Marketing Pilgrim

If you hold shares in Google, you probably already know the search engine had a great third quarter. For the rest of us, here’s the summary that will allow us to sleep well, knowing there’s no sign of a slow down.

Net income rose to $1.07 billion, or $3.38 per diluted share, compared with the year-earlier quarter’s $733.3 million, or $2.36 per diluted share. Excluding one-time items, profit was $3.91 per share in the latest quarter, versus the Wall Street average target of $3.77, according to Reuters Estimates

Revenue rose 57 percent to $4.23 billion, compared with an average analyst forecast of $4.13 billion. Ever-larger numbers mean its growth rate is down from 70 percent in the third quarter of 2006 and 96 percent in the same period of 2005. Excluding payments to affiliates carrying ads from Google, revenue grew 61.5 percent.

Other key items:

• Traffic acquisition costs–what is pays its search partners–actually dropped from 30% to 29%.
• The company plans to hold back hiring costs.
• GOOG plans to continue spending $500M a quarter on date centers and networks.

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