Google cloud growth tops Microsoft and Amazon as all three beat estimates on AI demand

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian speaks at the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco, April 9, 2019. Michael Short | Bloomberg | All three top cloud infrastructure providers surpassed analyst estimates in earnings reports late Wednesday, but Google was the standout, generating its fastest growth rate on record. Google is chasing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud market, which is booming as demand soars for access to artificial intelligence models and services. All three vendors provide a suite of tools for building and running companies' products, and they also offer an array of their own AI models and specialized hardware. "Wow, that was some quarter," Synergy Research analyst John Dinsdale said in an email after the results were released. His firm estimated that cloud infrastructure spending reached $129 billion in the period. "Our forecasts point to sustained strong growth in the years ahead, with AI continuing to drive usage, unlock new use cases, and boost cloud provider revenues," Dinsdale said in Synergy's update. Google Cloud, which includes infrastructure and corporate productivity apps, saw revenue shoot up 63% to $20.03 billion, surpassing StreetAccount's consensus of $18.05 billion. That's by far the strongest rate of growth for any period since Google started breaking out cloud results in 2020. …