Mountain View, Calif-based Google Inc. posted a net income of $2.17 billion, or $6.72 a share in the third quarter, up 32 percent from $1.64 billion, or $5.13, a year earlier.
Total sales of the company were $5.48 billion, excluding the revenues of its partner sites, which is greater than the $5.26 billion estimates put forward by some analysts.
Google has seen mounting competition from Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the race for bagging the maximum Internet revenue has surged in recent years. According to estimates compiled by Emarketer Inc., advertisers spent up to $6.15 billion in the U.S. on Internet advertisements in the third quarter, which shows an 11.8 percent increase from the year-earlier period.
Revenues from paid clicks surged 16 percent from a year earlier, and about 4 percent from the second quarter. The company said the cost per click increased about 3 percent from a year earlier and about 2 percent from the second quarter of 2010.
The company invested a total of $33.4 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of the third quarter; it spent $30.1 billion in the third quarter and $26.5 billion in the first.
Google’s YouTube Web site observed a boost in its weekly views to 2 billion, an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier. The company contributed to 66.1 percent in U.S. Internet searches in September, up from 65.4 percent a month earlier, according to data released by researcher ComScore Inc.
The company traded at $540.93 in regular trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market Thursday, showing a decline of 13 percent this year.
