Alphabet Claims AI Boosts Search Volume Amid Q3 Growth
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire · Based on a photo by Austin McKinley (CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
CEO Sundar Pichai credits AI investments for the highest year-over-year search query growth rate in five years.
Alphabet reported Q3 2026 consolidated revenues of $127.6 billion, representing a 25 percent increase year-over-year, as The Verge first reported.
CEO Sundar Pichai attributed a surge in search activity to the company's AI investments, stating that these efforts are driving growth in overall search queries, including commercial ones. Pichai noted that the year-over-year query growth rate has reached its highest level in the last five years.
Financial results for the quarter showed that "Google Search & other" revenues rose 12 percent year-over-year. Google Cloud revenue saw a significant jump of 103 percent year-over-year, totaling $30.7 billion. Additionally, Alphabet reported surpassing 150 million global subscribers for YouTube Music and Premium, a figure that includes users on trials.
The earnings report comes after a series of product launches and organizational changes. The Verge reports that Alphabet recently released the Gemini 4 Argon frontier model, surpassed 1 billion monthly Gemini users, and launched the Pixel 11 smartphone line, a new Pixel Watch, and the first five Googlebook laptops. The company also renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook and implemented a leadership shift where former DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis moved into a chair role.