Alphabet, Google’s parent company, lost a significant amount of money on “moonshot” concepts like self-driving cars and hot air balloons last quarter, but given the company’s impressive recent financial results – topping $21 billion USD, an 18 percent increase over last year – not making profit on forward thinking projects isn’t a concern for the tech giant.
For the first time, Alphabet separated what it calls “Other Bets” from the rest of the company’s financials, giving us an in-depth look at how its speculative projects – Google Fiber, Nest, X and even its self driving car efforts – actually fare financially.
Alphabet lost nearly $3.6 billion USD in 2015 on its Other Bets moonshot projects, a number that’s considerably worse than 2014’s $1.9 billion USD in loses on the same projects.
The company is in no hurry to figure out if these experimental projects are viable, with advertising revenue coming in at $19 billion USD a quarter, Google has money to blow on figuring out the future of the technology industry.
Related reading: Google Q4 revenue soars on higher mobile ad earnings
[source]Alphabet[/source]
