Plus points
Search giant Google reported revenues of $9.72 billion for the third quarter, which was a 33 percent increase on the same quarter last year. This yielded a profit of $2.73 billion, 20 percent up on a year ago.
The majority of Google's earnings come from its own sites, which contributed $6.74 billion of the total. This was a 39 percent increase on a year ago, which suggests the company is ever more reliant on its core business, despite its many attempts to diversify. AdSense revenues were $2.60 billion, and 18 percent increase. The UK accounted for 11 percent of total revenues, down from 12 percent a year ago.
"We had a great quarter," said Larry Page, CEO of Google. "Revenue was up 33% year on year and our quarterly revenue was just short of $10 billion. Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!"
It says a lot that Page focused almost entirely on Google+ in his official comment, a product in its infancy that presumably represents a net loss for Google right now. Having established itself strongly in the mobile Internet through Android, Google is clearly determined to challenge Facebook's stranglehold on the social web.
Talking about mobile, Page revealed a few more details in the earnings conference call. Apparently annual revenues from mobile are estimated to be around $2.5 billion. While that still remains a small fraction of total revenues it's starting to look like a big number, and is up 150 percent on a year ago. He also took the opportunity to bang on about Google+ some more.
