“Google’s fourth-quarter earnings rose 7 percent as online advertisers spent more money in pursuit of holiday shoppers. The financial results announced Tuesday were a mixed bag. While the company’s earnings topped analyst estimates, an accounting quirk caused net revenue to fall below the projections that guide investor expectations.”
Why did you report on this, Thom? This kind of news makes tech blogs all the time, and I’m not sure why, as it seems like it would only be of interest to investors, who are probably already reading The Wall Street Journal, or similar.
It’s interesting to hear if a tech company’s stock takes a huge dive (or there’s a huge spike), but a 7% rise hardly seems eventful.
I have been posting them since always, and of all three major companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple). There’s a very simple reason why.
If I don’t, I’ll get slammed for being biased by idiots who assume that because their precious pet company’s results weren’t posted I must be biased against it or for its competitors. Same thing if I never post them but only if they have a bad quarter (because, as you say, that’s actually news). So, I just post them all as-is so none of those idiots can complain.
Simple, huh?
and yet no one really cares…
Edited 2013-01-23 02:59 UTC
That’s the point, I think. No one cares about the presence of such news, only about their absence.
I think about it like this:
If company A has a bad quarter, then it makes sense to write about when they have a good quarter. A lot of analysis is done based off of these posts (Just not this one, because Google is a rather boring company to follow.).
I think some of the criticism is that when a company has a terrible quarter, the naysayers and dooms day people are out in full force. When they show signs of growth, its marginalized. When they have a stellar quarter, its not reported on.
I think its important to tell the whole story, because it may be indicative of a particular strategy working/not working. As much as I disagree with for example, the conclusions drawn when Nokia has a bad quarter, I know this is the very first place I go when the news breaks. Its fun.
my comment was a bit tongue in cheek
but fair point.
Today’s apple earnings comment is sure to get a few heated comments.
Imagine you replaced name Google with Apple in those financial results.
There would be countless articles about the proof that they’re on a downward spiral and that they’re doomed.
On a side note, I’m really curious to see how Google Glass will materialise both hardware and software-wise. I consider it the most interesting project being developed at Google right now.
As ever with Google (and most of the other big tech companies) it’s the silences and gaps that are very interesting.
In the whole of the Google press release not a single word on Android finances, no costs, no revenues no loss figures (Google does not make a profit on Android).
No breakdown of the figures for mobile finances. What did Google earn from which mobile markets? How much did they earn from iOS and Android (almost certainly more from iOS)? They are not saying.
Considering the endless claims that Google+ is a core strategic project for the company, and given Facebook’s recent debut of Graph Search, it’s interesting that Google once again had nothing to say about usage or performance of Google+.
They did confirm that the key metric of average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of Google’s Network members, decreased approximately 6% over the fourth quarter of 2011.
I doubt investors and analysts are only looking at the press release.* Maybe you should read the stuff they read (that they seem to be happy with) before imagining some kind of corporate soap opera.
* It’s a PRESS RELEASE.
Are you suggesting that the missing data is actually available outside of Google? If so I would really appreciate a pointer to where I can find it as I am very interested in those figures.
In related financial news, IBM made a $6.1 billion profit for the 4th quarter, beating analyst predictions. Lots of money being made on Linux based solutions/services there.
How large part of that from ~Linux? (and I suppose IBM still services lots of big iron)