Google Posts 26 Percent Revenue Surge in Q4 2010

Along with the bombshell announcement of the CEO switch, Google also revealed its fourth quarter financial results. While not as spectacular as the leadership change, the numbers are quite interesting in themselves, though perhaps not that surprising. Google posted great results for Q4, revenue was up 26 percent and net income also saw a big boost.

"Our strong performance has been driven by a rapidly growing digital economy, continuous product innovation that benefits both users and advertisers, and by the extraordinary momentum of our newer businesses, such as display and mobile," Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said in a statement.

"These results give us the optimism and confidence to invest heavily in future growth -- investments that will benefit our users, Google and the wider web," he added.

Gross revenue was $8.44 billion for the fourth quarter of the year. That's 26 percent improvement over Q4 2009. Traffic acquisition costs, what Google pays advertising partners were $2.07 billion, 25 percent of ad revenue.

This leaves net revenue at $6.4 billion, higher than analysts expected. The consensus was on $6.06 billion estimated for Q4 revenue. GAAP net income was $2.54 billion, a big increase over the same quarter of 2009 when it was $1.97 billion.

Google's own properties accounted for $5.67 billion of the gross revenue, or 67 percent. Google made another $2.5 billion from partners through the AdSense network, 30 percent of its revenue. Again, this indicates that Google's own free products are still the big focus at Google and that the strategy promoted by the company is still paying off.

While the US is still Google's biggest market, by a fair margin, international sales now account for $4.38 billion, or 52 percent of Q4 revenue. The UK was Google's biggest market outside the US, bringing in $878 million, 10 percent of gross revenue, less than the 12 percent it contributed in Q4 2009.