Google got a little taste after hours of Yahoo’s medicine, dropping 6 percent despite more than quadrupling earnings. Google’s earnings call covered as much ground as, well, the oft-mentioned Google Maps. Participants included CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt, co-founders Larry Page (president, products) and Sergey Brin, (president, technology), and CFO George Reyes. Some highlights:
– On expectations: If shareholders get burnt by a drop in Google stock at some point, say when the company has a quarter that doesn’t meet the exceedingly high expectations, I don’t see any grounds for a suit. Google execs may hold a record for the number of warnings in any given call about any and all the factors that could hit earnings. One factor for 3Q05: seasonality, particularly in Europe, where overlapping vacations can cause significant dips in online use. Google’s European business is growing so much that the company is more vulnerable to that than in the past.
– Google Wallet: Schmitt reiterated that Google does not plan to compete with eBay’s PayPal. “That market is extremely well served. … We don’t see a need to enter that market at this time. We’re exploring ways to make merchants even happier, more powerful. … We would prefer not to pre-announce those products.”
– RSS/Tagging: Asked about emerging web technology including the two, Brinn said RSS and other web developments “are great things that can improve our comprehensiveness and freshness.” Re tagging, he adde, “In addition, you mentioned tagging — the various forms of more-precise user-generated structured data we’re able to get, the better search experience we’ll be able to produce. Today, the amount of the latter that is out there is fairly small but it’s indicative of the potential in the future.”
– On social network Orkut’s success in Brazil: Brinn said, “Orkut’s growth in Brazil has been phenomenal. It’s surpassed anything we could have imagined even a few months aqo.” The focus now, he continued, is on adding functionality as well as scaling. “It’s also important to us that usage of Orkut help us drive usage of many of our other products; these are efforts we’re beginning to undertake as well.”
– Google in China: Page took that one. “China’s obviously a very exciting market in general and also for Google. We have very significant market share in China. … I think there’s tremenedous opportunity there with our existing marketing share to make money through advertising like we do in other place.” He also referred to a successful model in China with distributors “who comb the countryside and are very effective in selling things and we expect to be working with some of those in the future.”
– On mobile: Page again. “There’s tremendous promise in all sorts of mobile services and we’re getting very significant usage now on many of our mobile services. I couldn’t be more excited about the things that going to happen in the pretty short term, next couple of months, around mobile services — access to things like maps and other products we have I think are going to be very significant.”
– On monetization: Asked if Google was in the seventh inning in terms of monetization, Page replied: “I think we’re still in the first inning.”
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