The Mountain View, California-based company said second-quarter net profit increased 24 percent over a year ago to 1.84 billion dollars.

Revenue also rose grew year-on-year by 24 percent to 6.82 billion dollars but increased by only one percent compared with the first quarter, apparently disappointing investors.

Adjusted earnings per share of 6.45 dollars came in slightly below the 6.52 dollars expected by Wall Street analysts and Google shares tumbled 4.21 percent in after-hours electronic trading at 473.20 dollars.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said the company had a strong second quarter with "solid growth in our core business and very strong growth in our emerging businesses."

"We saw strength in every major product area, as more and more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising and as large advertisers increasingly ran integrated campaigns across search, display, and mobile.

"We feel confident about our future, and plan to continue to invest aggressively in our core areas of strategic focus," Schmidt said.

Google, which has been on a buying spree lately, snapping up a number of firms, said it had 30.1 billion dollars of cash and securities on hand as of June 30, up from 26.5 billion dollars a year ago.

Google said it had 21,805 full-time employees at the end of the quarter, about 1,200 more than a year ago.

In a conference call with analysts, Patrick Pichette, Google's chief financial officer, said Google was making strides in display advertising.

Display advertising includes banner ads, sponsorship and rich media ads and is distinct from the search-related advertising format dominated by Google but which has been showing signs of a slowdown in growth recently.

"Our display network, which includes YouTube, is growing very rapidly and we see increased demand from traditional brand advertisers in that space," Pichette said.

He said Google had entered into a strategic agreement with Omnicom Media Group to partner on display advertising.

Pichette also welcomed the recent court ruling in Google's favor in the copyright case filed against YouTube, which Google purchased in 2006, by US entertainment giant Viacom.

He said Google had made "a significant investment of approximately 100 million dollars to win this case."

Pichette declined to say if YouTube has achieved profitability but said "we're incredibly pleased by its trajectory, it's a great business for us."

Pichette said the 1,200 employees added over the past year included members of AdMob, a mobile advertising network which Google purchased for 750 million dollars to compete in the rapidly growing mobile advertising space.

"We have a very competitive mobile advertising platform now," Pichette said.

Other hires were in engineering, sales, search monetization, display advertising, mobile and applications -- "the next billion dollar business taht are growing rapidly," Pichette said.

Asked about China, where Google has been embroiled in a dispute with the authorities over cyberattacks and censorship, Pichette said "the good news is we have our license renewal."

China last week renewed Google's license to operate in China, the world's largest Internet market.

Pichette also said that "from a financial perspective, revenue from China is not material to our revenue."

He declined to comment further "given the sensitivities."

Nikesh Arora, Google's president of global sales operations and business development, said Google has seen "good growth in Brazil, India and Russia."

"It's a combination of more advertisers, it's a combination of Internet penetration getting higher," he said.

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