Google reported 2014 earnings with a $66 billion revenue in total, of which $18.1 billion was profit or income before taxes. Its revenue was “up 19% year on year,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google, in the company’s most recent earnings call.
For the fourth quarter of 2014, the company reported $18.10 billion in revenue, and $4.40 billion in profit. It said that it saw a gain of $740 million in the sale of its Motorola Mobile business. The company slightly missed analyst estimates - it reported $14.48 billion in revenue after subtracting traffic acquisition costs (TAC); Wall Street had predicted about $14.82 billion in revenue after TAC.
The search and advertising giant continued to report lower cost-per-click earnings, and a higher number of total clicks. It said its average cost-per-click was down 8% for the quarter, but total number of paid clicks went up by 14 percent.
The Mountain View company is continuing to hire aggressively, seeing its operating expense for the year up to $6.78 billion in 2014, from $5.03 billion last year.
Advertising continues to be Google’s strongest income generator, but it has kept falling in recent years. This quarter, advertising accounted for 89 percent income, and the company’s CFO Patrick Pichette said that “other revenue” grew to $2 billion for the quarter, citing strong growth in Google’s Play Store.
The company continues to invest in other areas not directly related to advertising, announcing a few days ago that its high-speed Internet service Google Fiber would expand to four other cities in the US.
But the company also noted that it takes a hard look at its products and is willing to cut some products if they don’t meet the requirements, citing the recently shelved Google Glass as an example.
While its earnings continue to grow, one thing to note in passing that Apple made more revenue in its last quarter of 2014 than Google did in the entire year.
