Google, Apple disappoint as tech earnings hit by gloom
Google and Apple on Thursday reported downbeat results for the last quarter of 2022 as Amazon beat expectations, but warned that the coming months would be uncertain in a difficult moment for Big Tech.
The world's biggest tech companies posted their earnings as shares in Meta skyrocketed a day after it reported better results than expected and signaled spending and job cuts.
The results follow several weeks of unprecedented layoff rounds in the usually unassailable tech sector amid pessimism about the economic outlook.
The souring mood followed a long spell of outsized growth during the peak Covid-19 period when consumers went online for work, shopping and entertainment.
Google parent Alphabet's revenue of $76 billion in its fourth quarter and profit of $13.6 billion were below what it made in the same period a year earlier, with share prices falling more than 6 percent in after-market trade.
Google saw a slump in its crucial advertising sales to $63.1 billion in the fourth quarter, though this was slightly better than what analysts had projected, according to data compiled by Factset.
This was only the second quarterly fall since the search engine giant went public in 2004.
"It's clear that after a period of significant acceleration in digital spending during the pandemic, the macro economic climate has become more challenging," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a call to analysts.
Pichai last month announced a plan to lay off 12,000 people in order to reverse pandemic over-hiring and focus on new areas, especially artificial intelligence.
In another setback, Google, which has long seen itself as an innovation leader, was caught off guard by the sudden rise of user-friendly AI such as ChatGPT, which is seen as
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