YouTube revenue shines as Alphabet earnings falter amid DeepSeek’s Big Tech upheaval

Chinese tech firms are bringing widespread turmoil to the U.S. market, and one of the world’s biggest companies is feeling the squeeze. Alphabet stocks initially dropped by 6% after the parent company of Google fell short of projections for the fourth quarter of 2024.

YouTube, however, was a bright spot for the Mountain View-based giant. The video platform maintained its momentum from the third quarter by accounting for $10.5 billion of ad revenue. It’s the first time YouTube has ever pushed that number beyond $10 billion in a single quarter.

Much of YouTube’s growth has been driven by its acceleration on TV screens, where it now gets more than 10% of all watch time to lead all platforms. During the Q4 2024 earnings call, Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler identified the U.S. presidential election as another factor in YouTube’s ascendance. Political content on both sides of the aisle spiked ahead of November — perhaps that data point explains why YouTube has slackened its policy on election denialism and other forms of misinformation.

In other areas of Alphabet’s business, the picture is cloudier. U.S. tech companies are still figuring out how the rise of DeepSeek 

— an open-source chatbot that runs more efficiently than big-name competitors like ChatGPT — will affect American AI development.

DeepSeek’s presence has created chaos in the U.S. market, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai still sees some advantages for brand-name solutions like Google Gemini. “Our results show the power of our differentiated full-stack approach to AI innovation and the continued strength of our core businesses,” he said. “We are confident about the opportunities ahead, and to accelerate our progress, we expect to invest approximately $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025.”

New initiatives, such as the CAA partnership that protects YouTube creators from deepfakes, show how Google can use its wealth of resources to stay competitive in AI. If TikTok is banned for U.S. users, that would likely provide an additional boost for Alphabet. But even if the social media status quo survives for another quarter, YouTube will still get opportunities to solidify its all-star status. The upcoming Super Bowl will remind viewers about YouTube’s distribution of the NFL Sunday Ticket package, and that could easily translate into more YouTube TV subscribers.