Google: 'Billions of page impressions' via G1

Google posted a 68 percent drop in fourth quarter profit, blamed in part on its investment in AOL, but sales remained strong despite the economic downturn thanks to the web services giant's search advertising business and recent cost-cutting efforts [1]. Google reported net income of $382 million, down from $1.21 billion in Q4 2007--revenues increased at an 18 percent annual rate to $5.7 billion, down 31 percent quarter-over-quarter.

"Search query growth was strong, revenues were up in most verticals, and we successfully contained costs," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a prepared statement. "It's unclear how long the global downturn will last, but our focus remains on the long term, and we'll continue to invest in Google's core search and ads business as well as in strategic growth areas such as display, mobile, and enterprise." Google also announced it will offer employees a voluntary, one-for-one stock option exchange in an effort to create more incentives for employees to remain at the company.

"More people are searching from mobile phones. Our objective is to make search from a mobile phone as fast and easy as possible," Google senior vice president of product management Jonathan Rosenberg said during Thursday's earnings call, according to Seeking Alpha [2]. Rosenberg added that T-Mobile USA's G1, the first handset based on Google's Android mobile operating system, has "done very well," and there are more Android-powered phones in the works. Schmidt later said that Google has already seen billions of page impressions via the G1, Alley Insider [3] reports, while Google CFO Patrick Pitchette said the company's Android Market virtual application storefront now offers about 800 apps. By comparison, rival Apple recently stated [4] the total number of applications available for download via the App Store now tops the 15,000 mark, and Phone and iPod touch users have now downloaded more than 500 million applications in all.

For more on Google's Q4 report:
- read this release [5]