Google's Revenues Dip From Fourth Quarter

Google saw a 3 percent drop in revenue from last quarter, the company said Thursday, the first time the company has posted a quarter to quarter loss. Revenues climbed 6 percent from last year, however. Total revenue for the first quarter was $5.51 billion. Net income for the first quarter was $1.42 billion, up from $382 million from the last quarter and $1.31 billion during the same period last year. Last quarter, net income was affected by a $1.09 billion investment in WiMAX provider Clearwire that the company wrote down, as well as an investment in AOL.

"Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said during a conference call with analysts. "No company is recession-proof. Google is absolutely feeling the impact. Users are still searching, but they're buying less [so] ads are converting less."

Google also announced that Omid Kordestani, who has served as senior vice president of Google's Global Sales and Business Development for 10 years, will leave his role to become senior advisor to the office of the CEO and the company's founders. Nikesh Arora, currently president of international operations at Google, will step into Kordestani's old job.

"No one is better placed to advise us on future growth," Schmidt said of Kordestani. On specific products, Google.com was up 9 percent from last year, driven primarily by traffic growth, said chief financial officer Patrick Pichette. AdSense, meanwhile, was down 3 percent from last year to $1.6 billion.

Google's integration with DoubleClick has gone smoothly, Pichette said. "I don't know how we define full integration, but those efforts as well as efforts on ad exchange are coming along nicely," he said.

Schmidt was asked about licensing deals for YouTube. The Google-owned video site recently signed a lucrative deal with Universal Music Group, but has been locked in a battle with Warner Music Group over licensing fees.

Google has "made progress" with the studios and will be "announcing additional things in that area literally very, very soon," Schmidt said.

Google has been rumored to be in talks with micro-blogging site Twitter, and while Schmidt did not address those rumors when asked about the company, he did say that Google would be "very happy to pursue" any sort of ad-related monetization plan Twitter might put in place in the future.