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 business reported operating losses of $ 5.66 billion in 2020. It generated revenue of $ 13.06 million for the year.
This is the first time the company has revealed the operating revenue metric for its cloud business.
Unit losses appear to be growing as the company invests heavily in sales personnel. The company said the unit in the cloud lost $ 4.65 trillion in revenue of $ 8.92 million in 2019 and lost $ 4.35 trillion in revenue of $ 5.84 million in 2018.
It lost $ 1.242 billion in revenue of $ 3.83 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Alphabet’s latest push to show that it’s serious about its cloud drive comes in trying to diversify revenue, which comes primarily from advertising, a business that showed vulnerability in 2020, especially in the second quarter. Google Cloud includes data analytics infrastructures and platforms, collaboration tools such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and “other business customer services.”
Wall Street has been looking for additional financial details around the company’s cloud business, which Google has amassed resources to grow while in a distant third place for heavyweights Microsoft and Amazon. Google first started breaking cloud revenue a year ago.
The company’s past attempts to bolster its cloud unit under the direction of Diane Greene, who left in 2018, failed to gain any market share. But since Oracle executive Thomas Kurian came to Google to lead its efforts in the cloud in 2019, the company has continued to make hires and acquisitions.