Earnings Labs

Alphabet Inc. (GOOG)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 23, 2015

$348.25

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Alphabet, Inc. Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Ellen West, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ellen West

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Alphabet’s conference call on Google’s third quarter 2015 earnings. With us today are Ruth Porat and Sundar Pichai. As you know, we distribute our earnings release through our Investor Relations website located at investor.google.com. Please refer to our IR website for our earnings releases as well as the supplementary slides that accompany the call. This call is also being webcast from investor.google.com. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. Now, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. Some of the statements that we make today may be considered forward-looking, including statements regarding Alphabet’s future investments, our long-term growth and innovation, the expected performance of our businesses, and our expected level of capital expenditures. These statements involve a number risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our Form 10-K for 2014 filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today’s earnings press release. The press release and an accompanying investor presentation are available on our website at investor.google.com. And now, I’ll turn the call over to Ruth.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Ellen. We turned in a strong performance in the third quarter, notwithstanding continued meaningful currency headwinds. The key highlight this quarter was the substantial growth of our mobile search revenue complemented by ongoing strong contributions from YouTube and our programmatic business. I will first give you a summary of the quarter, followed by specific financial details and conclude with comments regarding our upcoming move to segment reporting. Sundar will then review the business and product highlights of the quarter, after which we will take your questions. Beginning with the summary of our financial performance, total revenue was $18.7 billion up 13% year-over-year and up 5% sequentially. As a result of the ongoing strengthening of the U.S. dollar, we realized a negative currency impact on our revenues of $1.6 billion or $1.3 billion after the benefit of our hedging program. Holding currency constant to prior periods, our total revenue grew 21% year-over-year and 7% sequentially. On a GAAP basis, operating profit was $4.7 billion and the operating margin was 25%. On a non-GAAP basis, operating profit was $6.1 billion and the operating margin was 33%. GAAP operating income was up 26% versus last year and GAAP net income from continuing operations was up 36% year-over-year. As a reminder, the year-on-year increases reflect a non-cash impairment charge of $378 million in the third quarter of 2014. Non-GAAP operating income was up 15% year-over-year and non-GAAP net income was up 19% year-over-year. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $5.73; non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $7.35. As detailed in the earnings slides on our IR website, stock-based compensation totaled $1.4 billion, up 14% year-over-year and up 27% sequentially. With respect to stock-based compensation, the increase reflects the fact that our annual equity refresh grants were made in the third quarter as well…

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Ruth. I’m glad to be here with you all today to talk about the areas we are focused on now and in the future at Google. There is a real sense of energy and focus throughout the company and we’re seeing momentum across our businesses. Products like Search, Android, Maps, Chrome and YouTube each have over a billion users already, and Google Play crossed that milestone this quarter as well. But what’s most exciting is that we are just beginning to scratch the surface. We know that computing transforms people’s lives, we’ve gone from the PC revolution to the Internet revolution to the mobile revolution. And 10 years from now, everything will be different again in ways no one can predict. Our vision is for Google to remain a place of incredible creativity and innovation that uses a unique technical expertise to tackle big problems and create that future. We do this, arm-in-arm with our partners around the world. Today, I want to touch on three key areas that are important for us; first, making information accessible and useful; then how we are building computing platforms used by billions of people; and lastly, how we are driving growth in our core advertising business as well as new emerging businesses. Let’s start with the first area. Google’s core mission has always been to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Search continues to be at the center of this with people turning to search on mobile every day to find quick answers, in fact search traffic on mobile phones have now surpassed desktop traffic worldwide. We are also seeing strong mobile momentum in many emerging markets like India, which is a number two country for mobile search queries behind the U.S. This is the result of…

Ruth Porat

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you, Sundar. And we will now take your questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Mark Mahaney from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks. Two questions, could you talk about the sustainability of the mobile search revenue growth that you see there? And is that just really been driven by finally the gapping up of kind of mobile search pricing versus desktop pricing or is there something else going on? And then, Ruth, I was just trying to figure out how you came up with that - your repurchase number and I’ve been Googling that number a couple of times. I can see it’s 26 to the E18 of the square root of that, but outside of that, how did you come up with that particular amount of share buyback? Why not more and why not less? Thanks.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Mark. So starting on the sustainability of mobile revenue growth, as I said, in my opening comments, revenue growth really reflects continued improvement in ad formats and delivery. And that’s on top of what’s a really strong industry-wide global growth in mobile usage as you know well. And then we regularly adjust the way we present ads. So we expanded ad space in some queries with particularly high commercial intent to display more relevant mobile friendly ads. And our view is just as we saw consumer behavior change on desktop we are seeing the same on mobile. And as Sundar said, we continue to believe we’re in very early innings here. And then in terms of sizing, so this is the way we approached it. If I take you back to the capital framework that I laid out last quarter, it’s defined primarily by CapEx and M&A, but also includes working capital and a buffer as well as a potential return of capital. And we remain focused on solving the biggest problems and solving them at scale and that presents sizable potential revenue opportunities. It was a key catalyst for creating Alphabet. But these opportunities also require investment. And so the focus of our team is on prioritizing these opportunities over a multiyear period. We look out, kind of as we’re modeling it out a number of years. And then working with the Board we reviewed our outlook. We reviewed the opportunity set and we concluded that layering in this action at this time complements what we view as a very disciplined budgeting process, while still very importantly providing ample capacity to pursue the growth agenda. And then, applying this framework once we had come up with the size that we believe fits and consistent with the way we do things around here, we decided to come up with some fun math similar to the way we approach sizing the IPO, which sounds like you’ve fit back right into what that was. We do view it as the right action at the right time. And it really is anchored in the framework.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Ruth.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ross Sandler from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ross Sandler

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks. I have one for Ruth and one for Sundar. Ruth, so back to the mobile search question, the bear-case on Google has been the company’s ability or lack thereof to port the search business model from PC over to mobile. And you called out mobile search is the key driver of acceleration in both the U.S. and UK. So can you just give us a little bit of more color around the volume trends that you are seeing between desktop and mobile as you cross that 50% threshold that you talked about last quarter. And then, Sundar, on the platform side, it seems like every few years new company crop up as the next big Android OEM. Looks like it’s Huawei now. It’s been other companies in the past. How do you plan on getting Android to a point where all these OEMs can build successful businesses on the back of it? And any update on when Google plans to roll out the Play Store in China would be helpful. Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

So starting with mobile and our outlook there, clearly, as I said, mobile search revenue was up significantly and it was an important catalyst in the quarter. But the very important thing to note, as we discussed also last quarter, is that desktop remains a solid contributor. And so we continue to have a healthy growth there. And when we look, if you step back, overall sites revenue, we’re firing on all cylinders, really strong growth in mobile, desktop is healthy and continuing to grow. And then you layer on top of it YouTube and some of the color that Sundar added there. But that’s really a continuation of what we talked about last quarter as well.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

And on the platform side, look, we continue to see tremendous momentum overall on Android. In just over a year, we’ve gone from 1 billion to 1.4 billion users. So obviously that translates into huge opportunities for OEMs and that’s what we are seeing. Especially, there are whole new markets opening up, there’s next billion users coming online in emerging markets. And businesses, I mean, Enterprises, a whole opportunity for OEMs as well. So I think there is a lot of room ahead.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Carlos Kirjner from Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Carlos Kirjner

Analyst · Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you. I have two questions as well, one for Sundar and one for Ruth. Sundar, in two parts, if you take a three-year view what are the three main milestones you think you need to reach to be successful as Google’s CEO? And what you think would be the externally observable consequences of achieving these milestones? And Ruth, in the last call, you talked about the 70/20/10 framework. Can you help us understand what 70/20/10 applies to? Is it related to operating expenses, or expenses in cost in the P&L, CapEx, R&D, management time? And is it an explicit constraint in the budgeting process or am I trying to read too much into something that’s just a concept of framework and a broad guideline? Thank you.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Carlos. In terms of how I think about it, I think we are fortunate to have an incredibly broad mission statement. Organizing the world’s information turns out to be something that has a lot of room ahead, we are still in the early days. Especially with mobile I think you have a computing platform that’s going to reach, it’s already reached half the world’s population or on its way to reach the entirety of the human population in about five to 10 years. So want to stay focused on that both from information standpoint and a computing standpoint, I think of them as two sides of the same coin, and making sure we are building the right user experience for that. And so that’s what I’m focused on.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

And then on 70/20/10 it’s intended to be instructive and it’s intended to mirror the founders’ vision and really capture how we devote our resources, which for us means, how do we apply effort. And for me, one of the many very important statements from the founders that explains this framework is when they said in the letters some years ago and repeated since, incrementalism in technology leads to irrelevance and thus innovation is critical. And so this mantra is really about pushing people to look at new areas, invest in newer areas, look for things that are adjacent the 20% and even the unrelated big bets, the 10%. It’s not intended to be a specific guide to financial modeling. I think with our move to segment reporting, we look forward to giving you more information next quarter which should be helpful there, but directionally to talk about philosophically how do we think about our approach to the business.

Carlos Kirjner

Analyst · Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Heather Bellini from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Heather Bellini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you very much. This question is for Ruth. I was just wondering given you’re likely in the midst of 2016 business planning right now. Can you share with us the way in which you’re approaching budgeting versus maybe how it was done last year? And are there any specifics you can share with us in terms of how you’re thinking about it? Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Well. I guess a couple of things, there has been a very strong foundation here on budgeting and the approach and setting an envelope, and working very closely with business leaders on what that that envelope should be, and we are in the midst of it in. As I said last quarter, but to emphasize our priority remains revenue growth and that doesn’t give us a pass on a rigorous approach to expense growth, and that’s where we’re focused. So I think really what was very encouraging for me is there is a framework, a very strong approach to financial planning and analysis, and really building on that to make sure we have reasonable but tight envelope so that we can have the right conversations collectively, collaboratively with our business leaders to assess how we can look at optimizing all of our resources, and that’s what it really comes down to, it’s looking at how to manage the rate of growth of expenses, while still supporting our growth initiatives and we’ll be going into more of that in as we go through our segment reporting in the fourth quarter.

Heather Bellini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Brian Nowak from Morgan Stanley Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Nowak

Analyst · Morgan Stanley Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks for taking my questions. One on YouTube, I guess could you talk some of the qualitative drivers that are really bring more advertising dollars on the YouTube. And then, I think last quarter you’d mentioned top 100 advertisers spend was up 60% year-on-year on YouTube. I’m wondering if you could update us on that? And the second one, on Search, sounds like mobile is accelerating, where you now in the mobile versus desktop monetization gap. And Sundar, how do you think about that long-term, you see mobile being higher, reaching equilibrium, how do you see that trending?

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Morgan Stanley Your line is now open. Please go ahead

On the YouTube one, look I mean to shift to video is a profound medium shift, and especially in the context of mobile. And obviously users are following that you’re seeing it in YouTube as well as elsewhere in mobile. And so advertisers are being increasingly conscious, they’re being very, very responsive. And so we are seeing great traction there, and we’ll continue to see that, they are moving more of their traditional budgets to YouTube and that’s where we’re getting traction. On mobile search - to me - increasingly we see - we already announced that or 50% of our searchers are on mobile. Mobile gives us very unique opportunities in terms of better understanding users and over time as we use things like machine learning, I think we can make great strides. So my long-term view on this is, it is ask compelling or in fact even better than the desktop, but it will take us time to get there, and we’re going to be focused to be get that.

Brian Nowak

Analyst · Morgan Stanley Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Eric Sheridan from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks for taking the question, maybe a big picture question with respect to media distribution, media consumption and monetizing that you should across all the platforms that you distribute media. I’m so curious about the various business models you’re now putting in front of consumers, subscription versus advertising versus paper unit like on Google Play. How you think about the about the pros and cons and some of those distribution models? And do how think about the need to may be source content yourself for media distribution? Thanks.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks. To me, we want to stay focused on the user experience and we want to follow what users want, right. So if you take something like YouTube, we expect most users to consume, YouTube debate has been and advertising has been a strong part of providing the content for free to those users, and it’s growing very, very well, but we also see a need for certain users, in certain scenarios be it music or gaming or for premium content to experience it in a different way. And we want to make sure we do that. So we don’t have a prescriptive opinion on this as much as we will provide the right user experience and follow where it goes, and that applies to Google Play as well.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Justin Post from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Justin Post

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you. Two things, Ruth, it really does seem like there’s been a change in the management philosophy this year as far as kind of expense discipline into 2Q, also have seen the disclosures and now you get the buyback announcement. Could you talk about the change there, if there has been one, and how you think about that? And then the second thing, we were pretty focus on the cloud over here, Google. We don’t have a number. It’s in your other revenues, but Amazon is probably $8 billion plus run rate, Microsoft over $1.5 billion. Just wondering you can give us any thoughts on your cloud strategy and how you’re thinking about using those really strong data center assets? Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

So I guess, there were a couple of things, on expenses and expense management and clearly a lot of the foundation here has - was laid some time ago. I think after a period of big expense buildup, there was an appreciation that we needed to manage the cadence of spend. And that’s what we’re doing and collectively we’re locked arm-in-arm to make sure that there’s resource prioritization. I think that’s an important part of that we have an extraordinary set of opportunities, not just within Google but across the Alphabet businesses, and we need to ensure that prioritization is a key part of all that that we do. I would note that when you’re looking at some of the expenses, operating expenses is an example. When we look forward to the fourth quarter, in particular given the hardware launches that we’ve done here with the Nexus Chromecast and Pixel launches, a consistent with prior device launches we would expect higher sales and marketing and I realized I’m getting a little more specific than your question, but I think it’s very important to note that there are also certain patterns to some of these similarly with CapEx, CapEx is - it’s been a bit more muted here. And I indicated last quarter that where in a bit of a digestion period. But when you look forward to 2016, we do see accelerated investment given the nature of the businesses that we’re building up here. So I want to also just keep make sure, we can things and perspective. And I think, it’s just, it’s been an extraordinary experience joining this team, I think the with the move to Alphabet it gives us the opportunity to then provide some greater insight into the extraordinary operating performance within Google and breakouts you can see the investments that we’re doing and we’re working very tightly as a senior team here as we make that next step into this new environment in Alphabet.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

On the cloud side, and he observed, I mean it’s an exceptional opportunity, I think it just reflects is a secular shift every businesses in the world is going to run on cloud, eventually and so we viewed as an amazing opportunity. We’re uniquely qualified to do so, as he pointed out we have tremendous experiences and running large scale cloud services. And it’s been only in the past two years, and earnest we have been taking those assets and serving customers outside. For me, what’s exciting as I look at new customer adoption, we are seeing tremendous momentum. We’re very competitive in each of those situations, and we are investing a lot and playing for the long-term.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Douglas Anmuth from JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Douglas Anmuth

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Sundar, I want to ask about mobile. You talked about being greater than 50% of queries and want to ask if you have a view on whether - on when that will pass 50% of clicks. And then also your thoughts on what happens to desktop pricing in demand, as that happens how do you think about the tail on the desktop business as mobile just continues to take share? Thanks.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

The interesting thing, we’re seeing is, when we talk about mobile, mobile is a computing paradigm is eventually going to blend with what we think of his desktop today as well. So overall it’s a shift in a computing paradigm, it’s not just form factors. And so overtime we see all of this is together. What matters to us as people evolve they are computing paradigm search transitions to that world, and we are the best source to provide that information. So along that line, I expect all the metrics to follow the trend, and so we only see, all the right indicators, and so I think we are position for the long-term well, so I can’t comment too much on the specifics beyond that.

Douglas Anmuth

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ken Sena from Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ken Sena

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you. I just have an ad format question, maybe just to follow-up on Eric’s. We noticed that there was an additional ad slot added on mobile. And can you just maybe talk through the decisioning on that? And if so, is there anything we should interpret as far as the other ad formats that have been used too? Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Well, big picture what we are doing is looking at ways to use the mobile screen space to be as useful as possible for users. So this quarter we had some important changes and we’re always focused on innovation, and we’re growing in a growing market. But as we’ve said we’re looking at how consumer behavior is changing and just as it did on desktop we’re seeing the same on mobile and the notion of trying to make sure were being as useful as possible for users is key driver and we’ll continue to innovate.

Ken Sena

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

And maybe just this one follow-up. Can you see anything then it maybe in terms of the success with the efficiency that you’re seeing in terms of text based mobile ads versus more of the other structured data ones that’s around like part of glycerin [ph] or hotel price ads and so forth? Thanks.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Yes. There is probably not much to add there.

Ken Sena

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Anthony DiClemente from Nomura. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Anthony DiClemente

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks a lot. I have two, one for Sundar and one for Ruth. Sundar is ad blocking something that potential have an impact on the business either in the fourth quarter or longer term? And then, Ruth, in terms of M&A just wondering if the buyback might indicate that the company is becoming a bit more selective around larger acquisitions than it’s been in prior periods of the company’s lifecycle? Thanks.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Anthony. On the ad blocker stuff, it’s not a new phenomenon. I think it’s important to understand that ads today fun almost all the services which people use, including products like Google Search, Google Maps many, many third-party products. For publishers, it represents the majority of the revenue and I think users are okay with the contract and we need to make sure it works well. It’s also clear that that are areas where the ad experience is getting in the way, it affects performance, and so we as industry need to collectively do all that better. And so we are going to work hard to do that. And then, so we want to make sure we transition areas like the mobile web to have better ad experiences. But overall, I think we’ve used to this, we’ve seen this for a while overwhelmingly the model works well and we expect that to continue.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

And then, in terms of your M&A question, I talked about how did we think of sizing the return, I started with what’s really most quarter as which is continuing to focus on the biggest problems and solving them at scale, and ensuring that we’re investing in those. And as I said that’s primarily to find by obviously the opportunity, but how do we support the growth that’s about capital expenditure and about M&A, and those are really the anchor pillars in our capital framework. And then beyond that there is working capital and a buffer and then the potential return of capital. We talked about the fact that we have six products that have over billion users. Three of those were through acquisitions, YouTube, Android and Maps that is not lost on us, and then you layer on top of that, double-click that was also through acquisition. So we do have you viewed app and at the time, it wasn’t clear, I’d say everybody that those would end up being the incredibly powerful businesses, effective businesses for users that they are today. And so it remains a part of what we consider the bar is high, but I certainly wouldn’t want you to read anything into it beyond, what it is it fits right within our framework, and as I said, we reviewed is the right action at the right time.

Anthony DiClemente

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

That’s it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Paul Vogel from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Paul Vogel

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks. Two questions, please. First, just when we think about search and deep liking. Can you just sort of quantify a little bit how important deep linking has been to either click, so ROI or improvements in CPC on mobile? And then, the second question is just as we think about the more transparency going forward in Q4. How should we think about businesses that currently are in the Other Bets line that may continue to growing. What would be considered to move something from other bets into core Google? Thank you.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

On the deep linking, I would view it as, we’re beginning to scratch the surface in terms of how we get it information within apps. What’s been exciting to us is all of the indication show that when we provide these deep links. Users respond to them the same way they’ve done with links to websites and the model is working well. And second think maybe…

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Yes. Interesting in the way frame the question, so within other bets we have a pretty broad array of challenges, opportunities that are being tackled, as you know well from life sciences to driverless cars to what we’re doing in access and energy. And those we’re funding, we’ve got a very rigorous disciplined approach to looking at the metrics against which they’re performing and growing. But you used a term, when do they move into Google. And I wouldn’t assume that, that’s the plan. What we’re really looking at is how do we continue to broaden the nature of issues that we’re able to address. What we want with Alphabet is to be an extraordinary magnet, the best magnet for entrepreneurs, and to be an accelerant for their development. And to give them that the kind of environment where we can continue to thrive, and therefore build great businesses that generate tremendous returns as well for our stakeholders on top of solving big problems. But that doesn’t necessarily mean, in fact, we’re very much thinking they will continue to grow and be independent entity. So it is a broader view of what is Alphabet.

Paul Vogel

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Got it. So just to be clear, it’s not about that there are sort of newer or smaller or growing. It’s just they’re separate business that will grow on their own, separate from the core Google.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Our view is that we are seeding them and they are growing. And we’re not pre-determining what ends up happening. There are big opportunities and we’re excited to be in a position where we can address them in a way that is an incredible magnet for great entrepreneurs.

Paul Vogel

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Stephen Ju

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thanks. Sundar, so I think it was on a conference call about three years ago when Larry articulated a vision of a simple and consistent consumer experience from Google, and the same for your advertising customers as well. So as this is your first conference call with investors where do you think you are in that initiative today? Are you still on the same path or do you plan to take that on a different direction in your new role? And Ruth, despite the high growth of YouTube and Play presumably, are your cost of goods sold where the content cost of these two businesses live is not growing as rapidly. So will you give some color on where you might be driving the opage [ph]? Thanks.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

On the first one, I think the vision that Larry articulated, it’s a very compelling vision and it’s still valid. To me, the way I think about it is mobile is a good forcing function in some ways. It’s a good constraint for us to focus and deliver against that vision. So what I’m doing is internally all our objectives are primarily focused on mobile, and how within the context of mobile we get to a better, simpler and a consistent experience for consumers and advertisers. And so, that framework is how we are thinking about it and I think we are making solid progress.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

And then, if you’re focusing on the other cost to revenue line, the year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth was driven by ongoing data center operations, including depreciation that’s in there as well, as well as content acquisition costs, as you said primarily YouTube and Play. One thing to note as we look forward to the fourth quarter with the launch of Nexus, Chromecast and Pixel, it’s worth noting that we do book the hardware costs in this line.

Stephen Ju

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Ruth Porat

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Mark May from Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Mark May

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks. I had two questions that are kind of interrelated around mobile apps. When you talk about the strength in mobile search are you including also searches that are done on some of your mobile apps like search done on the Maps app or on the mobile YouTube app? And then, kind of somewhat related I guess is, yes, I think it is six apps that have over 1 billion users globally. But some of these you’re not really monetizing today or very nascent stages. Can you talk about kind of your efforts maybe to monetize some of these large and actively used apps and maybe identify one or two where you’re, I guess, it’s for Sundar, where you’re particularly sort of excited about the opportunities? Thanks.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Mark. On the first one, or maybe you’re specifically talking about the mobile search experience on Google.com or the Google app, but we are seeing the same traction within Maps or YouTube. We are seeing mobile usage dramatically grow and in that context people are searching as well. So it’s across-the-board we are seeing strength. In terms of our app such of scale, and obviously we take a very long-term view. And several of those apps today already play huge roles, so for example, take Google Maps, it already plays a huge important role in making mobile search better. And so these are interrelated. YouTube is obviously a big opportunity. Google Play is one. And even things like Gmail are playing a critical role in Google for Work and how we are driving big business opportunities as well. And, by the way, because we are scaling all these apps over 1 billion users, we are building the infrastructure which is what will power our cloud platform externally as well. So in many ways these are all working for us.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Colin Sebastian form Robert W. Baird. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Colin Sebastian

Analyst

Great. Thanks. I want to ask about two areas of business mentioned on the call. One is machine learning. And it’s just coming up a lot more frequently as a topic and I wonder if you could mention more specifically the vision that you have for some of the core applications and how machine learning can make them more useful. And then, just as a follow to the question on the Google Cloud, and specifically, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service layer, I wonder there if your strategy is more focused on price or if there are other ways that you can differentiate the service from the competition? Thank you.

Sundar Pichai

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Machine learning is core transformative way by which we are rethinking everything we are doing. We’ve been investing in this area for a while. We believe we are state-of-the-art here. And the progress particularly in the last two years has been pretty dramatic. And so we are - we are thoughtfully applying it across all our products, be it search, be it ads, be it YouTube and Play et cetera. And we are in early days, but you will see us in a systematic manner, think about how we can apply machine learning to all these areas. On Cloud, I think the right way to think about it over time, for a company or for a developer to build stuff on cloud, they need not just basic things like computer and storage, they need a whole set of services on top of it. We - so there is a lot in the stack. And so I think the way we will differentiate over time is because we have built large services on top of our infrastructure, we understand all the layers which you need to build great application. So you would see us increasingly provide value-added services on top of compute and storage. And that’s the way I think we’ll play this.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that’s all the time we have for questions. I would now like to turn the call back to Ellen West for any closing remarks.

Ellen West

Analyst

Great. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again on our fourth quarter call. Thank you and have a good evening.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude today’s program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.