Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is the latest tech giant to release its financial results this week. And just like everyone’s favourite* tech company Facebook, Alphabet generated an incredible amount of revenue in just three months.
Yesterday we reported Facebook booked $US29 billion ($39 billion) in revenue in the third quarter. Well Alphabet did a tiny bit better – the company that gives the majority of us our information booked a whopping $US65 billion (around $88 billion) in revenue for the months of July, August and September.
After operation costs and some taxes, Alphabet reports income as $US18.9 billion (that’s still over $25 billion). (!!!)
So what made Alphabet all the revenue?
Search, mostly. It’s to thank for over $50 billion in revenue. This is a massive pool, however, which has a bunch of puzzle pieces (read: advertising) that are all dependent on people using Search.
YouTube ads generated just over $9.5 billion in revenue and Alphabet’s Google Cloud biz brought in around $6.5 billion.
In its results, Alphabet lists ‘APAC revenues’ as a little over $14 billion. The last report available for Australian-specific financial stats, however, was for 2020. During that year, Google (which doesn’t operate as Alphabet down under) took in more than $5 billion from advertisers and corporate customers in Australia.
Google has been trying to brand itself as an AI-first company (you can see this focus in the company’s latest Pixel 6 phones). And the company’s CEO, when delivering the financial results, thanked this focus.
“Five years ago, I laid out our vision to become an AI-first company. This quarter’s results show how our investments there are enabling us to build more helpful products for people and our partners … and as the digital transformation and shift to hybrid work continue, our Cloud services are helping organisations collaborate and stay secure,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google.