By Alistair Barr
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- Google reportedly plans to issue 100-year bonds, following a recent 50-year bond issue.
- The company is borrowing money for far longer than the US government.
- How is that possible? In September, something changed.
This morning, I woke up to a stunning report that Google is gearing up to sell a 100-year bond.
That follows a similar move in early November, when Google issued a 50-year bond.
Investors are giving this company billions and are willing to wait up to a century to get it back. In contrast, the US government usually borrows money for a maximum of 30 years.
And the interest rates Google is paying are not that much more than what the US Treasury pays. For the 50-year bond, Google paid about 1 percentage point more, but got an extra 20 years to repay.
To me, this means Google is now considered about as safe a bet as an entity that oversees the world's largest economy, operates the most powerful military on earth, and can print US dollars to pay back what it owes. How is this possible?
In September, something happened that changed what Google really is. After previously ruling Google was a monopoly, a federal judge delivered remedies that left the company mostly unscathed. In the words of former DOJ antitrust attorney John Newman, "a judge just decided to let Google keep breaking the law."
Google essentially became a government-approved monopoly. Other companies in similar situations, such as utilities, have their prices controlled by regulators. In contrast, Google gets to charge whatever it can get away with for online search ads.
The result is a profit gusher the likes of which the world has never seen. Net income topped $132 billion in 2025, Google reported last week. For 2026, the company plans to spend as much as $185 billion on data centers, chips, and other components to support its AI efforts.
When you make and spend this much money, and have this much power — and regulators let it happen — then comparisons with a nation like the US become possible.
Will Google be around in 2075 or 2126 to pay this money back? Right now, it has about as much chance as America to still be thriving in 50 or 100 years.
This particular 100-year bond is being issued in British pounds, according to the Financial Times. The only other entities to have borrowed for this long in this market are the University of Oxford, the Wellcome Trust, and EDF, the FT noted.
Making my point: EDF is a utility owned by the French government.
A Google spokesperson said my argument was "deeply flawed."
"Not even the DOJ argued that Google should be regulated like a utility or that a private company should be turned into a regulated entity with capped pricing," the spokesperson added.
Google is appealing the judge's monopoly ruling, which "ignores an intensely competitive market where consumers have more ways than ever to find information online," the spokesperson wrote in a statement to Business Insider. "We're also asking that the implementation of specific remedies be paused as the appeal progresses."
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Note: Business Insider sued Google last year, alleging it monopolizes the digital ad market. Google called the suit "meritless."
