From KGO-TV
July 17, 2008
Google's Disappointing $5 Billion Earnings
By David Louie
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (KGO) -- For just the fourth time in four years as a publicly traded company, Google fell short. The Silicon Valley search giant reported taking in more than $5 billion $5 billion dollars last quarter. It's a 39 percent increase over last year, but that wasn't good enough for Wall Street.
Google stock fell more than $40 a share Thursday in after-hours trading, down almost eight percent. Same for Microsoft, down about six percent after an equally disappointing earnings report....
Even in an economic downturn, Google's chief economist, U.C. Berkeley's Hal Varian, was optimistic on the company's earnings webcast.
"Price sensitive consumers are going to shop more carefully and try to make every dollar count, and that means they're going to be doing research online and they're going to be shopping online," says Google Chief Economist Hal Varian.
However, no one is saying Google is bullet-proof.