Stefan Mileschin

Google has come out smelling of roses in its latest financial report, announcing that it grew 10 percent over 2012 and raking in $10.74 billion, while the fourth quarter profit of 2012 was up by 6.7 percent to $2.89 billion compared to the same time last year. Overall, the company surpassed $50 billion in revenues.

"We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” Larry Page, CEO of Google, said in a statement. “Revenues were up 36 percent year-on-year, and eight percent quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half.”

The company, which exceeded analyst estimations, saw its shares jump by five percent in light of the results, which were also driven by advert advertising revenue that rose by 19 percent.

Google generated revenues of $8.64 billion through search, which made up 67 percent of its total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2012, an 18 percent rise from the same period in 2011.

Partner sites also helped boost revenue, accumulating profits of $3.44 billion - 27 percent of total revenues - in the quarter. Paid clicks increased 24 percent year on year and were also up by nine percent from the third quarter of 2012.

Google admitted to seeing a six percent fall in cost cost-per-click revenue. It said this was affected by the consumer's increasing reliance on mobile surfing. Motorola's hardware division, meanwhile, fell short of analyst expectations - bringing in $2.3 billion compared to previous analyst estimates of $2.9 billion.

Patrick Pichette, Google's CFO, said that the company is "not in the business of losing money on Motorola," the FT reports, though he warned that there could be large losses on it in the future.

http://news.techeye.net/business/goo...record-profits