RUTH PORAT

Stockholders are taking a surprisingly short-term view when executives are emphasizing an uncertain outlook.

Alphabet executives blamed tough comparisons and economic challenges for YouTube's slowing growth rate.

Google’s revenue growth during the past quarter decelerated to its slowest pace in two years as advertisers reined in their spending amid fears of an economic recession.

Alphabet reported earnings after the bell. Here are the results.

Alphabet's finance chief noted that the $5.4 billion cybersecurity acquisition will help compete against larger-scaled competitors

Google is joining Ford Motor Co.'s effort to transform a once-dilapidated Detroit train station into a research hub focused on electric and self-driving vehicles.

Most of Alphabet's top executives are getting annual salary increases from $650,000 to $1 million, along with hefty stock awards.

It'll be one of the biggest New York real estate deals in years.

When asked about Biden's proposed tax rate, Porat reasoned 'we need to do our part'

Search leader Prabhakar Raghavan's executive compensation was revealed for the first time on its 2020 proxy statement.

Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said the company is seeing pre-pandemic productivity levels from employees again — thanks to leadership coaching and employee surveys. "What we saw in the early days of Covid we saw a bit of productivity dip, in particular at junior levels." Early on in the pandemic and before other tech companies, Porat led the company's crisis response to the pandemic and called on Google employees to prepare to mobilize during a "big moment." "For Google, that was a new muscle because Google really had had the best of the best options for so much of its life." Planning that return to offices has been "substantially more complicated" than was moving everyone to work from home, Porat said Wednesday.

Google wants investors to know its cloud business isn't going anywhere. The company began reporting cloud revenue for the first time earlier this year. Google Cloud brought in $3.44 billion in revenue versus the $3.32 billion analysts expected, according to its Q3 results. More specifically, Google wants to show how much it's investing in its cloud business. Heather Bellini from Goldman Sachs asked Pichai how he thinks Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is doing, given he's been at the helm for nearly two years now.

That pledge is now a distant memory as Google confronts an existential threat similar to what Microsoft once faced. They focused on creating a database of everything on the internet through a search engine that almost instantaneously listed a pecking order of websites most likely to have what anyone wanted. Google's promotion of Chrome on its search engine helped the browser supplant Explorer as the market leader. Google began reining in its spending and even created a new holding company, Alphabet, to oversee some of its unprofitable projects, such as internet=beaming balloons and self-driving cars. —-Liedtke first interviewed Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2000 when he began covering Google for the AP.

Shares of Alphabet climbed more than 9% Wednesday after the company reported earnings that beat revenue expectations, easing investors' fears about the pandemic's impact on advertising. The Google parent company reported earnings of $9.87 per share and revenue $41.16 billion on Tuesday, missing analysts expectations on earnings but surpassing revenue estimates, based on data compiled by Refinitiv. YouTube advertising brought in $4.04 billion in the quarter, up 33% year on year. Analysts at Raymond James maintained a buy rating on the stock and $1,425 price target, citing strong long-term revenue growth and momentum in cloud. WATCH: Google reports earnings, and coronavirus threatens budgets and enrollments across state universities: CNBC After Hours

Investors seemed relieved with revenue growth of 13% from the previous year, sending the stock up about 3% as the release crossed. While the outlook wasn't all rosy, as executives promised a "difficult" quarter ahead, here's the good news they shared. YouTube advertising revenues were $4.04 billion, up 33% year on year. Execs said that strong YouTube revenue growth persisted until mid-March, which was when the coronavirus officially became a global pandemic. Porat also noted that the company's share buybacks would continue as planned, which should help the stock price by boosting earnings per share.

Google is restricting all visitors from its headquarters in Mountain View and other offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York as the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Monday. The spokesperson added that as the COVID-19 situation changes, its "rule of thumb" for individual offices comes from regional health guidance from the CDC and WHO. The latest measures come amid Alphabet's attempts to mobilize its workforce of more than 300,000 workers to deal with the crisis. "We know this is a very unsettling time for everyone," Pichai wrote in a memo to employees. San Francisco city officials confirmed five new cases of coronavirus in the city Monday, bringing the total amount to 13.

Sundar Pichai Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAlphabet's top executives are urging employees to stay motivated to run Google's global infrastructure amid coronavirus fears. San Francisco, officials reported its first two confirmed cases Thursday, triggering large employers like Google to tell employees to work from home. Google's popular products include its cloud platform Google Cloud, Google Docs and Gmail. Porat said the company has a new internal channel called "Go/Coronavirus" dedicated to real-time updates, which employees are expected to check. Meanwhile, some Google contractors say they're not getting all of Google's internal communications related to the coronavirus at the same time as full-time employees.

YouTube says it paid the music industry more than $3 billion last year. "YouTube offers twin engines for revenue with advertising and subscribers, paying out more than $3 billion to the music industry last year from ads and subscriptions," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a blog post Friday. The latest figure hints at how much of the Alphabet-owned company's ad revenue goes back to music industry and creators. YouTube broke out ad revenue numbers for the first time in its fourth quarter earlier this month. YouTube ads generated $15.15 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019, with $4.72 billion generated in the fourth quarter alone.

Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat opened up about her battles with cancer, and how her personal experience inspired her to support health-care initiatives at Google and its parent company. "And that's where Google has focused its work: to bring healthcare innovations to everyone." Porat joins a small but growing number of technology executives who are publicly discussing their personal health struggles or those of family members. Porat said Alphabet is also specifically working to bring its technology to improve cancer care and help with early disease detection. "Google hopes AI research will further fuel progress on both detection and diagnosis," Porat wrote.

Shares of Alphabet surged 9.6% Friday, a day after the company reported second-quarter earnings that beat estimates and announced board approval to repurchase $25 billion of its Class C stock. Alphabet had its best day since July 2015 and saw its market cap rise more than $75 billion to reach $864.5 billion on Friday. Revenue came in at $38.94 billion, according to Alphabet, beating Refinitiv estimates of $38.15 billion. Google reported TAC of $7.24 billion compared with StreetAccount estimates of $7.27 billion. While Porat partially blamed YouTube last quarter for deceleration in Google's revenue growth, this quarter she said its revenue was strong.