Google in 42% revenue rise

Google has reported a 42 per cent increase in net revenues to $5.19 billion (£2.6 billion) for the first quarter on strong international revenues.

The internet search engine said profits jumped 30 per cent to $1.32 billion (£0.66 billion), exceeding analyst's expectations.

Google's stock leaped more than 17 per cent to $526 (£263.3 billion) a share in after-hours trading on the news, announced late last night.

"Our ongoing innovation in search, ads, and apps helped drive healthy growth globally across our product lines, yielding another strong quarter for Google," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google.

Over half of Google's revenues came from outside the US for the first time, contributing $2.65 billion (£1.3 billion).

Revenues from clicks on online ads, Google's main source of income, rose 20 per cent in the quarter.

Google said the overall impact of its $3.1 billion ($1.55 billion) DoubleClick acquisition in the first quarter of 2008 was immaterial to revenue.

The company added it laid off approximately ten per cent of the DoubleClick workforce in early April.

The results mean Google is beating the economic downturn that is affecting many US businesses and shares in other internet companies rallied on the news, including Amazon (three per cent) and Chinese search engine Baidu (eight per cent).