For the first time in four years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is reshuffling its components. Two of the iconic gauge's 30 stocks are being replaced.
Now a lot has happened in four years. The Internet is a vital part of our lives. Within that time, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) has become the definitive dot-com poster child. It commands the majority of the industry's search queries. It is the undisputed champ of online ad revenue, ringing up a whopping $16.6 billion in revenues last year.
Google's dominance is so overpowering that it has forced Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) -- a Dow component since 1999 -- to overpay on acquisitions to keep pace.
So it's great to see the Dow finally induct Big G into its historical index with a ticker-tape parade that will start --
What's that? Google didn't get in? Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC ) are the two new additions going in next week?
Hogwash!
Big G gets the short shrift
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a fuel-driven heavy like Chevron making the cut in these times of buoyant oil prices and record profits. Choosing a financial company might be unpopular, given the sector's recent shortcomings, but Bank of America is a survivor and a bellwether. It's almost a shock that the two weren't already inducted into the index.
Google would have been a better entry than either Chevron or Bank of America; that's not to say the two additions aren't worthy. The real shame is that fading automakers, home improvement retailers, and aluminum makers are members of the elite, as Google watches from the other side of the museum display case.
Please don't remind me that this is an industrial average we're talking about here. You and I both know that the gauge is loaded with software, media, and soft-drink makers.
If one argues that the metric is already overloaded with PC-centric names -- Microsoft, IBM (NYSE: IBM ) , Intel (Nasdaq: INTC ) , and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) -- that's just the Dow showing its fuddy-duddy ways.
How can you weight yourself in tech without taking on the Web's most legitimate rock star? With its $164 billion market cap, it is more valuable than 24 of the Dow's 30 previous entries. Why isn't it there?
Dow goes down for the count
Google is evolving. It's morphing into more than simply a company serving contextual marketing for lead-chasing sponsors. It's a fast-growing software provider with its Google Apps suite of Web-based programs.
It's breathing new life into Madison Avenue; it has gone beyond selling Web ads to populate TV sets, radios, and even print publications with targeted advertisements.
Google is everywhere. Well, everywhere but on the DJIA.
Situations like this are why real investors dismiss the Dow as a measuring stick, preferring the more responsive S&P 500 or tech-telling Nasdaq Composite.
Then again, Dow didn't add Intel or Microsoft until 1999, and missed two explosive decades of computing bellwether growth. iPerhaps it's only natural for it to be unfashionably late to the Google bandwagon too.
Why be truly representative of today's world -- starring a dot-com giant with chunky 25% net profit margins -- when you can continue as an antique shop of dated companies with razor-thin margins and diminishing market importance?
You blew it, DJ. Don't let the cobwebs hit you on the way out of Relevanceville.
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