Alphabet by the Numbers – Q4 2015 Earnings Report

Monday’s results are the first time that Alphabet has broken its numbers into two segments – money earned in the core Google internet search and advertising business, plus everything else.

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google Inc., briefly overtook Apple on Tuesday to become the world’s most valuable company.

Porat referred to expenses related to “milestones” hit by some Alphabet “big bets” but declined to provide details or specifics on the earnings call. The ancestral Web deal with the search engine and online advertising is been separated from new ventures such as self-propelled cars or drones.

Porat also said when she was hired that she would reduce Alphabet’s expenses, and she followed through. It’s a massive business, but sales in the fiscal quarter increased only 1 percent from a year earlier, while iPad and Mac revenue dropped.

Yes, the company actually called them bets. “So we’ll continue to make long-term investments”.

Alphabet, the parent firm for Google, became world’s most valuable company today as a jump in its share price helped it vault past tech rival Apple.

Alphabet has positively surprised investors with its quarterly figures.

Meanwhile, Google’s email service, Gmail passed one billion users in Q4, joining six other services with over a billion users. However that has taken a battering lately because while Jobs’ Mob has not made anything new, Google has been going from strength to strength.

Notably, Pichai said the amount that Android customers spent on Google’s Play app store grew by 30% globally last quarter. Hartford Financial Management Inc. raised its position in Alphabet by 4.7% in the fourth quarter. Finally, Natixis Asset Management increased its stake in shares of Alphabet by 74.5% in the third quarter.

The company’s earnings from its “other bets”, the name given to the group of projects that includes self-driving cars and the Calico health project, hit $448 million (£311m) in 2015, but at a massive operating loss of $3.6 billion (£2.5bn). Its aggregate paid clicks were 31% YoY. According to Page, this was generated primarily by video advertising across TrueView and Google Preferred. That’s happened as advertisers shift to mobile advertising, which tends to cost less than desktop ads. Google is its bread and butter, but there’s also Alphabet’s fiber Internet business, its Nest division, and several others to carry the torch.