Google trots out execs to quell analyst jitters
Worth reading: News.com transcribes portions of the a four-hour meeting today with analysts at its Mountain View headquarters, trying to make course corrections after comments by the company's CFO earlier this week sent the shares on a downward spiral. Google trotted out an executive show of force:
- Eric Schmidt, CEO
- George Reyes, CFO
- Sergey Brin, Founder
- Larry Page, Founder
- Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product anagement
- Alan Eustace, responsible for engineering efforts
- Kai-Fu Lee, heading up efforts in China
- Marissa Mayer, product management
- Jeff Huber, in ads and commerce
- Omid Kordestani, vice president of sales.
- Nikesh Arora, vice president of European Operations
- Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, vice president of Asia-Pacific and Latin America Operations
- David Fischer, director of online sales and operations
- Joan Braddi, vice president of search services
- David Eun, vice president of content partnerships
A few tidbits:
Reyes: Revenue per employee is key metric. Google's revenue per employee is double that of its competitors. $1.44 million per head versus $700,000 per head for rivals.
Rosenberg: Enormous opportunity in click-through rate improvements. Traffic is basically traffic. As long as Google gains market share, traffic will improve. The most important thing is that Google's user experience continues to improve, and company is targeting geographies with high growth rates. If search experience is good, queries per user will increase, which will drive advertisers.
Mayer: Google tries not to get too focused on external competition, but it's improved search quality with a bigger index and algorithm analysis to reduce index spam. "Spam is at an all-time low in the Google index and probably at an industry low." When you look at what Microsoft is doing, it's clear that search is a focus and a start on their ad network. The fact that AOL chose to go with Google rather than Microsoft (as search partner) indicates AOL thinks Google is better.
How long can Google keep revenue per employee above $1 million? Rosenberg recites the Google formula: user interface + new markets + search quality = more queries + more ad revenue. Mayer talks about AOL choosing Google instead of Microsoft as a search partner because AOL thinks Google is better. Try Google offer3e a better deal than Microsoft...