Late last week Google announced its quarterly earnings with disappointing results; only the fourth time they have ever missed Wall Street's expectations.  So what's behind this?  Well, first of all it's important to note that even though Google didn't meet Wall Street's expectations; they still rose from Net Income in Q2 of 2007 of $925B to Net Income of $1.25B this past quarter. 

What does this mean to the search community?  Internet and technology companies are historically volatile, but Google is the mother ship and rarely misses the mark.  So a couple of the reasons why Net Income and some revenue numbers were off the mark this past quarter:
  • Acquisition of DoubleClick
  • Increased costs associated with hedging foreign currencies (one of the most interesting things about corporate finance in a multinational company --- how much a currency fluctuation can change the bottom line)
Net-net, Google is still just as dominating as it was prior to this announcement in my eyes.  Google is who we, as a business blogging platform focused on winning organic search, will continue to benchmark against and use as a primary search engine of measuring clients success because with over 60% of the US market share it really is the elephant in the room when it comes to online acquisition --- so, being Google's friend and working in good faith to structure content in the best way for the user experience is exactly what we are focused in doing here at Compendium.