Google beats Street, stock jumps after hours

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Google shares shot past $500 Thursday as the Internet giant reported fiscal consequences that round Wall Street estimations and defied fearfulnesses that the down economic system could be harming its Internet advertisement business.

Google stock had been hammered leading up to Thursday's first-quarter announcement, but it jumped almost 17 percent, or $76.05, to $525.59 per share, in after-hours trading.

"It's unclutter to us that we are well positioned for 2008 and beyond, regardless of the concern environment we happen ourselves surrounded by," Google chief executive officer Eric Helmut Schmidt said in a conference call.

Schmidt added that should the economic system falter, Google could endure it because targeted hunt advertisement goes on to be in demand.

Google said it made $5.19 billion in gross for the one-fourth that ended March 31, up from $3.66 billion for the same one-fourth last year. Wall Street analysts had projected $3.61 billion in revenue, according to Virgil Thomson Financial.

The Mountain Position company also reported nett income of $1.31 billion($4.12 per share), compared with $1 billion ($3.18) for the same time period a twelvemonth ago.

Investors had been edgy after a study by ComScore, a research firm, showed this hebdomad that click-through rates on Google advertisements had increased just 2 percentage compared with last year, and declined 9 percentage compared with the former quarter.

They worried that if consumers pass less, they might be less likely to seek and purchase merchandises and services online, a tendency that could ache Google, which do money when people chink on advertisements that dad up in their search.

"There was a batch of fume and not much fire," Rob Sanderson, an analyst with American Technology Research, said about Wall Street's worries.

"There was misplaced concern, and I believe investors were very much alleviated when they saw the results."

Company executive directors said that Google have continued to better the consequences that advertizers acquire through the site, and that targeted advertisement would stay attractive to sellers in a down economic system because they bring forth better gross sales takes than other sorts of advertising.

Google also demonstrated Thursday that it stays far ahead of its competitors, even as Microsoft goes on its unsought command for competing Yahoo, which have rejected the offer, initially valued at $44.6 billion.

Google is talking with competing Yokel about taking over the Sunnyvale portal's hunt advertisement business.

"They're gaining additional competitory advantage against both Yokel and Microsoft," said St Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital.

Google also said it is absorbing its DoubleClick acquisition, including adding 1,500 employees. It cut 10 percentage of DoubleClick's U.S. work force and programs to put off another 15 percentage of workers who are in transitional roles.

For the first time, more than than 50 percentage of Google's concern stemmed from its international markets, a tendency that Helmut Schmidt said he anticipates will continue.

GOOGLE INC., Mountain View

1st Quarter

2007

2008

Revenue

$3,663,971,000

$5,186,043,000

Net profit

$1,002,162,000

$1,307,086,000

Share earnings

$3.18

$4.12

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