Google Inc. is another symbolic
company for the surge in online networking over the last ten years. Most of the
revenues for the company come from several areas such as search engine,
advertising, operating systems and hardware products. As you can see, the
company is much more than the famous search engine, differentiating itself in
many different areas. The most lucrative hardware sector for Google is
Motorola.
The company provides its services
and products in more than 100 languages, reaching over 50 countries. Some of
the latest acquisitions of the company are Bump Technologies, Flexy Core,
SCHAFT Inc., Boston Dynamics Inc., Nest Labs Inc. and Green Throttle games.
They are all in the spheres of software and mobile technology, and most of
those companies are the basis on Google projects such as Google labs.
Of course, the search services of
the company is accounting for most of its operations. It offers very
specialized research services, as well as a great platform for advertisement.
Other companies’ image, offerings, pries and information are available with
just a few key words away. The company is characterized with constant
innovation and in the beginning of 2012 it launched a Search plus Your World
engine. Since then it also released Google
Now and Google’s Knowledge graph.
The first one is a search service that gives information about specific area at
a certain time. A good example is a weather forecast just before the needed
period, traffic expectations.
The company’s Ad Words is the
most famous auction-advertising program, which determines which words to be
detailed first in search queries. Advertisers can use it to create ads that
appear as linked results to other searches in web content or websites. The
company offers the services on cost basis – the more you pay, the more
prominent are your chances for having the ad placed.
Google’s stock price plummeted from $550 to $520 over
the last year, with a very stable decline. Many analysts think that the online
giant has overreached with its endeavors towards diversification. A lot of the
external financing for the company goes for the acquisition of smaller
companies and investors are starting to worry about their funds being spent on
unprofitable businesses. However, it is far from sure that if the management
changes its policy this trend will decline. Furthermore, there are a lot of
existing projects that Google should work on, such as Google maps and the
Google Glass app, who are known to have been causing dissatisfaction to the
public. Many think that financing is better spent on improvement and not for
expansion. Apparently Google has reached the phase were its GOOG stock performance has to mature
and start performing as a low-risk, low-yield investment, instead of a booming
A stock such as Facebook.
Furthermore, some bad press has
drove GOOG stocks to lower prices.
Scandals about the morally questionable applications that can track a person’s
movement and are often turned on without the person’s knowledge have raised
concerns both amongst investors and users.
However, EPS remain very strong,
with company revenues increasing over the last year. They are currently at
$19.09 and many people are starting to wonder whether shareholders will enjoy
profits from dividends instead of only capital gains, or as it is recently,
losses. After all, stock prices are calculated on expected dividend payouts and
not on managers’ confidence about future booming performance.
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