Google's profit jumps 32%

Google Inc. reported a quarterly profit and sales on Thursday that rose from year-ago results and beat Wall Street's forecasts.

The world's online search leader said its third-quarter net income rose to $2.2 billion, or $6.72 per share, up 32% from a year earlier.

Google bouncing back

Results included one-time charges totaling 92 cents per share. Without the charge, Google said it earned $7.64 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their estimates, forecasted earnings of $6.69 per share.

Sales for the Mountain View, Calif., company rose 23% to $7.3 billion. Excluding advertising sales that Google shares with partners, a figure also known as "traffic acquisition costs," the company reported revenue of $5.5 billion, which topped analysts' forecasts of $5.3 billion.

An increase in both the number of clicks on advertisements on Google's sites and the amount advertisers paid for those clicks helped drive results. Shares of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) rose 9% after hours.

"Google had an excellent quarter," CEO Eric Schmidt said in a prepared statement. "Our core business grew very well, and our newer businesses -- particularly display and mobile -- continued to show significant momentum."

Though Google's growth continues at a rapid pace, investors and analysts have been looking for new sources of income to keep the company from stagnating. As a result, display advertising and mobile have been areas of focus for Google, in its attempt to expand beyond search ads.

Display advertising is currently a business dominated by rivals AOL (AOL) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), around which merger talks are swirling.

But Google has made tremendous headway in mobile. Its Android operating system will command 17.7% of the global mobile device market by year's end, according to a Gartner forecast, making it the second best-selling smartphone operating system, behind Nokia's (NOK) Symbian OS and ahead of Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iOS. That's stunning, considering it entered the market just two years ago.

Google is also growing by acquisitions, buying up social networking companies that the company is using to create a more social experience throughout its various Web applications and properties.

As a result, the company expanded its workforce by a brisk 7% in the quarter, adding 1,526 employees to its ranks.