Google+ ‘growing tremendously’, Android still on top

During Google’s fourth quarter report on Thursday, Larry Page announced that Google+ now has 90-million global users, showing a 100% growth over the past three months. Page also said that the social network has a 60% “daily engagement” rate.

The report showed that the search juggernaut’s stock price dipped after “four straight quarters of accelerating growth” in after-hours trading on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nonetheless, Page is still “excited” about the company’s growth.

“Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year. Full year revenue was up 29%, and our quarterly revenue blew past the US$10 billion mark for the first time,” said the Google CEO.

I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90-million users globally — well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 — there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.

In a conference call, Page also revealed that in the last year Google’s mobile operating system Android saw 700 000 activations daily. Android is becoming a popular favourite among users around the world.

He said there are now 250-million Android devices in total, up 50-million since November.

Page, who took over as chief executive from Eric Schmidt in April of last year, said growth in the Android software platform for mobile devices was “quite simply, mind-boggling.”

The Mountain View, California-based company reported a 25% revenue rise.

“Plus users are very engaged with our product, over 60 percent of them engage daily and over 80 percent weekly,” he said.

Google’s free email program Gmail has more than 350 million active users “and is growing rapidly,” Page said.

Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said display advertising growth remained strong and revenue was rising in every region despite the crisis in Europe.

Google said it had 32 467 full-time employees at the end of December, up from 31 353 at the end of September.