SAN FRANCISCO — Google is still thriving while the company navigates through a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence and battles regulators trying to topple its internet empire.
The latest evidence of Google’s prosperity emerged Tuesday with the release of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc.’s results for the July-September period. Both Alphabet’s profit and revenue increased at a brisker pace than industry analysts anticipated, thanks primarily to a moneymaking machine powered by Google’s ubiquitous search engine.
Alphabet earned $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share during the most recent quarter, a 34% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose 15% from the same time last year to $88.27 billion.
The profits would have been even higher if Google wasn’t pouring so much money into building up its AI arsenal in a technological arms race that includes other industry heavyweights Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook parent Meta Platforms and rising star OpenAI. The AI investments are the primary reason Google’s capital expenditures in the past quarter soared 62% from the same time last year to $13.1 billion.
Investors seemed pleased with the performance as Alphabet’s stock price climbed nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out.
But a 4-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice has cast a cloud of uncertainty over Google’s future.
After weighing the evidence presented during a high-profile trial last year, a federal judge declared Google’s search engine is an illegal monopoly — a decision that has opened the door for a major shake-up. Earlier this month, the Justice Department suggested it might seek to break up Google as part of penalties that will be determined by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta next summer.
Besides the legal assault on its search engine, Google also has been ordered to tear down the barriers protecting its Play Store for Android smartphone apps. That ruling came earlier this month after a jury decided that operation also was an illegal monopoly. Google is also nearing the end of another antitrust trial in Virginia revolving around the technology underlying its digital ad network.
As if the regulatory headaches aren’t enough, Google is also in the midst of a major makeover of its search engine that is putting an increasing emphasis on highlight results produced by artificial intelligence in response to competitive threats to alternative options relying on the same potentially revolutionary technology.
For now, at least, Google remains a financial behemoth.
“The momentum across the company is extraordinary,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
