In its most recent quarterly financial report, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, disclosed significant cost savings of $2.9 billion through the extension of server lifespan. The report, covering the quarter ending on September 3, revealed a total revenue of $77 billion. Alphabet achieved substantial savings by extending the operational life of its data center servers from five to six years, surpassing the expenses incurred from employee severance payouts in 2023.

In January 2023, Alphabet initiated a workforce reduction and global office space reduction strategy. During this period, the company conducted an evaluation of the useful lifespan of its datacentre servers and network equipment. Following the assessment, Alphabet adjusted the estimated operational life of servers from four to six years and certain network equipment from five to six years.

The impact of this adjustment over the nine-month period ending in September 2023 resulted in a depreciation expense reduction of $2.9 billion and a net income increase of $2.3 billion, as outlined in the company’s latest quarterly financial filing.

Alphabet’s CFO, Ruth Porat, who also serves as the company’s president and chief investment officer, expressed the robustness of the business in Q3, with revenue reaching $77 billion, an 11% year-over-year increase. This growth was driven by significant advancements in Search and YouTube, as well as momentum in Cloud services. Porat emphasized the company’s focus on prudent capital allocation to ensure sustainable financial value.

Porat further explained that Alphabet was maintaining a measured pace of workforce expansion, prioritizing key products and reallocating talent to support essential growth opportunities. The company remained committed to optimizing its real estate footprint and reducing expense growth through efficient work processes. Additionally, Alphabet was leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline operations and control costs.

CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted Alphabet’s focus on enhancing the utility of AI for everyone. He discussed the upcoming Gemini project from Google DeepMind, scheduled for 2024, which aims to establish the foundation for the next generation of AI models. Pichai emphasized the project’s versatility and efficiency, designed to enable future innovations. Alphabet plans to integrate Gemini across its products, internally, and make it available to developers and cloud customers through Vertex.