Alphabet, the parent company of Google, bounced back from an absolutely dreadful day for tech shares, as its stock surged Thursday after the closing bell. All it had to do was to hand out billions of dollars to investors.

The tech giant announced its first quarterly cash dividend, saying it will pay $0.20 per share on June 17 to shareholders of record as of June 10, as well as a $70 billion share buyback. Buybacks and dividends help to boost stock prices by rewarding investors with cash just for holding the stock — but they’re widely criticized for artificially inflating the stock price without spending on employees or improvements to the underlying business.

Google’s stock jumped as much as 13% in after-hours trading following the report.

The announcement came as part of Google’s earnings report for the first three months of the year, in which it also reported that it exceeded Wall Street analysts’ expectations for both sales and profits.

Read More