Google Revenue Barely Impacted by Recession

Google reported what it referred to as good financial results for the first quarter of 2009, indicating that it was feeling the impact of the recession. The Mountain View search giant's revenues for the first fiscal quarter of 2009 amounted to $5.51 billion. Undoubtedly results that spell success even without the context of the global economic crisis, the $5.51 billion also indicate that not even Google is recession-proof. And in fact the recession was blamed for the revenue drop quarter over quarter, even though it still managed to grow year over year.

"Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession – while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew 6% year over year, thanks to continued strong query growth. These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online," revealed Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Going forward, our priority remains investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses."

Essentially, Google accounted for a 3% drop in revenue in Q1 2009, compared to Q4 2008. In the last quarter of FY2008, the company reported revenue of $5.7 billion. The first fiscal quarter of 2009 has seen revenue drop almost 200 million. Schmidt explained that, like any business, the search giant was also feeling the impact of the recession.

However, at the same time, $5.51 billion in Q1 2009 represents a growth of no less than 6% compared to the same quarter of 2008. The Mountain View company indicated that operating income for Q12009 was $1.88 billion, representing no less than 34% of revenues. In this regard, operating income has actually increased over Q4 2008. Net income for the first fiscal quarter of 2009 totaled $1.42 billion, dwarfing the $382 million in Q4 2008.

The Mountain View search giant explained that end users were searching more and benefiting from improved query results, but that in fact they were shopping less and, in this regard, conversion rates were smaller.