Alphabet 'A'

Alphabet reported negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion, partly driven by massive AI and data‑center investments and the buildup of inventory for its own TPUs. Google Cloud grew 103% to $30.7 billion and has a backlog of $561 billion, more than half of which is expected to convert to revenue within two years. The cash outflows therefore reflect not only ongoing expenses but front‑loaded spending for future cloud and AI revenue; the key question is whether these investments can be translated into higher revenues and margins. » More on deraktionaer.de

Google reports search queries growing fastest in five years, yet search revenue growth slowed to 12% year-over-year in Q3 and paid-click growth fell to 8%. Google says many AI Mode queries are incremental and it is expanding ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode, but those queries currently monetize at a lower rate than traditional searches. Advertisers still report acceptable returns, but investors worry about the cost of Google's AI push as Alphabet shares fell and the company spends heavily on AI infrastructure. » More on theverge.com

Google has extended the severance program that has been running since June in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland to offset rising costs for building new AI data centers. Alphabet recently recorded a negative free cash flow of about $9 billion and plans up to $205 billion in data center investments for 2026. The offers apparently do not apply to the strategic cloud unit and DeepMind, and Google gave no details on how many offers have been accepted so far. » More on wiwo.de