San Francisco, Jul 27 (IANS): Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has reported weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue for the April-June period (Q2). The company reported solid growth in its Search business.

Revenue growth slowed to 13 per cent from 62 per cent in the same quarter last year.

The company reported revenues of $69.7 billion in the quarter, up 13 per cent.

"In the second quarter our performance was driven by Search and Cloud. The investments we've made over the years in AI and computing are helping to make our services particularly valuable for consumers, and highly effective for businesses of all sizes," said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google.

Pichai said that the company will continue to invest responsibly in deep computer science for the long-term.

Google's Search and Other revenue was $40.69 billion, up from $35.85 billion the year prior, boosted by travel and retail queries, said the company

YouTube advertising revenue was $7.34 billion vs $7.52 billion expected while Google Cloud revenue was $6.28 billion vs. $6.41 billion expected.

Alphabet said its headcount was up 21 per cent to 174,014 full-time employees.

Google has put a freeze on hiring for two weeks to review its headcount needs and decide on future course of action. The company last week announced to slow down hirings for the rest of the year.