"Google stock dropping? That's unpossible!"
Ralph Wiggum never actually said that, but a lot of the Ralph Wiggums out there in the national press will be crying in disbelief at Google's
Of course, the earnings do look fine. Tough to argue with nearly three times the EPS, unless, of course, the market's Ralph Wiggums wanted even more. That's precisely the problem with Google. People assume it's going to do more. How can it not? It's Google!
While it's doing fine whomping up on Yahoo!
And don't even get me started on that bogus, overhyped NASA hookup: a non-exclusive deal to share weather and images spun as some kind of high-tech mind-meld. This kind of pathetic fluffery is exactly what makes me believe Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a lot more hat than cattle, or however they put it in the People's Republic of California. (Frankly, I think that any reporter who mentions the deal without pointing out just how lame it is ought to be forced to spend a day listening to Google's engineers discuss the latest search algorithms.)
But what about Gootube? More hat, no cattle. Where's the business? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that people love free, pirated content. Monetizing it, that will take work. And we've seen no evidence of that. Heck, every time I see someone using Gootube, I ask them when they last clicked an ad. The answer is always the same: a blank stare and then, "Check out this episode of [insert copyright-violated program here]."
I still think it's not for nothing that insiders at Google continue to dump shares as if they're laced with polonium. Who do you think is right? The insiders, or the Ralph Wiggums out there?
Comments? Bring them here.
At the time of publication, Seth Jayson was long Microsoft common and calls but had no positions in any other company mentioned here. View his stock holdings and Fool profile here. See what he's Digging these days. Yahoo! is a Stock Advisor pick, and Microsoft is an Inside Value selection. Fool rules are here.
