Google reported fourth quarter fiscal 2011 earnings on Thursday that missed analyst expectations. Google CEO and Co-founder Larry Page, however, remarked during his company’s earnings call the he was ‘happy’ with the results overall during the quarter.
Google’s revenues for the fourth quarter grew to $10.58 billion, which is a 25 percent year-over-year increase. For Google, revenues excluding Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) is another key metric and that came in at $8.13 billion, which was a miss from analyst estimates of $8.41 billion.
Net Income was also on the rise at Google, growing to $2.71 billion, up from $2.54 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The reason for the earnings miss was related to a declining average cost-per-click (CPC) number from Google, for ads served on Google and its network partner sites. Google reported that the average cost-per-click, decreased approximately 8 percent over the fourth quarter of 2010.
Google’s Larry Page stressed during his company’s earning call that Google had a good quarter and is growing new business areas including Google Plus and Android.
“I’m pleased to announce that there are over 90 million Google+ users, well over double what I announced just a quarter ago on our earnings call,” Page said. “Engagement on plus is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time. Plus users are very engaged with our products, over 60 percent of them engage daily and over 80 percent weekly.”
Read the full story at Datamation:
Google Grows G+ As Earnings Miss
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist