Google parent company Alphabet added nearly 9,000 new employees in the past year (GOOG, GOOGL)

Google

Google parent company Alphabet has added nearly 9,000 employees to its payroll over the past year. 

The company finished Q1 with a headcount of 64,115 employees, according to its earnings report. That compares to 55,419 employees in the year-ago period. And it's up a couple thousand from the 61,814 that Alphabet had just a few months ago, at the end of 2015. 

Alphabet is one of the internet industry's most dominant companies, generating $20.3 billion in the first quarter. But investors are worried about its spending.

The increasing headcount is especially interesting since Alphabet has slowed down its once feverish acquisitions of other companies in recent months.

Alphabet CEO Ruth Porat said during the conference call that "the vast majoirty of new hires continue to be engineers and product managers in areas where we’ve prioritized investment such as cloud and apps."

She noted that the core Google business, which consists of search, Android and other web services, experienced the largest numerical increase in staff, but the Other Bets companies, such as Google Fiber and biotech firm Verily, saw the largest percentage increase in headcount.

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