Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#111

Post by blueg3 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:16 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #26

throwaway_20357 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain how search revenue is still _growing_ in the age of LLMs?

Have you looked at the results for any commercial query, something like [sofa beds] or [hard drives]? It is basically 100% ads. Anything where the user is intending to spend money, they show only ads, and have all the top producers in the world bid against each other for who gets featured, and Google captures essentially all surplus value in the transaction. My wife is an investor, and one of her portfolio areas is p…

While I get that there a lot of ads -- particularly if you search for something with the intent to buy -- I tried out both of your example queries.

"sofa beds": Popular Products section (5x2 grid of chips) Reddit link: "Are sofa beds actually practical" Wayfair Reddit link: recommendations Wirecutter "Discussions and forums" section (Reddit and random crap) Ikea "In stores nearby" (5x1 of chips) "Deals on sleeper sofas" (5x2 of chips) "Things to know" section "Brands" (one row of chips) Furniture store Furniture store Furniture store "More products" (5x2 chips) Furniture store "People also search for"

None of these were marked as sponsored. I assume, but don't know, that the Popular Products chips are sponsored somehow.

"hard drive": Popular Products (5x2) Wikipedia Best Buy People Also Ask section Reddit: request for what brand is good Brand Picks for You (5x1) Things to Know section Amazon link PCMag reviews Reddit: "What exactly is HDD?" Brands section NYT review article What People Are Saying section (a weird mix of stuff) Wikipedia More Products section Store link People Also Search For section

None marked as sponsored.

Not that crazy for a vague, commercially-oriented search. Certainly not 100% ads.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#112

Post by blueg3 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

tempest_ wrote: post #86

martinald wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini is not reliable whatsoever: https://openrouter.ai/google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview/uptime (the orange chart is either AI studio or Vertex, I suspect AI studio, but it's not good either way). The reason you don't hear people complaining (esp on HN) is because noone is using Gemini with coding agents. Claude Code, Codex (and IMO OpenCode et al with open weights models) are miles ahead of Gemini CLI/Jules/Antigravit…

I tried gemini-cli. While the model was "ok" everything else was trash. Constant 429s or 502s for "reasons". 10 different ways to try and pay for the stupid thing and none of them clear. My favourite was as a paying customer I could not get it to use the latest model. Sometimes it would but most times it would dump me to 2.5. All of my experience is exactly the opposite of the gp comment is saying. The gemini-cli rep…

If you don't pay for it, you don't get much in the way of quota.

Earlier on (okay, until recently), Gemini CLI's quota management didn't work very well.

Antigravity tends to have better quota management behavior.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#113

Post by dyauspitr » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #7

Google grew revenue 22% YoY and operating income 30%, with growing margins. Search revenue still growing 19%, an acceleration vs YoY growth this time last year. Cloud grew revenue 63%. Cloud income up from $2.2b Q1’25 to $6.6b Q1’26. https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1sza7xi/alphabet_be...

That’s… insane. How is there this much upside left on a behemoth like Google.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#114

Post by dyauspitr » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:22 PM UTC

next_xibalba wrote: post #9

mgh2 wrote: post #7

Google grew revenue 22% YoY and operating income 30%, with growing margins. Search revenue still growing 19%, an acceleration vs YoY growth this time last year. Cloud grew revenue 63%. Cloud income up from $2.2b Q1’25 to $6.6b Q1’26. https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1sza7xi/alphabet_be...

I don't follow this stuff too closely, but Cloud growing by 63% seems astounding. It'd be interesting to know how much of that is converting AWS and Azure workloads to GCP.

I use Cloud Run a lot. It’s free up to 2M requests per month. It’s also very clean, scalable and very easy to set up.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#115

Post by bitpush » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:26 PM UTC

jdw64 wrote: post #94

bitpush wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Previously, content would appear in Google Search, visitors would come in, and creators could earn revenue through ads, courses, or other products. But now Google can answer directly through AI Overviews, making it harder for content creators to survive independently. This isnt a Google issue. Users are asking for it - ChatGPT and Perplexity did it first and it'd be crazy for Google not to do that. You could argue…

This makes sense from a financial perspective. But Google’s main service became centralized and convenient because it acted as the traffic gateway of the web. The moral question is a different matter. Suppose an electricity utility builds the power grid, and many businesses build their operations around that grid. Then later, the utility uses its privileged position in the grid to directly replace the businesses that…

> Suppose an electricity utility builds the power grid, and many businesses build their operations around that grid. Then later, the utility uses its privileged position in the grid to directly replace the businesses that depended on it. Would that be morally acceptable?

This analogy is incorrect. If someone wants to use bing.com, they just have to type b-i-n-g.com. You chose an example with high barrier to entry. So if the utility behaves poorly, the consumer cant switch.

Google did none of that.

You dont like google? go to ddg, bing, .. You dont like google maps? use apple maps .. You dont like youtube? .. go to tiktok, fb reels, and if you're a creator, upload it elsewhere.

---

You can say that Apple does a fantastic job of removing altnernatives. You dont like Apple Airpods? Good luck buying Sony to work the same way as Airpods with your iPhone.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#116

Post by crowcroft » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:52 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #106

crowcroft wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise is absurd. Search engines do exist, and search engines do allow tool calls. Try find an AI chat provider that doesn't connect web search to the agent.

Bing and google do not give you free and unlimited calls. And of course there are many clients… which harness lets you call bing or google on all devices locally? As far as the premise goes, people on this very site were saying it. The very parent is surprised search is growing.

[dead]

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#117

Post by arebop » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #90

arebop wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did it again in 2024 and then switched to continuous drip of small "layoffs" and encouraging attrition. They have tried various layoff flavors: random, strategic, political, voluntary, and now in their continuous microlayoff era good luck distilling a consistent simple explanation for the day to day decisions of many thousands of managers. Google has cost-cut their old hiring and performance management processes…

Link? I don’t recall any mass layoffs in 2024, and by mass I mean multi thousand

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034124/google-layoffs-e...

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#118

Post by amazingamazing » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 12:13 AM UTC

arebop wrote: post #117

amazingamazing wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link? I don’t recall any mass layoffs in 2024, and by mass I mean multi thousand

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034124/google-layoffs-e...

I’m talking multi thousand though. More than a few. Google has never done it other than that 2023 layoff. Google like all mega corps have layoffs all the time though sadly.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#119

Post by kingstnap » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 12:23 AM UTC

fancyfredbot wrote: post #85

halJordan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is losing money on inference these days. Google's vertical integration means that they have some of the lowest inference costs in the industry in any event.

Microsoft recently announced changes to copilot because, apparently, it was losing money on inference.

They were loosing money giving absurdly generous agentic usage on expensive models to people with $10 to $40 flat rate subscriptions.

They weren't selling inference.

Re: Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results

#120

Post by tempest_ » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 12:24 AM UTC

blueg3 wrote: post #112

tempest_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried gemini-cli. While the model was "ok" everything else was trash. Constant 429s or 502s for "reasons". 10 different ways to try and pay for the stupid thing and none of them clear. My favourite was as a paying customer I could not get it to use the latest model. Sometimes it would but most times it would dump me to 2.5. All of my experience is exactly the opposite of the gp comment is saying. The gemini-cli rep…

If you don't pay for it, you don't get much in the way of quota. Earlier on (okay, until recently), Gemini CLI's quota management didn't work very well. Antigravity tends to have better quota management behavior.

That is what was infuriating.

It was paid for through code assist enterprise and had all the flags enabled for the "preview" models. Still the only way to get gemini 3+ was to open and close the application 5 to 10 times and sometimes you would get 3 for a bit and then get dumped back to 2.5 and no matter what you do it would not use 3.

I tossed it after spending like 3 hours total messing around the google cloud console and trying a bunch of shit from the github issues. The other offerings don't waste my time (or waste less of it anyway). If they want me to beta test their shit they shouldn't charge for it.