Google has published mixed results for the first quarter of 2015 - the company missed market earning expectations.

It finished the three months with earnings per share of $6.57 - compared to the $6.60 that the market had expected. Revenue for the quarter came to almost $17.3bn - the same figure during this period in 2014 was $15.4bn.

Year-over-year aggregate paid clicks grew by 13 percent in the last year, but the cost-per-clicks (the average price for Google's online ads) fell by 7 percent. The company says that this fall related to skippable TrueView advertisements on YouTube, and issues maximising revenues from mobile search results.

______________________________________________________________ 

European finance ministers gather for a Eurogroup meeting in Riga today - Greek debt is the main issue on the agenda.

Greece prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, met the German chancellor, Angela Merkel yesterday and urged her to use her influence to speed up the process of an interim deal being negotiated before the end of April. Greece is due to pay up to €1bn to the IMF in May.

It has been suggested that the talks were positive, and media reports are full of comments from unnamed Greek officials saying that a deal is close - but anyone who has been following this story will have heard similar statements at different times since February - but talks have remained deadlocked.

Greek shares are up by by 2.4 percent, coming from a three-year low hit on Wednesday.

______________________________________________________________