Just like every big company, Google doesn’t innovate. At best, they buy someone who has something new and then they put it out under their brand. It’s still not coming from internally.

They have innovated a lot in the past though. I mean Gmail, Calendar, and, Spreadsheets (Docs was aquired), and Notebook were all pretty big steps I think. And I don’t remember reading about them acquiring companies for any of those products.

How companies are really performing and how speculators get wowed or scared by the price movements of shares are two different things.

When Google went public, huge numbers of people got on the Google band wagon because it was…. Google. Perhaps now the shares are just returning to a more realistic level finally?

That could very well be the case. Give it a few months and I’m sure we’ll have that figured out…

When Google went public, huge numbers of people got on the Google band wagon because it was…. Google. Perhaps now the shares are just returning to a more realistic level finally?

@ Leland: Those were exactly my thoughts. Google has acquired so many companies yet we haven’t really seen many of those put to good use yet. They need to get the ball rolling!

“We looked at some of Google’s competitors and it looks like some of them also had a rough day yesterday, but it got us thinking about Google and if they’re failing to innovate and thus failing to impress investors?”

I’ve been monitoring Google and other corporation’s performance at the stock exchange and noticed the continued Southern trend. Wall Street is very nervous and you can see that in the Dow Jones Index Average (12,065.31) and Nasdaq (2,232.21). Both indexes are far below what they were a month ago. The same is true with Amazon (65.60), Apple (125.65), Microsoft (28.99) and Yahoo (28.97).

IMO, the United States is in the initial stages of a recession and the cycle will hit the Stock Market in one way or another pushing the prices of shares down. How much? I wish I knew.

Google has an excellent track record in the Search domain as you correctly stated, but they don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket. They have been busy providing different services in an effort to lure consumers to these services and study their tastes and preferences. This information is very valuable to enhance their advertising strategies. “Know thy customer”.

Unfortunately Google steadfastly refuses to provide analysts with financial guidance, so they have to guess what the future revenues and earning will be. When Google doesn’t meet their expectations, then they announce that the sky is falling down on Google.

Google’s goal is to create a solid global network to store and manage all the information they can get their hands on. They want to be the super-computer of the world (cloud computing), and they have done a good job with setting up their “Googleplexes”. They have already started to move in the direction of the cell phones with the Android platform. There’s a lot of money in this territory and Google has demonstrated they play well in the search field. Now they want to apply their expertise in placing ads in cell phones adding more volume to their current huge cash flow. The recent European approval of DoubleClick certainly helps.

This is why Microsoft is so scared and wants to buy Yahoo to level the playing field. In my crystal ball, Google still has a lot of punch under their sleeve.

Just my two cents on this exciting subject. Of course I could be dead wrong.
Regards,

Omar.-