The slump at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, appears to have been brief.

The company said on Thursday that profits in the most recent quarter had tripled from a year earlier. The strong results, which topped Wall Street expectations, should ease worries — provoked by a disappointing first quarter — that the company was slowing down after years of fast growth.

Alphabet’s stock price surged 9 percent in after-hours trading after the results were announced.



Is Alphabet’s advertising business starting to slow down?

The company has always been able to rely on one thing: Its advertising machine would generate cash at a furious pace.

Alphabet said overall revenue was up 19 percent, to $38.9 billion. It had $9.9 billion in profits, aided by a $2.7 billion gain from investments. The quarterly profit gain looked especially large because Alphabet accounted for a $5.1 billion fine from the European Union last year.

But there are clouds on the horizon. Growth in paid clicks on advertisements on Google websites decelerated for a second straight quarter — though they were still up 28 percent. When Alphabet reported results for the first quarter, revenue came in below expectations. Paid clicks on Google websites had grown by 39 percent — a cause for celebration at most companies but significantly off the 50-percent to 60-percent growth that Alphabet recorded in previous quarters.