The European Commission recently hit Google with a $5bn fine for anti-competitive behaviour around its Android platform, although the company is planning to appeal. How much would the fine hurt its parent company Alphabet if that appeal fails?
The company’s financials, which were announced yesterday, give us some idea. Alphabet reported revenues of $32.66bn for the second quarter of this year, and excluding the fine, a net profit of $8.27bn.
Including the fine (which was $5.07bn at the time the report was prepared) that means a quarterly net profit of $3.2bn still. Alphabet’s revenues were up 26% year-on-year.
Notes of interest from Alphabet’s earnings call? Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that “We launched our revamped YouTube Music service across 17 countries, and it’s receiving great feedback from users and artists” (but with no figures on early subscriptions).
He also said that the Google Assistant voice-assistant will be available in 30 languages and 80 countries by the end of 2018.
There were no general figures for YouTube, but Pichai said that “we definitely are continuing to see great product momentum, it’s the user adoption and interest, and our metrics are very strong, continues to grow and the growth is global”.
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