Sundar Pichai says Google Search's AI Overviews now has over 2 billion monthly users
Search, Google’s largest business, delivered double-digit revenue growth, aided by new features such as AI Mode, which launched in the United States and India
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Alphabet reported a strong second quarter, with growth across its sprawling business, as the company’s aggressive push into artificial intelligence fuels its core products and newer bets, including cloud and autonomous driving. “Q2 was a standout quarter for us, with robust growth across the company,” Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, said during the company’s earnings call. “As you saw at I/O, we are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace. AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum.”
Search, Google’s largest business, delivered double-digit revenue growth, aided by new features such as AI Mode, which launched in the United States and India. “AI Overviews now has over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages,” Pichai noted, adding that the company’s new AI features are prompting users to search more frequently, particularly among younger audiences.
At the same time, YouTube showed strength in both advertising and subscriptions, with the company reporting that Shorts, its short-form video product, now earns as much revenue per watch hour as traditional instream ads in the United States. “In some countries, it now even exceeds instream's rate,” Pichai said.
Google Cloud, the company’s fastest-growing division, continued to benefit from what Mr. Pichai described as “significant demand for our comprehensive AI product portfolio.” The unit, which has an annual revenue run rate of more than $50 billion, has seen large customer deals double year-over-year, with the number of new Google Cloud Platform customers rising by nearly 28% quarter-over-quarter. “Nearly all gen AI unicorns use Google Cloud,” Pichai said.
The company’s focus on artificial intelligence extends beyond product launches to the underlying infrastructure that powers these offerings. “We operate the leading global network of AI optimized data centers and cloud regions,” Pichai said, emphasizing that the company’s investments in AI accelerators and optimized software packages are designed to meet growing demand while improving performance and efficiency.
Google’s Gemini models, which Pichai described as providing “industry-leading performance in nearly every major benchmark,” have been integrated across the company’s offerings, from Workspace to the Gemini App, which now has over 450 million monthly active users. In June alone, more than 50 million people used AI-powered meeting notes in Google Meet, and Google’s new video generation model, Veo 3, has been used to create over 70 million videos since May.
The company also highlighted continued momentum in Waymo, its autonomous driving unit, which launched in Atlanta last month while expanding its service areas in Austin, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads,” Pichai said.
The company sees artificial intelligence as central to its future. “This is all possible because of the long-term investments we've made in our differentiated, full-stack approach to AI,” Pichai said. “This spans AI infrastructure; world-class research, models and tooling; and our products and platforms that bring AI to people all over the world.”
As Alphabet moves deeper into AI-powered products, the company signaled plans to “keep enhancing the AI Mode experience for users by shipping great features, fast,” with improvements such as Deep Search and personalized responses in Search, while expanding AI-powered features across YouTube, Workspace, and Android.
