Google Blow Past Wall Street Expectation.

Not only is the Internet-leading search engine, Google Inc. has a knack for serving up the information people wants, it keeps giving what Wall Street ask for, delivering pleasant earnings surprise in all but one of 11 quarters since going public in August.

Reporting massive quarterly financial gains Thursday, Google post a net income of US$1 billion in the first quarter of 2007, up from $592 million in the first quarter of 2006, a 69 percent increase in first-quarter profit, and blowing past Wall Street's expectations.

Google's strong growth stands in sharp contrast to that of Yahoo, which earlier this week announced that sales had increased 7 percent from the year-ago quarter, while profits dropped 11 percent.

"The thing that is very difficult for Google's competitors is that, in the consumer mind, Google owns the brand -- Google is synonymous with search," Sterling said. "Google has continued to invest very aggressively in search, and that's a hard thing for its competitors because it has a lot of money and is aggressive on defending its core business. I don't think anyone else, even Microsoft

In March, Google processed 3.5 billion search requests in the United States, translating into a 48 percent share of the overall market, according to comScore Media Metrix. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo was a distant second, processing 2 billion search requests, or 27.7 percent of the U.S. market.

With last year's $1.76 billion acquisition of online video leader YouTube Inc. and its recently announced $3.1 billion deal to buy Internet ad distributor DoubleClick Inc., Google is expected to become an even more dominant force in that business.

Although Google has been trying to develop other revenue channels beyond the Internet, online advertising continues to produce virtually all of its profits.

"The global growth of our core search and ads business, and our focus on building our partnerships drove our strong results in the quarter," Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, said in the report.

"We continued to expand our worldwide footprint, adding important new partners and growing our platform to increase our ability to deliver targeted and measurable ads.

"The ongoing expansion of our network allows us to improve the user experience through new opportunities and programs."