Google not only announced record earnings (OK, the real story would have been if they did not announce record earnings), it bought a Brazilian company as an R&D lab, and … it launched in China.
Now Google and China has been something of a fascination of mine, but I sense this is sort of a non issue now. And in any case, given that Google stole a key guy from MSFT, and then MSFT sued Google, and now Google is suing MSFT back, well, that’s certainly taking the headlines away from the whole “Is it evil or not to be in China” question.
Beyond Google’s moves, we had Yahoo’s earnings, which were inline, leading some to speculate that Yahoo’s results were disappointing (its stock did dive after). In a research report I just received (not online yet) Safa Rashtchy notes that the real story in Yahoo lately is how the company is monetizing across many revenue lines. “Over-reaction to Yahoo’s recent inline Q2 results provides an attractive buying opportunity,” he wrote. “Yahoo has shown consistent page view monetization growth over the last 10 quarters, increasing from $0.15 of revenue per average daily page in 1Q03 to $0.28 in 2Q05.”
Yahoo also launched a new rev of its index, more on that here.
Meanwhile, today MSFT launched MSN Virtual Earth, its answer to Google Earth. I love that we have massive companies competing to give us Superman views of the tops of buildings.
There’s much more, but I have to run for the morning. More soon. It’s good to be back.