Google Q1 profit soars to US$1.31 billion

By Shaun Nichols on Apr 22, 2008 7:36 AM
Filed under Finance

Google's report on the first quarter of 2008 shows an unexpectedly strong start to the year for the search giant..

The company logged US$1.31 billion in profit between January and March on total income of US$5.19 billion.

The US$5.19 billion in revenues marks a 42 percent increase from the first quarter of 2007, and a seven percent rise on the last quarter of 2007.

The majority of Google's income came from its own properties. Sites owned by Google accounted for US$3.4 billion, making up 66 percent of the company's total revenues.

AdSense accounted for nearly all the remaining income, bringing in US$1.69 billion and accounting for 33 percent of revenues.

Some 51 percent of income came from outside the US, including US$803 million from the UK.

Google credited a portion of this to the weak US dollar, estimating that around US$18 million of its revenues were due to the favourable currency rate.

Chief executive Eric Schmidt said that the integration of DoubleClick into Google's advertising platform would "increase value" for advertisers and partners.

Investors shared Schmidt's rosy outlook on the earnings. Google stock rose 20 percent following the release of the report, the largest single-day surge on the stock market for the company since its IPO in 2004.