Marquee Asset

See: Crown Jewels.

Alphabet owns a ton of assets. Some good, some bad, some ugly. They have a division for Waymo, their driverless car. They have a few divisions in healthcare and finance and other media things. But far and away the marquee asset of Alphabet is Google.com, their search business, where they have grown to become a virtual monopoly in the lucrative industry of directing eyeballs to websites. They are, in fact, the greatest direct marketer of all time.

And notably, a marquee is a giant well-lit sign. It was a common thing in front of movie theaters when Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe were stars. Remember the phrase, "You can see their names in lights"? Well, those lights were, in fact, the marquee that showed off the studio's stars, marketing their filmic wares to a hungry public waiting to pay two bucks for a ticket. The marquee assets of the studios were its stars. When it was cool to be a star.

Today? Yeah, we'd rather own search.