Google's stock briefly bounded past $400 in after-hours trading Thursday for the first time since last October on the strength of its Q1 earnings performance.

When last seen, however, it had given back some gains after punters realized that the head of its global sales Omid Kordestani has been replaced by Nikesh Arora, president of international operations.

The news follows on the heels of is US sales chief Tim Armstrong going to AOL as CEO and Asia and Latin America sales chief Singh Cassidy leaving for Accel Partners.

Google's Q1 revenues, up 6.2% year-over-year, declined 3% sequentially for the very first time.

Despite the depth of the recession with less advertising getting bought and the consumer definitely buying less Google was still able to beat EPS estimates.

It earned $4.49 a share on in-line revenue of $4.07 billion, excluding $1.44 billion in traffic acquisition costs, down from $4.22 billion in Q4. Excluding special items it earned $5.16 a share when it was only expected to earn $4.93.

See, it trimmed its operating expenses.

For instance, its employment rolls are basically flat at 20,164 people. It stopped hiring people, even cut back a hair.

Revenues were about $10 million short of consensus.

Paid-clicks were up 17% year-over-year or 3% sequentially, when only a 10% gain was predicted. However, the prices advertisers are paying for keywords are falling.

CEO Eric Schmidt described the environment as "uncharted territory." He still feels ahead of the game given the shift from conventional to online advertising. He attributed the year-over-year revenue uptick to strong query growth.

The company now has $17.8 billion in the bank, up $2 billion from last quarter.