Google revenues up 20 per cent on mobile and YouTube ads

Alphabet's total profits in Q3 were $5.7bn

Alphabet made $22,451bn in revenues in the third quarter of its 2016 financial year, a 20 per cent year-on-year increase.

Almost all this revenue ($22,254bn) came from Google. Google itself made a profit of $6.7bn from these revenues, but losses in other areas of Alphabet's business brought the total profit down to $5.7bn.

Alphabet's Other Bets division took a hit of $865m, a little less than the $980m it lost last year, as revenues in the division rose slightly from $141m to $197m.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said mobile and video search were key to the huge growth Google had experienced over the past three months compared to the year ago quarter.

"YouTube continues to shine. More than one billion monthly users are watching hundreds of millions of hours every single day. YouTube has become the platform of choice for major brands, with a highly engaged audience, the best formats, and industry-leading measurement tools," he said.

"One format that's been working really well for ad prices are bumper ads, which are snackable, six-second videos that help brands drive incremental reach and frequency."

However, Google was less forthcoming about the performance of its cloud services, with no specific insights on its performance, beyond Pichai talking up its wider impact.

"As we officially move into the Google Cloud era, our goal remains the same. We want to build the most open cloud for all businesses and make it easy for them to build and run great software," he said.

"The team is firing on all cylinders to create the best cloud products in the industry for our customers."

Public cloud is one of the major areas where Google is competing with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and it faces it a tough fight, with both rivals also seeing strong growth and continually updating features and adding partners to meet firms' needs.