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Alphabet, the parent company in which Google now sits, has revealed its latest round of financial results.
Without getting bogged down in the heavy business aspects of such announcements, here are the three most important numbers from the results.
Compared to the same period a year ago, Alphabet’s revenue was up a healthy 17% to £14.1bn, but it was still down on the end of last year by about 5%. That was the set of results that briefly made Alphabet the most valuable company in the world – overtaking old rival Apple – which has since regained the crown.
This switch to Alphabet as the parent company has seen Google form one segment, with the rest made up of ‘Other Bets’. These are predominately the company’s long-shot, long-term projects, and includes the likes of smart home firm Nest, the self-driving car programme and Project Loon, the plan to put a WiFi signal in weather balloons and beam it down to Earth.
As is often the case with such ideas, right now they are proving expensive. Losses for the Other Bets part of Alphabet were up to more than £559m – but revenue had doubled, so steady progress is being made.
Despite reprimands from the European Union on being anti-competitive with the way it handles apps on Android, Google as a business did report some growth in these results.
Income rose to £4.3bn, with a lot of this being down to mobile advertising as more and more consumers turn to smartphones and tablets to do their searching online.
