Over the past decade, Google has gone from being search engine king to playing smartphone rivals with Apple and controlling the video sharing market through YouTube, among other power moves.
The Mountain View-based company celebrates another accomplishment as stock prices opened at $1,007.40 Friday morning before retreating to $1,001.99. The stock ended trading on Friday at $1011.41. This marks the first time Google's share price has surged past $1,000-mark as it had never posted higher than $928 since going public nine years ago at $85 per share.
Google's earnings and revenue blew past investors' expectations as it reported a 36 percent jump in third-quarter net income late Thursday. This comes as the search-engine giant shifts to mobile promotions from the more expensive search-based ads on desktops through Google's mobile operating system Android.
According to Bloomberg, the volume of clicks on advertisements climbed at the fastest pace this year, compensating for drops in average-ad prices. The number of "paid clicks" on Google's ads have increased 26 percent from last year. Edward Jones & Co. analyst Josh Olson explains Google's strategy.
"As long as we continue to see that higher-than-expected volume coupled with the lower pricing, I'm OK with it," said Olson who rates the stock at buy. "It just signals they have good demand for that mobile business."
Even YouTube is expected to shift ad dollars away from traditional television. Google acquired the video sharing service in 2006. Branded video-ads for the service grew more than 75 percent in the quarter as 40 percent of its traffic now comes from mobile devices. Speaking with CNBC, a RBC Capital Markets analyst wrote that Google is growing with Youtube.
"We estimate that Google's key YouTube asset generated approximately $4 billion in revenue in 2012, positioning Google extremely well for the strong growth in video advertising," the analyst wrote.
Though Google is enjoying the increased profits on the software front, it's been struggling on the hardware front. Google recently released their flagship Moto X smartphone, its first device with Motorola since buying the communication company last year. That division's revenue has declined 34 percent to $1.18 billion since the acquisition.
