“People depend on Google more than ever,” says Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google. “There is a great popularity of the price of our products, especially in vital and pressing times. “
Google’s cloud profit jumped 52% to $2. 77 billion in the first quarter, while the spread of the coronavirus had a significant impact on the online search giant’s advertising business in the final weeks of the period.
“There are two key facets of our business that give us confidence in the future,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on an earnings conference call today. “First of all, as we saw after 2008, one of the most difficult features of (Google’s) thing we’re looking for is that it can be adjusted quickly. It’s relatively simple to turn it off and on again, and marketers consider it very cost-effective.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is also a more diversified company than it was during the 2008 recession, Pichai said, pointing to Google Cloud’s developing business in the public and advertising sectors with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and its more than 6 million paying G Suite users. clients. Collaboration and productivity tools, adding Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Currents, and Docs.
Google Cloud’s annual profit now exceeds $11. 08 billion.
“Once again, GCP’s rate of expansion has been particularly higher than that of the cloud as a whole,” said Ruth Porat, chief monetary officer of Alphabet and Google. “GCP’s expansion has been driven through our infrastructure offerings and knowledge and analytics platform. We are proud of the acceleration of our progress across sectors, adding public sector and healthcare for disease surveillance and control, working with leading on-call stores to make forecasts, working with media and communications corporations for their visitor service, and across procurement sectors. Chain optimization.
Google and YouTube advertising rose to $37. 8 billion in the quarter ended March 31, up from $33. 61 billion in the year-ago period.
The first quarter was, in many ways, “a tale of two quarters,” for Pichai.
“For our advertising business, the first two months of the quarter were strong,” he said. “In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenue. The timing of the slowdown is correlated with the locations and sectors affected during the virus, and related final orders As the effect of COVID-19 emerged, we delayed some ad launches and prioritized supporting our clients, as many of them adjusted their strategies.
Alphabet beat Wall Street’s earnings estimates for the first quarter, thanks to functionality from Google Search, YouTube and Google Cloud. Its profit rose 13% to $41. 16 billion in the first quarter, up from $36. 34 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected Alphabet to generate $40. 17 billion in profit. The net source of earnings rose to $6. 83 billion, or $9. 87 consistent with the stock, from $6. 65 billion, or $9. 50 consistent with the stock, a year ago, without analysts’ forecast of $10. 76 consistent with the stock.
“This is a complicated time for the world,” Pichai said, noting that the coronavirus crisis is the first primary pandemic to occur in a virtual world.
According to Pichai, the most pressing considerations for small and large companies right now are business continuity and addressing issues such as worker safety, dramatic decreases or increases in demand, supply chain, and remote management.
“People depend more than ever on Google,” he said. “There is a strong popularity of the price of our products, especially in vital and pressing times. “
Google has noticed a significant increase in search activity. In the U. S. , coronavirus-related study activity, at its peak, was 4 times higher than at the height of the Super Bowl. People are spending a lot more time on their Android apps. and Google Play app downloads increased by 30% between February and March. Watch time on YouTube has also increased significantly, especially live streams. And 100 million academics and teachers use Google Classroom, twice as many as they did at the beginning of March. Google has also noticed a big increase in demand for Chromebooks, with analysts reporting a 400% year-over-year increase in the week of March 21, Pichai said. Schools and businesses are also employing Google’s video conferencing platform, Meet, which adds about 3 million new users each day and has noticed a 30-fold increase in usage since January.
Looking ahead, Alphabet continues to invest in its long-term priorities, albeit being considered short-term, according to Pichai.
“As we face a global crisis of uncertain magnitude and duration, we have focused on taking steps to improve efficiency, adding slowing speed to hiring and certain categories of marketing spend, as well as better device utilization,” says Porat.
While Porat indicated in the last quarter that Google’s headcount expansion rate would be higher than the 20% expansion in 2019, Google now anticipates a slowdown in headcount expansion that deserves to start being visual in the third quarter and continue into the fourth quarter.
“While we focus on those and other measures to moderate the overall velocity of investment, we remain committed to the long-term opportunities for which we are well-positioned,” he said. “So we’re going to continue to invest in those areas, adding search, device learning and Google Cloud. “
Alphabet is now forecasting a slight reduction in its overall capital spending this year.
“Compared to last year, the biggest update to our outlook is a relief in overall workplace investment due to the need to suspend most of our structure and equipment work in reaction to COVID-19 and our decision to slow down. “Overall, we expect investment in technical infrastructure to remain at roughly the same level as in 2019, with higher spending on servers than on knowledge media structures. “
Google’s inventory rose 7. 98% after hours Tuesday to $1,331.