Google Profits, Revenues Soar On More Ad SalesGoogle Profits, Revenues Soar On More Ad Sales

Google Inc. on Thursday reported nearly a doubling in revenues in the second quarter and more than a fourfold increase in profits, as the company continued to benefit from the growth in online advertising.

The Mountain View, Calif., search giant said net income for the quarter ended June 30 was $343 million, or $1.19 a share, compared with $79 million, or 30 cents a share, during the same period a year ago.

Revenues surged 98 percent year over year to a record $1.4 billion from $700 million a year ago.

"We had an excellent quarter," Eric Schmidt, chief executive for Google, said in a statement. "We continued to innovate, we continued to execute and we stayed focused on our users."

The company said its revenue increase reflected "strong traffic and monetization growth in the quarter, as well as advertisers' growing recognition of the Internet as an effective medium."

Indeed, ad sales on Google-owned sites generated $737 million in the quarter, or 53 percent of total revenues and a 115 percent boost over a year ago. On Google's partner sites, the company's AdSense programs generated $630 million, or 46 percent of total revenues and an 82 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

The online advertising market has been steadily growing, as the Internet evolves into a mainstream channel for marketers to reach consumers. Advertisers spent more than $2.8 billion on the Internet in the first quarter of this year, making the three-month period the highest in nine consecutive growth quarters, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Google in June remained the leading search engine on the Internet with 47 percent of all searches conducted online, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo Inc. was second with 22 percent, followed by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, 12 percent.