Alphabet, Google's parent company, lost 511 billion dollars in stock market value in early New York trading, its biggest-ever fall, as The Japan Times reported on 30 October 2026. The shares dropped after Alphabet reported third-quarter search and advertising sales below analysts' forecasts.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, lost 511 billion dollars in stock market value in early New York trading, its biggest-ever fall, as The Japan Times reported on 30 October 2026. The shares dropped after Alphabet reported third-quarter search and advertising sales below analysts' forecasts. Its chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, said AI Mode, a Google Search tab that answers with artificial intelligence, brings in less money per query than ordinary search.

Ad sales from search and other channels, roughly half of Alphabet's revenue, grew at the slowest pace in five quarters. Overall services revenue of 96.3 billion dollars missed estimates of 98.4 billion. Google Cloud, which sells AI products and hosting to other companies, was the exception, with sales of 30.7 billion dollars against an expected 29.1 billion. Costs keep rising: in July, Alphabet said capital spending this year will reach as much as 205 billion dollars, more than double last year's.

Whether ads in AI Mode can earn as much as classic search ads is unproven. Schindler said Google plans to bring more ads there, but the report gives no timeline. Alphabet also posted negative free cash flow, spending more cash than it brought in, for the second quarter in a row, a first since going public.

Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told analysts that more AI models are "coming soon", including more efficient versions; Google unveiled one called Carbon hours before the call. Its future payments for data centers, computing and energy exceed 1 trillion dollars. The source names no date for the next quarterly report.

The cards of this story

from the video, click to enlarge