Google reports strong earnings amid DoJ antitrust lawsuits and Trump tariffs

Tech giant exceeds Wall Street expectations despite 17% drop in stock price and tariffs levied on its trade partners

Google’s parent company Alphabet reported strong first quarter earnings on Thursday, despite being embroiled in antitrust lawsuits brought by the US government and seeing a 17% drop in its stock price since the beginning of the year. This is the company’s first earnings report since Donald Trump levied tariffs on trade partners around the world.

Despite the upheaval for Alphabet, it exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, reporting revenue of $90.23bn, up 12% since the same time last year, and $2.81 in earnings per share. Analysts had projected first quarter revenue of $89.2bn and earnings of $2.01 per share, according to consensus estimates. The global tariffs were not expected to create much of an impact for Alphabet, since they were mostly instituted after the end of the quarter.

Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said the first quarter results “reflect healthy growth and momentum across the business” and that underpinning this growth is the company’s emphasis on artificial intelligence.

Alphabet’s stock jumped more than 7% in after hours trading.

Alphabet is one of the world’s most valuable companies, worth nearly $2trn. But economic headwinds that include high tariffs and possible trade wars, along with various legal battles brought by governments worldwide, could eventually hit the tech behemoth.

Google is “not immune to the macro environment”, Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, said during the company’s earnings call on Thursday. He added that Google’s ads business could be effected by Trump’s decision to end the de minimis trade loophole on 2 May, which allows for duty-free shipments to the US for items less than $800. But, Schindler said, “we have a lot of experience in managing through uncertain times.”

Earlier this week, Google returned to court in Washington DC for the conclusion of a lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice. The government sued Google in 2020 alleging it acted illegally to maintain a monopoly of the search engine market. The justice department won that case after a trial last year and now the two parties are in court again to decide whether Google will be forced to break off parts of its company, including its Chrome browser.

In a blogpost on Sunday, Google’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, wrote that the justice department’s lawsuit “is a backwards-looking case at a time of intense competition and unprecedented innovation” and said that the company will appeal.

Japan and the European Union have also alleged that Alphabet has broken the law by operating an illegal monopoly with its search engine practices.

In a separate justice department antitrust lawsuit, which wrapped last week, a federal judge ruled that Google had illegally monopolized some of its online advertising technology. Google has said it will also appeal the “adverse” portion of this ruling.

Advertising is Google’s core business, making up about 75% of its total revenue, according to Statista. That number has fallen 13% since 2017 though, and the company says it’s working on shifting its ads business to emphasize more artificial intelligence tools and capabilities for marketers.

Artificial intelligence is a huge growth area for Alphabet, as it faces competition from companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek. In its last earnings report in February, Alphabet said it planned to spend $75bn on capital expenditures in 2025, which will mostly be used to expand its AI capabilities and infrastructure.

Investors have been looking at how the company is integrating the technology into its suite of services, including Google Search, YouTube and Google Cloud. On Thursday, Pichai touted the company’s growth in AI, saying features such as its AI Overview tool on Google Search has seen a boost in users.