Google has announced its quarterly results for the fourth quarter of 2012. According to the results Google earned a revenue of $14.4 billion revenue during the fourth quarter. This made the year revenue of $50 billion, the first in the history of Google. The reported revenues are comfortably higher than what the analysts had expected. But the results also hint at how the mobile is affecting the online advertising world.
“We ended 2012 with a strong quarter.Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50bn in revenues for the first time – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half ,” Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google said.
The revenue from advertising increased by 19% compared with a growth of 25 per cent last year. Google’s own portfolio of sites witnessed a revenue of $8.6 billion which accounts for a big 67 per cent of the total Google revenues during the fourth quarter of 2012. This is an increase of 18 per cent when compared with the year 2011. The partner sites of Google generated a revenue of $3.34 billion which makes 27 per cent share in the total revenues of Google in the fourth quarter. This is an increase of 19 per cent compared with the fourth quarter revenues from partner sites in fourth quarter of 2011.
The quarterly profit of Google stood at $2.89 billion against a profit of $2.71 billion last year. Paid clicks witnessed a growth of 24 per cent compared with the last year 2011 and these were 9% more than the last quarter. But the growth in paid clicks came with a downward trend in the cost per click paid by advertisers. The shift to mobile is hitting at the foundations of Google business model as well like all other giants like Facebook.
Google managed to announce this quarter results quite smoothly because the last quarter results declared by Google were nothing short of a disaster because the results were leaked many hours before official announcement. The shares went tumbling because the results were far below the expectations by analysts. The shares of Google were also moving up and down before this quarter announcement. But the final results sent Google shareholders in jubilation.
