Google has just presented the company’s Q1 earnings and finally the report showed that Google is not immune to the crisis after all. Google’s revenue for Q1 has decreased by 3% as compared to Q4 2008. The last quarter’s earnings decline also made Google’s current year-over-year earnings increase the slowest in the company’s history.
Fortunately for Google despite the decline in earnings from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009 Google’s profit still increased by 9 percent while its revenues for Q1 has increased by 6% as compared to Q1 2008.
Here are the highlights of Google’s financial report for Q1 2009:
- $1.42 billion net profit
- $2.16 billion operating income
- $5.51 billion gross revenue
- $4.07 billion gross revenue less traffic acquisition costs
- $2.25 billion earned from operating activities
Even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was quick to admit that Google is feeling the impact of the economic recession and said that no company is recession-proof. Schmidt also said that although Google’s search engine is continuously used, users/consumers’ purchasing activities has been greatly reduced, while advertisers are starting to minimize their advertising cost expenditures.
“Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession–while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew 6% year over year, thanks to continued strong query growth. These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online,” said Schmidt.
Still Schmidt is positive that Google can easily recover from this slump in due time. And that Google’s main priority right now is to focus on long-term investment that will catapult the growth of its business in the future. And yes, among this priority might be a partnership with Twitter.
