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Google Reports Increased Profits
typobox43 writes "According to Yahoo! News, Google has reported increased profits compared to the year-ago numbers in its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly held company. Google's revenue figures more than doubled, leaping to $805.9 million from $393.9 million. Google shares closed today at $149.38."
Atleast, they deserve it.
But I just hope that after all this, Google does not turn into yet-another-evil-corporation. A lot of companies started out with benign ideals, only to be corrupted as they grew bigger and were taken over by selfish MBA types.
I just hope that that the Google share-holders realize that what makes Google important are not just its ideas, but also the nature of their ideas.
Kudos, Google! You guys deserve it.
Tune in tomorrow for the earnings reports from railroad and textile companies, and we'll discuss whether Amazon P/E ratio makes sense to hedge funds managers.
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Despite the guaranteed criticism any company that "makes it" gets, I think Google's a good example of good ideas paying off.
Do I worry that they'll become another Microsoft or Oracle? Sure - but the best way to prevent that is to support the good that they do, while expressing directly to their feedback lines the things you don't like.
Thus far, they seem to be listening. I hope they keep up the good work!
Step 1: Free search engine
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
Hell, it worked!
Ok, lets crunch some numbers:
2 billion * 1/4 (one quarter) * 5% (much more than you can get through safe investments) = $25 million. And how much did Google's revenues increase by? $400 million?
Not at all. Although advertising is still a major source of revenue, Google makes plenty of business offering enterprise solutions. For example, Amazon's new search engine is Google powered (previously reported here). I believe Yahoo's search engine has been powered by Google for a while now too, although I could stand to be corrected.
As far as the search engine wars go, well, I think they've pretty much been declared the winner for now. It will take something very innovative and different from existing engines to have a chance at dislodging them.
So maybe that's where you see things like Gmail and Google Desktop Search coming from? Theres not a lot of room to expand in the search engine arena; not a lot they can do other than branch out into places where there's more room to innovate and expand.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
We are Google's product. We, the users of their free and popular services. And there are a lot of us out there. To me, Google Groups alone is invaluable in finding information. I use it several times a day.
And not only that, but people don't seem to be very concerned about blocking Google ads. They block banner as and popup ads, and all those nasty things, but Google's nice and unintrusive text ads are often let through.
I think you are underestimating Google's product line. You are one of its products, and Google is making money because millions of people like you and I use them, often every day. And as long as Google continues to be useful and offer something we want, we'll use it, and we'll spread the word, and more and more people will use it.
Clever signature text goes here.
- Closed source
- Multi-Billion dollar corporation
- Single point of information control
- Monopolistic Practices
- Secretive
Explain to me again why we should be cheering for them? Yes, it's a useful service. But MS stuff is likewise useful (despite what many of you think). So what if it's free for you to use? They still have a business model.The best thing I can say about google is that it is unsustainable. Consider if the company is worth X billion dollars now. Well, even the most armchair businessman here will tell you that it wouldn't take a billion dollars to build a duplicate google system. It wouldn't even take a twentieth of that. And, while google is nice and popular now, if a better search engine came along with slightly fewer ads or whatever else perceived benefit, it would seriously erode google's traffic and cause actualy *gasp* competition and choice for advertisers.
and no, Yahoo and its overture systems are not an alternative.. they are a different service that targets different markets.
What I am suggesting is that google is selling a very generic, easily duplicatable service if somebody just got the funding to hire the right engineers. Google knows this.. that's why they are trying very hard to build all sorts of peripheral stuff like gmail and so forth, but the fundamental (99%+) business is still the search engine.
Has anyone else noticed the similarities between this and this? Hell, it even has the 'did you mean' and calculator features!
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Google has a good and eminently useful core product which they provide for free. They make money off ads like so many free web services, but they choose to do so in a rather low-key manner. In addition they are starting to offer other free services, not by copying the competition, but by listening to the customers and raising the standard for everying else. Compare GMail to other free email services, and you'll see what I mean.
I guess many people are cheering for Google because this appears to be a company with good ideas, but also with good ethics, a drive to do things right, and attention for their customers; qualities that other companies often see as cost centers and something that they have to pay lip service to, to further their public image. With Google it seems that these very qualities are the things that made them succesful. It's nice to look at a company that works because of these good practices rather than despite them, because it reinforces our belief that the world works as it should, and that the good guys can finish first. (Yes yes, it sounds melodramatic, but I don't really have any other way to put all this).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...