Google Revenue Beats Forecasts

California based Google search engine increased its revenue for the quarter ending December '09 by 17% to $6.7 bn. The last time Google reached double digit sales growth was for the quarter ending December '08. For the first three quarters of 2009, revenue growth was slow, just around 5%. An astonishing fact is that since 2004, Google has managed to grow at least 10% in every single quarter. So the first 9 months of 2009 were somewhat disappointing for the giant search engine.

But they seem to be back with a bang. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, "We're back in business, full-blast. Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year. Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn. As we enter 2010, we remain hugely optimistic about the Internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider Web." 97% of Google's revenue for the quarter was from online advertising. The sales figures are also a result of the comeback of the advertising industry. Advertisers are said to have paid 5% more for every click on ads on Google's website in this quarter as compared to a year back. This, also being a welcome sign that customers are willing to spend more, and click on more ads. The number of paid clicks on ads rose more than 13% as compared to the year 2008.

For the month of December '09, Google had a market share of 65.7% in terms of online searches. Yahoo was behind with a share of 17.3%.

Google has just recently launched the Nexus One phone. This was the company's first jump into the hardware market. Google employs around 20,000 people worldwide as full-time employees, and the number is just growing steadily. But, even though Google beat expectations for the quarter, its shares still fell around 5% to $552.52, according to latest figures. But this is one company that has managed to grow substantially, quite immune to the economic recession that hit the rest of the world.