Alphabet announced earnings last night with a whopping 25.6 percent quarterly y/y revenue growth (23 percent on a constant currency basis).   See earnings release here.

It is stunning to us that an almost $900 billion market cap company can grow this fast.    The quarterly increase in revenues relative to the 2017 quarterly was larger than the entire 2018 GDP of  Montenegro.

AI

The CEO,  Sundar Pichai, opened his remarks and spent a lot of time on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is at the center off all things these days,

The common thread you’ll hear on today’s call is the benefit of machine learning and AI, and how it’s improving our products and generating great results for our users and partners.

..,Today, I’ll start with how AI is enabling us to advance the mission of making information accessible and useful to everyone in new ways. Then, I’ll share updates on our computing, video and advertising platforms which are helping our partners succeed and grow. And finally, I’ll talk about our growing cloud business.

Let’s begin with AI helping our mission. We revamped the Google News app in May to create reviews. It uses machine learning to highlight top stories organized for users, explore topics more deeply with articles from a range of clustered news sources. We believe in the need to deliver high-quality information and news to users, and to support the news industry as we do so.

The Google Assistant is another the great product based on machine learning. By the end of this year, it will be available in more than 30 languages and 80 countries. We have worked with partners to expand the number of smart devices that are now compatible with the Google Assistant like doorbells, dryers, refrigerators and more, and connect with more than 5,000 devices in the home.

At Google I/O, we also highlighted how AI is improving Google Maps, including enhancing the experience with Assistant and AR features. Through our improvements in machine learning, we have seen a 25x increase in our ability to build maps algorithmically, and we have added 110 million algorithmically drawn buildings to Maps, since the beginning of this year. And with over 1 billion users, we’re continuing to see tremendous growth in maps with especially strong growth in countries like Indonesia, India and Nigeria, each of which are growing over 50% year-on-year.

There are many more great AI powered features we rolled out this quarter including the new version of Gmail with Smart Compose, a new features that helps users craft emails faster. And Google Photos now suggests actions to help you brighten, share, rotate or archive a picture.  – Sundar Pichai, Earning Conference Call

Conference Call

Here is the word cloud from the overall conference call and just the Q&A section.

Overall 

Q&A

Stock

The stock gapped up at opened, which looks like the high for the day and is now down 2 percent off that high.

Yesterday’s price action looked like a breakout of a classic cup-and handle.   Today’s action doesn’t look of feel like a gap and go, and may spend the next few weeks filling that gap.

The close is what matters, however.