Impressive growth, and even more, ahem, impressive capital spending :-O
According to page 6, year to date in 2026, operations generated $127B in cash, and capital spending on property and equipment was $132B, so year to date, the business consumed $5B.
According to page 8, in the last quarter, operations generated $42B and capital spending was $51B, so over the past three months, the business consumed $9B.
Those figures don't include any capital spending made through off-balance sheet arrangements. No idea what those might be, or for how much Alphabet could be on the hook.
I'm curious to see if all that money invested in infrastructure will pay off. I hope it pays off, for everyone's sake, but hope is not certainty.
It's a tale of two AIs for Google. Cloud doubled revenue and tripled profit, probably based off serving models. So good for Cloud.
Search increased revenue and profit which is good. Means that LLMs are not yet stealing revenue. But also bad because the massive spend on infrastructure doesn't look like it's going to come back as increased revenue.
People on the internet really overrate google's TPU advantage. OAI and Anthropic and others have been using TPUs as well for a long time now too. And they've also hired lots and lots of talent from the rest of FAANG, hyperscale compute talent and knowledge is also well distributed through all the top AI companies at this point.
It's wild how quickly the tide turned from big tech companies having hundreds of billions in cash reserves and not knowing what to do with it to now taking on hundreds of billions in debt for questionable infrastructure buildouts.
Ironically their massive cash reserves created an environment where the cost of AI infrastructure could be bid up so much to consume those very cash reserves.
Ad sales fall because the AI mania has made it clear that Big Tech does not care about humans, so humans go elsewhere.
Advertisers on the other hand are alerted to viewbotting with increasingly sophisticated AI "users".
It was clear already two years ago that the model of AI generated "content" that is watched by AI viewbots does not work. Of course Big Tech has to steam forward and find out the hard way.
Congrats, you have ruined the entire SV business model with your fantasies derived from cheap, horribly written SciFi novels.
Well it’s currently negatively affecting my life in every aspect other than being an upgrade to searches.
I don’t discount its capabilities since around April of this year, it passed my bar for being able to do amazing things. But it has also made any interaction I’ve had with companies a living nightmare and appears to have permanently deleted my career and knocked me down 1-2 economic classes.
2. Youtube meh, like always (weird that it doesn't kill it)
3. Search -- this was the issue. QonQ 0.1% <-- the whole story
Everyone has expected Search to, sooner or later, crack. This looks like it may be it.
If Google had 30B in revenue from coding tools and a few billion from Gemini Enterprise then there would be a story that Google could get through this.
But GDM didn't execute. And that's that.
Who knows the bottom. More than 10-15% seems unlikely. But if search cracks again next quarter then we'll see a real revaluing of the business.
Google did not have the proper focus on AI. They should have owned the space. But there were clearly management issues.
Youtube has sucked for many years. I just don't know how much Google is responsible for it. Back in 2006, they were dealing with copyright battles (despite the fact they won their lawsuit against Viacom) so Google bought them to help them out with their resources. The site itself has tons of censorship and bad targeting on the recommended videos and I think Neal Mohan has made it even worse the last few years with more and more ads and Shorts and everything
I'm sure Google will end up being one of the winners no matter what but man the market hates the stock. It was trading at 16 p/e before earnings and is now at like 14. Less than half of Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia.
Impressive growth, and even more, ahem, impressive capital spending :-O
According to page 6, year to date in 2026, operations generated $127B in cash, and capital spending on property and equipment was $132B, so year to date, the business consumed $5B.
According to page 8, in the last quarter, operations generated $42B and capital spending was $51B, so over the past three months, the business consumed $9B.
Those figures don't include any capital spending made through off-balance sheet arrangements. No idea what those might be, or for how much Alphabet could be on the hook.
I'm curious to see if all that money invested in infrastructure will pay off. I hope it pays off, for everyone's sake, but hope is not certainty.
Why their shares tanked 10% then?
They need to do layoffs and it will pop by 20%
It's a tale of two AIs for Google. Cloud doubled revenue and tripled profit, probably based off serving models. So good for Cloud.
Search increased revenue and profit which is good. Means that LLMs are not yet stealing revenue. But also bad because the massive spend on infrastructure doesn't look like it's going to come back as increased revenue.
Out of all companies, with their own TPUs and native large scale computing... "habitat" they exist in – they probably know how to spend it well.
People on the internet really overrate google's TPU advantage. OAI and Anthropic and others have been using TPUs as well for a long time now too. And they've also hired lots and lots of talent from the rest of FAANG, hyperscale compute talent and knowledge is also well distributed through all the top AI companies at this point.
They control the supply chain though, so they can't be price-gouged by Nvidia
First signs that Search revenue might be peaking.
Pretty sure it's this part:
> generating $127B in cash, and capital spending on property and equipment was $132B, so the business consumed $5B.
well, they don't burn it like anthropic on rent, they spend it on their own TPUs, right?
There's no guarantee it'll generate big enough returns and it's probably at jacked up prices.
not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is pretty much the reason.
It's about expectations. They missed expectations on earnings, meaning they're less valuable than people thought.
I mean, it will pay off for society one way or the other — we’ll have the datacenters and (hopefully) the weights at the end of this.
That’s an amazing amount of revenue and spend, though. Wild.
The buildout is out of control lol
sell shovels
It's wild how quickly the tide turned from big tech companies having hundreds of billions in cash reserves and not knowing what to do with it to now taking on hundreds of billions in debt for questionable infrastructure buildouts.
Ironically their massive cash reserves created an environment where the cost of AI infrastructure could be bid up so much to consume those very cash reserves.
Ad sales fall because the AI mania has made it clear that Big Tech does not care about humans, so humans go elsewhere.
Advertisers on the other hand are alerted to viewbotting with increasingly sophisticated AI "users".
It was clear already two years ago that the model of AI generated "content" that is watched by AI viewbots does not work. Of course Big Tech has to steam forward and find out the hard way.
Congrats, you have ruined the entire SV business model with your fantasies derived from cheap, horribly written SciFi novels.
As sales dropped probably because people ask their AI for answers and searches instead of Google…
Ad sales grew
Much lower than anticipated:
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/article/google-stock-pl...
why do people on HN hate AI so much?
I've found people on HN to be far more AI-tolerant than any other group of people I've encountered yet.
You can't think of any reasons not to like AI?
Personally, because it forced me to abandon my craft as programmer and become meat proxy ...soon to be replaced.
Because there are a lot of people on HN and the general population is very split on AI.
Well it’s currently negatively affecting my life in every aspect other than being an upgrade to searches.
I don’t discount its capabilities since around April of this year, it passed my bar for being able to do amazing things. But it has also made any interaction I’ve had with companies a living nightmare and appears to have permanently deleted my career and knocked me down 1-2 economic classes.
Personally because it’s made pc parts unaffordable or unobtainable.
Google makes a shitton of money with the same ol' click ads--same as in 2004. But with a bunch of other stuff added, like AI spending.
...and the stock falls 8% in after-hours trading.
this happens a 3-4 times a year and it bounces back within a few months
1. Cloud killed it.
2. Youtube meh, like always (weird that it doesn't kill it)
3. Search -- this was the issue. QonQ 0.1% <-- the whole story
Everyone has expected Search to, sooner or later, crack. This looks like it may be it.
If Google had 30B in revenue from coding tools and a few billion from Gemini Enterprise then there would be a story that Google could get through this.
But GDM didn't execute. And that's that.
Who knows the bottom. More than 10-15% seems unlikely. But if search cracks again next quarter then we'll see a real revaluing of the business.
Google did not have the proper focus on AI. They should have owned the space. But there were clearly management issues.
> Youtube meh, like always (weird that it doesn't kill it)
It's a huuuge training set, why would they kill that?
Kill it as in "awesome financial results"
Youtube has sucked for many years. I just don't know how much Google is responsible for it. Back in 2006, they were dealing with copyright battles (despite the fact they won their lawsuit against Viacom) so Google bought them to help them out with their resources. The site itself has tons of censorship and bad targeting on the recommended videos and I think Neal Mohan has made it even worse the last few years with more and more ads and Shorts and everything
Meh I bought the dip. Google has such giant moats. I’m still hugely long tech.
I'm sure Google will end up being one of the winners no matter what but man the market hates the stock. It was trading at 16 p/e before earnings and is now at like 14. Less than half of Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia.
TLDR; Alphabet hit negative free cash flow for the first time ever since going public.
Translation: even Google ... a company that basically has a license to print money (aka Google Search) ... is losing a ton of money on AI.
Negative free cash flow is not the same as losing money
Like others, desperate to make sure they're the next Google.
posting about negative free cash flow seems to be the new tell for those pretending to know what happens next in the AI era. this post included.