Alphabet tops $200 billion in yearly revenue for the first time ever

Google parent company Alphabet Inc. crossed the $250 billion mark primarily because its internet advertising and cloud computing businesses did a sustained growth during the pandemic. The company saw a 41% growth in its annual revenues at $257 billion in 2021. The firm also reported revenue of $75.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, up by 32% from the same period a year ago. Its net profit also surged by more than 9% during Q4 2021 at $20.6 billion.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google reckoned that the fourth-quarter results saw strong growth in the advertising business, which helped millions of businesses thrive and find new customers. He also attributed the growth to the quarterly sales record for its Pixel phones despite supply constraints, as well as the recurrent growth in its cloud business. 

Google doesn’t provide a breakup in its consumer devices like Pixel smartphones and Nest smart home devices into their own categories in its earnings reports. The company had launched Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro last year in the global markets.

However, during the fourth quarter, the YouTube advertisement division posted $8.63 billion revenue and the cloud unit’s revenue went up by 45% at $5.54 billion in the same period, revealed the California-based tech giant. Alphabet’s ‘Other Bets’ division, which includes its self-drive car vertical Waymo, earned $181 million in 2021. 

Ruth Porat, CFO of Google and Alphabet opined that the Q4 growth reflected broad-based strength in advertiser spend and strong consumer online activity, as well as substantial ongoing revenue growth from Google Cloud.

He maintained, “Our investments have helped us drive this growth by delivering the services that people, our partners and businesses need, and we continue to invest in long-term opportunities.” 

Meanwhile, Alphabet has also reaffirmed that it is betting big on the Indian market. “A year ago, we announced a $10 billion Google for India Digitization Fund. And it’s a reflection of our confidence in the future of India, its digital economy, our desire to build products there, which we think will help us globally,” said Pichai in an analyst call. 

“When I look at YouTube in India, some of the commerce ideas we talked about earlier, you may see as first stride in India first because we can get quicker feedback, very dynamic, youthful population.”