Google has announced Q4 profits of $4.8bn (£3.2bn), a 41 per cent year-on-year increase, off the back of revenues of $18.1bn (up 15.3 per cent year-on-year), but still managed to disappoint analysts, who had been hoping for a figure of $18.46bn. Google put some of the shortfall down to the strength of the dollar, which it said had hit Q4 revenues to the tune of $616m.

Full-year profits came in at $14.4bn (only a few billion less than Apple made in the last quarter alone, but 11.8 per cent more than last year), off the back of revenues of $66bn, an 18.9 per cent year-on-year increase. Advertising accounted for 89.2 per cent of Q4 revenues, and 89.5 per cent of the whole-year total.
In an earnings call, Google also admitted that its recent decision to transfer work on Google Glass to its Nest division (read by most commentators as a shelving of the project), stemmed from a failure to meet internal targets.

According to eMarketer, Google accounted for 31.1 per cent of all digital ad spending worldwide in 2014. Its closest competitor, Facebook accounted for 7.8 per cent of all global digital ad revenues. The global digital ad market grew 20.5 per cent to $146.4bn in 2014, up from $121.5bn in 2013.