Google Cloud revenue grew 54% year over year to $4.62 billion during the second quarter of 2021. Perhaps even more impressive: Google Cloud’s operating loss shrunk 59%, from $1.42 billion a year ago to $591 million.

“As for Google Cloud, we remain focused on revenue growth, and are pleased with the trends we’re seeing across cloud,” Google CFO Ruth Porat said on the company’s earnings call with investors. “We will continue to invest aggressively, given the opportunity.”

Google Cloud includes both Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and its Workspace (formerly G Suite) cloud computing services and collaboration tools. And, like previous quarters, “GCPs revenue growth was, again, above cloud overall, reflecting significant growth in both infrastructure and platform services,”

No. 2 cloud provider Microsoft also reported its quarterly earnings today, and as Google works to gain market share and unseat Microsoft, Google CEO Sundar Pichai pointed to security as a competitive differentiator and “our strongest product portfolio.”

Google will continue to invest in security and continue its work to integrate its various security products such as Beyond Corp and Chronicle, he added.

“We are cloud native, we pioneered … zero trust and built the architecture out from a security-first perspective,” Pichai said during the Q2 call. “Particularly over the course of the last couple of years, with the recent attacks, [companies] really started thinking deeply about the vulnerabilities, supply chain security has been a major source of consensus, cyber threats are increasingly on the mind of, not just CIOs, but CEOs across our partners. So it’s definitely an area where we are seeing a lot of conversations, a lot of interest.”

During his prepared remarks, Pichai noted last week’s virtual Google Cloud Security Summit, at which the company rolled out several new security services including a cloud-native network threat detection service in partnership with Palo Alto Networks.

“Over two decades, Google has built some of the most secure computing systems in the world,” he said.

Google Cloud, along with its other business units, boosted parent company Alphabet’s revenue 62% year over year, to $61.9 billion on earnings per share of $27.26. As usual, Google ad revenue represented the biggest piece of the pie. It grew 69% to $50.44 billion with retail being the biggest contributor to advertising growth.

Additionally, YouTube revenue increased 83% from last year to $7 billion.