The headline from Thursday afternoon’s earnings release from Alphabet/Google was that earnings came in below analysts’ expectations, with first quarter sales of $20.3 billion up 17 percent. In the segment we follow, the glamorous “Other revenue” that incorporates the Google Play store, sales of $2.1 billion were up 24 percent (though 1 percent below the previous, holiday quarter). In the investor conference call, the company said, “Year-over-year performance was driven by Play as well as continued strong growth in cloud and apps and a nice contribution from hardware.” Apple‘s earnings report was postponed until next week. In the meantime, the […]