Google posts strong $17.7 billion revenue for Q2, stock surges

Update: At closing of the stock market, Google's stock had surged a record 16%, adding $65 billion to the search giant's market capitalization in a single day. The rally is the biggest one-day gain in value ever for a U.S company.

Google has posted their financial results for the second quarter of 2015, and it's good news for the company on several fronts. For the three months ending June 30th, Google posted net income of $3.93 billion from revenues of $17.7 billion, an increase of 17 and 11 percent respectively on the same quarter last year.

The vast majority of Google's quarterly revenue came from their expansive advertising network: the company reported $12.4 billion in revenue from their own websites, plus a further $3.62 billion from partner websites. Paid clicks on advertisements were up 18% year-on-year, while cost-per-click shrunk by 11%.

Google now holds a whopping $69.8 billion in cash, a $9 billion increase on the same quarter last year. The company has also increased their employee headcount by 8,500 over the past year, now employing 57,148 people. Perhaps controversially for the tech giant, Google's effective tax rate is reported at just 21 percent, lower than the United States' official corporate tax rate.

The strong financial results for Google this quarter led to a pretty significant 11.2% jump in the value of their stock during after hours trading. Google finished regular trading with a valuation of $395 billion, making it the second largest company in the world behind Apple.