Brazil Key To Google's South American Growth (GOOG)

Brazil is the key to Google's GOOG growth in Latin America CEO Eric Schmidt said Friday.

The company saw its revenue skyrocket in the region, with specific countries seeing 50-100% growth.

"That means you're almost doubling (revenue) every year," Schmidt told Reuters in the company's offices in Buenos Aires. "That's a lot due to the effect of the economic recovery from a global recession, but also to the development of broadband and the development of the electronic commerce."

Schmidt is set to be replaced by Larry Page next month as the CEO. Schmidt will be the company's executive chariman.

Latin America only accounts for 2-3% of the company's revenue, which was $29.3 billion last year, but the company wants to expand that.

"It will become a much larger percentage very quickly. Brazil is, for example, already on its way to becoming our sixth-largest country in revenue," he said.

"Latin American is our fastest-growing region in the world. You can see it everywhere," Schmidt said, highlighting the company's Orkut social network.

"I disagree that the only thing Google can do in social networking would be buying Twitter simply by the observation we have a very successful social network in Brazil, Orkut, which is growing and expanding," Schmidt said.

Shares of Google are up $1.20 to $601.82, a gain of 0.2% this morning.