Slate Money · Slate Podcasts

100 More Years of Google

February 14, 2026·42 min·3 clips

Google's century bond costs more than UK gilts, even though Google has a higher credit rating.

Google's century bond becomes the test case. The panel starts with the obvious worry: lending to a company for one hundred years sounds exposed. Then it gets more precise. Corporate survival stories can trip up investors who treat mergers, delistings, and restructuring as if they were default. That distinction matters. A company can change shape while bondholders still get paid, unless there is an actual bankruptcy proceeding. Bankruptcy is not the center of this one. The century bond is mostly a bet on interest rates, not a verdict on Google's future. Rates do the damage. If rates climb, a long bond can fall hard even when the borrower is fine. That is the dry math, and it is the point. The conversation also pushes against the easy story that artificial intelligence drives everything here. The mechanism is more boring. These companies are borrowing at real rates, not near-zero money, and the obligation lasts. The episode works best when it separates credit analysis from rate exposure and shows how investors can lose money without a dramatic corporate collapse. There is some nerdy satisfaction in that. The texture is a working finance argument. The preview widens out with tariffs, Bad Bunny, old newsroom memories, and a Slate Plus detour on Johnny Ive around the bond-math spine.

As heard by us

A sharp fixed-income segment that turns Google's century bond from a corporate-survival story into a cleaner lesson about rate risk.

Slate Money uses Google's century bond to get past the headline novelty and into the practical mechanics of long-dated credit. The useful point is not whether Google will still look like Google in 100 years, but what bondholders are really underwriting.

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Why you'd press play

If you want nerdy bond math, tariff sparring, and a Bad Bunny detour, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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