YouTube ad revenues increased over last quarter, but growth is slower than in previous years as marketers reduced ad spend due to inflation and YouTube faced competition from short-form video giant TikTok.
Alphabet's advertising revenue increased only 12% overall, and YouTube sales only rose 5% compared to 84% in the same period in 2021. Google Cloud lost $858 million during the quarter; while competitor Microsoft's cloud services grew 40% this quarter. The company is also slowing its hiring.: "In the second quarter our performance was driven by search and cloud," CEO Sundar Pichai said in a release. "The investments we’ve made over the years in AI and computing are helping to make our services particularly valuable for consumers, and highly effective for businesses of all sizes.
"As we sharpen our focus, we’ll continue to invest responsibly in deep computer science for the long-term." Pichai, on an investor call, also highlighted increased use and new features for Safe Browsing and Google's password manager. He talked about increased opportunities for shopping on YouTube and growing views on YouTube Shorts, clear attempts at competing with Instagram and TikTok.