Instant view: Google stirs hopes for ad rebound; Microsoft's first loss

Also on Thursday, Google Inc -- unveiling results for the first time after buying Motorola Mobility -- reported a consolidated $12.2 billion of revenue in the second quarter.

Commentary

Google:

KERRY RICE, SENIOR ANALYST, NEEDHAM & CO

"It was a pretty solid report. We were seeing, across the tech world, sentiment getting a little too negative.

"Search demand in the U.S. was pretty solid, and despite economic challenges in Europe, I'm getting the sense that search demand was not too bad there. There's a little bit of squishiness in the margins, with higher TAC (traffic acquisition cost) as a proportion of revenues.

"Paid clicks was phenomenal, mostly driven by mobile. CPC (cost-per-clicks) was down more than I expected, but this could be a trough, since we did see a sequential uptick in CPC.

"We may have hit the bottom here and are returning to a little bit more flat CPCs."

SAMEET SINHA, ANALYST, B. RILEY & CO

Paid-click "volume gross is accelerating because mobile volume continues to explode. Cost-per-click continues to come down because mobile cost-per-click is lower than for desktop.

Google core revenues were slightly ahead of our expectations.

HERMAN LEUNG, ANALYST, SUSQUEHANNA FINANCIAL

"Cost-per-click is sequentially up 1 percent. That's a good sign that you are getting to a recovery.

"Paid-click volume is really strong; it's a good thing. The volumes are accelerating and usage of Google has not stopped, it just has continued."

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba and Nicola Leske in New York and Malathi Nayak, Alistair Barr and Gerry Shih in San Francisco)