Earnings: Google Q1 Call: Third Parties Wrong On Clicks; More Layoffs Of DoubleClickers
This story was written by Joseph Weisenthal.
Work in progress Eric Schmidt is feeling good. While acknowledging difficulties in the broader market, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is well positioned for the year to come, Schmidt said in his prepared remarks. And right off the bat, in his prepared remarks, he confronted the doubters: "Paid click growth has been much higher than has been speculated by third parties."
-- In a rundown of the numbers, (still) CFO George Reyes promised continued heavy capex, and more jobs cut at DoubleClick (15 percent).
-- Sergey Brin, talking up product: The company has launched over 100 search improvements, including better localized search internationally, as well as the company's somewhat controversial "search within a site" service. On mobile: mobile search is now available in 40 languages, and mobile traffic is growing very rapidly (though he didn't specify the number). Larry Page picks up the baton, mentions a few other new services, like better analytics tools, and pay-per-action advertising. On YouTube, 10 hours of video are uploaded every minute. YouTube is seeing better results from overlays than other ad forms, like banners.
Q&A set to begin:
-- CFO Search: Schmidt: "A whole bunch of candidates that we're really close to we have not made any offers." (This must be getting a little old for Reyes.)
More to come
By Joseph Weisenthal