• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 25, 2023

Alphabet's second-quarter revenue rose 7% to $74.6 billion compared with the previous year, capitalizing on artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.

Google reported $58.14 billion in ad revenue -- up from $56.29 billion last year. YouTube ads came in at $7.67 billion, up from $7.34 billion the year before. The company reported falling ad sales in the past two consecutive quarters.

The star of this quarter’s revenue gains was Google’s cloud unit, which includes infrastructure and productivity apps.

Google’s cloud unit increased revenue by 28% compared with the year-ago quarter.

Separately, Alphabet announced Ruth Porat, the company’s finance chief, will leave her role as CFO to take on the newly created position of president and chief investment officer. Porat will remain CFO while the company searches for and selects her successor.

Alphabet’s Other Bets, which includes life sciences unit Verily and self-driving car unit Waymo, generated $285 million in revenue, up from $193 the year prior.

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, Alphabet’s second-largest individual shareholder, has been working with researchers at headquarters about three or four days a week on Gemini, its next big AI system, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Google announced two new updates for Performance Max earlier today. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) and Google Display Ads (GDA) campaign upgrades are open to all advertisers, but opting-in Performance Max supported by artificial intelligence (AI) is voluntary. A self-serve tool will appear in advertisers' accounts.