Business News Roundup April 22
Google parent company Alphabet announced first-quarter earnings and revenue that fell below analyst projections Thursday, causing shares to fall more than 5 percent in extended trading.
Alphabet’s earnings rose 20 percent from last year to $4.2 billion, fueled by a huge advertising network that includes Google’s dominant search engine, Android’s ubiquitous operating system for smartphones, YouTube’s widely watched video service and Gmail.
Larry Page created Alphabet last year to oversee Google and a wide variety of other businesses delving into self-driving cars, Internet access, medical research and city management.
The two have been guiding Google through a sometimes rocky transition as people search for information less frequently on their personal computers and rely instead on smartphones and tablets.
The shift has driven down the average prices for the ads appearing alongside search results because marketers so far haven’t been willing to pay as much for space on the smaller screens of mobile devices.
Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring gains, were 68 cents per share.
The average estimate of 16 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 66 cents per share.