April 19, 2009

Google Q1: Printing money, but feels the recession

Google's first quarter report showed a few different things:

* $5.51 billion in revenue. 6 % growth year-on-year and a decrease of 3 % from Q4 2008, the first ever quarter-on-quarter decrease
* Net profit of $1.42 billion (25.7 %) and free cash flow $1.99 billion
* Goolge is obviously highly profitable and one of the best businesses around today, but Google's profits have been depressed by a lot of initiatives in the last few years so cost-cutting is a good (and effective) way for the company to improve its margins in the short-run
* The economy is impacting Google, resulting in the first ever quarter-on-quarter revenue decline and the average cost-per-click declining 9.4 % (17 % more clicks for a 6 % increase in revenue)

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