5 Crazy Things We Learned About Google Today On Alphabet's earnings call for the last quarter of 2017, the company revealed some eye-opening stats and made some big statements.
By Lydia Belanger •
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Google-parent Alphabet's revenue rose 24 percent year-over-year, to $32.32 billion, exceeding expectations. Net revenue also beat expectations, at $25.9 billion. And because of recent tax legislation in the last quarter, the company faced a net loss of $3.02 billion.
But to better illustrate those metrics and potential growth areas for the company, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat sprinkled in some more tangible numbers about the company's progress over the last quarter of 2017 and the year overall.
Related: The Surprising Ways Amazon, Apple and Microsoft Really Make Their Billions
The figures they shared reveal where the company is headed and how its investments in its "three biggest bets," -- hardware, cloud and YouTube -- have manifested themselves.
1. Google Assistant is now available on more than 400 million devices.
From the Google Home speaker to smartphones, tablets, headphones, televisions and even 400 different car models, the Google Assistant is finding its way into more and more devices.
Google has sold "tens of millions" of Google devices for the home over the past year, including the Google Home, Mini, Max and Chromecast.
"Our AI research and innovation leads the world," Pichai said during Thursday's earnings call. "Our mission to better organize the world's information has been transformed by these technologies, with our search products and the Google Assistant at the heart."
Pichai also noted that "There was a lot of excitement around the Google Assistant at CES from partners and consumers." (That was thanks in part to the company's aggressive advertising efforts in Las Vegas.)
2. People rang in the new year with 3 billion Google Photos.
"One area that's really benefiting from our advancements in AI is photography," Pichai said during Thursday's call.
He noted that the Pixel 2 phone employs machine learning and video stabilization to up the ante on smartphone video standards.
He also shared a crazy stat about Google Photos: More than 3 billion photos and videos were uploaded to Google Photos on New Year's Eve alone.
3. Google Cloud brings in $1 billion per quarter.
"Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud platform and G suite, has reached meaningful scale," Pichai said. "And I'm excited to share today that it's already a billion-dollar-per-quarter business. In fact, we believe that Google Cloud platform, based on publicly reported data for the 12 months ending December 2017, is the fastest-growing major public cloud provider in the world."
Also this quarter, Google surpassed 4 million paying customers on G Suite.
4. "Every month, more than 1.5 billion people come to YouTube.'
Those 1.5 monthly visitors are responsible for 1 billion "learning-related video views" daily, Pichai reported. Around the world, there are now localized versions of YouTube in 90 countries -- in 80 languages.
He also noted that more and more people are watching traditional television programs, such as news events, via YouTube. On Jan. 30, YouTube garnered 5 million live views of President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.
5. Google's self-driving car business clocked 1 million miles in the past six months.
Google's driverless car division, Waymo, has "surpassed 4 million miles of driving in the real world," Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat reported during the earnings call. It took the Waymo vehicles "only six months to achieve the last million miles, compared to about 18 months for our first million miles," Porat said.
Waymo self-driving vehicles cover 10,000 miles on public roads each day.
Porat reminded listeners that in November 2017, Waymo became the only fleet of driverless cars that operates completely autonomously.
In 2017, we drove an additional 2.7 billion miles in simulation, multiplying what we learn in the real world. (At its peak, that's 2,000 complex driving scenarios per second!). pic.twitter.com/ZJ3uCiGbLL
— Waymo (@Waymo) February 1, 2018
