Microsoft Reveals Azure Revenue at $33.2B as Google Unveils Gemini 4 Carbon and Expands AI Search Ads

Microsoft disclosed Azure's quarterly revenue in dollars for the first time, reporting $33.2 billion and revealing how close the cloud platform is to challenging AWS for market leadership, according to Microsoft's earnings update. The transparency marks a shift in how the company reports its cloud performance.

Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, its latest frontier AI model described as a slightly improved version of the prior Argon model, reports Google. The release gives users access to enhanced capabilities as competition among frontier models intensifies.

Google parent Alphabet reported third-quarter revenue of $127.6 billion, up 25% year over year, per its earnings release. The company simultaneously announced a global expansion of AI Search ads as its core advertising growth slows.

Sources told The Information that DeepSeek and Moonshot AI heavily relied on distillation from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra to train models including Kimi K3.1 Pro and V4.1-Flash 1017, following Anthropic's crackdown on similar practices. GPT-6 Astra has seen strong demand since its release in early September.

Google's AI responses become notably less forthright when asked who won the 2020 U.S. presidential election, reports indicate. The AI provides more direct answers when the same question is posed from outside the United States.

AI infrastructure is increasingly straining Arizona's water resources as massive data center complexes rise from the desert landscape. These facilities power the chatbots, streaming services, and search engines used by millions, drawing significant water supplies for cooling operations.

Sources: