Google’s Q4 numbers suggest strong Pixel sales،
Constantly under surveillance by the DOJ, Google's parent company, Alphabet, has just released its fourth quarter figures and these are also under surveillance, but by Wall Street. Fourth-quarter revenue increased 13% year-over-year to $86.31 billion, compared to the $76.05 billion Alphabet reported in the same quarter in 2022. Throughout 2023, the company took in $307.39 billion, an increase of 9% from $282.84 billion. that the company generated in 2022.
Google search revenue rose 12.7% to $48.02 billion, while YouTube revenue did even better with a 15.5% increase to $9.20 billion. Overall advertising on Google reached $65.52 billion, an increase of 11% on a year-over-year basis. Subscriptions, platforms and devices (which include Android, Pixel phones, tablets, smartwatches and true wireless earbuds) brought in $10.79 billion, an increase of 22.7% per year. compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. This suggests that Pixel sales performed very well during the fourth quarter, which included the release of the Pixel 8 series.
Google's cloud services had a good quarter with revenue reaching $9.19 billion, an increase of 25.7%. And it cost Google 8.2% more for online traffic, with the company spending $13.99 billion during the quarter on traffic acquisition costs. Alphabet's employee count suffered, falling 4.1% to 182,502 from 190,234 in the same quarter in 2023.
YouTube's revenue grew 15.5% in the fourth quarter, but that wasn't enough for Wall Street.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, said: “We are pleased with the continued strength of Search and the growing contribution of YouTube and Cloud. Each of them is already benefiting from our AI investments and innovation. As we enter the Gemini era, the best is yet to come.” Google's Gemini is its family of large language multimodal models consisting of Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Nano. They work with text, images, audio, videos and code.
Net profit was $20.89 billion in the fourth quarter, an increase of 52% year-on-year. Similarly, earnings per share increased 56.2% to $1.64 from $1.05 reported for the fourth quarter of 2022. For all of 2023, Alphabet reported net income of $73.80 billion. dollars, up 23.05%. Earnings per share for all of 2023 increased 27.2% to $5.80 per share. This seemed like a great earnings report, except for one item that led investors to dump their Alphabet shares.
Wall Street expected Google's fourth-quarter ad revenue to come in at $65.8 billion instead of the reported $65.52 billion; this failure was enough to cause the stock to crater. After the report was released, Alphabet shares fell $8.54, or 5.58 percent, to $144.51.
