Thomas Kurian, CEO of Alphabet’s Google Cloud, speaks at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google in the cloud reported operating losses of $ 5.61 billion in 2020. It brought in revenue of $ 13.06 billion for that year.
This is the first time the company has revealed the value of operating income for its cloud business.
Unit losses appear to be rising as the company invests heavily in sales staff. The company said the cloud unit lost $ 4.65 billion in revenue of $ 8.92 billion in 2019 and lost $ 4.35 billion in revenue of $ 5.84 billion in 2018.
It lost $ 1.24 billion to $ 3.83 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Alphabet’s latest pressure to show that it is serious about its cloud drive comes as it tries to diversify revenue, which comes primarily from advertising, a business that has shown vulnerability in 2020 – especially in the second quarter. . Google Cloud includes data analytics infrastructure and platforms, collaboration tools such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and “other enterprise customer service.”
Wall Street sought additional financial details about the company’s cloud business, which Google pumped resources to develop, while being in a distant third place to the weight of Microsoft and Amazon. Google first broke its cloud revenue a year ago.
The company’s previous attempts to consolidate its cloud unit under the leadership of CEO Diane Greene, who left in 2018, failed to gain much market share. But since former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian came to Google to lead his cloud efforts in 2019, the company has continued to hire and acquire.