Google’s Profits Surge In Second Quarter

While the rest of the world is in recession, the Google juggernaut goes on, with profits rising a remarkable 18% in the second quarter.

As many people have noticed, there’s a recession going on at the moment, with people losing jobs, money, and houses. But it seems to have pretty much by-passed the behemoth that is Google. The company has just posted its figures for the second quarter that end in June, and their profits have leaped up by 18%.

For the three-month period, profits were $1.48 billion on revenue of $5.52 billion – so the revenue only went up marginally, by 3%, over the same period last year. The company has a very comfortable $19.3 billion in cash.

In a statement, chief executive Eric Schmidt attributed the jump in profits to "responsible efforts to manage expenses" and said:

"Google had a very good quarter, especially given the continued macro-economic downturn. We remain focused on investing in technical innovation to drive growth."

While most of its income derives from search ads, it’s now diversified into several different areas. An optimistic Schmidt even claimed that YouTube would eventually become a "strong revenue business." Notably, though, he didn’t predict when that might happen.

For all its smarts, Google hasn’t been totally recession-proof, having cut back on some projects and laid off some employees earlier this year.