Google Revenues: $14.4 Billion In Q4, Over $50 Billion In 2012

Amid some lingering accounting confusion tied to the sale of its Motorola Home property, Google announced quarterly and full year revenues for 2012. Fourth quarter consolidated revenues (including Motorola) were $14.42 billion, which was an increase of 36 percent vs. last year and 8 percent over Q3 2012. For the full year 2012 Google made $50.2 […]

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google-g-logoAmid some lingering accounting confusion tied to the sale of its Motorola Home property, Google announced quarterly and full year revenues for 2012. Fourth quarter consolidated revenues (including Motorola) were $14.42 billion, which was an increase of 36 percent vs. last year and 8 percent over Q3 2012.

For the full year 2012 Google made $50.2 billion vs. $37.9 billion a year ago.

Google revenues 2012

Summary highlights:

  • Google revenues (minus Motorola Mobility) were $12.91 billion (89 percent of total revenue). That compares with $10.6 billion a year ago.
  • Google owned sites were responsible for $8.64 billion of the $12.9 billion in Q4
  • Google’s network generated $3.44 billion
  • Other revenue was $829 million

Google earnings Q4 US vs. International

Google’s international revenues were $6.9 billion, which was 54 percent of total revenue in Q4. UK revenue was $1.3 billion, up 24 percent vs. last year.

Paid clicks grew 24 percent in Q4 vs. last year. However average CPCs decreased 6 percent vs. Q4 2011 but grew 2 percent over Q3 of 2012. Traffic acquisition costs were $3.08 billion in Q4 (vs. $2.45 billion during the same period in 2011).

Motorola Mobility revenues were $1.51 billion in Q4, not including revenues from the “discontinued” (sold) Motorola Home business.

Additional comments from the earnings call: 

  • The top 25 advertisers are spending more than $150 million each with Google
  • Google executives repeatedly referred to the multi-screen environment and how they’re optimizing search for all screens
  • Skippable ads on YouTube (70 percent) are well-liked by consumers and advertisers because they only pay for full ad views
  • Google’s election-related ad revenues increased 5X over 2008
  • Mobile revenue growing significantly, no hard numbers provided
  • Larry Page: Knowledge Graph is at “1 percent of where we should be”  . . . there could be some short term impact on ad revenue.
  • Larry Page: We’re still in the early stages of Maps monetization
  • Larry Page on Facebook Graph Search: After receive a question about it, he doesn’t speak directly to Facebook but talks about Google’s technology and search innovation (Google Now, Voice Search). “I feel very confident about our core business.”
  • Larry Page: mobile CPCs will improve; we’re working to simplify ad system for advertisers “in light of all these [mobile] changes.”
  • Nikesh Arora: Vast majority of our advertisers have opted in to mobile. On mobile landing pages: those numbers are not as high as we’d like
  • Larry Page expresses frustration about the simplicity of some mobile sites and landing pages, thinks they’re not rich enough often for “modern phones”
  • Google Fiber: “not a hobby for us”

Larry Page kept coming back to Google Now and Knowledge Graph as products that really excited him, especially Now.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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