US tech giants make tons of cash, again

Another quarter, another record haul for America’s technology giants as Apple, Google and Microsoft all report their Q2 numbers.

You can see the revenue and profit numbers below, along with those for the previous quarter. Facebook reports later today and Amazon tomorrow. As you can see, everything continues to go very well for three of the world’s most profitable companies, with them once more collectively doubling their profits year-on-year.

“This quarter, our teams built on a period of unmatched innovation by sharing powerful new products with our users, at a time when using technology to connect people everywhere has never been more important,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re continuing to press forward in our work to infuse everything we make with the values that define us — by inspiring a new generation of developers to learn to code, moving closer to our 2030 environment goal, and engaging in the urgent work of building a more equitable future.”

“In Q2, there was a rising tide of online activity in many parts of the world, and we’re proud that our services helped so many consumers and businesses,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “Our long-term investments in AI and Google Cloud are helping us drive significant improvements in everyone’s digital experience.”

“We are innovating across the technology stack to help organizations drive new levels of tech intensity across their business,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Our results show that when we execute well and meet customers’ needs in differentiated ways in large and growing markets, we generate growth, as we’ve seen in our commercial cloud – and in new franchises we’ve built, including gaming, security, and LinkedIn, all of which surpassed $10 billion in annual revenue over the past three years.”

Isn’t it great how these companies just want to make the world a better place? Not everyone seems prepared to take their word on this, however, with the US government apparently determined to punish them for their outrageous success. Or maybe it’s just inspired by the recent example set by Chinese head honcho Xi Jinping and wants to use legal and regulatory pressure to force them to cooperate with its political agenda.