Alphabet nearly doubled its annual revenue last year despite mounting regulatory pressure, thanks to both its continued dominance of online advertising and its investment in artificial intelligence (AI). Five years after CEO Sundar Pichai announced a wholesale embrace of AI, the tech giant is now using such technology “to tackle some of humanity’s most pressing challenges,” he says. For example, Alphabet helps users reduce their carbon footprint by providing eco-friendly routes in Maps, emissions data in Google Flights, and home-energy-use data with Nest thermostats.
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