Stock Market Power Rankings: YouTube Catches Something Viral

Each week, I'm ranking the biggest companies that trade on U.S. exchanges based on their size ( market capitalization), momentum (total return over the past year), and recent news. Before we get to the rankings, a quick word on a major player.

This is YouTube's world when it comes to ad-supported streaming video, and some rivals of parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) think the online platform isn't always playing fair. The Verge reports that some Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) engineers believe Google's YouTube intentionally added code to the streaming site to break compatibility with Microsoft's Edge browser. A Mozilla program manager made similar claims about the speed on YouTube videos on Firefox and Edge after an update earlier this year.

Alphabet is defending its platform. It argues that YouTube doesn't add code designed to stymie compatibility and optimization in browsers outside its own Chrome. It fixes bugs as they come up, Alphabet says. One can also argue that YouTube has more to lose than gain if it's not easily accessible to the largest audience possible, though tech giants can be pretty ruthless sometimes.