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Google has just announced its first quarter financial results that have beaten the average estimates of 27 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. This is in strike contrast with Yahoo’s dismal results announced earlier this week. Some key figures from the results are:

• Revenues – Revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2007 were $3.66 billion, an increase of 63% compared to the first quarter of 2006 and an increase of 14% compared to the fourth quarter of 2006.
• Operating Income – Operating Income for the first quarter of 2007 was $1.22 billion, or 33% of revenues. This compares to operating income of $1.06 billion, or 33% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2006. /li>
• Net Income – Net Income for the first quarter of 2007 was $1.0 billion as compared to $1.03 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006.
• Earnings per Share – EPS for the first quarter of 2007 was $3.18 on 315 million shares outstanding, compared to $3.29 for the fourth quarter of 2006 on 313 million diluted shares outstanding.
• Capital Expenditures – Capital Expenditures were $597 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment.
• Cash – As of March 31, 2007, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $11.9 billion.
• Employees – On a worldwide basis, Google employed 12,238 full-time employees as of March 31, 2007, up from 10,674 full time employees as of December 31, 2006.

They have also made some major changes in the Board of Directors with Eric Schmidt been elected as Chairman of the Board and John L. Hennessey, President of Stanford University, been elected as Lead Independent Director. Another recent change in the Board was the departure of Michael Moritz, who was member of the Board since 1999.

Google stock price increased 3 percent in after hours trading, as a reaction to the announcement. Google’s profit have risen steadily as a result of its search and ad dominance. Earlier this week, research from comScore showed that Google widened its share lead in search over Yahoo, Microsoft and IAC’s Ask.com. According to comScore Google handled 48% of U.S. search queries in the first quarter, up from 42% a year earlier. Yahoo remained unchanged at 28%, while Microsoft’s share fell to 11%.

Compete another web analytics firm however is reporting slightly different statistics. According to them two-third of the 6.4 billion search queries in the U.S. pass through Google servers, with the other five major players handling the rest of one-third. Another important trend is that Google’s search market share continues to increase, while that of others is taking a nose dive.

Google has also made some major search advertisement partnerships TV and Radio companies alongwith with acquisition of Youtube and DoubleClick. However Schmidt has ruled out revenues from these deals becoming material within the current fiscal year. “If I were to estimate, I would say 08 not 07,” Schmidt said. “But we don’t really know.”