Google has revealed its financial reports for the first quarter of 2012, with the web search giant managing to pull a very impressive £6.68 billion ($10.65 billion) revenue increase - exceeding analysts' predictions.

Comparing the numbers with the same timeframe as of last year, Google has seen a 24 per cent increase in revenue. This can also be seen as a 30 per cent hike compared to the company's numbers from the past quarter (Q4 2011).

More than 90 per cent of the $6.68 billion amount came from advertising revenues, where Google makes use of its search engine and other services like AdSense and YouTube - whilst a share of £4.58 billion from this sizeable chunk was placed on Google's own properties.

The GAAP net income was reported to be £1.81 billion, a sum which represents more than twice of what the company earned in Q1 2011. The traffic acquisition costs also increased from £1.28 billion in the first quarter of the past year, up to £1.57 billion, while the percentage of advertising remained constant at 25 per cent.

Another big news item for investors is the 2-for-1 stock split announced by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google is to introduce a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be listed on NASDAQ and its shares distributed amongst all stockholders.

This will double the number of existing shares and may be a move that won't be greeted with enthusiasm by all shareholders.

Source: Google, Letter