Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet's third-quarter earnings call that the company's AI spending is driving more people to search. Year-on-year query growth is now the highest in five years, he said, and he credited AI features for the increase.
Revenue and Cloud
Alphabet's quarterly revenue rose 25 percent year on year to about $127.6 billion. Pichai said the company is now on a 'half-trillion dollar revenue run rate', as reported by WRAL, citing the earnings statement.
Google Cloud was the standout. Its revenue rose 103 percent to $30.7 billion, which Pichai attributed to heavy demand for AI infrastructure and solutions. He said Google is working to add capacity to keep up. Google Search and other advertising revenue grew 12 percent to about $63.3 billion, WRAL reported.
How AI is changing search
Pichai said Google is merging AI Overviews, AI Mode and traditional Search into one experience. Users are asking longer, more detailed questions and increasingly searching by voice, image and document. AI Mode queries run about three times longer than traditional ones. Also, one in five AI Mode searches involves voice, images or documents, and that Google now handles more than 50 billion visual searches a month.
Gemini growth
The Gemini app has reached one billion users, which Pichai described as the fastest growth of any product in Google's history.
Pichai said Gemini 4 Argon, launched recently, drew far heavier usage than Gemini 3 despite limited capacity. He said that developer usage in its first week grew three and a half times faster. Pichai also called Gemini 4 Carbon Google's strongest frontier model, per Digit. It will first go to selected cybersecurity experts before wider release.
Pichai said Google's own teams are benefiting too. Digit reported that teams across Chrome, Ads and Search used Argon to ship 35 percent more code with 30 percent fewer errors. He expects further acceleration over the next 12 months and said more models are coming, including more efficient versions for developers.
YouTube remains leading streaming platform
YouTube remains the leading streaming platform in the US by television watch time, Pichai said. Its music and premium services have passed 150 million subscribers, including trial users. YouTube ad revenue rose 9 percent to $11.2 billion.
