Google profits keep zooming up

By Stan Beer
Friday, 20 April 2007 05:34

Home IT

Analysts may ask when is Google's bubble going to burst in the wake of yet another breathtaking quarterly earnings performance. The answer may well be when the Internet falls over. Meanwhile, with a 69% increase in earnings and 63% increase revenues, the market can only sit back and watch dumbfounded.

While Google's blue sky projects, such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, grab media attention, the search company quietly sticks to its knitting and rakes in ever more advertising revenue from its core search business. With Internet advertising on a steep upward growth, Google is proving that it's good to be the king in the king of growth markets.

In fact, the continuing success of Google's search advertising business has its competitors so worried that they are now resorting to attempts to curb the company's growing dominance through regulatory measures.

Microsoft, Yahoo and others are considering their options for an antitrust challenge to Google's US$3.1 acquisition of contextual ad management company DoubleClick. Microsoft, which dominates more than 90% of the desktop operating system market, claims that a Google-DoubleClick combination would control 85% of the Internet ad distribution market.

Meanwhile, Google's continually rising share price, allows it to easily absorb some of the web's most valuable businesses, adding to the snowball effect while competitors watch helplessly and Google stock holders grin from ear to ear.