Google helps Alphabet to $21bn revenues

Profits also soar

Alphabet, Google's parent company, has reported strong sales and profits for the second quarter of its financial year, driven entirely by the Google business.

Overall revenue for Alphabet was up 21 per cent to $21.5bn, and Google accounted for $21.3bn of the sum. The rest came from the company's Other Bets business, which includes Nest, Fiber and Verily, which reported revenue of $185m.

This helped the company to a profit of $5.96bn, up 28 per cent year on year. Google generated all of this profit, and actually brought in $6.99bn. The Other Bets business lost $859m, bringing down the overall profit figure for Alphabet.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained that the strong growth was driven by the company's focus on mobile.

"There's an amazing energy right now at Google. The strength of the quarter is about mobile. It's transformed the way people consume information, and Google's products have become a central and much loved part of their experience," he said.

"Our investment in mobile now underlines everything that we do today, from Search and YouTube to Android and advertising. Mobile is the engine that drives our present.

"And now with our deep investments in machine learning and AI we are building the engine that will drive our future."

Pichai also touched on the firm's cloud business, claiming strong interest but declining to provide specifics on financial performance.

"Many tremendous digital experiences are being built in the cloud today, and businesses are working to take advantage of the cloud as part of their digital transformation," he said.

"We've been integrating our cloud and apps products to create more unified solutions for companies large and small, and these efforts are paying off."

Google's increase in revenue and profit pushed the firm's overall asset worth to $78.5bn, while headcount increased from 57,148 to 66,575.