Even Google feels the heat

(By Richard Holway 8.00am 17th Apr 09) Google's Q1 results, announced last night, indicate that even Google is not immune from the economic climate. Although revenues at $5.51b were up 6% yoy, they were down 3% on the previous quarter. That is the first sequential decline in Google's history.

What's really interesting in this is that Google's advertising revenues has been hit like everyone else. But this was more than made up for in an increase in the revenues it gets from paid clicks. It looks as if more of us are Googling before we buy and clicking on more paid-for search results. In a way this can be a bit involuntary. You sign a paid click deal with Google but more people click than you expected and it costs you more. Whether you get more business as a result is debatable. By contrast, what you spend on advertising is entirely under your control (and therefore gets cut)