Google Adds 25 Million Paid Subscriptions in Q1, YouTube and Google One Lead the Way

Alphabet dropped its Q1 earnings on Wednesday, and the headline number is 25 million new paid subscriptions across Google’s services. That brings the total to 350 million, up from 325 million in Q4 2025. The growth drivers are exactly what you’d expect: YouTube Premium and Google One, the cloud storage bundle that now includes access to advanced Gemini features.

It’s a solid number, but I wish they’d break it down more. The earnings report is frustratingly quiet on Gemini’s actual subscriber count or monthly active users. We know it passed 750 million users last quarter, and the lack of an update suggests it’s still hovering around there. Google did mention a 40% quarter-over-quarter increase in paid monthly active users for Gemini in the enterprise market, but no hard figures. That vagueness feels deliberate, and it’s a bit annoying for anyone trying to gauge how the AI race is really going.

YouTube ads were the other sore spot. Wall Street expected $9.99 billion in ad revenue; Google delivered $9.88 billion. That’s a miss, even though it’s up 11% year-over-year. The culprit is obvious: more people are paying for YouTube Premium to skip ads, which directly eats into ad revenue. CEO Sundar Pichai warned about this last quarter, telling analysts to judge YouTube on the combination of ads and subscriptions, not just ads alone. Last year, YouTube’s total revenue across both hit $60 billion, with Q4 2025 alone bringing in $11.4 billion in ads. This quarter’s $9.9 billion ad figure is lower, but the subscription side is clearly picking up the slack.

Alphabet’s stock still climbed after earnings, because the overall picture is healthy. Revenue hit $109.9 billion, beating expectations, and cloud revenue topped $20 billion for the first time. That cloud growth is the real story underneath the subscription numbers — it’s where the margin and the future are.

Personally, I think Google is smart to bundle Gemini into Google One. It drives adoption without forcing a separate subscription pitch. But the lack of transparency on Gemini’s standalone numbers makes me wonder if they’re trying to avoid comparisons with ChatGPT‘s user stats. Either way, the subscription machine is humming, and the ad trade-off is a calculated bet that’s working so far.