Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches
The Verge Jay Peters
Google says its AI spending is helping push search queries higher. Alphabet says the growth is the strongest in five years, even as ad and cloud numbers keep climbing.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Jay Peters — read the original for the full story.
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Alphabet says its bet on AI is showing up in Search. In its Q3 2026 earnings, the company said those investments are driving overall search query growth, including commercial queries, and CEO Sundar Pichai called the year-over-year query growth rate the highest it has been in five years.
That claim sits alongside a strong quarter on the top line. Alphabet posted $127.6 billion in consolidated revenue, up 25 percent from a year earlier. The Google Search & other business was up 12 percent year-over-year, which is still the core cash machine here. And Google Cloud keeps looking less like a side bet and more like a second engine, with revenue rising 103 percent to $30.7 billion.
The interesting part is the way Alphabet is framing AI not as a replacement for search, but as fuel for more of it. More queries, including commercial ones, are exactly the kind of traffic that matters when the company is trying to prove AI can strengthen the old business instead of cannibalizing it.
Alphabet said a lot more in the earnings release, but the main message was pretty simple: the AI spend is not just a promise on a slide deck. It is, at least by Alphabet’s numbers, feeding demand.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the oldest Silicon Valley trick in the book: spend like mad on the future, then point to the familiar product and say it’s healthier than ever. Alphabet can afford that story because Search still prints money, and Cloud is finally growing fast enough to play along. The real test is whether AI keeps boosting query volume without turning search into a more expensive magic trick.
Read more about this at: The Verge
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