Google parent Alphabet nearly doubles annual profit

Google’s parent firm Alphabet announced quarterly profits that beat expectations and nearly doubled in 2021 — after a booming holiday season for the online ads giant facing anti-trust scrutiny, AFP reported.

Google dominance online has powered it to new heights during the pandemic period, but has also left it in the sights of regulators around the world.

The tech giant had net income of $20.6 billion on revenue that grew 32 percent to $75 billion in the final quarter of 2021, ending the year with a total of $76 billion in profit.

That was nearly double the $40 billion annual profit reported for 2020, as the pandemic had already accelerated a shift to online shopping, working and learning that also benefited fellow giants like Amazon and Facebook.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai cited “strong growth in our advertising business … a quarterly sales record for our Pixel phones despite supply constraints, and our cloud business continuing to grow strongly” for the success.

In all, Google earned more than $61 billion in advertising revenue, mostly from online search and its video platform, while its cloud business grew by 45 percent to $5.5 billion in revenue.

Alphabet’s strong earnings come after Apple, another pandemic-era winner, reported record revenue last week as markets were jittery about tech’s future as well as geopolitical risks like the Ukraine crisis.

However, regulators’ scrutiny around the world is stacking up as one of the most significant risks for the Silicon Valley giant.

“Google has the biggest uphill battle in terms of antitrust issues among all of the Big Tech companies,” Third Bridge analyst Scott Kessler wrote.

“Despite Apple’s bigger size and Meta/Facebook’s bad publicity, Google is seen most at risk in terms of US antitrust law,” he added.