Google reports record quarterly earnings

Google has achieved its highest-ever quarterly revenue during new CEO Larry Page's first few months in charge of the firm.

The search engine giant recorded revenue of $9.03bn (£5.6bn) in the second quarter of 2011, representing a 32 per cent increase over second-quarter 2010 revenue of $6.82bn.

Revenue from the UK totalled $976m, representing 11 per cent of revenue in the second quarter of 2011, the same proportion as the second quarter of 2010.

"We had a great quarter, with revenue up 32 per cent year on year to a record-breaking over-$9bn," said Page (pictured).

Page, one of the firm's co-founders, took charge at Google in early April 2011, replacing former CEO Eric Schmidt. However, Ovum analyst Mike Davies claims that a lot of the credit for this successful quarter should go to Schmidt, who is now executive chairman at the firm.

"While Google still generates the majority of its revenue through advertising on its Google.com internet search engine, Eric [Schmidt] led the diversity into multiple platforms for advertising in the future, such as YouTube, and perhaps most importantly, the Android mobile operating system, that Google reported is being used on 135 million devices worldwide, which is approximately a fifth of ‘challenger' Facebook's user base," said Davies.

"Along with the recently released ‘Facebook killer' Google+, which gained 10 million users in days, the company has inherited from Eric a multi-front strategy which aims to ensure that Google stays as ‘the next big thing'."