Google has added another 25 million paid subscriptions to its services over the past quarter, parent company Alphabet announced during its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The company said it now has 350 million paid subscriptions across its services, up from 325 million in Q4 2025, with YouTube and Google One — its cloud storage and subscription service — plans driving the recent growth.
The earnings report didn’t highlight the number of Gemini subscribers or its monthly active users. But access to advanced Gemini features is now bundled in with those Google One plans, which are growing.
The lack of solid numbers may suggest that the Gemini chatbot still has more than 750 million users, the same benchmark reported in the prior quarter. Google pointed to the growth of Gemini in the key enterprise market, noting a 40% quarter-over-quarter increase in paid monthly active users. It did not offer a solid number here, either.
YouTube ad revenue missed Wall Street expectations, even as it continued to grow year over year.
As Google pushes ad-free viewing as part of its YouTube Premium subscription plan, the video service has seen a decline in ad revenue that has worried investors. Per CNBC, Wall Street expected Alphabet to bring in $9.99 billion in YouTube ad revenue this quarter, but it pulled in $9.88 billion. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai had warned analysts last quarter that investors should evaluate YouTube’s business going forward based on a combination of ads and subscriptions: When users switch to a YouTube subscription plan, it has a negative impact on ad revenue.
Last year, YouTube’s annual revenue topped $60 billion across both ads and subscriptions, with Q4 2025 bringing in $11.4 billion in YouTube ads alone. This quarter, the YouTube ads figure was $9.9 billion. That’s up 11% year-over-year, the company pointed out, but a shortfall on analyst expectations suggests that consumers are continuing to move from ad-supported YouTube viewing to ad-free subscriptions through YouTube Premium. We expect to hear more about this on the company’s earnings call.
Either way, Alphabet’s stock is up after surpassing Wall Street’s expectations, with revenue of $109.9 billion, which included healthy cloud growth. Cloud revenue alone topped $20 billion.
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The Ogun State Police Command has confirmed the successful rescue of five abducted students of Gateway Polytechnic, Sapade, following a coordinated, intelligence-led operation.
The Commissioner of Police, Bode Ojajuni, disclosed this during a press briefing held at the Command Headquarters in Eleweran, Abeokuta on Tuesday.
According to him, the incident occurred late on April 27, 2026, when officers at the Ipara Division received a distress call about a suspected kidnapping in the Sapade area. A patrol team dispatched to the scene discovered an abandoned ash-coloured Toyota vehicle riddled with bullet holes, with blood stains and personal belongings, including mobile phones, recovered at the scene.
Further investigation led to the discovery of a student identity card belonging to Gateway Polytechnic, confirming that the victims were students of the institution. This prompted the immediate launch of a full-scale rescue operation.
Ojajuni said tactical units, including operatives from Isara Area Command, Ipara Division, SWAT, the Anti-Kidnapping Unit, the Violent Crime Response Unit, Quick Response Squad, and OP MESA, were mobilised for the operation.
On April 28, joint security teams carried out extensive bush-combing and intelligence-driven tracking along suspected escape routes, including the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the Fidiwo axis in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area.
“The sustained operational pressure led to the successful rescue of the five victims,” the police commissioner said.
He added that the victims were immediately evacuated, given first aid, and later taken to the police hospital in Abeokuta, where they received medical attention. They were reported to be in stable condition.
Ojajuni revealed that the kidnappers engaged security operatives in a gun duel during the operation but were overpowered and forced to flee, likely with gunshot wounds. No casualties were recorded among police personnel.
He assured the public that efforts were ongoing to apprehend the fleeing suspects and bring them to justice, noting that bush-combing operations were still in progress.
The rescued students have since been handed over to the management of Gateway Polytechnic.
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.