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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai walks to lunch at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 12, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday after the market closes.

Here’s what analysts are expecting:

  • Earnings: $1.59 per share, adjusted, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
  • Revenue: $85.33 billion, according to LSEG.
  • Google Cloud: $8.94 billion, according to StreetAccount.
  • YouTube ads: $9.21 billion, according to Street Account.
  • Traffic acquisition costs: $14.1 billion, according to StreetAccount.

Alphabet shares climbed to a record last week, joining Microsoft and Meta in rallying to fresh highs in January. Those climbs follow dramatic cost-cutting efforts that executives put in place in 2023.

Growth is accelerating, sparked by a rebound in the digital ad market and Google’s continuing dominance in mobile ads. But expansion remains meek by the company’s historic standards.

Analysts expect to see revenue growth of just more than 12% for the period that ended Dec. 31, from $76.05 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. That would be slightly above the growth rate for the third quarter and represent the strongest year-over-year increase since the first quarter of 2022. Between 2015 and the end of 2021, revenue growth reached at least 15% in all but three quarters.

YouTube is helping lift overall results, with revenue in that unit expected to jump 16% from $7.96 billion a year earlier. Google Cloud, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, remains a growth engine, with expansion expected to reach 22% from $7.32 billion.

“Our sense is retail and travel benefited Search spend in 4Q, while YouTube benefited from a stronger brand market,” analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a report on Jan. 28. They have the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock and increased their target price to $165 from $153.

Across Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai continues to focus on investments in artificial intelligence and embedding new generative AI tools into more of Google’s key products. To get there, Pichai has said the company has to make cuts elsewhere, which means more layoffs on top of 12,000 cuts last year, equal to roughly 6% of its full-time workforce.

In a memo earlier this month, Pichai warned employees that additional downsizing is coming this year, telling them that investing in its top priorities means “we have to make tough choices.” The company cut several hundred jobs in mid-January, affecting employees in areas including hardware and central engineering.

Wall Street has shown its confidence in Alphabet’s cost-cutting strategy as well as its ability to maintain its dominant internet business, even as generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT present consumers with new ways to access information. The stock price dipped in late 2022 and early 2023, in part due to concern that Google users would migrate elsewhere, but shares are up more than 9% this year after rallying 58% for all of last year. They closed Monday at $153.51.

In December, Google launched the large language model called Gemini, which it considers its largest and most capable AI model to date. The company is planning to license Gemini to customers through Google Cloud for them to use in their own applications. 

Tech investors will be focused on earnings this week from most of the top companies in the industry. Microsoft reports Tuesday, alongside Alphabet. Amazon, Apple and Meta are all scheduled to release quarterly results Thursday.

— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

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Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

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Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

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Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Omada Health smart devices in use.

Courtesy: Omada Health

Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.

Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.

Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.

Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.

The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.

But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.

Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.

In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.

“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. 

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Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”

The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.

Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.

“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.

Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.

Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.

The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

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