Translating Google's spectacular earnings call

Google turned in another awe-inspring financial performance in 1Q07. Pick your news report for the basics. All you need to know is revenue growth was up 63%. Wow!

• Derek Brown of Cantor Fitzgerald said in the Washington Post today:
• "I am basically convinced that no company in history has put up the type of finanical performance that Google has put up from a growth and financial perspective for as long as they have done it."
• It's hard to disagree with him. There is no other example.
• They are a jugernaut.
• What I questioned in my recent 10-page analysis of the Google-Doubleclick merger, was whether all of that success is legitimate given rampant click fraud and Google's systematic theft of its core inputs -- copyrighted content.

Let me translate some of the earnings call:

• CEO Eric Schmidt: [search] "Its a huge business, we have lots of room to grow there."
• Translation: 'World domination of search is in our grasp.'
• The CEO focused reporters and analysts on the core search business and away from the mergers and efforts to extend their business outside of search.
• Translation: 'Don't worry your little heads about talk of Google's plan to extend its dominance of search into Internet advertising overall... it will be good for you... it will be more efficient... it will be more targeted.'   
• CEO Schmidt also said: "We show fewer ads and those are worth more because they are better targeted."
• Translation: 'We leverage more private information on more Americans better than anyone in the history of the planet...we know more about what makes an individual person really tick than their mother does!'

Another interesting proof point of my thesis that Google in on path to effectively monopolize the search business in the next several years, was the reported fact that the number of searches Google did last quarter grew 40%, while they grew for Yahoo 12% and Microsoft only 9%.

• Google's search lead  is increasing.
• Game. Set. Match.