This article is about Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), the company formerly known as Google. I can't bring myself to call it Alphabet, so I will refer to it by its consumer brand.
At his recent yearly shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) in Omaha, Warren Buffett bemoaned the fact that he missed investing into Google and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) despite being exposed to both companies. Buffett recalled that Berkshire's GEICO unit was an early customer of Google, paying the search engine company $10-11 per click on the auto insurer's ads. He was self-critical about the fact that he should have been able to recognize the business opportunity and missed multiple opportunities to do so.
"Any time you're paying somebody $10 or $11 when somebody just punches a little thing where you've got no cost at all, that's a good business, you've almost never seen a business like it."
