On the agenda…

It was always going to be a closely scrutinised set of results for Google this quarter after the arrival of China’s DeepSeek sent American tech companies into somewhat of a tailspin regarding their AI ventures.

There’s been no shortage of negative headlines surrounding Google’s stock dropping by 6% after it missed revenue targets for the quarter in its cloud division. Indeed, the Financial Times reported it could be Google’s fifth-worst trading day in the last decade.

But, equally, an element of context is needed. Google saw its consolidated revenues rise by 12% year-on-year to $96.5bn (£77bn) in Q4 and its net income grew by 28% to $26.54bn (£21.17bn). Advertising services revenue across search and YouTube grew by 10% to $84.1bn (£67.1bn).