No. of Recommendations: 5
A significant portion of the huge capex currently being incurred by Google can be thought of as defensive in nature.
Defensive investment should mean you have to upgrade your computers or have a free AI counselor or put marble in all your lobbys just to keep the business you already have. Defensive investment should be characterized by: yeah we spend a lot of money each year even though our earnings are pretty steady because if we don't our customers will leave us for somebody who will.
But when you make big-ish investments every year and the result is over 20 years of ~23% CAGR in earnings, cash flow, revenue and share price (approximately, on trend) then it really would be an abuse of the language to call that result "defensive".
And THAT is what has been happening to Google for the last 20+ years since they went public.
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