Google's advertising revenues grew more slowly in the second quarter, dampening the recovery of the search engine giant following a brief downturn in its core business after the pandemic.

Alphabet reported that the Google division achieved advertising revenues of $64.6 billion from April to June, which corresponds to an increase of 11.1% compared to the same period last year. This represents a slowdown compared to the previous quarter, in which advertising revenues grew by 13% year-over-year, highlighting the primary revenue driver for Alphabet.

The total revenue of Alphabet increased by 13.5% to 84.74 billion USD, which represents a slowdown compared to the growth rate of the first quarter.

The company reported a net profit of $23.62 billion in the second quarter, representing a 28.6% increase compared to the same period last year.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Google's talks to acquire the cybersecurity startup Wiz for about 23 billion US dollars have failed. The acquisition would have been by far Google's largest and would have given a boost to the company's efforts to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud business.

In a conversation with reporters, Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet, refused to comment on why the talks had failed. She also said that Google has strong opportunities to grow the cloud business organically.

That said, we are always looking for good opportunities to diversify the portfolio, and we will continue to do so when we find the right combination of factors, including value," said Porat.

On Monday, Google also announced that they will stop efforts to remove so-called cookies from its Chrome browser, a significant reversal after years of working on less invasive alternatives. Instead, Google will present users with a prompt to decide whether they want to disable cookies, as reported by the UK competition authority overseeing the process.

Alphabet reported capital expenditures of $13.2 billion in the second quarter, representing a 91.4% increase compared to the same period last year, primarily reflecting Google's efforts to build more data centers and purchase chips for operating AI systems.

The growth in Google's cloud business, which is the potential beneficiary of the canceled Wiz deal, slightly accelerated in the second quarter, reaching 28.9% year-on-year. The unit recorded revenues of $10.3 billion in the most recent quarter.

The Google-owned video service YouTube also reported a slowdown in growth. YouTube generated advertising revenues of $8.7 billion in the most recent quarter, which represents an increase of 13% compared to the same period last year.

Wall Street analysts had expected Alphabet to report revenues of $84.2 billion and a net profit of $22.9 billion.

Alphabet also announced that it will pay a dividend of 20 cents per share in September. This was also the case in the last quarter when the company distributed its very first cash dividend.

After Alphabet stock closed slightly at $183.60 on Tuesday, it rose by 2.4% in after-hours trading.

The shares of Alphabet have risen by more than 30% this year as investors have shown new optimism regarding the resilience of Google's core business and the effects of cost-cutting measures.