Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Q3 2009: An "extraordinary end to a rollercoaster year by any means"

Google reported total capital expenditures of $221 million in the fourth quarter of last year, most of which was spent on the company's IT infrastructure, including data centers, servers and networking equipment.

The company reported an overall 17 percent yearly revenue growth during the quarter from the last quarter of 2008. Google's total revenue in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2009, was $6.67 billion - up from $5.71 billion one year prior.

In a conference call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt described the quarter as an "extraordinary end to a rollercoaster year by any means."

While investing heavily into new IT infrastructure, Google managed to reduce the operational expense of running its infrastructure in the final quarter of 2009. The company includes in one cost-of-revenues category its data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs and credit card processing charges.

That category of expenditures decreased by about $19 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. During the quarter, the company spent $688 million in the category, or about 10 percent of quarterly revenue. These expenditures amounted to $707 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

During the call, Schmidt commented on Google's recent announcement of a major cyber attack on its corporate infrastructure, which possibly resulted in attackers' gaining access to some of the company's intellectual property. The company also detected evidence of attempts to gain unauthorized access to Gmail accounts of activists for human rights in China.

Google said that for these and other reasons, it decided to discontinue its agreement with Chinese authorities to filter search results returned by the Chinese version of the search engine to block links to information the nation's government considers inappropriate.

The company said it would seek agreement with the government to operate Google.cn without the filters. If an agreement is not reached, Google said it would seize all operations in the country.

"We wish to remain in China," Schmidt said. "We remain quite committed to being there."