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Despite the currently difficult economic situation the company is facing, Google released its Q4 2008 results yesterday and sported a per-share revenue of $5.10, beating the average analyst forecast of $4.95. The company’s revenue rose about 18 percent to $5.7 billion, significantly less than the 50 percent level the company was used to in past years, but still to be considered quite a robust performance given the weakened economy.

Preceeding the announcement, many investors were already confident that Google’s advertising system was better able to withstand a down economy than many others, since all advertisers can easily find out just how well their campaigns are faring financially and because cost-conscious buyers are likely to use Google’s services more.

Even despite this, many top Silicon Valley firms — the latest of which is Microsoft — have had to take drastic measures such as laying off a very large percentage of its staff in the last few weeks; Google itself was reported to have been silently laid off as much as 3,000 contractors, which equates to approximately ten percent of its total working force.

Yesterday, Google reported in a press release a Q4 adjusted EPS (Earning Per Share) of $5.10, against a Wall Street prediction of $4.95, and a Q4 revenue of $5.7 bln, in line with analysts’ expectations. Reuters also reported that shares went up 2.6 percent in after-hours trading. For today, the Google stock is up 7 percent to $327 at the time of this writing; a good result, but still far from the company’s all-time high of $747, which was reached 13 months ago as investors bet on its moves into new ad formats that would appear on mobile phones and YouTube.com.

According to the report, Google-owned sites were responsible for 67 percent of revenue, rising 22 percent from a year ago, while traffic acquisition costs — the portion of revenues shared with webmasters who choose to feature AdSense on their pages — decreased to $1.48 billion. “It’s clear that macroeconomic challenges continue to rob Google of growth, but it seems equally clear that the company continues to make headway in this market, and take share in this market,” commented Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown.

The Mountain View search giant is therefore one of the very few top Silicon Valley firms that, together with Apple and IBM, seems to be able to withstand the crisis by taking difficult but necessary cost-cutting decisions.

Google also announced a new stock options plan, beginning January 29, that was designed to help retain employees in the company. The CEO Eric Schmidt said about 85 percent of its 20,000 employees had stock options “under water,” that is to say, priced higher than the current trading price of the asset.

Under the new plan, employees will be able to exchange all or a portion of their existing stock options for the same number of new options. Google said it expects the new options to have an exercise price equal to the closing price per share on March 2, 2009. Stock options with exercise prices above the March 2 closing price would be eligible for exchange, though Google said details of how the plan will work could change over time. The new options will have a new vesting schedule that adds 12 months to the original vesting schedule and will vest no sooner than 6 months after the close of the offer period.

Further information on the Google options can be found on Google’s Official Blog.