Google rakes in billions in advertising - growth in profit and revenue

Thanks to high advertising revenues, sales in the second quarter rose by 32 percent to a good 9.0 billion dollars. The bottom line was a profit of 2.5 billion dollars. This was 36 percent more than in the same period last year. Google even performed much better than analysts had expected. The share price jumped by a whopping 13 percent after trading hours.

In particular, the foray into display advertising - graphic advertising with classic banner ads, for example - on the website seems to have paid off for Google, as does the turnover in advertising on mobile devices such as smartphones. Until now, Google had primarily earned from plain text ads in the environment of its search engine.

New products, more employees

The company has just launched its own social network under the name Google+ and has thus entered into competition with Facebook. He was totally overwhelmed by how well Google+ was received, said co-founder and company CEO Larry Page on Thursday. The test phase has been running for two weeks. According to Page, there are already more than ten million members. By comparison, Facebook now has 750 million members.

Although Google is constantly investing in new products, it has succeeded in boosting profits. This has sometimes earned the management the resentment of investors, because new products first cost money. But in the end, the calculation seems to have worked out.

Google also needs new employees for new products. The number of employees grew further to almost 28'800 at mid-year. At the end of March, there were still 26'300 employees. Despite the investments, Google continues to have a bulging cash register. As of June 30, it was filled with $39.1 billion.

Google has been operating in Switzerland since 2004 and employs more than 700 people. According to the company, Zurich is Google's largest research and development location outside the USA.