Google's parent Alphabet misses profit expectations as moonshot spend soars

Google's parent company Alphabet saw its revenue grow 17% during the first three months of this year, the company said on Thursday, but spent more money on its experimental moonshot projects, engineers, data centers and YouTube shows, causing it to miss investors' profit expectations. Alphabet shares dropped more than 4% in the US during after-hours trading to about 724 a share. The dilemma illustrates Alphabet's key challenge as it seeks to become the technology firm most omnipresent in consumers lives, including search, email, smartphones, maps, self-driving cars, virtual reality and even cancer research. Alphabet's growth has also attracted attention from regulators. On 20 April, the European Union's antitrust regulators charged the company with using its mobile operating system, Android, to block out competitors.