Google gains 25M subscriptions in Q1, driven by YouTube and Google One

In a remarkable financial performance, Google has reported an impressive addition of 25 million paid subscriptions to its services in the last quarter, as announced by its parent company, Alphabet, during their first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. This growth brings the total number of paid subscriptions to 350 million, up from 325 million in the previous quarter of 2025. The surge in subscriptions is largely attributed to the popularity of YouTube and Google One, the latter being Google's cloud storage and subscription service. Although the earnings report did not disclose specific figures for Gemini subscribers or their monthly active users, it was noted that advanced features of the Gemini service are now included with Google One plans, which are experiencing significant growth. Interestingly, the absence of detailed subscriber numbers may imply that the Gemini chatbot continues to boast over 750 million users, maintaining the same benchmark reported in the last quarter. Google highlighted a notable 40% quarter-over-quarter increase in paid monthly active users within the enterprise market for Gemini, although specific figures were not provided. While YouTube's ad revenue has shown year-over-year growth, it fell short of Wall Street's expectations. Investors were concerned as the company pushes for ad-free viewing options through YouTube Premium subscriptions, which has led to a decline in ad revenue. According to CNBC, analysts had anticipated YouTube ad revenue to reach $9.99 billion this quarter; however, the actual figure came in at $9.88 billion. Alphabet's CEO, Sundar Pichai, previously cautioned analysts that the future evaluation of YouTube's business should consider both ads and subscriptions, as the transition of users to subscription plans negatively affects ad revenue. In the previous year, YouTube generated over $60 billion in total revenue from ads and subscriptions, with Q4 2025 alone driving in $11.4 billion in ad revenue. This quarter, the ad revenue stood at $9.9 billion, reflecting an 11% increase year-over-year. Despite missing analyst targets, the overall revenue of Alphabet reached $109.9 billion, bolstered by robust cloud growth, with cloud revenue exceeding $20 billion.