E-commerce pushes Google and YouTube to record profits

Alphabet has achieved record profits as it was able to sell more ads than expected, pushed forward by the growth of e-commerce. The owner of Google and YouTube now sees NFTs as new source of revenue.

NFT hype

This quarter is the fourth in a row in which Alphabet was able to announce record results, especially as working from home and online shopping become ever more popular. Revenue from online ads has grown by over 30 %, while profits even went up by almost 40 %. According to Belgian newspaper De Tijd, Google has been able to sell more online ads than any other company.

Not only Alphabet’s search engine Google was able to attract more customers, but video platform YouTube saw enormous growth as well. People around the world now watch fifteen billion Youtube videos per day, and especially the shorter formats (under a minute in length) have witnessed exceptional growth. The company sees NFTs as interesting source of revenue: viewers will able to buy non-fungible tokens of their favourite clips.

Alphabet plans to focus more on artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to make its advertising business even more powerful, CEO Sundar Pichai says. The chief executive does, however, express concerns about governments who are ever more “interfering” in matters of privacy and competition.