Google Recruits AI to Write 25% of Its Code: Earnings Call

Google software engineers have a new coworker: AI.

Google released its third quarter 2024 earnings on Tuesday and emphasized the role that AI plays within the company.

“Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated on the earnings call. “This helps our engineers do more and move faster.”

Google has over 1,000 fewer employees now than it did at the same time last year, for a current headcount of 181,269 employees compared to 182,381 in Q3 2023.

^{Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images}

Google’s AI impact extends to all corners of the globe. Pichai stated that AI overviews in search will roll out to more than a hundred new countries this week and will “now reach more than one billion users on a monthly basis.”

Related: New Google Report Reveals the Hidden Cost of AI

Google Search revenue grew 12% year-over-year, hitting $49.39 billion in the third quarter of this year. Total revenue reached $88.27 billion, a 15% increase from the previous year’s $76.69 billion.

“Search remained the largest contributor to revenue growth, followed by robust 35% growth in Cloud,” Google’s chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said on the earnings call. Google Cloud revenue was $11.35 billion in Q3 2024.

Google also announced on the call that YouTube’s ad and subscription revenue for the past four quarters have topped $50 billion for the first time.

Overall, “Q3 was another great quarter,” Pichai stated. Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet were up over 5% today at the time of writing.

Related: I Tried Making an AI-Hosted Podcast with Google’s NotebookLM. It Worked Surprisingly Well.