Thomas Kurian, CEO of Alphabet’s Google Cloud, speaks at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google’s cloud company reported a business loss of $ 5.61 billion in 2020. It brought in $ 13.06 billion in revenue this year.
It is the first time that the company has disclosed operating revenues for its cloud operations.
The unit’s losses appear to be increasing as the company invests heavily in sales force. The company said the cloud unit lost $ 4.65 billion on $ 8.92 billion in revenues in 2019, and lost $ 4.35 billion on $ 5.84 billion in revenues in 2018.
It lost $ 1.24 billion on sales of $ 3.83 billion in Q4 2020.
Alphabet’s latest attempt to show it is serious about its cloud unit is as it seeks to diversify its revenues, which come mainly from advertising, a company that was vulnerable in 2020, especially in the second quarter. Google Cloud includes infrastructure and data analytics platforms, collaboration tools such as Google Docs and Sheets, and “other services for enterprise customers.”
Wall Street is looking for additional financial details about the company’s cloud operations, which Google has been pumping to grow as it ranks in a distant third place ahead of heavyweights Microsoft and Amazon. Google first started monetizing the cloud a year ago.
The company’s previous attempts to strengthen its cloud unit led by CEO Diane Greene, who left in 2018, failed to gain much market share. But since former Oracle CEO Thomas Kurian came to Google to lead its cloud efforts in 2019, the company has continued to recruit and acquire.