Google and AWS revenues soar due to cloud computing success
The world’s top cloud computing companies have enjoyed another bumper quarter as they reap benefit from the global shift towards remote working.
Google Cloud has revealed its Q2 revenues grew over 43% year on year in what was otherwise a challenging period for parent company Alphabet, which saw overall revenues struggle.
Meanwhile its big rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) also saw a 29% growth in revenues for its Q2, marking another few months of success for the cloud giant.
AWS revenues
AWS revealed that the global coronavirus pandemic had affected partnerships with some of its largest customers, although revenues still totaled $10.81bn for the quarter – equivalent to around 12% of Amazon’s total revenue as a whole.
This marked the first time AWS growth slipped under the 30% margin, down from the 33% seen in Q1 2020, but the company enjoyed a number of expanding partnerships with companies such as Zoom and Slack, as well as organisations such as Formula 1.
Google Cloud revenues brought in $3.007bn for Q2 2020, up 43% from $2.1bn year-on-year and $2.77bn in the previous quarter – although this did represent a slightly lower rate of growth from Q1 2019, where the year-on-year revenue increase hit 52%.
“GCP maintained the strong level of revenue growth it delivered in the first quarter, and its revenue growth was again meaningfully above cloud overall,” Google CFO Ruth Porat stated.
“Overall, the lower Google Cloud revenue growth in the second quarter relative to the first quarter reflects the fact that G Suite lapped a price increase that was introduced in April last year. G suite maintained healthy growth in average revenue per seat as well as in seat growth which does not include customers who took advantage of our free trials as they shifted their employees to work-from-home.”
Google Cloud proved a bright point for the company as a whole, with the report seeing Google record its first quarterly revenue decline since going public. Overall, parent company Alphabet reported total revenue of $31.6bn, down from $31.7bn over the same period last year.
The successes for Google Cloud and AWS were mirrored by their other great rival Microsoft Azure, which has been a huge success story for the company as demand for cloud computing capacity has soared over the last decade. The recent move towards remote working has also led to increased Azure usage, with revenues in the division rising 27 percent year over year in Microsoft’s recent Q2 2020 results.