Sundar Pichai Announces Google One Milestone

Google One Reaches Nearly 100 Million Subscribers

During Alphabet’s Q4 2023 earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed that the Google One cloud storage service is on the brink of surpassing 100 million subscribers. Launched by the tech giant in 2018, Google One has continually evolved, now offering additional perks such as AI-powered features for Google Photos editing, including magic eraser, portrait light, portrait blur, color pop, and sky suggestion.

Expansion of Google One and Subscription Business

Pichai emphasized plans to augment Google One further by integrating more AI-driven functionalities. Currently priced starting at $1.99 per month, the service provides 100GB of storage, shareable among five users, along with access to its VPN service in the U.S. Beyond Google One, Pichai highlighted the growth of Google’s overall subscription business, which includes YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV, and Google One, amounting to over $15 billion in annual revenues. This reflects a substantial 5x increase from 2019, with the “Subscriptions, Platforms, and Devices” segment witnessing a 23% year-on-year growth.

Workforce Changes and Financial Performance

However, amidst these successes, Google recently underwent significant workforce changes, laying off nearly 1,000 employees across various divisions, including hardware, engineering, and services, along with 100 employees from YouTube. Pichai, in response, communicated internally about further job cuts anticipated for the year. Despite these adjustments, Google’s workforce, as of the latest earnings release, stands at 182,502 employees, slightly higher than the previous quarter but notably lower than the end of 2022, which recorded 190,234 employees.

Financial Outlook and Analyst Expectations

While Google’s ad revenue surged to $65.5 billion, marking an 11% year-on-year increase, it fell short of analyst predictions of $65.8 billion. This slight miss in revenue expectations caused the company’s stocks to decline by 4%. Despite this setback, Google remains a dominant force in the tech industry, continually innovating its services and expanding its subscriber base.