Alphabet, Google's parent company reported its Q2 2018 results, with total revenue clocking in at $32.7 billion, up 26% from the second quarter of 2017. Accounting for EU's $5 billion fine, the company's net income stands at $3.1 billion, and excluding the fine stands at $8.2 billion, down from $9.4 billion in the last quarter. The company's net income for the same quarter last year stood at $3.5 billion when it had paid a fine of $2.7 billion to the European Commission. Robust earnings despite EU fine, ads rakes in most revenue Alphabet's primary source of revenue is Google's advertising business, which brought in $28 million, or 86% of its total revenue. Q2 ad revenue is up from $18.4 billion in the same quarter last year. Advertising on Google's own platform (Search, YouTube) brought in $23.2 billion while advertising on its network properties brought in another $4.8 billion. The results appeared to have an insignificant impact from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation that came into effect in early May. The GDPR limited the ways companies can use customer data, which was expected to have a negative effect on ad revenue. GDPR affected some advertising technology firms as companies have held off on using some data-intensive ad services in order to comply with the data protection law. However, Google's ad revenue has gone up significantly by 24% year-on-year. How Google will deal with EU regulators The company said in its investor call that ad revenue growth was primarily driven by…
