• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 29, 2024

Google’s parent company Alphabet reported third-quarter revenue has risen 15% to $88.27 billion for Q3 2024 compared with the year-ago quarter.

The company reported $84.7 billion in revenue and $23.62 billion in net income in the second quarter of 2024.

Google Advertising rose 10.6% to $65.9 billion versus $59.6 billion in the year-ago quarter, but search remains the largest service contributing to revenue growth, the company said.

Revenue from Google’s search engine rose 12% to $49.4 billion in the third quarter -- slightly higher than analysts’ estimate of $49 billion.

AI supercharges search, the company says, especially with younger users.

The Circle to Search feature is seeing higher engagement from people ages 18 to 34 and expands the ability to identify intent and connect users with advertisers.

The visual search feature Lens is being used for nearly 20 billion visual searches, and one in four has commercial intent. People also are turning to Lens to run multimodal searches.

With AI Overviews -- where Google has begun showing search and shopping ads in mobile in the U.S. -- people now find ads in the new feature helpful, the company said.

Services at Google revenue rose 13% to $76.5 billion, led by strength across Google Search and other, Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, and YouTube ads.

YouTube ad revenue reached $8.92 billion -- up from $7.95 billion a year ago -- and Cloud services was reported as $11.35 billion, compared with $8.41 billion, respectively. 

For the first time ever, YouTube’s combined advertising and subscription revenue surpassed $50 billion during the past four quarters. YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket, and YouTube Music Premium are driving subscription growth for the platform, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the earnings call.

“We are leaning into the experience with Multiview and a new option for creators to organize content into episodes and seasons similar to traditional TV,” Pichai said.

Google Cloud revenue grew 35% year-over-year to $11.4 billion, bolstered by "accelerated growth" in the company's AI products, the company said.

Revenue rose despite Google’s continuing antitrust battles with the Department of Justice and other governments worldwide. There have also been antitrust accusations from Yelp as well as allegations from Microsoft that Google has been conducting “shadow” campaigns to undermine its businesses.