Google grows despite economic crisis
Internet giant Google is continuing its rapid growth even during the recession. Strong advertising revenue also brought the search engine operator an unexpected profit at the end of the year.
Internet giant Google is continuing its rapid growth even during the recession. Strong advertising revenues also brought the search engine operator an unexpected profit at the end of the year, as reported by SDA on Friday. Google thus joins the small group of technology companies that have surprised on the upside during the economic crisis: Apple and IBM also increased their profits, while US software giant Microsoft disappointed expectations and announced 5,000 job cuts on Thursday.
Google sales rose by 18 percent to 5.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter. This is a far cry from Google's previous growth rates - the company often grew by around 50 percent a year. Nevertheless, industry experts consider this an extremely respectable performance in view of the desolate economic situation and the cuts in the advertising budgets of many companies. 67 percent of sales were generated via group-owned sites such as Google.com - an increase of 22 percent compared to the same period last year. While the UK, Google's second-largest market, showed "certain weaknesses" due to the weak British pound, the rest of Europe achieved a better result.
More paid clicks
Google performed particularly well in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The number of paid clicks - a measure of how often Google is paid for advertising placed alongside its search results - rose by 18 percent in the past quarter. Excluding one-off expenses, Google earned 5.10 dollars per share, while analysts had expected only 4.95 dollars. On balance, however, net profit fell to 382 million dollars from 1.21 billion dollars due to write-downs on the investments in Clearwire and the Time Warner division AOL.
Google sales rose by 18 percent to 5.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter. This is a far cry from Google's previous growth rates - the company often grew by around 50 percent a year. Nevertheless, industry experts consider this an extremely respectable performance in view of the desolate economic situation and the cuts in the advertising budgets of many companies. 67 percent of sales were generated via group-owned sites such as Google.com - an increase of 22 percent compared to the same period last year. While the UK, Google's second-largest market, showed "certain weaknesses" due to the weak British pound, the rest of Europe achieved a better result.
More paid clicks
Google performed particularly well in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The number of paid clicks - a measure of how often Google is paid for advertising placed alongside its search results - rose by 18 percent in the past quarter. Excluding one-off expenses, Google earned 5.10 dollars per share, while analysts had expected only 4.95 dollars. On balance, however, net profit fell to 382 million dollars from 1.21 billion dollars due to write-downs on the investments in Clearwire and the Time Warner division AOL.
