Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
In what world Ed?
In a world where analysts compare year-over-year results in order to remove the seasonal, cyclical, and irregular components of a time series. In this world, Google's profits declined 68% in the year-ending fourth quarter 2008.
In a world where Economists, who are trained to think about these things, take into account the opportunity cost of a firm's capital. All that money could have been doing other stuff.
That's the world in which Google lost money, Ed - the REAL world that actually thinks and reasons rather than basing ideas on meaningless, nominal data.
In this real world, Ed, Google's management, stockholders, and employees are soiling their drawers.
Here's what the Google CEO had to say about the 4th quarter:
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134042
Google's stock has recovered some of its losses only because their declining profits beat expectations due to the "record" December searches. Let's see if the massive layoffs in January from retailers will outstrip the "January Effect" on Google's stock.
BTW, you still haven't told me how Google's single-month record searches translated into record sales or record profits for its advertisers. As the CEO points out, searches in December were driven by comparison shopping, precisely what I told you: multiple searches resulting in one or zero sales.
I forgive you, though, for not understanding what happens to a firm, in the long run, when they have increasing market share in a declining industry.
Jan 23, 2009, 10:44:00 PM
Posted to I Hate Google