Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) recently reported its quarterly results that continued to outpace market expectations. Like most other tech players, Google delivered strong growth across all segments. The company is pushing hard on all fronts, especially Cloud. But the market leaders continue to remain far ahead of them.

Alphabet’s Financials

Alphabet’s third-quarter revenues grew 39% to $65.12 billion, ahead of the market’s forecast of $63.34 billion. Net income grew a spectacular 169.1% to $27.99 per share, again surpassing the market’s forecast of $23.48 for the quarter.

By segment, revenues from Google Services that includes Search, advertising, Android, Chrome, hardware, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube grew from $26.34 billion a year ago to $37.93 billion. Google Cloud revenues grew 44.89% to $4.99 billion. Revenues from Other Bets grew to $182 million.

Operating income from Google Services grew from $14.45 billion last year to $23.97 billion. Google Cloud and its Other Bets are loss-making divisions. Cloud ended the quarter with a loss of $644 million and Other Bets reported a loss of $1.29 billion.   

Among other key metrics, overall search revenues grew from $26.3 billion to $37.9 billion. YouTube revenues grew from $5 billion to $7.2 billion. In fact, YouTube recently surpassed 50 million music and premium subscribers, including those in trial. In the past year, the average number of daily first-time creators on the service also more than doubled.

Google did not provide an outlook for the current quarter. The market is looking for an EPS of $24.85 on revenues of $58.14 billion for the coming quarter and EPS of $101.87 on revenues of $206.5 billion for the current fiscal year.

Google’s Product Enhancements

Google continued to improve its search capabilities. It is using its multitask unified model (MUM) to improve Google Lens, so users can search using both images and words. It is also working on bringing a more visual shopping experience to Search, powered by the Google Shopping graph. The capability will link shoppers with more than 24 billion product listings from merchants across the web. Google Maps is leveraging advanced capabilities to offer eco-friendly routing by providing drivers the ability to choose a more fuel-efficient route, saving money, and reducing emissions. The service is currently available only in the US. Maps was also paying attention to the growing wildfire situation in America and added a wildfire layer so that people can get up-to-date details and make quick informed decisions during emergencies.

Within Hardware, Google announced the launch of its new Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. The phones combine the best of Google AI, software and hardware, with advanced and inclusive cameras. They are also powered by Google Tensor, their first-ever system on a chip. Specifically built to support Google AI and machine learning on devices, it also provides a long-term foundation for its Pixel devices. It also introduced its new Nest Renew program, which uses Nest thermostats to support clean energy use in the home.

Within Android, the latest Android 12 is getting great reviews. The latest upgrade has the biggest design change in Android’s history with new widgets to personalize phones. They introduced accessibility features that use gestures to control the phone and communicate. The introduction of new dashboards and indicators makes it easier for users to view and adjust privacy permissions and disable access to device sensors and location information.

And, to address the markets of India, it has partnered with Reliance Jio to launch a made-for-India affordable smartphone. The Jio Phone will feature premium localized capabilities and is expected to hit the local market early this month.

Google’s Cloud Momentum

Google continues to see momentum on the Cloud with Q3 revenues growing 45% over the year. It recently unveiled several new capabilities and announced 20 new and expanded partnerships to support the growth and scale of its customers around the world. Google believes that GCP is able to address the competition on accounts of its leadership in real-time data, analytics and AI, open scalable infrastructure, and the increased safety features. Google still lags far behind the market leaders within the cloud infrastructure market.

According to a May 2021 Canalys report, Amazon remained the market leader with a 32% market share, followed by Azure with a 19% share. Google was the third-largest vendor with a 7% market share, followed closely by Alibaba. Gartner believes that the current pandemic conditions have accelerated the adoption of cloud services and infrastructure globally. It expects the public cloud end-user spending to grow 18% to $305 billion in 2021. Google is stepping up the ante to address this high growth market, but it still has a long way to go.

Google’s AI Platform

Meanwhile, Google is focused on improving the reach of its AI platform. It introduced more tools for its Vertex AI machine learning platform and Google partners released several new applications for Vertex AI. Vertex AI has been designed as a flexible platform that allows developers and data scientists to quickly train models. According to Google, it takes about 80% fewer lines of code to train a model on Vertex AI.

Google had launched its ML platform earlier this summer, and it is now seeing developers release applications based on the platform’s ML capabilities. Google has integrated data engineering capabilities directly into the data science environment, thus making it easier for tools to ingest and analyze data, and deploy and manage ML models, using a single interface.

It has also enhanced AI capabilities for its Contact Center Artificial Intelligence (CCAI) platform to bring voice biometrics and conversational AI to call center applications. It added a new service, Speaker ID, to CCAI that allows callers to first enroll and then authenticate themselves using voice biometrics. Since Speaker ID is text-independent, it is able to authenticate the user within the natural flow of conversation, instead of asking them to enter specific pins or phrases.

Google’s stock is trading at $2,869.94 with a market capitalization of $1.91 trillion. It had climbed to a 52-week high of $2,982.36 in October. It hit a 52-week low of $1,616.03 in October last year.