Google Posts Strong Q2 Earnings While Putting Motorola on the Books

Google has announced its earnings for the second quarter of 2012. It closed the deal on its acquisition of Motorola Mobility this quarter, and that acquisition’s assets and liabilities are now on the balance sheet. It was a strong quarter for Google overall, posting 21% year-on-year revenue growth for Google’s own properties, but Motorola racked up a $233 million loss. Despite running at a loss, Motorola netted Google $1.25 billion in revenue.

Google’s total quarterly revenue was $12.21 billion, up 35% from Q2 2011, including revenue from Google-owned sites and partner sites not part of the main Google portfolio. Revenues from outside the U.S. accounted for 54% of Google’s quarterly revenue, holding steady from a year ago.

Paid clicks increased just 1% over the first quarter of 2012, but that’s up 42% from a year ago. Cost per click increased 1% over last quarter as well, but that’s down 16% from last year.

The most interesting number to watch is Google’s traffic acquisition cost, which is the amount of money it costs Google to get user eyeballs on its ads, whether on desktop or mobile. This cost increased to $2.6 billion this quarter, up from $2.11 billion in Q2 2011. As a percentage of advertising revenues, TAC was 25% this quarter, compared to 24% last year.

Adding Motorola to the family caused Google’s employee numbers to skyrocket. The company already had 34,000 workers, and Motorola adds another 20,000. The Motorola loss breaks down to $192 million for the mobile segment and $41 million for the home segment. The loss represents 19% of Motorola’s Q2 revenue of $1.25 billion, $843 million of which came from mobile and $407 million from the home segment.

The earnings call will stream live on YouTube momentarily. Watch it here: