Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches - The Verge

Tech News Google Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches Google’s year-over-year search query growth rate is ‘the highest it’s been in the last five years.’ Google’s year-over-year search query growth rate is ‘the highest it’s been in the last five years.’ by Jay Peters Oct 28, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC Link Share Gift Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Part Of Fall 2026 earnings watch see all Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Google parent company Alphabet says that its AI investments are leading to a big growth in searches year-over-year, as noted in its Q3 2026 earnings today . “Our AI investments are driving overall Search query growth, including commercial queries,” CEO Sundar Pichai says in a statement. “In fact, our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it’s been in the last five years.” Alphabet’s consolidated revenues for the quarter were $127.6 billion, up 25 percent year-over-year, with its “Google Search & other” revenues up 12 percent year-over-year. Google Cloud revenue was also up 103 percent year-over-year to $30.7 billion. Alphabet also says it passed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, though that figure includes trials. Related Google is working on a new agentic AI experience for consumers. The earnings follow a packed quarter for Google, including the announcement of its Gemini 4 Argon frontier model (which it released widely this month ); crossing 1 billion monthly users in Gemini ; the reveal of the first five Googlebook laptops ; a price hike for the Google TV Streamer ; renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook ; the launch of the Pixel 11 line of smartphones, the new Pixel Watch , and the forthcoming Pixel Tag ; and a major shakeup of its top AI leadership that included former DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis stepping into a chair role . Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Jay Peters Google News Tech More In Fall 2026 earnings watch See all Microsoft reveals strong cloud growth amid financial reporting overhaul Tom Warren Oct 28 Netflix can’t fire its way out of this downward spiral Charles Pulliam-Moore Oct 23 Sure, let’s smoosh SpaceX and Tesla together, who cares Elizabeth Lopatto Oct 22 Most Popular Most Popular Hands-on with Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro Hands-on with the new OLED iPad Mini Apple announces its first touchscreen MacBook Pro All the news from Apple’s ‘Pro and tell’ event You can see every red flag in Theranos 2.0 The Verge Daily A free daily digest of the news that matters most. Email (required) Sign Up By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Advertiser Content From This is the title for the native ad