70% Profit Increase For Search Giant

Sunday, October 19, 2008

April is the time when companies take stock of their Q1 performance, and take steps to enhance growth or reverse losses over the rest of the year. This year, investing in
Google looks promising, thanks to their 69 per cent rise in profits from Q1 2006.
It’s still search and the advertising it brings that powers Google, but their whole strategy of diversifying, acquiring and hiring seems to be paying the dividends it’s supposed to.
We reported earlier that Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, thought Google’s growth strategy was “insane”. At a talk in Stanford, Ballmer said, “They (Google) are trying to
double in a year. That’s insane in my opinion.” He was careful enough to add
that this didn’t mean that Google wouldn’t do well. He also pointed to Google’s
work ethic of allowing people “to do their own thing”, and said that it wasn’t proven to create“value”. For those who don’t know, Google demands that engineers spend 20 per cent of their work hours working on projects of their own, no matter how weird. This is
perhaps why some of the coolest things online are at Google Labs. With Google going from a 10,000+ employee company to 12,000+ in under a year, and posting
huge increases in profits, it seems to us that they have got their business model
right. Acquiring smaller companies with ideas that fit into the Google way of
life also seems to be paying off. But most of all, it’s the public perception and Google’s image as an innovator that’s not afraid to try new and fun things that’s helping them. We
all want jobs at Google, and we all want to use their products—come to think of
it, maybe 69 per cent is nothing compared to the things to come. We’re just dying to hear
what Steve Ballmer will say next, after all, it was he who predicted in 2005 that
Google would be dead before 2010!