There are four key areas where digital businesses can make a significant profit, and Google's parent company Alphabet appears to be gaining in all four of them according to its latest earnings report.
In a recent call to reveal its results, Alphabet said revenue rose 21 percent to $26 billion, in the second quarter of 2017. Net income was $3.5 billion.
The four areas where Alphabet made significant earnings are mobile ads, video streaming, artificial intelligence and the cloud.
For mobile ads, revenue rose 18 percent, to $22.7 billion. The biggest driver of this growth was paid clicks, which rose 52 percent.
When it comes to video, YouTube was the primary growth driver. More than 1.5 billion people visit YouTube on a monthly basis, sticking around for an hour -- daily.
"YouTube is scaling really well globally," CEO Sundar Pichai said. "Just like search did."
Cloud business rose 42 percent, earning $3.09 million. In the last quarter, Google has made cloud deals worth more than $500 million.
The fourth pillar, artificial intelligence, is "impossible to fit into a revenue category." However, Alphabet has managed to embed it into many of Google's products.
"We rolled out new machine learning features in Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Photos," Pichai said. "We believe we have a compelling runway here. Our revenue growth and Alphabet structure give us both the opportunity and confidence to invest in our businesses for the long-term.".
