In a nutshell, Google is fine, thanks. Last quarterly earning showed a revenue of $5.2bn for the first three months of 2008, a 42% increase compared to a year ago. And the operating income is cruising at $1.55bn, or 30% of the revenue. Going deeper into the financial statements give some clues about Google’s strategy for the coming years. In one word : dominance will be secured through a control of the physical internet, i.e. servers and networks. Expenditures for the period amounted to $842m, a jump of 41% versus Q1 2007. Altogether, Google has invested $5.14bn in datacenters since 2006. A level that no operator can match. Not Microsoft, not IBM, not HP. That gigantic infrastructure will allow Google, not only to serve any advertising to any customer, but also to develop and host new applications, most of them having yet to be invented.
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