Alphabet profits take a hit from $2.4bn EU fine

Alphabet’s profits took a hit from the record EU fine that was imposed on Google’s parent company earlier this year.

The tech giant saw strong results for their second quarter of 2017 with revenues up 21 percent compared to the same period of 2016. Despite this increase in revenue, profits for 2017’s second quarter came in at $3.5 billion – a fall of almost 30 percent.

The European Commission fined Google 2.42 billion euros (£2.1 billion) last month after they found Google was promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results, abusing its own power.

Google is repealing the fine as an attempt to add the lost billions back onto the company’s profits.

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Shares in Alphabet fell by 3.5 percent in after-hours trading, reversing any gains made earlier that day.

Ahead of the results, the tech company had been trading up 1.1 percent after news was revealed that the company was appointing Google chief executive Sundar Pichai to its board of directors.

The tech giant is going to keep an eye on advertising. The cost per click – how much money the tech giant makes with every ad click – has dropped much more than analysts predicted.

Alphabet makes the majority of its money from advertising. Revenues from the company’s different advertisers on its sites, for example, YouTube and Gmail, increased by 18 percent year-on-year reaching a total $22.7 billion.

Chief financial officer Ruth Porat said on Monday: “The main thing is we’re very focused on helping users and advertisers and are reviewing our options,”

“We’re delivering strong growth with great underlying momentum while continuing to make focused investments in new revenue streams,” she added.

She refused to comment on how the fine would affect the business.