Market Pulse: Alphabet's Earnings Tripled. Strip Out One Line and the Business Was Roughly Flat. (2026-07-25)

Location: Market Pulse: Alphabet's Earnings Tripled. Strip Out One Line and the Business Was Roughly Flat.

What was wrong: The article stated that Alphabet did not update its full-year 2026 capital-spending plan, leaving the April range of $180 billion to $190 billion in place, and that it did not disclose its cloud backlog, which stood at $460 billion three months earlier. A section headed "The question the report answered, and the two it did not" was built on those two absences. The article also stated that the stock rose slightly in after-hours trading.

What it now says: Alphabet raised its full-year 2026 capital-spending guidance to $195 billion to $205 billion, up from the April range of $180 billion to $190 billion, citing an acceleration in delivering capacity to meet demand, and disclosed a cloud order backlog of $514 billion. The stock swung after hours and ended down about 5% on the raised guidance. The bullet, the section heading, and the paragraph have been rewritten to report the raise and the backlog as the two numbers behind the selloff.

Why it was wrong and how it was caught: The article was drafted from Alphabet's earnings release and did not account for the disclosures made on the earnings call the same day, where both the raised guidance and the backlog were given. The result was a section asserting the opposite of what happened. Caught on July 25, 2026 while cross-checking Alphabet's capex figure against a second Market Pulse article covering the same quarter, which had reported the raise correctly. The article's central point, that the 300 percent earnings jump was mostly investment gains rather than the operating business, is unaffected and stands.

Primary source: Alphabet Inc., Q2 2026 results and earnings call, July 22, 2026 (full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance raised to $195 billion to $205 billion; cloud backlog $514 billion) (https://abc.xyz/investor/)