Alphabet's 2Q Earns Soar Despite Rising 'Moonshot' Losses

Business is booming at Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., even as it loses billions of dollars on kooky-sounding projects that may never produce any revenue. Huge chunks of the losses have been piling up in Alphabet's "X'' lab, a wellspring of far-out ideas that has become known as a "moonshot factory" since Google co-founder Sergey Brin launched it about six years ago. The lab is responsible for some once-zany projects, such as Google's self-driving cars, that matured into potentially revolutionary technology. It also has pursued but ultimately abandoned other outlandish endeavors...

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