Google parent Alphabet benefited from strong online advertising business in the last quarter. Sales rose 15 percent year-on-year to $80.5 billion, Alphabet announced after the stock market closed on Thursday. Analysts on average had only expected around $79 billion. Profit rose to 23.66 billion dollars (22 billion euros) from a good 15 billion dollars a year earlier.
Google parent Alphabet benefited from strong online advertising business in the last quarter. Sales rose 15 percent year-on-year to $80.5 billion, Alphabet announced after the stock market closed on Thursday. Analysts on average had only expected around $79 billion. Profit rose to 23.66 billion dollars (22 billion euros) from a good 15 billion dollars a year earlier.
The shares jumped by more than twelve percent in after-hours trading. Alphabet announced a dividend of 20 cents per share for the first time – and also promised distributions for the future.
The basis of the business is still Google’s advertising revenue. They rose from $54.5 to $61.66 billion within a year. The video subsidiary YouTube contributed a good eight billion dollars – around 21 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year.
The development of Google’s advertising business is being watched very closely. A central question is whether attempts by competitors to use artificial intelligence to display direct answers instead of links will leave a trace on Google’s search engine.
In the so-called “other bets” – future projects such as self-driving cars or delivery drones – sales of all companies rose from 288 to 495 million dollars. The division’s operating loss has been reduced – from $1.22 billion a year ago to just over a billion dollars now.
Source: Stern
