Google broke another record, earning its first $50 billion in annual revenue in 2012, thanks in a large part to strong fourth quarter earnings that generated $14.62 billion, an increase of 26 percent over the same period the year before. Outpacing analyst estimates of $12.36 billion for the December quarter, Google’s fourth quarter was about three times that of Facebook for the same quarter.
Comparatively, Google earned $38 billion in 2011.
As typical, most of that revenue was generated by ads, about $12 billion of the $14 billion in the final quarter. Google rakes in about 41 percent of all online and mobile ads in the country, according eMarketer, the research firm, which makes Google the top ad performer for any company in the world.
“We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “Revenues were up 36 percent year-on-year, and 8 percent quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half.”
It was good news after the company advised analysts in recent days to rethink their estimates to take into account the sale of Motorola’s set top box business.
Following the earnings report, Google stock rose 4 percent in after hours trading.
It was a more successful earnings report than the third quarter, when Google’s financial team accidentally linked the report during early trading hours, which caused the search companies stock to tank below $700 per share.