6% revenue growth YoY. There was no way we were going to see a number anywhere close to 41% annual growth. That was an absurd comp to meet, so while it is lower than expected, Google brought in $69 Billion in a single quarter so I won't overthink this. YouTube was a bit weak, but we have been hearing about a slowdown in ad spend for basically the entire last year so I'm not really surprised at this.

Cloud growth continues to be strong, but it's still funded by the advertising business and the losses widened. The company continues to invest heavily here and the long-term opportunity should be the focus.

The most surprising piece from this report was the growth in number of employees (150k -> 187k). Management stated that they would slow hiring as they emphasize productivity and shift focus to certain product and business priorities. Operating income came in at 25% vs 32% the previous year, so the aggressive hiring seems to have been a little bit too enthusiastic.

Not a lot to be overly impressed about here, but I'm not really surprised by the results. Comps were very difficult and macro impacts are starting to show. The numbers are a little weak across the board relative to expectations, but nothing alarming. My biggest gripe with Google actually has nothing to do with their Q3 results, and everything to do with innovation.

Google Cloud will likely be the next cash cow, but they've been playing catchup with Amazon and Microsoft for years in the cloud space. The advertising business is obviously strong, but when are some of these other bets going to pay off? Google has launched countless products that haven't panned out, and very few that have become significant pieces of the business. Part of me views this as a positive, since the company is still bringing in $69 Billion in a single quarter in spite of this lack of innovation. I won't go so far as to suggest that Google is sort of stagnating, but it feels like we have been wondering when even a single one of these other bets will pay off for quite a long time.

Anyway, results seem so-so. Probably going to get a decent chance to add since this company is still a money printing machine.