Huge profit surge at Google; Google+ numbers revealed
Search giant beats expectations; shares jump 13%
Google's new social network, Google+, has gained more than 10 million users during its first two weeks as an invite-only trial service, chief executive Larry Page said today.
That's a quick start, though still leaves some daylight between Google+ and Facebook (750 million users), Twitter (300 million) and LinkedIn (100 million).
Mr Page made his comments at Google's quarterly earnings announcement, whcih easily exceeded analysts' expectations.
Quarterly profit climbed 36% to $US2.51 billion from the year-ago quarter's $US1.84 billion.
Revenue was up 32% to $9.03 billion from the year-ago quarter's $US6.82 billion.
The company's core search engine ad business still accounted for the lion's share of revenue and profit, but there was increasing strength in mobile ads and YouTube.
Google shares (NAS: GOOG) jumped more than 13% after hours on the news. Before today's earnings announcement, Google shares had been down 9.94% for the year.
Results were not broken out by division.
Mr Page said that 550,000 mobiles running Google Android software were being activated each day, and that 135 million Android devices had been activated all told.
6 billion apps had been downloaded from the Android Market, compared to 14 billion from Apple's iTunes AppStore, and 1 billion form the BlackBerry AppWorld.
The company added 2452 employees during the quarter, taking its total to 28,768.
NBR staff
Fri, 15 Jul 2011
Fri, 15 Jul 2011
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Huge profit surge at Google; Google+ numbers revealed
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