Google falls to earth
By Yi-Wyn Yen
Turns out Google is mortal. The Internet search giant ended a month’s worth of disappointing earnings from Silicon Valley tech companies by missing Wall Street’s forecasts too.
Google (GOOG) blamed a slowdown in its fourth-quarter growth on its difficulty selling ads on social networking sites. The company delivers online ads for about 20 social networking sites, including MySpace (NWS). “I don’t think we have the killer best way to advertise social networking,” said Sergey Brin during a conference call with analysts Thursday. “Some of the things we were working on in Q4 didn’t pan out. There were some disappointments there.”
Google is the latest tech company struggling to stay ahead of consumer spending and behavior during an economic slowdown. EBay (EBAY), Apple (AAPL), and Yahoo (YHOO) reported projections that underwhelmed Wall Street in the past week. Google does not give sales or profit guidance, but its fourth-quarter numbers gave reason to make tech investors a bit nervous. Google has already wiped out nearly $73 billion off its November market cap, when shares hit a high of $747. By mid-day Friday, the stock was trading at $521.
The Mountain-View, Calif.-based company made $4.43 a share for the fourth quarter, which was a penny short of analysts’ consensus. Google raked in a $1.2 billion profit for the quarter, up 17% from a year ago. Sales, minus the money the company shares with its ad partners, came in at $3.39 billion, up 52 percent from the previous period a year ago. The Street had anticipated $3.45 billion and Google’s shares dropped more than 7 percent in after-hours trading to $516.20.
Not that all of this came as a big surprise. “Our expectations were a bit muted going into the quarter,” said Christa Quarles of Thomas Weisel. “But, this is still a company that grew 52 percent a quarter.”
Along with the discovery that fans of social networking sites have a low propensity to click on ads, Google was challenged by a decline in advertising spending in financial and travel businesses. Chief Financial Officer George Reyes said the slowdown was “seasonal” due to the holiday period last quarter.
Meanwhile, the growth rate of paid clicks for AdSense, which displays ads on sites outside of the Google homepage, has slowed. Paid clicks increased 30 percent compared to a 45 percent growth rate from the same period a year ago. AdSense, which made up 34 percent of total revenue, raked in $1.64 billion.
Google’s performance is a telling sign of how consumers use the Internet, and thereby gives some indication of how the Internet industry is faring. Analysts, naturally, tried to bait Google chief Eric Schmidt into giving some guidance for 2008. Schmidt, who acted like an air traffic controller by directing which of the five other Google execs answered questions on the hour-long call, didn’t budge.
When one analyst asked about potential outlook during a “weaker economy,” Schmidt quipped, “We’re not going to talk about the current quarter. We’re talking about the past quarter. We haven’t seen any negative impacts with rumors of future recessions.”
Real or not, Google has proven that it’s not immune to an economic downturn. While Jonathan Rosenberg, who runs Google’s product management team, painted a cheery picture of bargain-hunting consumers clicking on ads during a recession, some feel that’s not enough.
Google is banking a lot of the extra revenue to come from DoubleClick, the ad serving company it bought for $3.1 billion last year. Google can’t close the deal until the European Commission approves the merger. A ruling is expected by April 2. Said Schmidt, “We’re hopeful that it’ll clear.”
There is one part of the Google story that nobody is talking about…and it’s the big pink elephant in the room: Google’s real advantage is it’s human capital.
Now, if you were a Google employee who joined the company recently (past few quarters), while the stock was in the $600’s and $700’s, the strike price for your stock options, was most likely very high (probably close to those price at the time you joined the company). Now, with the stock in $500’s, your stock options are worth nothing. Now, I know you will all say “but the Google employess commute long hours to their office everyday, and work 12-15 hour days, and basically give their blood, sweat and tears to the company because of the free food, the guest speakers, the free gym and the chance to work on cool projects, blah, blah, blah.” But, I guarantee you that many thousands of Google employees joined that company (and I personally know many of them), for the hopes of riches in cashing out stock options. Now that the stock value has taken a hit, you will see Google lose some talent, because those employees are looking for the next start-up IPO, or because they just don’t see the value in staying. Plus, watch out, because Wall Street will not tolerate the big spending, big-hiring-Google way for much longer. Wait and see…
Funny how many of you people disparage Google Ads. Our company spends $5000 a month on Google Ads and we make well over $50,000 in net profit from those ads alone. Obviously not everyone clicking on the ads is committing fraud.
the headline is wrong. it is still overvalued. $280-$300/share is goog’s true value. at $500+ it is still overvalued and not ‘back to earth’ as the author suggests. the real music starts when people stop clicking on the search ads as well. take a poll among your friends and you will realize that no one actually clicks on google ads. it is massive click fraud that is driving goog. once this fraud is revealed, its light out for GOOG>
I stopped caring what “The Street” thinks a long time ago. This is the same “street” that allowed Enron, the Tech Bubble and now the Housing Bubble.
We need to think more in terms of what the folks on Main Street think. Because we’re the ones getting screwed.
In China, they take these kind of crooks out back and shoot them. And their economy seems to be working pretty well.
It’s worth a thought.
Why is Google such a darling? Outside of search their webpages are crummy, no fun and hard to navigate. Yahoo on the other hand is vibrant yet their search falls short. Why did Yahoo Japan auctions drive out Ebay there, whereas they closed their US auction site? A: Because they were chasing Ebay & Google ad money rather than building their own business, a strategic error that now allows MS to bid.
Gumby – Eric Schmidt a plant for MSFT?!?! You obviously know nothing about the man. Might I suggest a little research… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
.
.
if Microsoft will succeed to buy Yahoo, the Google web-leadership may fall very quickly since the “Web 2.0″ applications are the #1 weapon in this battle (and Microsoft is the clear leader in the software industry)
I believe that a Microsoft-Yahoo may give a full Google-like offer of services within two years
the other side of the coin is that no one will be able to compete with the Microsoft-Yahoo giant
.
.
Jerry, dealing with customers with free products/service is a totally different business model than dealing with customers with paid products/services.
Google does not have a prayer in customer service. I don’t see anyone talking about this issue related to Google. Everyone talks about Google in X market and Google in Y market. How about Google in the “respect” market. That is, to respect its paying customers and NOT to treat them like chopped liver.
This is where Google will fail in the short as well as long run. Google is not getting any more revenues from Adwords or Adsense in 2008. That’s where Google has been getting 99% of its revenue. If anything, the revenues will substantially go down, as Microsoft closes in with infinitely better customer-oriented approach and by literally giving away PPC as Google continues to play its shifting algorithm games.
Google has no choice. It is either relevant search or Adwords+Adsense. It cannot have both and it cannot continue to treat its paying Adwords clients as pests.
Ebay sellers are hungry for Google to enter the online auction service. There is a lack of competition and an online petition. This would benefit Google as they have a payment service already and alot of disgruntled Ebay sellers. Stockholders should take notice.
By the way, GOOG’s support is at $350 or much lower. So “put” it all the way.
Sign up at GoogleBubble.com to learn how Gogglidiots are going to ruin their company if they don’t start respecting their paying clients.
Goo, Goo, GoogleBubble.com 
Sergey Brin: “I don’t think we have the killer best way to advertise social networking”
Mr. Brin has no clue what he is talking about. Google’s Adword is dead because of the bookmarking and article marketing which are going to pull the earth under Google’s feet. People have already started saying NO to the ugly “Ads by Google” ads. So those will be going out of respectable websites soon.
Besides, in order to keep its search in sync with ads, Google is making it difficult for Adwords advertisers to place their ads on their system. So it is either going to be the search or Adwords. Google will have to make a choice.
If Google is able to purchase DoubleClick, then it will chuck Adwords and live off of DoubleClick until its more lofty projects pan out.
GOOG has nowhere to go but down.
Goo, Goo, GoogleBubble.com
Google is probably just a welfare to work project for do nothing gray bearded skiing tech-nerds. Google can still fall further to 200 or so where it really belongs. Eric Schmidt really doesnt look like he really fit into Googleplex at all.. I suspect that Eric is a plant by Microsoft to bully the young founders around and make a big mess of Google so that Microsoft would remain unchallenged. Microsoft really want to rule the ad banner all over the planet. Courts had been distracting Microsoft from beating down every idiot who shout that he got a killer app. Microsoft will crush Google in 5 years. Sure, Google is a tougher thorn than Netscape way back in 1995. But nothing changes, you know, courts or no courts. Microsoft will do everything to steal not only from companies but stakeholders as well. Microsoft doesnt even care about its own anyway. Microsoft just doesnt need anybody, anymore…
Being a penny short on $4.43, given that the stock has already dropped 200 points from its high, seems like a bit of overkill. look for google to do an amazon tomorrow (start 10% below, finish high).
Never thought google would be my favorite short of the month. Making a lot of money with it. Hey who knew
- Nintendo Wii officially recession-proof
- Kosmix searches for a new way around Google
- Report: Former AOL chief wants to buy Yahoo
- Phone forecast calls for sales decline in 2009
- Hewlett-Packard solid, Corning shattered
- The Xbox 360’s holiday makeover
- Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to step down
- Mark Cuban faces insider trading charges
- Silicon Valley celebrates do-gooders
- Microsoft gives Windows Live a Facebook facelift
- I just went through a nightmare with ... More
- In 1998, somewhere around there, my n... More
- Bob, I'm sure someone in your office ... More
- Guess I'll join the chorus; without a... More
- dudes..really nice discussion going o... More
- I'm so glad that we we are working to... More
- But the PS3 has better graphics, crap... More
- people just wanna forget about d bad ... More
- This link will take you to a "memo" t... More
- Dude ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;... More
Things aren’t too bad for Google considering how much they control.