Google Posts Strong Earnings as Threats Mount

By Rob Copeland

Google's parent overcame recent challenges to post strong earnings as an impending antitrust investigation threatens to choke the search giant's online-advertising spigot.

Alphabet Inc. reported revenue of $38.9 billion, up 19% over the same period last year. The metric beat analyst expectations and defied bearish prognostications stemming from the company's rare earnings miss a quarter earlier.

At 21 years old, Google is hardly a technology up-and-comer any longer, and this year a series of colliding challenges threaten to take a toll. Advertising growth is slowing over the long term, pinched by rising competition and costly changes to important units like YouTube.

Meanwhile, forays in tertiary areas like cloud computing and hardware bleed resources, while U.S. prosecutors this week tipped the start of a broad new review into whether tech giants like Google are abusing their dominance.

Alphabet stock is the worst-performing this year among large tech peers. Shares bounced back after hours Thursday, up 6%.

Write to Rob Copeland at rob.copeland@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 25, 2019 16:43 ET (20:43 GMT)

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