[TheGrumpyBrit]

If Alphabet just "decided" to shut down - i.e. they didn't go bust, they weren't attacked, they just woke up one day and said "We're ceasing trading with immediate effect"?

In all likelihood, the internet as we know it would immediately cease to exist. Huge chunks of infrastructure would immediately go down because they're hosted on GCP. DNS servers which use Google as their root would stop updating. The other FAANG companies would most likely go down too due to various codependent services.

In other news, the stock market would collapse, cable and broadcast services would go off the air, and we'd very quickly discover just how incredibly reliant we are on this stuff. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that governments would fall.

[jfoster]

I don't think that scenario would even be possible. Shareholders would seek an injunction. They have to maximise shareholder value, and such a decision clearly wouldn't be doing so.