ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのAlphabet / Google Q3 2020 Earnings Call　Sundar Pichai

Candice: (00:00)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Alphabet first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero.

Candice: (00:23)
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jim Friedland, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jim Friedland: (00:29)
Thank you, Candice. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Alphabet’s first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. With us today are Sundar Pichai and Ruth Porat. Now I’ll quickly go over the Safe Harbor. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business operations and financial performance including the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on those areas may be considered forward looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our most recent form 10K filed with the SEC. And in our form 10Q for the quarter ended March 31st, 2020 expected to be filed with the SEC later today.

Jim Friedland: (01:14)
During this call we will present both GAAP and Non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of Non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today’s earnings press release, which is distributed and available to the public through our investor relations website located at abc.xyz/investor. And I’ll now turn over the call to Sundar.

Sundar Pichai: (01:37)
Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon everyone. When I last spoke with you in early February, no one could have imagined how much the world would change and how suddenly. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by COVID-19, especially those who have lost loved ones or their livelihoods. It’s a challenging moment for the world. Through it all, we are incredibly grateful for all of the essential workers on the front lines of this crisis from healthcare workers and first responders, to the grocery store clerks and delivery workers, to teachers grappling with new technology to help children learn remotely, to all the scientists and researchers working hard to develop vaccines and treatments, and many others who are leading through these difficult times. Thank you. These people fill us with hope and show us the power of human resilience. We’ll need that energy and resolve in the months and years ahead.

Sundar Pichai: (02:34)
Today, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the path to recovery, but there are some things that we can understand better with the patterns we are seeing. For example, it’s clear from data that people are being more cautious and are seeking authoritative advice and guidance to predict their family’s health and safety. A returned to normal economic activity depends on how effectively societies manage the spread of the virus. There is no one size fits all and the timing and pace of recovery will vary from location to location. There’s a longterm effort.

Sundar Pichai: (03:10)
It’s also clear that this is the first major pandemic taking place in a digital world. Many parts of the economy are also able to continue with some semblance of normalcy, thanks to advances in remote work, online shopping, delivery options, home entertainment, and telemedicine. At the same time, newer technologies like AI, Bluetooth exposure notifications, and 3D printing are being used to help fight the disease head on.

Sundar Pichai: (03:40)
It’s now clear that once the emergency has passed, the world will not look the same. Some social norms will change and many businesses are speaking to us looking to reinvent their operations. We’ve seen that the most pressing concern of small and large businesses right now is business continuity, solving for issues like employee safety, dramatic false or surges in demand, supply chains, and managing remote workforce. Ultimately, we’ll see a longterm acceleration of movement from businesses to digital services including increased online work, education, medicine, shopping, and entertainment. These changes will be significant and lasting.

Sundar Pichai: (04:25)
Given the depth of challenges so many are facing, it’s been a huge privilege to be able to help people and businesses at this moment. In today’s call, I’ll cover four areas. First I’ll mention some of the ways we have marshaled our resources in product development to help. Second, I’ll talk about how people are using our products at this unprecedented moment. Third, I’ll talk about our business, especially our advertising business, which was significantly impacted in the last few weeks of the quarter. And I’ll close with our investment plans and focus for the rest of the year.

Sundar Pichai: (05:02)
In the early days of the crisis, we were able to put in motion a number of efforts quickly. There’s a testament to strategy areas where we have invested over recent years, products that people trust, our technical leadership and innovation, deep partnerships, a highly skilled workforce, and the scale and resilience of our operations. I’ve been proud of all these efforts and what they say about our company. I’ll give just a few examples. First, we’ve been working with healthcare providers, researchers, authorities, and communities to help combat the virus. Our community mobility reports help authority see and aggregate how social distancing requirements are working. Verily has tested thousands of people in California and has partnered with Rite Aid to bring free testing to eight additional states. Google Cloud is forming deep partnerships such as with leading healthcare provider ACA Healthcare to understand data around ICU bed availability, ventilator supplies, and test results. And you may have read about our exposure notification partnership with Apple, designed specifically and carefully to protect user’s privacy while helping public health authorities and governments manage countries reopening.

Sundar Pichai: (06:23)
Second, we are working hard to provide accurate and authoritative information to people using our services. In search, we have launched a number of features such as up-to-date answers from health authorities and remote medical care options. On YouTube, we are quickly removing content that violates policy and raising authoritative content from news organizations and experts. Up to last week, our COVID-19 info panels have had 20 billion impressions.

Sundar Pichai: (06:58)
Third, we are playing a role in supporting businesses and workers that are hurting because of the downturn. In March, we made a commitment upwards of $800 million to support small businesses and crisis response efforts through a combination of grants, small business loans, and ad credits. And the Google news initiative is offering financial support to thousands of small, medium, and local news publishers through a journalism emergency relief fund. We’ve also waived ad serving fees for news publishers globally on Ad Manager for the next five months.

Sundar Pichai: (07:37)
Turning to the way people are using our products, people are relying on Google services more than ever. There’s a strong recognition of the value of our products, particularly in important and urgent moments. As a few examples, we have seen a significant rise in search activity. To put it into perspective in the U.S. coronavirus related search activity at its peak was four times greater than during the peak of the Super Bowl. People are spending significantly more time on their Android apps with downloads of apps from Google Play rising 30% from February to March. YouTube watch time has also significantly increased. One area in particular is livestreams. I hope you saw Andrea Bocelli on YouTube live on Easter, which has had over 39 million views. It was truly beautiful. 100 million students and educators are using Google Classroom, double the number from the beginning of March. We’ve seen a massive increase in demand for Chromebooks. Analysts have reported a 400% increase during the week of March 21st year over a year. And schools and businesses in particular are using our secure video conferencing platform Meet. Last week we surpassed a significant milestone and are now adding roughly 3 million new users each day, and have seen a 30 fold increase in usage since January. There are now over 100 million daily Meet meeting participants. Stay tuned for much more.

Sundar Pichai: (09:11)
Turning to our business, let me touch on our performance this quarter. Q1 was in many ways the tale of two quarters. For our advertising business, the first two months of the quarter were strong. In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenues. The timing of the slowdown correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the widest and related shutdown orders. As the impact of COVID-19 came into view, we delayed some ad launches and prioritized supporting our customers, as many adjusted their strategy.

Sundar Pichai: (09:48)
We are focused on products where we can help most advertisers and merchants during the crisis. For example, under our new leader of commerce Bill Ready last week we announced that merchants can list products in Google shopping for free. It’s been widely rolled out in the U.S. with more countries to come and the response has been positive. Overall recovery in the ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity.

Sundar Pichai: (10:16)
There are two key aspects of our business that give us confidence about the future. First, as we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of search is that it can be adjusted quickly so it’s relatively easier to turn off and then back on and marketers see it as highly cost effective and ROI based.

Sundar Pichai: (10:38)
Second, our business is more diversified than it was in 2008. For example, Cloud. In the public sector, we are helping governments deliver critical health and social services. We are supporting the state of New York’s new online, unemployment application system, as it deals with a significant increase in demand. In retail, we have helped Loblaw, one of Canada’s largest food retailers and Wayfair scale to support exponential traffic increase.

Sundar Pichai: (11:11)
We are helping communication companies adapt to new behavior patterns. Waterfall is using Google Cloud platform to help it analyze network traffic flows to keep everyone connected. And we are a helping entity technologies keep real time online games stay up and running. Institutions like Lloyd’s Bank are digitally transforming their businesses and we are helping even more businesses do the same. Through new partnerships with Accenture, AT&T and T-Systems. We now have more than 6 million paying G Suite customers. G Suite is helping Netflix and German manufacturer, [inaudible 00:11:54] transition quickly to remote work. While Twitter, Shopify, retailers shops, and Italian bank, Freedom, are using Meet for things like all hands and customer meetings.

Sundar Pichai: (12:08)
Elsewhere across the business, YouTube subscriptions continue to grow. The team has launched YouTube Kids in 15 new countries around the world since the beginning of the year and rolled out new features to make kids focused channels safer. Android previewed Android 11, which includes seamless 5G connectivity and a smarter keyboard with a faster messaging experience. And as I mentioned we have seen significant growth in Play. There are now over 2.5 billion monthly active Play devices worldwide. And in hardware, we saw a decline in device activation in the quarter due to falling consumer demand globally. But I’m excited about the product roadmap ahead for the year, including yesterday’s launch of Pixel Buds 2.

Sundar Pichai: (12:58)
Finally moving on to our focus for the rest of the year. We are taking a long view and continuing to invest in a longterm priorities but are being thoughtful in the short term. So we made the decision to slow down the pace of hiring for the remainder of 2020, while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas. We are also recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines and non-business essential marketing and travel. We’ll also continue to thoughtfully manage our Alphabet’s portfolio. Waymo raised 2.2 $5 billion in its first external investment drown, a terrific validation of their technology and longterm business model. Wing saw a surge in deliveries and new users, increasing its daily volume five fold with great momentum and test programs in Australia and Virginia.

Sundar Pichai: (13:57)
At Google, we’ll continue to be focused on the four key areas that I outlined in the last earnings call. First, creating the most helpful product for everyone, particularly at a time where people rely on us for information, work, education, and entertainment.

Sundar Pichai: (14:16)
Second, providing the most trusted experiences for our users. This includes our efforts to tackle misinformation and digital threats, [inaudible 00:14:27] the cell work to safeguard consumer privacy. Third, executing at scale. I’ve been proud of how we continue to work so cohesively and productively even with a distributed workforce. We’ll continue to build on the internal tools, support systems and infrastructure we have built over the years.

Sundar Pichai: (14:48)
And finally creating sustainable value. We’ll be optimizing the way our data centers work and prioritizing strategic areas of investment where we need to support our users and partners.

Sundar Pichai: (15:02)
Let me express my thanks to our employees for their Herculean efforts under these difficult circumstances. While the road ahead for everyone is uncertain, we’ll continue to support our users, communities, and partners. And we’ll all emerge together from this moment. Thank you and please take care everyone over to Ruth.