Google Growth Fails To Impress

Google on Thursday reported revenues of $6.82 billion for the second quarter of the year, an increase of 24% compared to the same period last year.

The company delivered earnings of $6.45 per share, slightly less than the $6.52 cited in a Bloomberg analyst survey.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt characterized the company's performance as strong.

"Solid growth in our core business and very strong growth in our emerging businesses drove 24% revenue growth year over year," he said in a statement. "We saw strength in every major product area, as more and more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising and as large advertisers increasingly ran integrated campaigns across search, display, and mobile."

Following Intel's stellar performance earlier this week, Google's mere matching of expectations left investors disappointed. The company's shares were down about 4% in after-hours trading.

Google added 1,200 new employees during the quarter, most in areas related to search monetization, display, and mobile. Some 300 of these came to the company through acquisitions.

Google's Android platform continues to grow rapidly, with over 160,000 phones being activated daily.

"We see this platform as winning," said Google SVP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg in a conference call for investors. He underscored the huge opportunity for monetizing mobile search.

CFO Patrick Pichette said he preferred not to go into too much detail about Google's situation in China due to the ongoing sensitivity of the issues the company is dealing with there.

"The good news is we have our license renewal," he said. "From a financial perspective, revenue from China is not material to our overall revenue. Having said that, we had decent revenues in China for Q2."