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The company also spent at historic levels, nearly tripling capital expenditure for the quarter to $7.7 billion Alphabet Inc .’s first-quarter results came with a clear message to Wall Street: The company is embarking on a new spending binge to chase its biggest rivals. Google ’s parent posted the strongest sales growth in almost four years on Monday, indicating marketers kept flocking to its services amid rising scrutiny of digital ads. But the company also spent at historic levels, nearly tripling capital expenditure for the quarter to $7.7 billion. Almost all of that spending went to buttress newer cloud and consumer-device businesses that lag behind leaders Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more Inc. and Apple Inc. After neglecting these markets for years in favour of its main ad businesses and riskier moonshot bets, Alphabet is now splurging to catch up. "The big story from the results was the significant rise in expen...

Google launches Duo to take on Apple's FaceTime, Skype Knock, knock, Google's video chatting app has arrived. The app, dubbed Duo, represents   Google Duo   response to other popular video calling options, including Apple's FaceTime, Microsoft's Skype and Facebook's Messenger app. Duo   isn't much different from the other video chatting services, except that it gives a glimpse at who is making the call, helping the recipient decide whether to answer.   Google   calls this feature, "Knock, knock." The new app, announced in May, is being released Tuesday as a free service for phones running on Google's Android operating system as well as Apple's iPhones. Like   FaceTime   for iPhones, Duo only requires a person's phone number to connect. Many other services require both participants to have account logins to use their video calling options. Google has been offering video calling through its Hangout feature for several years, b...