Google’s profits hit $2 billion

Google’s net profits hit $1.97 billion in the last three months of 2009, according to the company’s latest financial results.

Revenues were up 17% for the quarter, rising to $6.67 billion from $5.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Despite these increases, shares in Google fell 5% in after hours trading due to analyst predictions of higher revenue.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said: “Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year.

“Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn.”