Google might be the largest company in the world whose fate seems completely out of its hands these days, but the $2 trillion internet giant still has a few cards it can play.
Some of them were on display in the third-quarter report from Alphabet, the parent company, late Tuesday. Revenue and operating income beat Wall Street’s estimates thanks to strength in the company’s core search business and its cloud-computing operation. Google Cloud’s revenue jumped 35% year over year, up 6 percentage points from the growth rate shown in the last quarter and the best for the unit in two years. The unit produced operating income of $1.9 billion, which was 77% ahead of analysts’ consensus targets, according to FactSet.
Meanwhile, Google’s services segment, comprising search, YouTube ads, subscriptions and…
