With Google parent Alphabet closing at all time highs ahead of it earnings, expectations were clearly both high, and priced to perfection. Too much perfection in fact, because unlike many of its peers, the company reported Q1 results which missed across the board and showed that ad revenue is slowing substantially.

Here are the highlights:

Q1 revenue ex-TAC $29.48 billion, missing the estimate of $30.04 billion

Q1 EPS $9.50, Exp. $10.17

Q1 paid clicks on Google properties +39% vs. +66% q/q

Q1 cost-per-click on Google properties -19% vs. -29.0% q/q

Q1 operating margin 18%, vs 21% Q/Q

But this was the punchline: ad growth slowed significantly with google ads only growing 15% during the quarter, a marked slowdown from prior years. In the first quarter of 2018, the ads business posted 24% growth. In the company's statement, CFO Ruth Porat, said growth came from "mobile search, YouTube and Cloud."

The immediate comparison made by analysts is one with Facebook which beat revenue across the board, prompting some to wonder if the broader ad business is slowing down, or if the company has conceded even more advertising market share to Facebook (and Amazon).

The topline was disappointing across the board, with 1Q Google advertising revenue $30.72 billion sliding from $32.64 billion q/q; total Google properties revenues of $25.68 billion dropped in Q1 vs. $27.02 billion q/q; Google other revenue also dropped in the quarter to $5.45 billion vs. $6.49 billion.

Just as concerning has been Google's rising expenses, and in Q1 the company's traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the amount Google pays out to websites and mobile partners, rose to $6.87 billion for the quarter.

The flipside is that after CapEx soared toward the end of 2018, Alphabet did manage to rein it in during the quarter. As a result, overall CapEx fell to $4.6 billion, from $7.3 billion last year. According to Google, the drop in CapEx came, in part, from the big real estate spending blip in the first quarter of 2018. Still, the company's spending is trending up. The overall spending on Google during the quarter ($4.5 billion) is nearly double the amount of spending from 2017. Additionally, spending on Alphabet's "Other Bets," which include driverless car unit Waymo, grew during the quarter, reaching $868 million in loses. The units reported $170 million in sales.

Silver lining aside, the Nasdaq is suffering from a minor tremor after hours, as investors were clearly disappointed by the results and since the stock was - as noted above - priced beyond perfection, it is tumbling after hours, and was down as much as 6%.

GOOGL hasn't fallen this much in the reporting aftermath since at least 2014.