Google’s parent company Alphabet exceeded Wall Street expectations last quarter. Sales grew by 22 percent year-on-year to around $109.9 billion. Analysts on average had expected revenue of a good $107 billion. The bottom line is that quarterly profits rose to $62.6 billion from $34.5 billion a year earlier.
Google and Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai emphasized that there was a record number of search queries in the quarter. In recent years there has been much speculation as to whether new rivals that use artificial intelligence to provide answers rather than links to queries could make life difficult for Google’s leading search engine. But the Internet giant itself integrated AI functions into its search engine – and claims that it is being used more as a result.
Google’s advertising revenue – the company’s most important moneymaker – increased by 15.5 percent year-on-year to $77.25 billion in the last quarter. The cloud business jumped by a good 63 percent to $20 billion.