Google’s cloud business reported an operating loss of $5.61 billion last year on $13.06 billion in revenue for 2020.

This is the first time the company disclosed its operating income for its cloud business following Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s pledge to do so late last year. The figures revealed that while Google Cloud revenues continued climbing over the past three years, so too did its operating losses.

For the fourth quarter of 2020, Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, reported operating losses of $1.24 billion compared to losses of $1.19 billion a year ago. Also during the quarter, Google Cloud revenue grew 47% year over year to $3.83 billion with Google Cloud Platform growth “remaining meaningfully above the growth rate of cloud overall,” Pichai said on the Q4 earnings call.

In addition to its quarterly and full-year 2020 losses and revenue, Google Cloud reported these metrics for the earlier two years. The company said its cloud business lost $4.65 billion on $8.92 billion in revenue in 2019, and it lost $4.35 billion on $5.84 billion in revenue in 2018.

Google’s top brass downplayed these operating losses on a call with investors and attributed them to growing pains as the company invests billions of dollars to build out its enterprise cloud business and hire sales and engineering staff.

“Operating loss reflects that we have meaningfully built out our organization, ahead of revenue, as we’ve discussed in prior quarters with respect to the substantial investments in our go to market organization, as well as engineering, and technical infrastructure,” Google CFO Ruth Porat said. “Operating loss and operating margin will benefit from increased scale over time.”

Both Porat and Pichai also pointed to Google Cloud’s growing backlog of deals as a measure of the business’ success.

“Our backlog grew to nearly $30 billion, up from $19 billion in Q3, nearly all attributable to cloud,” Pichai said. “We continue to invest strongly in the business given the momentum we are seeing,” he continued, noting that Google Cloud closed “several billion-dollar deals in 2020” and “deals over $250 million more than tripled in the same period.”

He pointed to a multi-year deal with Ford, announced yesterday, as further proof of Google Cloud’s progress in winning enterprise customers.

However, despite investing heavily in its cloud business, Google’s Q4 market share remained at about 9%, according to Synergy Research Group’s analysis.

Amazon and Microsoft continued to account for over half of the worldwide market during the fourth quarter with Microsoft again gaining ground on its larger rival and achieving a 20% worldwide market share, up from 18% in Q3, according to Synergy. Meanwhile Amazon, which also reported its quarterly financials today, held steady at 32%.