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."

Comments

Good

[metlin]

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.

Re:Good

[WIAKywbfatw]

99 percent of shareholders invest in a company for one reason and one reason only: to make money. They don't care about ethics, doing business in a friendly manner or the warm fuzzy glow inside that employees take home with them at the end of the day, they're only interested in the almighty dollar.

And, with the way that public companies have to operate by law in the US, that means doing whatever it takes: the boards of US companies are legally obliged to increase shareholder value as much as possible, and if that means no more Mr. Nice Guy, well, that's just tough for you, for me, and for anyone else that gets in the way of the bottom line.

Want to know the one way to keep a company from running into these sort of hassles? Stay privately owned rather than become a publicly traded company.

Of course, that means you can't properly compensate all the people (and venture capitalists, if any) that got you to where you are, and that presents its own set of problems including staff retention, but that's another story.

Bottom line: don't expect Google to be your best friend from mow till the day that you die.

Re:Good

[hunterx11]

I would argue that Google's credo has helped them to make money far more than it has hindered them. Not pissing off your customers and planning on succeeding in the long run might be a radical idea in today's business world, but it hardly constitutes a breach of fiduciary duty.

Re:Good

[DigitumDei]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the only way Google makes money is via paid ads. And the best way for them to sell those paid ads is by having tons of free applications that people WANT to use.

I think, in the industry they're in (that is search and anything they can link search to), that it really is in their best interests to NOT become yet another corporation. If they did, MS would eat them alive in no time.

Re:Good

[shrykk]

Yes, but part of the excellence of their product is that their ads don't piss us off. They realised you will put up with a few ads in order to get an excellent product and the day they sell out peoples private data or start bombarding us with pop-ups is the day we'll walk away.

finance.slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thank you for being with Slashdot Finance. Buy LNUX!

Sorry, I have to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Free search engine
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!

Hell, it worked!

Re:Google Moogle

[wargolem]

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.

And since they're a business...

[physicsphairy]

I wonder what they're going to do with the extra money?

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.

Yahoogle

[zobier]

Has anyone else noticed the similarities between this and this? Hell, it even has the 'did you mean' and calculator features!

Re:Don't take this as a troll, but..

[TinyManCan]

As someone involved in large Enterprise Scale operations, I can say that Google has certainly done something that is not easily duplicated. They managed to get an application running on 10,000 servers that could easily handle a load and dataset that is massive.

Google's strength is not in their search engine, or in gmail, but their ability to execute new appications in a highly available and supportable manner. Google has developed an Operating System for the web so to speak that is head and shoulders above any other system out there currently.

If Google continues to keep delivering solid and functional applications that meet my, and other users needs, we may see a future where the only OS you need on your local computer is a web browser.

That is why this stock is going through the roof. This company has capital, resources and manpower to deliver a Microsoft Killing blow, and is aquiring the skillset and experience needed to pull it off each day they run 'the worlds biggest application.'