Alphabet beats Q1 earnings expectations

The biggest contributor to Google's revenue growth was mobile search.

Alphabet released its latest earnings report after closing bell tonight, posting earnings of $7.73 per share on $24.7 billion in revenue. Mobile advertisements are cheaper than desktop, but thanks to growing volume, the business is making up the difference. But on a conference call with analysts Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai touted the company's continued sales progress in both areas.

Alphabet's total revenue for the quarter was US$24.75 billion, including an nearly 50% increase for Google's "other revenues" to $3.10 billion.

Paid clicks, where an advertiser pays only if a user clicks on ads, rose 44 percent.

Alphabet's stock has soared this year, pushing it above a United States dollars 600 billion market cap this week for the first time, the report said.

Alphabet reported Q1 revenue of $24.75 billion billion (up 22% annually) and EPS of $7.73 (up 28%), topping consensus analyst estimates of $24.22 billion and $7.38.

The strong advertising performance is especially impressive considering there had been an advertiser boycott of YouTube by some firms, concerned at their ads appearing alongside videos carrying extremist, homophobic or anti-Semitic messages.

On the other hand, the "Google Other" reporting segment, which covers non-ad businesses such as Pixel phone sales, Google Play transactions and cloud apps and services, once more provided a lift. In 2015, Google's non-advertising revenue accounted for 9.6% of the Alphabet's revenue, and in 2016 it was 11.3% of total revenue. He says, "We're evolving overall to a better place and the feedback from our partners was very positive and constructive". It started investing in hardware, machine learning and cloud computing.

With the traditional business of search advertising maturing, the company is looking to YouTube as its next driver of growth. "That is quite an impressive achievement". And the company's Other Bets division - which includes things like Google Fiber and Nest smart thermostats - saw revenue jump 48% to $244 million.

Operating income rose 23 per cent to $6.57 billion with a 27 per cent margin, up from 26 per cent a year ago.