Google's corporate parent posts first-ever quarter with $100B in revenue
in latest show of its power
[October 30, 2025] By
MICHAEL LIEDTKE
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s corporate parent on Wednesday announced
its first-ever quarter with more than $100 billion in revenue, a
milestone that illustrates the unwavering power of its internet empire
amid legal and competitive threats.
The news of Alphabet Inc.’s accelerating growth in revenue and profit
comes on the heels of a court ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s
landmark monopoly case against Google’s dominant search engine that was
widely seen as a mild rebuke that wouldn’t hobble the company.
Alphabet performed like a powerhouse during the July-September period,
delivering a profit of nearly $35 billion, or $2.87 per share, a 33%
increase from the same time last year. Revenue rose 16% from last year
to $102.3 billion. Both figures easily exceeded the analysts'
projections that steer the stock market.
Investors celebrated the third-quarter numbers by driving up Alphabet’s
stock price more than 6% in Wednesday’s extended trading, setting the
stage for the shares to reach a new high during Thursday's regular
trading session.
The gains supplement a 30% surge in Alphabet’s shares that has created
nearly $770 billion in stockholder wealth since early September. That’s
when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a Justice Department
proposal to break up Google to curb the abuses of a search engine that
was declared an illegal monopoly last year.
Mehta’s cautious handling of Google’s search monopoly largely reflected
his belief that rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology
have already been spawning conversational “answer engines” from rising
tech stars such as ChatGPT and Perplexity that are giving consumers more
options.
ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and Perplexity have released AI-powered web
browsers to compete against Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser
that the Justice Department had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mehta
to order to be sold.
But Google has been implanting more AI features into both its search
engine and Chrome, as well as its other products, as part of its effort
to protect its turf while also expanding into new technological
frontiers. In a sign of the inroads those efforts are making, Alphabet
CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed Wednesday that Google's AI-powered Gemini
app now has 650 million monthly users.
“We are seeing AI drive real business results across the company,”
Pichai told analysts during a Wednesday conference call in which he
described Google being in “an expansionary moment.”
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speak at a Google I/O event in Mountain
View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
 Like other major tech companies,
Google has been bankrolling its AI ambitions with a spending spree
that has raised worries about a potential bubble that will
eventually burst. Alphabet now expects to budget $91 billion to $93
billion for capital expenditures this year, up from $85 billion in
its previous quarterly report issued in July, with most of the money
earmarked for the massive data centers needed to power AI.
Alphabet's chief financial officer, Anat Ashkenazi, told analysts to
expect a significant increase in the company's capital expenditures
next year and said more specifics will be provided in early 2026.
“In a world where AI-driven search volumes are steadily taking
market share and reshaping Alphabet’s legacy business, this report
makes it clear the company isn’t ready to give up its lead anytime
soon," said Investing.com analyst Thomas Monteiro.
Alphabet has the luxury of drawing upon a lucrative ad network that
Google has spent a quarter century building. Google’s ad sales
totaled $74.2 billion in the third quarter, a 13% increase from last
year.
The AI craze has been a boon for Google’s Cloud division that
oversees data centers for other companies, an endeavor that has
turned into the fastest growing part of Alphabet. Google Cloud
posted revenue of $15.2 billion in the past quarter, up 34% from
last year.
Although Google appears to have fared relatively well in the legal
attack on its search engine, it still faces a potentially damaging
blow in another case brought by the Justice Department against the
technology underlying its ad network.
After condemning parts of Google’s ad technology as an illegal
monopoly earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is
considering ways to handcuff the company in the future. The Justice
Department is seeking a court order to force Google to sell pieces
of its ad network — an issue that Brinkema isn’t expected to rule on
until early next year.
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