Internet search giant Google, shrugging off a weakening US economy, reported strong third-quarter profits last night which beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts.
Net profits rose by 26% in the third quarter from the same time last year to $1.35 billion while revenue, at $5.54 billion, was up 31%. The California-based company reported diluted earnings per share of $4.92, better than the forecast of $4.76 a share.
'We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business,' Google CEO Eric Schmidt said.
'While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display,' Schmidt added.
Google's share price soared 9.68% in after-hours trading in New York after having already gained 4.08% during the day on Wall Street.
Schmidt said the Internet search giant still hoped to conclude an advertising deal with Yahoo that would put Google technology to work targeting search ads on Yahoo pages.
The deal is currently being reviewed by the US Department of Justice because of competition concerns over an advertising tie-up between Google and Yahoo, respectively number one and number two in the Internet ad market.
Analysts said they expected Google to eventually make money off YouTube, the popular video-sharing site it purchased for $1.65 billion two years ago.
The company said revenue from Google-owned websites, two-thirds of total revenue, was $3.67 billion in the third quarter, up 34% from the same time last year.
It said revenue from Google partner sites through its AdSense programmes was $1.68 billion, 30% of total revenue and up 15% from the same time in 2007.
The internet giant said revenue from outside of the US totaled $2.85 billion, or 51% of total revenue in the third-quarter of the year.
