The search giant just announced its Q4 earnings for 2012, and boy did they impress. For the three month period ending December 2012, Google raked in $14.42 billion in revenue and that doesn’t even include the income generated by recently purchased Motorola. Including the income generated by Motorola takes the total to a staggering $15.24 billion.

googleThis all translates into a tidy $2.89 billion net profit, up from $2.71 billion the same time last year and $2.74 billion last quarter. $1.3 billion came from my neck of the woods, the UK, but obviously most comes from the US sitting at $5.99 billion.

We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half. In today’s multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be at Google.”

Despite pulling in $1.51 billion in revenue, Motorola lost $353 million while the company is still going through its transition from a failing company to a Google child.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 24% over the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 9% over the third quarter of 2012.

Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 6% over the fourth quarter of 2011 and increased approximately 2% over the third quarter of 2012.

TAC – Traffic acquisition costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $3.08 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to $2.45 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 25% in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to 24% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Ads seem to make up most of the revenue, accounting for $12 billion from ads alone, and are still the major source of Google’s income.

These are some impressive figures that show Google have some serious income at their disposal, but their core profession still remains the center of their profit sheet. It also shows that there is still alot of work left to do with Motorola to turn it back into the profit engine that Google would like.

[Source Google PR]