Today, Alphabet, the umbrella company which owns Google, Nest, and all of Google’s money-eating “moonshot” experiments, announced plans to buy back more than $5 billion — specifically, $5,099,019,513.59 — in stock. That’s roughly one percent of Google’s $451.3 billion market cap.
In typical Google fashion, that goofy-looking figure translates to a particular number: the “square root of 26 e18th,” as Forbes’ George Anders first noted. There are 26 letters in the latin alphabet, obvi.
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This announcement is one of many factors driving Alphabet’s stock price up as high as 12 percent during after-hours trading today, in addition to the company’s stronger-than-expected earnings results.
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For more on Google’s first quarter under Alphabet, technically the company’s third fiscal quarter, head here.
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