Google's golden run continues
Google's Q2 completes a set of Web company announcements this week. Earlier this week Yahoo's stock went down after their second quarter results announcement disappointed, Apple reported rosier third-quarter results, eBay also announced earnings, and Microsoft had its 4th quarter results.
As David Jackson noted, Google's profits are very healthy:
"Net revenue (excludes traffic acquisition costs, or "TAC", paid to partners) up 77% year over year to $1.67 billion, beating the consensus estimate of $1.65 billion. Gross revenue was $2.46 billion. Net income more than doubled to $721 million. Adjusted EPS (which excludes stock based compensation) was $2.49, beating the consensus estimate of $2.22. The higher-than-expected profit came from revenue growth beating expectations but expenses being in-line with expectations. Total costs rose 86%. Capital expenditure was $699 million, including $319 million on real estate. Google's search market share in Q2 was 48% versus 31% for Yahoo and 14% for Microsoft, according to Majestic Research."
(emphasis mine)
So on all counts Google is smoking its competition - with a 77% increase in net revenue, double the profit, and a 48% search engine market share. Impressive stuff.
In other coverage, PaidContent notes that Google is eyeing mobile - quoting Larry Page as saying: “Since there are at least twice as many mobile phones than PCs in use globally, and mobile usage is growing faster than PCs, we want to make Google available in a device-independent way." Also Sergey Brin called Google Checkout “one of the most exciting products we have announced this year”.
Furthermore, Google is set to continue expanding aggressively into international markets. Via Ben Barren comes this quote from Eric Schmidt:
"The world is a very big place and Google has very much a worldwide mission. You're going to see more and more international focus, international expansion, international growth. Another is the investment in new products has continued apace. The primary investment, of course, according to our 70% rule, is in search and ads. When we talk about search -- we talk about search in everything -- and when we talk about ads, we talk about more than just the text ads."
Source: Seeking Alpha transcript
So search is still their golden Willie Wonka ticket, of course, but look for the Google Oompa Loompas to take over international markets too. OK I've totally twisted the Wonka metaphor...but you get my drift - Google is beloved, innovative, incredibly successful and a little odd.