Google beyond Search: These $100 billion businesses prove

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said that the Alphabet-owned company is expecting YouTube and Cloud business to clock over $100 billion in revenue by the end of 2024, as the company reported a revenue of $80.5 billion for the quarter ended March (1Q 2024).

“It took Google more than 15 years to reach $100 billion in annual revenue.

In just the last six years, we have gone from $100 billion to more than $300 billion in annual revenue. Of course, Search continues to power that as you see in our Q1 results. But in addition, we expect YouTube overall and Cloud to exit 2024 at a combined annual run rate of over $100 billion,” Pichai said during Alphabet's first-quarter earnings call.

Why these YouTube, Cloud business numbers are important
The tech giant's Q1 results were led by strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud. The company already rides on the success of Search and YouTube as well as its Cloud business may prove to be new money-raking services for the search giant.

“This shows our track record of investing in and building successful new growing businesses," Pichai added. Google's parent Alphabet reported a revenue of $80.5 billion for the quarter, which is up 15% year-on-year. Revenue from Search stood at $46 billion, Cloud at $9.5 billion and YouTube at $8 billion.

According to Alphabet's chief business officer Philipp Schindler, the revenue increase was also driven by strong growth in YouTube subscriptions. In February, YouTube announced that it crossed more than 100 million paid subscribers across YouTube Premium and YouTube Music – up from 80 million in November 2022.

YouTube is also continuing with its measures to crack down on ad blockers and ‘pushing’ users to buy subscriptions for ad-free experience. Meanwhile, Google announced various AI-powered tools and services at its “Google Next 2024” event.