Google Analyst Day Roundup

Well now that was an interesting meeting. The stock rose yesterday and is up nearly 2% this morning. Coverage abounds. Here’s the highlights:

Reader John K breaks it down on his blog. Best quote: “Schmidt pees on Microsoft’s parade: Google is primarily focused on Microsoft as a competitor because of the software giant’s history as a company, but Google hasn’t seen an impact from Microsoft’s search products yet.”

Cnet has a story which breaks the event down minute by minute. I wonder how long that will be done. In any case, it’s interesting tidbits: Google Local is now “number three in classifieds.” More can be done with personalization. Click fraud is not material to the company (again). International growth is strong. Google plans to be in every single major ad marketplace, period. A chart was shown with five core goals this year, the only one I found interesting was “building new products and services for publishers of information.” Google has tripled its Chinese index (Kai Fu Lee was at the meeting).

Kedrosky feels like he got a light lunch. “The day went fine, but there was really very little new here.”

Linden posted the presentation PDF (Paul has them too), and “liked slide 19, 20, and 31, all of which makes it clear that Google isn’t losing its wide-eyed optimism.”

Analyst Ben Schachter of UBS said in an email note: “Google came out of the corner swinging, and didn’t let up all day. The company clearly worked hard to dispel the post-4Q negative sentiment, as well as lingering concern over comments made earlier in the week by CFO, George Reyes. We think it succeeded on both fronts.”

Analyst Robert Peck at Bear: “It was clear to us that Google’s management made a concerted effort this year to provide more information to the Street on its core operations. One interesting tidbit we took to understand was the company’s $100B revenue goal.”

Thomas Weisel Partners’ Christa Sober struck a bit more cautious note: “Should it be referring to the $100bn as revenue, we would note that the company would need to grow its gross revenues 27% annually over the next 10 years to hit the target.”

But what is the most interesting quote I read? This one from Schmidt: “We want to be able to store everybody’s information all the time.”