San Francisco — Alphabet shares fell after second-quarter results showed the return of a worrying trend: the company’s costs are rising as it spends more to expand Google’s newer, fastest-growing advertising businesses. The company reported sales, minus partner payouts, were $20.92bn, in line with analysts’ consensus forecasts, but below some more bullish expectations. Estimates ranged from $20.55bn to $21.61bn, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit was also hammered by a record antitrust fine from the European Union. The main Google division generated revenue of $22.67bn in the latest period, but 22% of that was paid out to partners as traffic acquisition costs, also known as TAC. A year earlier, TAC was 21% of Google revenue. Most of Google’s growth comes from mobile search ads, YouTube marketing spots and automated marketing called programmatic campaigns. The company has to share more of the money from those ads than it does with its original web search marketing slots....
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