and Alphabet — two big areas for increased investment are cloud infrastructure and AI initiatives. In their earnings reports, company executives walked a tightrope in reminding investors of the importance of spending in those areas while maintaining diligence with broader cost cuts.Google parent Alphabet has spent the past few months dealing with the types of cuts the company never had to experience in its first quarter-century.
"We've been through almost a year where that pivot that Satya talked about – from we're starting tons of new workloads, and we'll call that the pandemic time, to this transition post – and we're coming to, really, the anniversary of that starting," CFO Amy Hood said on the latest earnings call. "We're continuing to set optimization, but at some point, workloads just can't be optimized much further.
Jassy said that led the company to close its physical bookstores, 4-star stores and businesses like Amazon Fabric and, "where we didn't see a path to meaningful returns." He added Amazon has also altered some programs, like eliminating free shipping for grocery orders over $35. Executives said economic conditions affected advertising and mobile gaming, and they reiterated the company's decision to direct spending toward revenue drivers.