Google Stock Suffers Worst Crash in 22 Years. What Happened?

Alphabet shares fell nearly 12% early Thursday and were on track for their worst post-earnings decline on record, erasing about $465 billion in market value. In the third quarter, Google Search revenue rose 12% to $63.35 billion, slowing from 17% in the second quarter and missing analysts’ roughly 15% expectation. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said query growth was the fastest in five years, while Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler cited weaker earnings from AI Mode, Google’s conversational search feature, which currently brings in less advertising money per search than classic search and is still being tested for ads. Google Cloud revenue rose 103% to $30.7 billion.