Alternatively could be growing inorganically through acquisitions. The largest acquisition Google has done is only for $12.5B of Motorola in 2011. Only one of top 5 acquisitions is in this decade ( Mandiant) and top 5 combined they spent only $25B Compare that to say Microsoft who are spending $70B on Activision, $10B on OpenAI, also bought Github($8B), Nuance($20B) just in the last 5 years. Google simply doesn't seem to have any ideas on how to spend money. [1] Buybacks give you the same choice as well, but they are not increasing the total value through investments to do so, just reducing the number of shares in circulation.