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Italy recently issued USD-denominated bonds, which are directly comparable, and the yields are much higher. The 30y ones are at 6.21% YTM now, vs 5.37% for US 30y Ts. For comparison, Alphabet borrows cheaper than Italy: 6.02% on 2060 maturities.

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It's wild to me that a private company in a volatile industry like Google can borrow so cheaply for such a long period. I get that they have been wildly profitable and powerful in recent years, but modern history is absolutely stuffed with companies that seemed invincible at one point but then were dead or dying a decade later.

Tech in particular has an awful lot of churn. There's isn't a single tech company in the world that I'm highly confident will be reliably printing money 34 years from now.

Yeah, but on the other hand the borrowing is relatively small compared to the company, so even if the company shrinks by 90% it will still be serviceable. Many western governments including the US have ridiculous debt loads at multiples of their GDPs; such high debt loads push up their interest rates. If you look at a less indebted country, like say Switzerland (22% of GDP, vs 115% for the US), then the premium paid by Alphabet over government bonds is a bit higher: 2.04% on 25y Alphabet CHF bonds vs 0.71/0.62% on 20y/30y Swiss government bonds.

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