India, Oct. 29 -- Microsoft (MSFT) shares rose 4% in pre-market trading on Thursday, while Alphabet (GOOGL), Google's parent company, saw its shares plunge 10%. Investors reacted differently to the two companies' quarterly results.

Microsoft's quarterly results were better than analysts had expected. The company's strong sales growth, especially in its Azure cloud business, helped improve investor confidence. Alphabet's results, in comparison, raised concerns about slowing growth and the rising cost of artificial intelligence (AI) investments, according to Yahoo Finance.

Microsoft's Azure cloud business recorded sales growth of 48%, excluding the impact of currency changes. This was about 3 percentage points higher than analysts had exp...