Of course, since these “other revenues” come from such diverse divisions, it’s hard to figure out just what caused the jump. But it does show that Google’s business is more than just search and advertising these days. “Hardware sales continue to be strong,” says CEO Sundar Pichai during the call, hinting that revenue from hardware did contribute quite a bit to the jump in revenue.
That said, advertising continues to be Google’s bread and butter. Out of the $24.7 billion it made this first quarter, $21.4 billion came from advertising. That’s a good 86.5 percent of overall revenue. According to CFO Ruth Porat, much of that is due to mobile search, YouTube and programmatic ads. Indeed, Pichai called out YouTube for its tremendous growth last year, with people watching well over a billion hours worth of online videos on the platform
Alphabet’s “other bets” division, which includes Nest, Fiber and Verily, did make more money year-over-year, with a $244 million revenue compared to $165 million this time last year. Yet, “other bets” continue to be a loss-leader for the company, with a $855 million loss — a jump from the $774 million loss it had last year. Porat says some of the loss can be contributed to the pause in Fiber expansion last year.
“We’re transitioning to an AI-first company,” says Pichai, continuing his mantra from last year. Specifically he called out Google Assistant is now integrated in Android Wear and will be coming soon to Android TV. The company is also investing more in machine learning, AI research and deep neural networks, in the hope to make all of Google’s products that much better.
“We’ll have much more to say at IO next month,” says Pichai, hinting at new announcements at Google’s upcoming developer’s conference in May.
