Google Cloud revenue is now 18% of Alphabet’s business. Is this the beginning of the end of Google’s search identity?

Ever since Google was founded in 1998, search has been the core of the company’s identity. For much of that time, search has also been the engine (no pun intended) driving Google’s business. 

On Wednesday, that began to change. 

The company’s cloud computing business was the undisputed star of parent company Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings, posting an eye-popping 63% revenue growth from the prior year, for a total of $20 billion.

AI is of course what’s driving the booming growth in the Google Cloud business, as CEO Sundar Pichai and other company executives noted on the earnings call. And investors were delighted, sending shares of Alphabet up 7% in after hours trading. 

But lost in the excitement of the moment is something more fundamental: Google Cloud now represents 18% of the company’s overall business. It’s perhaps just one quarter or two more quarters away from comprising one-fifth of the Google empire—something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. 

At this time last year, Google Cloud represented 13.6% percent of Alphabet’s total revenue. In the first quarte...