Google Search Volume Hits Record High, Alphabet's Earnings Per Share Doubles Expectations

According to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, Alphabet released its Q1 financial report, with revenue (excluding partner payouts) of $94.7 billion, surpassing analyst expectations of $91.6 billion. Earnings per share reached $5.11, nearly double Wall Street’s expectation of $2.62. Following the earnings report, the stock price rose over 6% in after-hours trading. CEO Sundar Pichai stated that after integrating AI tools into Google Search, the volume of search queries hit a record high, while the cost of using AI to answer user questions has been significantly reduced. This directly counters the narrative that ‘chatbots will erode Google Search.’ Cloud revenue was $20 billion, exceeding the expected $18.4 billion. The backlog of orders (contracts signed but not yet recognized as revenue) nearly doubled from the previous quarter, surpassing $460 billion. Pichai noted that the company is currently limited by computing power, stating, ‘Cloud revenue could have been higher,’ and that they are increasing investments. The company will also allow some customers to use TPU (Google’s self-developed AI chip, a major alternative to Nvidia) in its own data centers. The paid monthly active users of Gemini Enterprise (an AI agent platform for businesses) grew by 40% quarter-over-quarter. The consumer-facing Gemini chatbot is projected to have 750 million users by the end of 2025. CFO Anat Ashkenazi indicated that this year’s capital expenditure budget has been raised to a maximum of $190 billion, up from a previous estimate of $185 billion, already double the actual spending in 2025; spending in 2027 will be ‘significantly’ higher than this level. The company also announced a 5% increase in dividends.