Google had a massive quarter thanks to Search and AI

Google made nearly $85 billion over the past few months as revenue from its Search and cloud computing businesses soared. That’s according to the quarter two earnings report released by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, on Tuesday, which says Search alone raked in $48.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Google’s cloud division hit $10 billion for the first time while also achieving $1 billion in operating profit. During an earnings call on Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s generative AI solutions for Cloud customers “already generated billions in revenues and are being used by more than 2 million developers.”

“We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack,” Pichai says in a letter to investors. “Our longstanding infrastructure leadership and in-house research teams position us well as technology evolves and as we pursue the many opportunities ahead.”

Since becoming a $2 trillion company in April, Alphabet has managed to maintain that position. In May, Google began rolling out AI Overviews in Search powered by its large language model (LLM), Gemini. But users quickly found that the tool provided bizarre answers for certain queries, leading Google to manually take them down. Despite this, Pichai says AI Overviews have led to “increases in Search usage and increased user satisfaction with the results.”

Additionally, Google announced this week that it’s abandoning its long-delayed plans to phase out third-party cookies by default, something Safari and Firefox already do. Google Chrome will instead ask users to “make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing.” Google also has an earlier-than-usual Pixel hardware event coming in August, with the company offering a sneak peek at the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro Fold just weeks before their reveal.

Developing…

Correction, July 23rd: A previous version of the article misstated that Google made $85 million when it actually made $85 billion.