Eric, economic weakness: are you seeing things deteriorate a little bit further?

Mon, 2008-Jul-21 by nmw.

Google Q2 Earnings Call

There were some interesting questions posed on the earnings call — here are a couple “highlights”:

Justin Post (Merril Lynch ) 33:55 - 37:38

“Eric, on the press release you chose to highlight that you are seeing some economic weakness — and I don’t think the company was talking much about that last quarter — are you seeing things kind of deteriorate a little bit further than where we were about a quarter ago (and can you get some color on that)?”

34:50 Eric Schmidt “there’s a flight to quality — and in particular a flight to measurability”

35:55 Hal Varian (parts somewhat inaudible) “as times get a little uncertain, price-sensitive consumers are [going to be shopping more carefully] and trying to make every dollar count — and that means they’re going to be doing research online and they’re going to be doing shopping online… so I think we have a little bit of the wal-mart effect going on, that as times get tough, people are going to watch their dollars — and in may cases that means doing more shopping online.”

45:35 - 48:30 Mark Mahany (Citi) [re: Increase in G&A costs]

[Main increase due to legal, professional & outsourcing services]

48:18 Eric Schmidt “unfortunately the legal stuff is bursty, because — you know: we have suits, we… well, you know: welcome to the information economy — next question!”

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