The Biz of Coding

Google Quarterly Revenue goes past $ 2 Billion, Yahoo has a solid quarter

by Ujwal Tickoo on April 21st, 2006

Google (GOOG) has come out with stellar quarterly revenues of US $ 2.2 Billion up 79% from US $ 1.26 Billion for the same period in 2005. After subtracting the commissions to its Advertising Partners Google’s Revenue totals US $ 1.53 Billion. For the first time in Google’s 7.5 years history revenue crossed US $ 2 billion.

A few days ago on April 18, Yahoo! (YHOO) reported solid quarterly revenues of US $1.57 Billion which was 34% higher than the same quarter in 2005. Yahoo’s revenue after subtracting fees shared with partners — traffic acquisition costs was US $ 1.09 billion. Yahoo stock price jumped over $ 33 after hovering close to $ 31 for several weeks before the quarterly results.

Before accounting for Traffic Acquisition costs (TAC) Google earned $ 0.63 more than Yahoo. But after accounting for TAC Google earned only $ 0.43 billion more than Yahoo.

Even though Yahoo is the most trafficked web site on the Net, Google’s better monetization of its search traffic has helped it to grow revenue faster than Yahoo. Google leads web search market share world-wide and in the US. According to a recent ComScore study Google’s search market share in US stands at 47% compared to Yahoo’s (YHOO) 28% and to MSN (MSFT) 13%.

Yahoo remains the top Web site both in page views and unique visitors. It had 402 million unique users, 208 million active registered users in March 06. It also leads in Branded Advertising. Yahoo Executives believe that by releasing a better Search Advertising Platform by the end of 2006 they would see better monetization of their high traffic.

Yahoo ended the quarter with close to 10,000 employees while Google had close to 6,800 employees. Thus, Google’s Revenue per Employee is higher.

POSTED IN: Google, MSN, Web Search, Yahoo