14 DAY TRIAL // Google is scheduled to reveal its fourth quarter financial results a few days from now, on January 19th. If the fourth quarter follows the trend set in the first three, Google should have made about $11 billion, €8.67 billion. That's a total revenue for 2011 of about $38.3 billion, €30.2 billion.
Google brought in $29.32 billion, €23.12 billion in revenue in 2010, a 24 percent growth over 2009's $23.65 billion, €18,65 billion. Revenue grew only 9 percent that year.
Already, this year, revenue grew by 27 percent, 32 percent and 33 percent year-over-year in Q1, Q2 and Q3 respectively.
Assuming it sees a revenue growth of 30 percent in Q4, which seems very likely, and knowing that it made $8.44 billion, €6,65 billion in Q4 2010, Google should be seeing about $11 billion in revenue in the last quarter.
That's a very rough estimate, but the important thing to note is that Google managed to increase its revenue in 2011 by about 31 percent, a huge number for a company the size of Google which sees tens of billions in yearly revenue.
Facebook is expected to see a 33 percent revenue growth in 2012, but that's from $4 billion, €3.15 billion for the entire 2011.
Google has had a rough 2012 so far. It's image certainly isn't what it used to be. And it's got a rough 2012 ahead of it as well.
A pricey acquisition hangs in the balance, Google is willing to pay good money for Motorola, a company which hasn't exactly been flying lately. What's more, it's going to pay a lot of money if the acquisition doesn't go through either, based on one of the provisions of the Google - Motorola deal.
Google is also seeing a lot of pressure from government bodies over anti-trust issues. Bundling Google+ with search didn't help with that. At the same time, competition with Facebook is heating up, even if the social network is only getting a fraction of the revenue Google gets. It remains to be seen whether all of this will reflect in Google's financial well-being.