By Michael Liedtke
Google’s profits increased by 50% during the first quarter of this year, overcoming the competitive and legal threats to which its Internet Empire is faced in the midst of an economy rolled by a world trade war.
The figures published Thursday by Google Parent Alphabet Inc. have indicated that the company has been increasing the challenge so far, but investors are likely to remain concerned about the upcoming turbulent times.
Mountain View, California, won $ 34.5 billion, or $ 2.81 per share, during the January-March, against $ 23.7 billion, or $ 1.89 per share, at the same time last year. Income increased 12% from last year to $ 90.2 billion. The results easily exceeded the projections of analysts, according to Fostet Research.
“We continued to see healthy growth and momentum across the company,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on Thursday at a conference call.
Alphabet actions have gained more than 4% in prolonged exchanges after the release of the figures. Actions had dropped 16% since the end of last year.
Google’s first trimester performance illustrated the continuous power of its long dominant search engine in a sea of uncertainty. While attacking competitive threats emerging while artificial intelligence reshapes technology, Google also fights against the decisions of the courts condemning its search engine and its digital advertising network as illegal monopolies.
The upheaval led by AI has opened up new opportunities to people to find useful advice, ideas and information thanks to more conversational research options from Openai and Perplexity.
Google’s long-old search engine is in the fight against new competition with a functionality called the AI seen over the AI that appears above web links in its results. He also tests a conversational tool called AI mode which will inaugurate an even more radical change in his business model.
“The company has provided a good answer to those who question the solidity of the research activity in the request of the growing AI,” said Thomas Monteiro, Investing.com analyst.
But Google tries to keep its activities intact because by the United States Ministry of Justice, the tents to break the business and impose other constraints after a federal judge marked its search engine an illegal monopoly. To make matters worse, its digital advertising network has also proven to be illegally abused its power earlier this month in another case brought by the Ministry of Justice.
President Donald Trump’s trade war has injected more uncertainty into the mixture by vibrating the financial markets in the midst of fears that prices revive inflation while drawing the economy in a recession. Although Google’s digital services are not directly affected by prices, a recession would probably reduce the announcements of announcements that generate most alphabet income.
But there were few signs of slowing down during the last quarter. Google’s advertising revenues during the period totaled $ 66.9 billion, an increase of 8% compared to the same period a year ago.
Although Google managers are mainly optimistic during Thursday’s call, they also recognized the conditions if the trade war triggers a recession.
“We are obviously not immune to the macro environment,” said Philipp Schindler, Alphabet Director.
Regular growth in the last quarter has embarked on the alphabet to remain firm on investment plans to invest $ 75 billion in AI and other technologies this year while continuing to approve an agreement of $ 32 billion to buy the WIZ cybersecurity company.
This story was corrected to reflect the benefit of the first quarter of alphabet increased by 50% compared to the same era last year, or $ 2.81 per share, and that its revenues for the period in January-March totaled $ 90.2 billion. The story was also corrected to reflect Google’s advertising revenues for the first quarter, $ 66.9 billion, an increase of 8% compared to a year ago. An earlier version said that the incorrect dollar amounts and the percentage variation.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
