January 31, 2006
Google Reports Profit Below Expectations; Shares Fall Sharply
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:42 p.m. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Google Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit nearly doubled, but fell well below the high expectations for the online search engine leader.
The Mountain View, Calif-based company said Tuesday that it earned $372.2 million, or $1.22 per share, for the final three months of 2005. That represented an 82 percent increase from net income of $204.1 million, or 71 cents per share, in the previous year.
If not for a donation to launch its charitable foundation and stock compensation expenses, Google said it would have earned $1.54 per share. That missed the average estimate of $1.76 per share among 31 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Google released its results after the stock market closed Tuesday. Company shares plunged $59.16 -- 13.7 percent -- in after-hours trading after gaining $5.84 to close at $432.66 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. At one point, the stock was down more than 19 percent in late trade.
Revenue for the period totaled $1.92 billion, an 86 percent increase from $1.03 billion in the prior year. After subtracting commissions paid to Google's advertising partners, the company registered fourth-quarter revenue of $1.29 billion, matching analyst expectations, according to Thomson Financial.
A much higher tax rate during the fourth quarter appeared to contributed to the earnings shortfall.
The company said its effective tax rate in the fourth quarter was nearly 42 percent, well above the roughly 30 percent rate during the second and third quarters. Google also expects its 2006 tax rate to be about 30 percent.
Investors have been fretting about Google's latest earnings report since rival Yahoo Inc. released a fourth-quarter profit that fell a penny below analyst estimates. That news, released two weeks ago, raised fears that the Internet's advertising market didn't expand as much as most people anticipated during the pivotal holiday shopping season.
The jitters surrounding Google were exacerbated after the company vowed to fight a Bush administration subpoena demanding one week's worth of search requests as the federal government seeks to revive a law designed to shield children from online pornography.
Google then provoked more angst by launching a new search engine in China that will censor some results to comply with the country's free-speech restrictions.
------
On the Net:
http://www.google.com
Poor Bastard
Freud smoked cigars for most of his life; even after having his jaw removed due to malignancy, he continued to smoke until his death on September 23, 1939. He smoked an entire box of cigars daily. After contracting cancer of the mouth, he underwent over 30 operations to treat the disease; In the end, Freud could no longer tolerate the pain associated with his cancer. He requested that his personal physician visit him at his London home. Freud's death was by a physician-assisted morphine overdose.
Wikipedia
All Don't Have AIDS
December 7, 2005 -- BEFORE fashion designer Kenneth Cole is heaped with more praise for his "We All Have AIDS" campaign, which is supposedly raising awareness of the disease, maybe he should consult with Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Sci ence" (Regnery), which is on ama zon.com. Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Hanks, Sir Elton John, Richard Gere, Natasha Richardson and Sharon Stone should read it, too, since they are appearing in ads under the "We All Have AIDS" banner. Bethell claims AIDS in Africa has been vastly overre ported since 1985, when the World Health Organization decided "a combi nation of the following symptoms would suffice for an AIDS diagnosis: weight loss, fever, diarrhea, swollen glands, a cough, prolonged fatigue." Bethell re ports in The American Spectator that the real problem is lack of clean drink ing water in sub-Saharan Africa, which leads to a horrifying smorgasbord of infections, parasites and disease. Such conditions render HIV tests unreliable. "About 70 conditions have been shown to trigger a false positive, so the test is essentially useless in countries where bacterial contamination is endemic," Bethell writes. "Therefore, AIDS in Africa has never been shown to be the same as AIDS here . . . The sheer dishonesty of the New York Times and other media in not reporting these facts is hard to take."
Source: Page 6
Source: Page 6
"pre-orgasm anticipation" and "post-orgasm regret."
This explains all the arms I wake up next to.
As a side-note, all men experience phenomena known as "pre-orgasm anticipation" and "post-orgasm regret." In the former state, men pursue orgasm no matter what the cost. This includes lowering your standards and potentially sleeping with someone you’d never consider during a sane testosterone-free moment; in the latter state -- post-orgasm regret -- men feel trapped and want to flee.
Ian Kerner, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Clinical Sexology and is the author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman. To visit his website, click here. To learn more about She Comes First, click here.
As a side-note, all men experience phenomena known as "pre-orgasm anticipation" and "post-orgasm regret." In the former state, men pursue orgasm no matter what the cost. This includes lowering your standards and potentially sleeping with someone you’d never consider during a sane testosterone-free moment; in the latter state -- post-orgasm regret -- men feel trapped and want to flee.
Ian Kerner, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Clinical Sexology and is the author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman. To visit his website, click here. To learn more about She Comes First, click here.
Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2005
And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.
Source
Source
Forever and Ever
Just like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, it will last forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever...
At Google, Cube Culture Has New Rules
By STEVE LOHR
Google, like I.B.M., says that it is forging a corporate culture in which success depends on performance.
But while I.B.M. is an old company that has revamped the social contract with its workers, Google is writing a new one from scratch.
Some of Google's benefit and compensation practices resemble I.B.M.'s. The retirement plan is a tax-deferred 401(k) program with employee savings matched by company contributions, as it is for new employees at I.B.M. starting this year. Annual bonuses at Google range up to 25 or 30 percent, as they do at I.B.M.
Yet Google portrays itself as a special place, starting with its company motto, "Don't Be Evil." And its programs and perks for employees are unusual, even by the often-generous standards of young Silicon Valley companies in good times.
Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a modern corporate campus known as the Googleplex. Other amenities there include children's day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area.
And the big perk: the company's engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments.
The company is currently hiring about 10 people a day, adding to a workforce of more than 5,000. The essence of the Google pitch, said Shona L. Brown, vice president of operations, is: "Hey, come join us doing really exciting things. We're trying to change the world."
That prospect proved appealing to Paul Rademacher, 31, who came to Google in September from DreamWorks, where he worked on the software behind movies like "Shrek 2" and "Madagascar." Mr. Rademacher caught the attention of Google executives with a Web site he built on his own, www.housingmaps.com, which links Google's mapping software with property listings on Craigslist, the online bulletin board, to display houses and neighborhoods.
After talking to Google engineers and executives, Mr. Rademacher came away impressed that the company was a place that gave people "room to do great things." At Google, he is working on new products that remain secret.
In previous jobs, Mr. Rademacher rarely thought beyond a year or two, but he said he could see himself staying at Google for a long time. "If you really feel that you're part of the larger effort, that you have both opportunity and ownership, loyalty does follow," he said.
To encourage a sense of ownership, all Google employees receive stock grants or options. With revenues growing at nearly 100 percent and profit rising faster, Google's stock price has more than doubled so far this year. So there are a lot of happy owners these days. The company also doles out cash payments, including Founders' Awards of millions of dollars, for innovations that add value to the Google franchise.
But what happens to all this corporate largesse when, someday, the laws of economic gravity are felt at Google and growth slows sharply or worse? The thinking seems to be that any slowdown will be a soft landing that can be managed by easing the pace of hiring. Real belt-tightening, apparently, is unimaginable.
"We will not pull back on our commitments to employees," Ms. Brown said. "The last thing we would do is take it out of the hide of our employees. That is a path to a downward spiral."
At Google, Cube Culture Has New Rules
By STEVE LOHR
Google, like I.B.M., says that it is forging a corporate culture in which success depends on performance.
But while I.B.M. is an old company that has revamped the social contract with its workers, Google is writing a new one from scratch.
Some of Google's benefit and compensation practices resemble I.B.M.'s. The retirement plan is a tax-deferred 401(k) program with employee savings matched by company contributions, as it is for new employees at I.B.M. starting this year. Annual bonuses at Google range up to 25 or 30 percent, as they do at I.B.M.
Yet Google portrays itself as a special place, starting with its company motto, "Don't Be Evil." And its programs and perks for employees are unusual, even by the often-generous standards of young Silicon Valley companies in good times.
Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a modern corporate campus known as the Googleplex. Other amenities there include children's day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area.
And the big perk: the company's engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments.
The company is currently hiring about 10 people a day, adding to a workforce of more than 5,000. The essence of the Google pitch, said Shona L. Brown, vice president of operations, is: "Hey, come join us doing really exciting things. We're trying to change the world."
That prospect proved appealing to Paul Rademacher, 31, who came to Google in September from DreamWorks, where he worked on the software behind movies like "Shrek 2" and "Madagascar." Mr. Rademacher caught the attention of Google executives with a Web site he built on his own, www.housingmaps.com, which links Google's mapping software with property listings on Craigslist, the online bulletin board, to display houses and neighborhoods.
After talking to Google engineers and executives, Mr. Rademacher came away impressed that the company was a place that gave people "room to do great things." At Google, he is working on new products that remain secret.
In previous jobs, Mr. Rademacher rarely thought beyond a year or two, but he said he could see himself staying at Google for a long time. "If you really feel that you're part of the larger effort, that you have both opportunity and ownership, loyalty does follow," he said.
To encourage a sense of ownership, all Google employees receive stock grants or options. With revenues growing at nearly 100 percent and profit rising faster, Google's stock price has more than doubled so far this year. So there are a lot of happy owners these days. The company also doles out cash payments, including Founders' Awards of millions of dollars, for innovations that add value to the Google franchise.
But what happens to all this corporate largesse when, someday, the laws of economic gravity are felt at Google and growth slows sharply or worse? The thinking seems to be that any slowdown will be a soft landing that can be managed by easing the pace of hiring. Real belt-tightening, apparently, is unimaginable.
"We will not pull back on our commitments to employees," Ms. Brown said. "The last thing we would do is take it out of the hide of our employees. That is a path to a downward spiral."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
