Google’s corporate parent posts first-ever quarter with $100B in revenue in latest show of its power

FILE - Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speak at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Photo by Jeff Chiu /AP

Article content

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s corporate parent on Wednesday announced its first-ever quarter with more than $100 billion in revenue, a milestone that illustrates the unwavering power of its internet empire amid legal and competitive threats.

Article content

The news of Alphabet Inc.’s accelerating growth in revenue and profit comes on the heels of a court ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s landmark monopoly case against Google’s dominant search engine that was widely seen as a mild rebuke that wouldn’t hobble the company.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Alphabet performed like a powerhouse during the July-September period, delivering a profit of nearly $35 billion, or $2.87 per share, a 33% increase from the same time last year. Revenue rose 16% from last year to $102.3 billion. Both figures easily exceeded the analysts’ projections that steer the stock market.

Article content

Article content

Investors celebrated the third-quarter numbers by driving up Alphabet’s stock price 6% in Wednesday’s extended trading.

Article content

That’s on top of a 30% surge in Alphabet’s shares that has created nearly $770 billion in stockholder wealth since early September. That’s when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a Justice Department proposal to break up Google to curb the abuses of a search engine that was declared an illegal monopoly last year.

Article content

Mehta’s cautious handling of Google’s search monopoly largely reflected his belief that rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology have already been spawning conversational “answer engines” from rising tech stars such as ChatGPT and Perplexity that are giving consumers more options.

Article content

ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and Perplexity have released AI-powered web browsers to compete against Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser that the Justice Department had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mehta to order to be sold.

Article content

Article content

But Google has been implanting more AI features into both its search engine and Chrome, as well as its other products, as part of its effort to protect its turf while also expanding into new technological frontiers. In a sign of the inroads those efforts are making, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed Wednesday that Google’s AI-powered Gemini app now has 650 million monthly users.

Article content

Like other major tech companies, Google has been bankrolling its AI ambitions with a spending spree that has raised worries about a potential bubble that will eventually burst. Alphabet now expects to budget $91 billion to $93 billion for capital expenditures this year, up from $85 billion in its previous quarterly report issued in July, with most of the money earmarked for the massive data centers needed to power AI.

Article content

Alphabet has the luxury of drawing upon a lucrative ad network that Google has spent a quarter century building. Google’s ad sales totaled $74.2 billion in the third quarter, a 13% increase from last year.

Article content

The AI craze has been a boon for Google’s Cloud division that oversees data centers for other companies, an endeavor that has turned into the fastest growing part of Alphabet. Google Cloud posted revenue of $15.2 billion in the past quarter, up 34% from last year.

Article content