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Google’s headcount just grew by its largest amount in a while: Its parent company Alphabet added almost 5,000 employees last quarter, finishing March with 85,050 employees, it revealed as part of its first-quarter earnings report today.
Why so many? A large percentage came as part of a one-time, $1.1 billion “acqhire” deal that closed during the first quarter, as Google brought over around 2,000 engineers in Taiwan from the smartphone firm HTC.
That gets us to roughly 3,000 non-HTC hires during the quarter, which isn’t too unusual, especially as the company invests in its cloud business, etc. During 2017, Alphabet’s headcount grew by roughly 2,000 employees per quarter.
Overall, Alphabet reported $31.1 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 26 percent year over year, and exceeding expectations.
That represents sustained — and recently, accelerating — revenue growth.
Shares are up about 1 percent in after-hours trading.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.