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Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, boosted its revenue by 26% in the second quarter, outpacing Wall Street targets and delivering strong growth even as the company absorbed a hefty $5 billion fine from European regulators.

Shares of Alphabet were up 4% in after-hours trading on Monday.

Google executives credited the company's mobile advertising business and the expansion of its cloud-computing business for the healthy revenue growth. Google CEO Sundar Pichai cited important new customers for the cloud business, including the retail superstore Target, which he said was migrating key areas of its business to the Google Cloud platform.

To read more about Google's earnings, click here.

Also during Google's second-quarter earnings conference call on Monday, Pichai revealed an intriguing piece of information that hints at Google Translate's moneymaking potential.

In other news:

"The beginning of the democratization of fashion": H&M invited its Instagram followers to help design the latest collection for its millennial brand. H&M's Nyden enlisted nine Instagram influencers - including Refinery29 senior editor Alyssa Coscarelli - to help tap into consumer preferences using Instagram Stories' polling feature.

BuzzFeed's doing for travel what it did for food with Tasty - and big brands are starting to get on board. Since debuting as an experimental brand in February of 2017, BuzzFeed's Bring Me has racked up 2 billion views and has nabbed sponsors such as Pepsi.

Snap has signed up its first LGBT partner for Snapchat Discover. PinkNews will go live on Wednesday on Snapchat and aims to appeal to a young audience which is testing the boundaries of their sexuality.

Bank of America has hired 2 top bankers who work with the likes of Verizon and Viacom amid a deal frenzy in media and telecoms. Sam Powers will join in the fall as head of Americas Media & Telecom Investment Banking and Randy Russell recently joined as a managing director in Media & Telecom.

One of the stars of 'Planet of the Apps' is trashing Apple: 'I was like, f--- this.' Outspoken entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk apparently did not like the way Apple marketed its reality show about apps, "Planet of the Apps."

Guardian US teamed up with Google and MightyHive to initiate a series of tests to investigate issues of programmatic ad fraud on the open exchange and the effectiveness of ads.txt, reports the Guardian.The results showed clear evidence of unauthorized exchanges claiming to have sold inventory and taking revenue when the buy was made through the open exchange.