Google Cloud has made a profit for the first time in 15 years. In the first quarter of this year, the profit amounted to 191 million dollars (about 173 million euros). This is evident from the financial figures of parent company Alphabet. Google Cloud’s first-quarter revenue was $7.45 billion, a significant improvement from a year earlier when sales were $5.82 billion and losses were $706 million.
Google Cloud includes Google Cloud Platform, which leases servers, storage, and various other services to other companies to build and run software, as well as revenue from Google Workspace, the company’s productivity software. Until last quarter, Alphabet had made a loss in the cloud department. Last week, however, Alphabet filed a statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it is reviewing operating earnings for its cloud and other business segments, resulting in lower losses in 2021 and 2022.
The good news for Google Cloud offset declining ad revenues, which beat expectations at $54.55 billion, but were lower than the year before. Google Search and other revenue came in at $40.36 billion, up from $39.62 billion in the prior year, while YouTube’s ad revenue fell slightly to $6.69 billion.
Google is soon set to equip its Search engine with a Chat AI, according to its CEO.