Want insight into the business prospects for a company? Pay attention to what its biggest customers are saying. Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) provided its fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter update after the market closed on Tuesday.

Key Takeaways Shares of Google parent Alphabet tumbled Wednesday amid worries about whether the tech giant's spending on AI will pay off. Several analysts lowered their price targets for the stock, citing concerns about the company's weaker-than-expected cloud growth and plans to ramp up spending on AI.

From a purely business financials perspective, a large part of the reason for the sell-off stemmed from slowing growth in data centres revenue. Google’s cloud business is a huge money driver and posted a 30 per cent increase in revenues, totalling nearly $12bn (£9.6bn).