These five companies have the highest cash flows in the world over the past 12 months in order from highest to lowest: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. These five companies are practically blocked from making major acquisitions without long and brutal legal battles from the FTC: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta.

If you look up “Amazon FTC” or “Meta FTC,” etc. you will find countless articles about a potential lawsuit, a lawsuit that is currently progressing, or a hefty fine for one of these great companies (with the exception of Meta; Meta is not a great company) had to pay. Are these numerous lawsuits particularly effective? In the short term, no they are not super effective. A billion here, a billion there, annoying? Yes. Super-costly? No. Over the long term, however, these lawsuits have had the intended effect, they dissuade outward expansion. Despite titanic piles of cash, you do not hear much about any of these companies trying to buy out competitors or smaller companies because they know their attempts will be blocked. So, all these companies must build from within. Let us take a look at how that is going for Microsoft and Alphabet.

If you read my articles at all, you probably know that I L-U-V LOVE Microsoft. Microsoft has the largest recent acquisition with their purchase of Activision Blizzard, a gaming development company with famous titles like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, etc. Microsoft had to fight tooth and nail to get this acquisition through and had to give up so many concessions about guaranteeing access to Activision Blizzard games to other gaming hardware companies like Sony and Nintendo. While the acquisition was still great, I would have preferred if Microsoft could have screwed Sony over, but it is what it is.

When it comes to growing internally, Microsoft is positioned well, to say the least. Their office integration is coming together quite nicely. Microsoft keeps churning out good hardware and software. Microsoft’s cloud services system, Azure, is second only to Amazon’s AWS and is growing. And when it comes to future growth, Microsoft’s AI prospects are gold. OpenAI is practically controlled by Microsoft, and Microsoft is allowed to monetize all of OpenAI’s products up until AGI. Just to explain quickly, AGI is “artificial general intelligence;” basically when an AI program is at the level of human thought or higher, it is AGI. However, as a Microsoft shareholder, I am not worried about Microsoft losing hold of OpenAI because of their AGI agreement. AGI is likely at least 30-40 years away, at the very least. Besides, defining AGI is such a difficult concept, and Microsoft can likely force a lenient definition with OpenAI. And all of that is without mentioning Microsoft’s best asset, the minds at the top. Satya Nadella is a genius, and I believe, the best CEO in tech. Microsoft is PRIMED for the future, and I could not be more excited.

Alphabet/Google is in a rougher spot than it has been in a while. Sundar Pichai has overseen a decade of stagnation. Now, Wall Street has figured out that Pichai has pretty much dropped the ball on AI and they are quite peeved. There have been rumblings that he should lose his job, and he does not want that to happen so he may be lashing out a bit with a rumored purchase of HubSpot.

HubSpot is a data/advertising company that basically helps companies keep track of/get as much information about their customers as possible. I cannot emphasize enough how stupid that would be. First of all, there is more of a chance that I wake up tomorrow morning on The Moon than there is of Google actually being allowed to spend an estimated $40 billion to buy out a competitor in internet advertising. The FTC would sooner dissolve itself than allow Google to go through with this. There is NO CHANCE this happens, and Google knows it. There is no chance Google would be allowed to buy out a smaller competitor like this, and HubSpot runs on AWS, their rival. Google would have to either switch everything over, which would take super long and would be inconvenient, or keep a bunch of data on their rival’s servers, something that is definitely unacceptable.

I do not think there is another company that is as restricted in its external movements as Google. Google must grow from within, and I think they will struggle to. Frankly, Google seems to have missed the AI bus, living on their past (cough cough Kentucky basketball). Google’s largest accomplishment over the past ten years was buying YouTube. Time and time again I have only seen stagnation, and I have little faith in Google’s ability to stay on the forefront of technology.

Google is not a bad company, but there are better places to put my money.

I will tackle the other three companies in my next article. I meant to do them all this time, but I just kept on writing and trying to keep my articles between 600-900 words I cut it short. If I had done all of these companies it would have been 2,000, but I will knock it out next time, thanks!