Google has passed Apple as the most valuable technology company in the world—on one measure.

The search giant eclipsed the iPhone maker last week, actually. Few would have noticed because the metric by which Google jumped ahead isn’t the widely-watched one of market capitalization. Here Apple AAPL +0.87% is still well ahead, with a market cap of $378 billion versus Google’s $286 billion.

But the market caps of both companies are swelled by their huge bank accounts. Strip out Apple’s $145 billion of net cash as of March, and Google’s $45 billion. This leaves an enterprise value of $233 billion for Apple, but $241 billion for Google, reflecting the underlying value of the companies’ actual operations.

Another way to think about it: If you bought a house for $378,000, but there was $145,000 of cash lying on the living room floor, all you really paid was a net $233,000.

Apple also recently gave back the title of world’s biggest company by market cap to oil major Exxon Mobil XOM +0.74%. But having its arch-rival creep up on it must be more disconcerting.

By: DocMemory
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