Revenue was almost $1 billion short at $57.27 billion compared with the expected $58.2 billion, while earnings per share fell more than 15% short at $1.06 versus the expected $1.25.

The results, described as surprising by market analysts, has given rise to speculation in some quarters that staff cuts at the search, cloud and video giant are on the way.

Much of the less than illustrious set of Q3 results was attributed to the poor performance of video property YouTube, whose ad revenues fell $400 million short of expectations.

Analysts are blaming the worrying results from Alphabet and Google on a slowdown of spending by companies in the digital advertising space because of economic concerns due to rising inflation and interest rates.

"The digital advertising market has been struck by a slowdown in spending in the past few quarters, as companies pull back their budgets," reported Yahoo Finance today.

The overall tone of the Alphabet results will be a worry for many tech industry stakeholders, not least workers at the coal face.

While reduced advertising and marketing budgets are generally the first casualties in enterprises during economic slowdowns, what often follows is a drastic reduction in headcount.

On that score, Alphabet has given indications in its latest results that the company may be about to engage in a wave or two of axe sharpening.

The Q3 results revealed that with 186,000 staff on its books Alphabet had 9,000 more staff than the expected headcount of 177,000.

However, as Yahoo analysts noted when commenting on the results, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai as recently as last month said that the company needed to be 20% more productive which in turn sparked speculation that a 20% reduction in staff numbers could be on the books.