Facing ad boycott over its inaction to remove hate speech, Facebook shares surged over 7 percent after the social network reported net income of $5.18 billion as revenue jumped 11 percent to $18.69 billion from $16.89 billion a year ago.
On the other hand, things were gloomy for Google’s parent company Alphabet as it saw its revenue declining for the first time to $38.3 billion (down 1.7 percent from the year-ago period) in the quarter that ended June 30.
The company reported a net income of $6.96 billion in Q2 as Alphabet’s shares were up less than 1 percent after the report came out.
‘Business Has Been Impacted by COVID-19’: Facebook
“Our business has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and, like all companies, we are facing a period of unprecedented uncertainty in our business outlook,” Facebook said in a statement.
The monthly active users (MAUs) hit 2.7 billion while daily active users (DAUs) rose 12 percent to 1.79 billion (as of June 30).
Facebook said it counts 3.14 billion monthly users across its family of apps (Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp), compared to 2.99 billion in the first quarter.
Facebook expects total expenses in 2020 to be in the range of $52-55 billion, narrowed slightly from the prior range of $52-56 billion.
Google’s Cloud Business Grows
Google Search and others logged $21.3 billion in sales (down 9.8 per cent) while YouTube ads posted $3.81 billion in revenue (up 5.8 per cent).
Google Cloud registered revenue of $3 billion (up a massive 43 per cent).
“In the second quarter our total revenues were $38.3 billion, driven by gradual improvement in our ads business and strong growth in Google Cloud and other revenues,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google.
This announcement comes a day after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was grilled in front of the US Antitrust Committee as many of the representatives accused Google of aiding China’s artificial intelligence division and it also faced bipartisan criticism.
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