Google’s AI Push Fuels Revenue Surge and Massive Data‑Center Expansion

Lead: The world’s internet and tech giant Google is fully investing in artificial intelligence.

According to Alphabet’s latest quarterly report, CEO Sundar Pichai stated that AI is having a positive impact on Google’s profitability and that AI Overview and AI Mode features are performing well.

Pichai also announced that the company plans to raise its capital‑expenditure budget to $85 billion, adding $10 billion, likely to keep pace with OpenAI, Meta and other firms’ large‑scale data‑center builds.

Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said the outlook reflects extra investment in servers, accelerated server delivery schedules, and faster data‑center construction to meet cloud customers’ demand.

Alphabet reported Q2 revenue of $96.4 billion, up 14% year‑over‑year, with Google Search contributing $54.1 billion.

AI‑driven search is reshaping user behavior: AI Overview provides answers at the cost of reduced click‑through to source sites, while AI Mode has surpassed 100 million monthly active users in the US and India, and AI Overviews serve over 2 billion monthly active users across more than 200 countries in 40 languages.

Pichai noted that the Gemini app now has 450 million monthly active users, with daily request volume up more than 50% from the previous quarter, and that AI features encourage users—especially younger ones—to conduct more searches.

At the I/O developer conference, Google unveiled AI‑focused announcements, including an AI Search Mode, upgraded video and image generation models, Gemini integration in Chrome, and more powerful smart replies in Gmail.

Google also held an Android‑focused event showcasing the new design language of Android 16.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust case proceeds, with a federal judge previously labeling Google as a monopolist, raising the possibility of a breakup and sparking interest from other tech firms in acquiring Chrome.

For the first time in a decade, Google changed its “G” logo and revised its motto from “Don’t be evil” to “Do the right thing”.