Google's UK success boosts reveues

by Caitlin Fitzsimmons, Media Week 20-Apr-07, 12:00

CALIFORNIA - Google UK earned revenue of $578m (£288.4m) in the first quarter of 2007, representing 16% of the group's global revenues.

The strength of the British pound against the Greenback increased the UK's share of overall revenues, up from 15% in both first and fourth quarter last year.

Overall, the search giant reported revenue of $3.66bn (£1.83bn) for the three months ended 31 March 2007, up 63% year on year and 14% quarter on quarter.

This generated net income of $1bn (£0.5bn), compared with $1.03bn (£0.5bn) the previous quarter, based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Google-owned sites accounted for 62% of revenue and third-party sites monetised through Google AdSense accounted for 37%.

Traffic acquisition costs, mainly payments to Google AdSense partners, totalled $1.13bn (£0.56bn), 31% of revenue.

International revenues were 47% of the total, up from 42% in the first quarter of 2006 and 44% in the fourth quarter.

Google noted that if foreign exchange rates had remained constant for the past 12 months, international revenues would actually be $115m (£57m) lower than this time 2006.