Alphabet’s stock felt the brunt of investor skepticism, nosediving by nearly 10% on a recent Wednesday. The culprit? A lukewarm performance report from Google’s cloud segment in Q3, which, for Wall Street, didn’t quite hit the mark.

During this tense trading session, Alphabet’s market capitalization plummeted by a staggering $173 billion. Even though the stock did recover slightly, the company ended up bidding farewell to approximately $165.5 billion in market value. This figure sets a record for Alphabet—it’s the most significant single-day market cap loss they’ve ever faced.

Now, a dive into the numbers reveals a mixed bag. While overall revenue and profit surpassed Wall Street’s predictions, the cloud unit’s growth narrative was less compelling. The unit’s revenue ascended 22.5% to reach $8.41 billion, but this was a tad shy of the anticipated $8.62 billion. Notably, this is a deceleration from the 28% growth seen in the preceding quarter.

Despite this cloudy setback, Scott Devitt of Wedbush paints a brighter picture. He believes the stock’s dip was a tad “overdone.” In his view, the market might be overvaluing the Cloud segment, which only contributes to ~11% of Alphabet’s revenue and a mere ~1% of its operating income. For context, Google’s core advertising business—a powerhouse that churns out 78% of the revenue—is on an uptrend, heading into Q4, and its Q3 performance more than compensated for the cloud segment’s slower momentum. To drive home his point, Devitt amusingly said that counting on Alphabet for its Cloud is akin to “expecting Michael Jordan to shine in baseball.”

Interestingly, as Alphabet dealt with this turbulence, tech peer Microsoft sailed smoothly in the opposite direction. Microsoft’s shares leaped over 2.8% the same day, buoyed by a robust Q3 earnings report that surpassed revenue and EPS expectations. But here’s the clincher: Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit clocked in $24.3 billion, edging past Wall Street’s $23.5 billion forecast. Analyst Sophie Lund-Yates of Hargreaves Lansdown interprets this as evidence of Microsoft’s successful AI strategy bearing fruit.

In her words, “A decline in hardware and its associated software purchases is typically indicative of a slowing economy. However, Microsoft’s cloud capabilities have effectively filled that void.”

For the discerning investor, the message is clear. While short-term market reactions can be sharp and dramatic, it’s crucial to keep an eye on the bigger picture, the underlying strengths, and the long-term potential of tech giants. After all, every cloud, be it Google’s or the literal ones, has a silver lining.