"A very good quarter" for Google

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 17 Jul 2009 at 08:43

Google has posted revenues of $5.52 billion for the second quarter, as the firm continues to weather the worst of the economic downturn.

The results were a 3% improvement on the same period last year, leading Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to claim "it demonstrates our resilience in what continues to be a very difficult environment. Google's business appears to have stabilised."

Profits hit $1.48 billion during the quarter ended June, compared with $1.25 billion for the same period last year.

Schmidt put the results down to the company's recent raft of cost-cutting measures, including firing 200 sales and marketing staff and shutting down projects such as its newspaper and radio advertising division. As a result, operating expenses were around $120 million lower than at the same time last year.

Future growth, he predicted, would be down to technical innovations such as Google Chrome OS: "History shows that companies that invest in innovation during downturns emerge stronger than their cost-cutting competitors," says Schmidt.

However, Schmidt rejected claims that the results showed online advertising was returning to normal: "It's too early for us to tell when the recovery will materialise. I wish that we could just prove it, that we could just do the analysis and figure it out, but we don't know how to do that yet."