Infinite Hold BUY ALERT: The Empire Strikes Back (GOOGL)
Why the “Death of Google” was the greatest head-fake in market history. And why we aren't afraid to buy the high...
Megan Brantley
January 12, 2026
Infinite Hold: BUY ALERT
We are initiating an extremely rare INFINITE HOLD position for GOOGL, a threshold reserved for our highest conviction plays. GOOGL joins the company of only Tesla (TSLA), Amazon (AMZN) and Bitcoin in the LikeFolio universe.
We believe Alphabet remains in the early stages of a multi-year AI play, gearing up to dominate consumer search behavior and Agentic Commerce.
The shift toward Agentic Commerce—where AI agents don't just recommend products but actually execute transactions on behalf of users—is projected to be one of the most explosive growth areas in the global economy over the next five years.
McKinsey research indicates that by 2030, agentic commerce could orchestrate revenue in the range of $900 billion to $1 trillion in the U.S. B2C market alone. Globally, this opportunity is estimated to be between $3 trillion and $5 trillion.
Conversion rates for AI-assisted shopping sessions are roughly 4x higher than traditional browsing sessions (12.3% vs. 3.1%).
By positioning Gemini as the reasoning layer (Siri/Search), Alphabet has effectively inserted itself into a workflow that is projected to manage $1 trillion in US retail value within the decade. The data suggests that once consumers trust an agent to buy their groceries or batteries, they rarely go back to manual searching. GOOGL is securing that "default" trust right now.
Beyond AI implications, Alphabet is showing resilience in Cloud, Streaming, and Advertising macro themes.
As Charlie Munger once said, "Google has a huge new moat. In fact I’ve probably never seen such a wide moat. Their moat is filled with sharks.”
This is seemingly true, time and time again. And it’s why we aren’t afraid to “buy the high.”
Enjoy our detailed report below:
Why the “Death of Google” Was the Greatest Head-Fake in Market History
Most investors are paralyzed by a specific type of fear.
It’s the fear of heights.
They look at a chart hitting All-Time Highs (ATH) and their instinct tells them to wait. They want the pullback. They want the perfect entry. They want to buy when things look bloody, not when they look pristine.
But at LikeFolio, we don’t trade on instincts. We trade on data. And the data tells a very different story about buying the top.
The All-Time High Fallacy
Take a look at the chart below that tracks market entries and returns.
Conventional wisdom suggests that buying at a peak is a recipe for a correction.
The reality?
It’s often a signal of momentum that the average retail investor simply cannot fathom.
When you look at the performance of stocks over a 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year horizon, a shocking trend emerges: Investing in a stock at an all-time high consistently yields better results than investing on any random day.
Think about that. While many investors are waiting for a 10% dip that may never come, the winners are already compounding. Success breeds success. Strength breeds strength.
We’re telling you this because the most important company in the world is currently standing at a crossroads of all-time high investor sentiment and all-time high utility.
And if you’re waiting for a better time to get in, you’re missing the forest for the trees.
The Great Google Panic
Eighteen months ago, the death of search was the hottest take in Silicon Valley.
When OpenAI dropped ChatGPT, the narrative was written overnight: Google was the Old Guard. They were the Blockbuster Video of the AI era—slow, bloated, and about to be disrupted by a lean, mean, agentic machine.
Even we at LikeFolio had our moments of concern. We watched the sentiment shifts. We saw the curiosity surrounding LLMs. We wondered if Google’s prior search dominance was a castle built on sand.
We aren't worried anymore.
In fact, what we are witnessing right now is one of the greatest defensive-to-offensive pivots in corporate history.
The New Triple Crown of Dominance
While the media was busy crowning Sam Altman, Google was busy doing what it does best: becoming the default.
The machine isn't just slowing down; it's shifting into a gear that OpenAI simply cannot match. There are three massive pillars that have recently fallen into place, securing Alphabet’s dominance for the next decade:
Mindshare Reclamation (Gemini): For a year, GPT was the only acronym that mattered. That has changed. Our data shows Gemini is increasingly chipping away at OpenAI’s mindshare. By integrating Gemini directly into the Workspace and Search ecosystem, Google didn't have to find users. The users were already there. They simply upgraded the engine while the car was still running.
The Agentic Commerce Play (SHOP): Over the weekend, a major agentic protocol was announced with Shopify. This is the eCommerce pillar. Imagine a world where your AI agent doesn't just search for a product but negotiates, verifies inventory, and executes the purchase through the world's largest commerce backbone. Google is the interface; Shopify is the warehouse. This effectively bypasses the traditional discovery phase that Amazon once owned.
The Apple Endorsement (AAPL): This is the God Move. Today’s announcement that Gemini will power Apple’s Siri is the final nail in the “Google is dying” coffin. For months, the market wondered if Apple would build its own models or lean on OpenAI forever. Today, we got our answer: Apple explicitly stated that Google’s technology provides the "most capable foundation" for the future of the iPhone. By powering Siri, GOOGL has effectively secured the "entry point" for 2.2 billion active Apple devices. If you ask your iPhone to summarize an email, plan a trip, or find a photo, GOOGL’s brain is doing the work.
Search. Shop. Siri.
Think about your daily life. When you need an answer, you Search. When you need a product, you Shop. And every time you pull your phone out of your pocket, you interact with an OS.
Google is now the default engine for all three.
AI didn't kill Google. AI became the high-octane fuel that Google needed to turn its Search monopoly into an Everything monopoly.
The Bottom Line
The Death of Google was a narrative designed to shake weak hands out of a generational winner.
The chart is high. The sentiment is shifting from fear to inevitability.
As our lead-in lesson showed: don't fear the All-Time High. Fear being the person who sat on the sidelines while the most powerful machine in the history of capitalism consolidated the entire digital world into a single Default button.
Stay tuned.