Google revenues approach $5 billion

Mountain View (CA) – Google reported $4.83 billion in revenue and $1.21 in profit for the fourth quarter of 2007.

Compared to Q4 2006, sales were up about 51% from $3.21 billion and profit climbed about 17% from $1.03 billion. Google said that its own websites generated revenue of $3.12 billion, while websites participating in its Adsense program generated $1.64 billion, or about 34%of the firm’s revenues.

Google reported $16.6 billion of sales for the full year ; the firm’s net income was $4.2 billion. Google’s warchest now holds $14.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

Google employed 16,805 full-time employees as of December 31, 2007, up 889 from 15,916 as of September 30, 2007. Over the course of the year, Google added 6131 people to its full-time staff.