Google admits AI search makes less money, but it's fixing that with more ads

The AI obsession Google admits AI search makes less money, but it’s fixing that with more ads Google’s negative cash flow balloons to -$9.06 billion, and stock price tumbles following Q3 earnings.

11 Credit: Ryan Whitwam Credit: Ryan Whitwam Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Google parent Alphabet reported its Q3 financial results on Wednesday afternoon, showing a healthy rise in revenue for the months of July to September. But the company’s stock price has taken a beating, marking one of the largest post-earnings drops in its history. It comes down to several troubling aspects of the new report, including an admission by the company that AI search isn’t earning as much as organic search, and despite that, Google expects to spend even more on AI next year.

The company took in almost $128 billion in Q3 2026, earning more than $26 billion in net income. These may sound like good numbers, but financial markets are not impressed. While revenue is up 25 percent versus last year, net income is almost $9 billion lower. As of press time, the stock price is down almost 12 percent, and it was down about 13 percent earlier in the day.

While revenue was up 25 percent year-over-year, analysts expected more. Google reported earnings per share of $2.12, but the consensus projection ahead of Wednesday was $3.02. Google’s Cloud products actually beat expectations, crossing $30 billion in revenue. That’s about a billion more than analyst guesses.

Google is still making a huge amount of money, but there are several troubling trends emerging. The last few years at the company have been all about AI, with generative technology appearing in products from Gmail to Android. Most notably, Google is shifting to an AI search platform powered by Gemini models.

During the earnings call, Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler discussed the company’s search volume. This is one of the key metrics by which Google tracks its own performance. In the last quarter, Google saw search grow by 12 percent versus last year. Good for the company, right? Except that’s a much slower rate than previous quarters. Growth in Q2 was 17 percent, and Q1 saw 19 percent growth over 2025. Search revenue was also flat in Q3.

So that’s the first problem, likely driven by more consumers using AI chatbots to find answers. The other issue is that Google’s take on AI search isn’t pulling in revenue like standard web search yet. According to Schindler, each AI Mode query earns less revenue compared to a similar web search—there are fewer ads, and they cost less to run.

While Schindler suggested AI mode revenue was set to increase, he was also careful to control expectations. Advertisers may need time, he said, to understand the value in AI search ads. The company’s research reportedly shows that users find these ads more relevant and helpful than the ones they see in traditional search.

As part of the financial disclosure, Google announced an expansion of ads in AI Mode. If you do decide to dip into Google’s search chatbot, you’ll probably see more contextual advertising. These ads will begin appearing in more international markets soon. In the US, where AI Mode ads were already becoming commonplace, Google will implement multi-turn ads. That means the sponsored links will change continuously as you engage in a back-and-forth with the robot. CEO Sundar Pichai noted that these complex interactions are becoming more common as Google pushes more users toward AI Mode.

Google is not slowing down—it’s only going to accelerate the shift toward more AI. Like last quarter, Google reported that it saw negative cash flow in Q3. The loss actually increased from -$5.8 billion to -$9.06 billion, a situation that is directly attributable to Google’s runaway AI spending. Google had capital expenditures of $51.4 billion in Q3 and says it still expects total 2026 spending to be between $195 billion and $205 billion. In 2027, Google is targeting more than $300 billion of AI investment.

To support this continued spending, Google points to the more than doubling of its cloud revenues over the past year. And it’s easy to see why the company is so keen to continue expanding in AI based on that. The company’s AI compute infrastructure doesn’t just power Gemini. Countless AI startups pay to run models on Google’s infrastructure. But even the larger AI firms are using venture cash to do it, and if that funding were to dry up, Google’s cloud revenues could go with it.

While Google’s investments ensure it still turns a profit, the trend of spending more than it earns on products and services (that negative cash flow) could come back to bite it. Search growth is declining, and Google is placing all its eggs in the AI basket. If spending on cloud services in the industry drops or search growth stalls, the company could be looking at a lot more red in its future.