Google announces Q3 2015 results: $18.7 billion in revenue, $3.97 billion net income

Google has announced its Q3 2015 earnings, showing strong growth in revenues and net income for the quarter compared to last year. Total revenues for the quarter were $18.7 billion, which is a 13 percent growth over 2014. Net income came in at $3.979 billion, up from $2.739 billion in 2014.

Breaking down the revenues, Google's websites contributed $13 billion of the revenue, up 16 percent over last year, while the "other revenues" segment — which includes the Nexus business — came out to $1.89 billion, up 11 percent year-over-year.

Paid advertisement clicks, a major part of Google's business, were up 23 percent year-over-year- and six percent quarter-over-quarter, while paid clicks on Google's own websites were up 35 percent year-over-year and seven percent quarter-over-quarter. In a continuing trend, cost per click dropped again, this time 11 percent year-over-year and only one percent quarter-over-quarter.

Operating expenses for Q2 were $6.93 billion, which works out to 37 percent of revenues. At the end of the quarter Google held $72.76 billion in cash and cash equivalents, up from $61.1 billion last year, and its effective tax rate dropped to 19 percent for the quarter.

The board of directors of Alphabet have authorized Google to purchase back $5 billion of its Class C capital stock. This will commence in the fourth quarter of 2015.

On the employment side of things, Google's total number of employees grew to 59,976, a big jump from the 51,544 in the same quarter last year.

Source: Google