22 January 2010 | Author: J. Morton Search Copywriter

Google exec praises ad sales performance

In a day when Google Inc's year-on-year sales growth report sent its stocks sliding nearly 5 percent, CEO Eric Schmidt is still smiling. While his company posted 17 per cent growth in revenue, falling below some investors' expectations, he pointed to the search site's advertising sales as a mark of success.

Revenues reported by Google in its fourth quarter stood at $1.97 billion (£1.22 billion) and Schmidt showed a good disposition on the findings: "Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year."

Schmidt went on to praise the company's employees and growth despite the global recession, which has hit technology sectors especially.

"Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn," he said.

Analysts, however, note that Google may have suffered due to investors' inflated expectations. These expectations "got higher as they came closer to reporting and they delivered fundamentally sound numbers, but did not deliver a blowout," Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst at Janco partner, told Reuters. "The stock will recover. I don't think it will fall through the floor."

However, other signs - such as the firm's increased employment numbers and recent acquisitions and venture in the mobile phone world - paint a better picture for Google's future prospects.

"As we enter 2010, we remain hugely optimistic about the Internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider Web," Schmidt said.

The Guardian reports Google's Q4 UK revenue at $772 million (£479 million), a similar proportion to that of the same time last year.