Google results defy downturn doomsayers


18 Apr 2008

Wall Street thought Google could not possibly recover from its 38pc drop in share prices in February from its top price of US$747 in November 2007, but last night’s quarterly results proved them wrong as the company’s net income for the period ending 31 March was up by 31pc.

As the search engine giant’s income leapt to US$1.31bn for this financial quarter, its revenues increased year-on-year by 42pc to US$5.19bn.

While third parties including net analytics firm ComScore reported that Google’s revenue from paid click advertising was rapidly falling, the company noted that aggregate paid clicks, including clicks from ads on Google sites and the sites of their AdSense partners increased by about 20pc in the first quarter of 2007, and by a further 4pc in the fourth quarter.

“Our ongoing innovation in search, ads, and apps helped drive healthy growth globally across our product lines, yielding another strong quarter for Google,” said Eric Schmidt,
CEO of Google.

“As we integrate DoubleClick into our advertising platform, we see exciting new ways to improve the user experience and increase value for our advertisers and partners.

“Also, while exercising operational discipline, we continue to explore
opportunities that add value to users everywhere and to Google in the long term.”

Google currently employs 19,156 full-time employees, an increase of 2,351 employees since this time last year. However, since its acquisition of DoubleClick it laid off 300 employees from this company in early April.

By Marie Boran