Searching for Alphabet’s profit? Google it

A line on Alphabet’s earnings reports titled “Other Bets” has come under more scrutiny in the past year.

For tech juggernaut Alphabet Inc., G is the only letter that matters. That’s G as in Google, which accounted for all of its profit and more than 99 percent of its $90 billion in revenue last year.

But a line in the Mountain View company’s earnings reports titled “Other Bets” has come under more scrutiny in the past year. Other Bets refers to areas in which the company is investing large amounts of research and development dollars, in the hopes they might produce the next big thing. The 11 known divisions in the category include Nest, which sells Internet-connected thermostats and other home devices; Waymo, which builds self-driving car technology; and Verily, which collects health care data and teams with other firms to use that data to treat diseases.

So far, the Other Bets have been losing ones, at least financially. The segment lost $3.6 billion on $809 million in revenue in 2016. In the first quarter, it lost $855 million on $244 million in revenue.

Revenue outside of Google has recently increased, thanks largely to Nest, Verily and a division called Access, which runs Google Fiber, the highspeed Internet service offered in places like Atlanta, Kansas City and Austin, Texas. If the others are contributing revenue, it’s not clear how, let alone how much. The company does not break out how much each Bet makes or how much money Alphabet invests in each one.

And some of those businesses have struggled.

In October, Access laid off 9