Maybe two, if I could. First, on cloud, obviously, one of the dominant themes and you touched upon it is this client optimization theme that’s going on broadly in cloud computing. Can you give us a little bit more of your perspective on where we are in terms of the optimization theme broadly in cloud computing as a headwind to either revenue growth or backlog growth compared to the tailwinds of broader long-term consumption growth and possibly the contribution of AI initiatives to cloud computing growth? And then second on YouTube. Obviously, you have seen a lot of success with respect to engagement and consumption on Shorts. Can you give us an update on where we are on monetization trends in Shorts compared to the consumption you have already seen in usage shifts?
Thank you so much.Ruth Porat So, in terms of the cloud question, the point we are trying to underscore is there is uncertainty in the economic environment. And so we saw some headwind from slower growth of consumption with customers really looking to optimize their costs given that macro climate. I will leave the forecasting to you on that. But as both Sundar and I commented on, really pleased with the momentum that the team has been delivering and the breadth of what they have been working on.Sundar Pichai I do think – I would add, that we are leaning into optimization. I mean there is an important moment to help our customers, and we take a long-term view. And so it’s definitely an area we are leaning in and trying to help customers make progress in their efficiencies where we can.
Philipp?Philipp Schindler Yes. On the Shorts side, look, Shorts viewership is growing rapidly. We announced 50 billion plus daily views on the Q4 earnings call, up from 30 billion last spring. We are pleased with our continuing progress in monetization. As I have said earlier, people are engaging and converting on ads across Shorts at increasing rates, closing the gap between Shorts and long form is a top priority for us, as is continuing to build a greater, greater end user experience. Ads on Shorts are now available via video action app, Discovery and Performance Max campaigns and via product feeds. Shorts also are shoppable. Again, we are the only destination where creators can produce all forms of content across multiple formats and screens with multiple ways to make a living.
And as Sundar said, last year, the number of channels that uploaded to Shorts daily grew over 80%. And then in February, we brought revenue sharing to Shorts via our YouTube Partner program. Our sustainable revenue sharing model at scale remains pretty unique in the industry, and we continue to see strong greater adoption. So ultimately, our goal is to make YouTube the best places for Shorts viewers and creators. And that’s really what we are focused on right now.Eric Sheridan Thank you.Operator Thank you. The next question comes from Ross Sandler of Barclays. Please go ahead.Ross Sandler Hey guys. I will just ask a tough question. Sundar, you came up in the group that structured a lot of the Android partnerships from inception and I believe possibly the iOS agreement as well.
So, how do you feel about Alphabet’s ability to maintain the unit economics with these partnerships in light of Microsoft’s ambitions to increase its share of paid Search? And Ruth, does this have any impact on your outlook for profitability of overall Alphabet over the long-term? Thank you.Sundar Pichai Maybe I will – look, I think the – these dynamics are – have always been around. It’s important to remember, as far as I can remember, we have always been in a competitive environment for these deals. And while I can’t comment on the specifics of any of our partnership agreements, what has served us well is always, first of all, building the best product possible, focused on giving value to users. And when we work with our partners, we work hard to create a win-win – win-win experience, and ultimately, partners end up choosing us because that’s what their users want.
And that’s always been what’s helped Search be widely distributed. So, I think it all starts with continuing to innovate and improve Search and making sure we are leading there. So, I think we have always approached it very robustly over the many, many years, and I am comfortable that we will continue to be able to do so.Ruth Porat And then in terms of just longer term profitability, I think I will broaden out your question somewhat because the way we are looking at it is we continue to be committed to investing for growth, and we want to ensure we have overall capacity for growth. And so we have a number of work streams underway to, as we keep describing it, durably reengineer our cost base. And in particular, what we are excited about our long-term opportunities with AI and want to make sure we have the capacity to continue to invest there in the other areas where we see long-term growth in Search and ads, cloud, YouTube, hardware.
And so that underscores our efforts to build in additional flexibility. And as we have said repeatedly, we want to ensure that expense growth is not growing out of revenue growth, and that means driving revenue growth and really being as disciplined as we can on these various work streams that we have discussed earlier in this call and last quarter as well to improve our expense growth trajectory.Operator Thank you. The next question will come from Justin Post of BAML. Please go ahead.Justin Post Great. Thanks a lot. Maybe one for Sundar and one for Ruth. So, you got the cost question on learning language models into Search. Can you talk about revenues? I think on one hand, you will see better relevancy and maybe better results with higher conversion.
But on the other hand, there might be fewer areas for ads or fewer queries because people get answers quickly – more quickly. Are you optimistic on that transition, and maybe give us your thoughts there? And then, Ruth, backing out the one-time charges, it looks like OpEx growth is now 8%, so real progress there. Could you give us a flavor of where you are, you think in your optimization cycle? Thank you.Sundar Pichai So, first of all, throughout the years, as we have gone through many, many shifts in Search, and as we evolve Search, I think we have always had a strong grounded approach in terms of how we evolve ads as well. And we do that in a way that makes sense and provide value to users. It – the fundamental drivers here are people are looking for relevant information.
And in commercial categories, they find ads to be highly relevant and valuable. And so that’s what drives this virtuous cycle. And I don’t think the underpinnings of the fact that users want relevant commercial information, they want choice in what they look at, even in areas where we are summarizing and answering, etcetera, users want choice. We care about sending traffic. Advertisers want to reach users. And so all those dynamics, I think which have long served us well remain. And as I said, we will be iterating and testing as we go. And I feel comfortable we will be able to drive innovation here like we have always done.Ruth Porat And in terms of our OpEx trajectory, yes, there was the elevated expense in OpEx from the $2.6 billion in severance and office space charges.
There was also a $988 million benefit from lower depreciation due to the change in useful lives. But that obviously is an ongoing benefit. And there was also, as we noted in our earnings release, a benefit from the shift in timing of stock-based compensation from the first quarter to the second quarter. So, a little bit of complexity there, but core of your question, we remain extremely focused on these various work streams that we have talked about. It starts with the pace of hiring. It goes to the various work streams that both Sundar and I referenced around using AI and automation to improve productivity, all that we are doing with suppliers and vendors to be as efficient as possible, all that we are doing around optimizing how and where we work.
