Google Inc. is still spending money like the recession is a distant memory, but investors can’t complain too much as long as the Internet search leader keeps expanding its advertising empire like it did in the summer.
The evidence of Google’s dominance — and prosperity — emerged in its third-quarter results released late Thursday. The performance marked the latest sign that the technology industry is rolling again, even as other parts of the economy lag.
Its shares climbed $55, or more than 10 percent, to $590.93 in morning trading Friday.
Net income surged 32 percent to trounce analyst estimates, and would have been even higher if Google’s management hadn’t decided to hire so many more workers, buy other companies and invest in more equipment to keep its services humming.
Google’s liberal spending dismayed some investors during the first half of the year, causing the company’s stock to sag.
It probably helped that Google shared some data that showed some of the company’s previous investments are starting to pay off. As a result, Google finally appears to be turning it into something more than a one-trick pony dependent solely on text ads that appear alongside search results on a computer screen.
In the first and what may be the only time that Google provides such details, executives indicated Thursday that display advertising accounted for nearly 10 percent of ad revenue in the quarter, and mobile advertising was almost 4 percent.
Those figures helped justify two of Google’s biggest acquisitions. In 2008, it took aim at the display ad market with a $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. and earlier this year it completed a $681 million purchase of AdMob to supplement its marketing efforts on mobile phones.
Although it remains a small piece of Google’s business, CEO Eric Schmidt remains convinced that the company will bring in more ad…