Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported a 22% bounce in first-quarter sales to $24.8bn.

This performance came despite fears of the impact on sales of some advertisers’ decision to withdraw from Google’s YouTube video platform after it was discovered that some brands' advertisements were being placed alongside videos featuring extremist content.

Its shares were 4% higher at just under $930 per share in after-hours trading in New York last night and have risen by more than 20% over the past year.

Sundar Pichai, Google chief executive, said that the group has taken "serious and significant steps," to tackle the issue of adverts appearing next to graphic and extremist videos. It's invested in machine learning technology to spot this content.

Volkswagen, L’Oréal and the UK government are among the parties who suspended YouTube advertising.

Streaming and Cloud

Elsewhere, Amazon also had a strong quarter. It beat market expectations and delivered a 23% increase in net sales.

Cloud services continue to fuel the company's growth - it reported that its e-commerce business is still growing, and its video streaming platform is starting to generate significant revenue.

Microsoft

There were also new figures from Microsoft overnight - it missed expectation as its Surface sales lagged.

However - its cloud computing division has continued to make big gains.