There will be a whack-o-coverage of Google's better-than-expected first-quarter results (CEO Eric Schmidt: "good news across the whole business") but here are some interesting tidbits from the conference call with analysts:
- 42% of revenue came from international operations
- $1-billion in EBITDA
- $9.3-billion of cash, which Schmidt said gives Google "sufficient cash to take advantage of [opportunities] if they make sense".
That sure seems like an awful lot of cash for opportunities if you ask me unless they are looking to make a major acquisition - I'm not counting the purchase of Writely.com as "major"
- $284-million spent in the quarter on "head-count and facilities"
- Larry Page's take on the launch of new Google properties such as Finance, Video, etc. "We are looking for areas where we can innovate and meet really substantial user needs - generally areas that are not being addressed well at all now".
Hmmm, interesting comment given many of Google's new services (GMail, Froogle, Video, etc.) have failed to overwhelm Internet users.
- Sergey Brin said Google's Wi-Fi strategy is based on the company's interest in "providing better, more transparent accesss to the Internet for our users". As for the Wi-Fi business model, Page said ideally "we and everyone else in the world would be excited about good Internet access that is free, ad-supported and profitable".
Anyone want to read between the lines of these comments? Sounds to me like Google has pretty aggressive Wi-Fi plans. Wonder what Om thinks?