Google going social as profit soars

google_7.jpg.crop_display.jpg

Google on Thursday released blockbuster earnings figures along with word that more than 10 million people have already joined its freshly-launched online social network.

Google stock prices climbed more than 12 percent to $594.90 after release of the earnings figures by executives who effused about Google+, YouTube, Android and other products promising even better days ahead for the company.

"If you look at the arsenal we are building it is really quite formidable," Goggle chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said during an earnings conference call.

Google reported that its profit climbed to $2.51 billion in the recently-ended fiscal quarter on record-high revenue of more than $9 billion.

"We had a great quarter, with revenue up 32 percent year-on-year for a record-breaking over $9 billion of revenue," Google co-founder and chief executive Larry Page said on the call.

Slightly more than half of Google's revenue, $4.87 billion, came from outside the United States, the company reported.

Paid "clicks" on Internet ads at the heart of the Mountain View, California company's money-making machine were 18 percent higher than in the same quarter last year.

Google reported that as of June 30 it had 28,768 full-time employees as compared to the 26,316 workers on the company's global payroll at the end of the first three months of this year.

Compensation increases put in place at Google early this year to attract and retain workers worked surprisingly well, according to Page.

"A lot more people want to work at Google and stay working at Google than we expected," Page said. "I think we are at the edge of what we can add."

Page was happy with management restructuring instituted after he took the Google helm from Eric Schmidt in April.

"We have increased our velocity of execution this quarter, which has been a key goal of mine," Page said. "The new management team is working together fabulously."

His stated goals included simplifying and streamlining Google's product line, putting "more wood into fewer arrows."

Google is building on in its strong suit, Internet search and advertising, while investing in video-sharing service YouTube, mobile platform Android, and Chrome web browsing software that hold revenue generating potential, Page said.

Google is also nurturing new products to capitalize on the unrelenting popularity of smartphones and tablet computers as well as online social networking.

Google+, a rival to Facebook, launched on June 28 and has been a hit despite the fact that membership is invitation-only while the service remains in a test phase.

"Over 10 million people have joined Google+," Page said. "That is a great achievement for the team."

He added that more than a billion items are shared daily at Google+.

The Google+ team has stressed that users can separate online friends and family into different "Circles," or networks, and share information only with members of a particular circle such as family or friends.

One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one's friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate Facebook Groups.

"Not all relationships are created equal," senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said when Google+ launched online at plus.google.com.

"So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss," he noted.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/84922" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-2fd91085392478c07e21818ac43cf7e7" value="form-2fd91085392478c07e21818ac43cf7e7" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="87690516" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.