Alphabet brought in almost $100 billion in Q4, and investors still aren’t satisfied

Last time we checked in on Google (or rather, parent company Alphabet) sharing financial figures, it was riding high on the Pixel 9 wave, and Q3 2024 numbers showed strong performance across Search, YouTube, and cloud efforts. While its momentum looked great at the time, this is also an industry where new players like DeepSeek can seemingly emerge overnight, throwing off everyone’s expectations. Now Alphabet has its Q4 figures ready to share, and this time around the company’s performance feels a little more nuanced.

Total Alphabet revenue for the quarter reaches about $96.5 billion, and while that’s absolutely up from the $86.3 billion reported across the same quarter last year, that does represent a slight slowdown in the rate at which revenue’s growing. The good news is that margins are up, as is income across major Google services: Search brought in $54 billion, while YouTube generated $10.4 billion.

Maybe the biggest problem, though, is Google’s relationship with investors. Bloomberg reports Alphabet shares down over 8% in the wake of today’s publication, largely driven by a failure to hit analyst sales targets, ultimately coming up a little over a billion dollars short. One specific failure identified there is in terms of cloud sales, which analysts hoped would see much more growth, driven by external interest in AI projects.

Instead, we see an Alphabet that’s doing some of its best business ever — just not satisfying the even loftier demands of investors. This past quarter saw some particularly special opportunities for Google to generate revenue, like the big boost in YouTube ad spending preceding last fall’s US elections. Going forward, though, the company might benefit from a renewed focus on sales that can create recurring income, rather than any more one-offs.

All told, Alphabet is looking at Q4 revenue coming in at a 12% year-over-year gain, with net income hitting $2.15 a share.