SAN FRANCISCO, April 28: Microsoft and Google on Thursday drubbed quarterly earnings expectations as the tech titans continued investing heavily in artificial intelligence promising to shake up the way people live.
The results were cheered by Wall Street investors who pushed up Alphabets share price more than 11 percent and Microsoft shares up nearly 4 percent in after-market trades.
Google parent Alphabet reported profit of $23.7 billion on revenue of $80.5 billion, crediting growth in cloud computing, YouTube, and online search advertising.
Artificial intelligence helped drive the Silicon Valley tech giants business, according to Alphabet and Google chief Sundar Pichai.
"We are well under way with our Gemini era and theres great momentum across the company," Pichai said, referring to the Gemini AI model that powers services across the Google platform.
"Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation."
Some $9.5 billion was brought in by Googles cloud computing unit, compared with $7.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. Google also reported its first-ever dividend of 20 cents per share. "Things are looking good for Google," said Emarketer senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.
However, the future of Googles core search business is not assured, the analyst cautioned. Google faces an antitrust case in the United States, and the incorporation of AI-generated content into the companys leading search engine "will arguably be the biggest change to the search advertising market since its inception," Mitchell-Wolf said.
The earnings come as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other rivals competing in the hot field of AI face scrutiny from regulators in the US and Europe. —AFP
