When digging into Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) latest business results, it's easy to focus on slowing advertising demand or its rising headcount. While these are understandable considerations, they shouldn't outweigh what I think is the most critical part of Alphabet's third quarter.

The star of the show should be Google Cloud and how well this segment has been performing for Alphabet. I believe it represents the strongest case for the stock. Let's find out why.

In Q3, Google Cloud's revenue rose 38% year over year to $6.9 billion. Its two largest competitors, Amazon's Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsft's Azure, saw revenue growth of 27% and 35%, respectively. So from a sales growth standpoint, Google Cloud had the best quarter of the three.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com