Amid the pandemic, Big Tech reports mixed earnings

Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings on Thursday, a day after their top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.

Alphabet, Google’s holding company, reported its first-ever drop in quarterly revenue compared to the prior year. Although it was only a 2% decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more than it did more than a decade ago during the Great Recession

Google’s previous low point came during the second quarter of 2009 when its revenue edged up by just 3%. Alphabet’s profit for its most recent quarter plunged 30% to nearly $7 billion.

Revenue from Google’s core search business declined nearly 10%, though Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said there were signs of improvement at the end of the quarter as internet users searched for more commercial products and advertisers began spending more on the platform. Still, she said, it’s “premature to gauge the durability” of those trends because of ongoing economic uncertainty around the world.

Facebook, which also makes most of its money from digital ads, recorded an 11% increase in revenue from the prior year, the social networking company’s slowest growth since going public eight years ago. The company’s profit nearly doubled to $5.2 billion from the same time last year, although it would have fallen if not for $3 billion in tax and legal expense items a year ago, much of that related to a a major antitrust settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The social network said it expected revenue to grow about 10% in the current quarter, similar to the second quarter, and while that’s more than analysts expect, it’s factoring in issues including economic uncertainty,...