There was a lot of angst headed into Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) fourth-quarter 2022 earnings report, and not just because of worries about a slowing global economy and subsequent pullback in advertising spend. Investors had already been bracing for declining digital ad sales, which impact Alphabet's bread-and-butter Google Search business. More worrisome was Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) expanded $10 billion investment into ChatGPT, an apparent shot at Google as the public cloud giants gear up for another decade of next-gen IT investment. 

Though Alphabet's earnings update on Thursday was far from perfect, it did assuage some jitters, especially with its strength in Google Cloud. With Alphabet stock still down big over the last year, is now a good time to buy?

Alphabet's Q4 2022 revenue was up a pitiful 1% year over year to $76 billion. Management blamed a slowdown in advertiser activity as the primary culprit. However, just as was the case for much of 2022, a record run-up for the U.S. dollar (a side effect of the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes) also took a big bite out of growth. As can be seen from the increase in the Invesco DB US Dollar Bullish Index portrayed in the chart below, the dollar was well above 10% higher year over year for the duration of the fourth quarter, which lowers the value of international sales and profitability for Google. 

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Source Fool.com