Rick, my dear friend, you kind of get Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), but you kind of don't. It's nice to see you focusing on the core advertising operations, rather than the impressive but less profitable search engine. But I'm not sure you see how the ad business is working in Mountain View.

You're worried that a slight downtick in payout ratios might drive ad publishers away, leaving advertisers floundering for an audience. Bah, humbug! Google didn't simply decide to take a bigger slice of the cake last quarter. The margin shift came from a different partner mix.

Big marketing deals like the ones Google recently signed with News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL bring in large amounts of easy money, and because of the stature of these publishing channels, those partners tend to get a bigger cut of the profits. But those big fish swim among a massive horde of minnows from the small-publisher AdSense school. Last quarter, AdSense partner payouts amounted to $1.1 billion, while distribution partners outside that network got just $105 million.

This is where Google is really taking a tire iron to the kneecaps of Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), among other hopeful advertising network operators. The Yahoo! Publisher network is still in beta, requiring a lengthy sign-up-and-wait process before you can even start to publish those ads. I can't even find a small-site ad solution from Microsoft, where the ads you buy seem destined for company-run pages and big-name partners only. Take a second look at Google's AdSense payout numbers. Google is running away with a beautiful moneymaker segment unopposed, and it gets to keep a bigger piece of the advertiser fees while doing so. That can't be bad, no matter how you slice it.

Rick, you say you don't like to see Google "fight for scraps like radio advertising or print ads" when it could be going for high-margin online growth instead. Online advertising is a nice start, and it might even become a leading marketing channel in the far future. In the meantime, according to the New Yorker, Big G is shooting for 10% or so of the total global advertising market. It's starting with print and radio ads, along with a foray into television with EchoStar's (Nasdaq: DISH) Dish Network. One-tenth of a trillion-dollar annual revenue stream would place the company in the same league as Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) and its $116 billion annual sales, but with far more generous profit margins.

It's an ambitious plan, and I think Google has the chutzpah to get it done. Sorry, Rick.

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