I have to admit it… I’m addicted to Google. I can’t live without their search, email and other services. I think the company is great and I’m hooked on their silly stock. Yesterday was a crazy day for google. They lost $8,000,000,000 (yes that is 9 zeros!) in market capitalization due to a couple of off the cuff comments by the CFO George Reyes. What cracks me up about the whole thing is basically Reyes said that they are going to have to find new customers to continue to keep growing; and that they are not going to grow at their google crazy pace forever. Somehow, that surprised people! Here is a quote:

Clearly our growth rates are slowing. We are going to have to find new ways to monetize the business. - George Reyes, CFO Google Inc.

I mean really, of course their growth rates are going to slow. Of course they have to find new ways to make money, but why on earth would you hack 7% off of the stock from those comments? I think this is really an indication that Google is going to have to start acting like a normal corporate citizen and give out more information. I love the fact that they are trying to “do no evil” and be unique. The IPO was great, so far their googlized approach to everything has been great; however, the fact that a small statement like that can whack 8 billion in market cap is just ridiculous.

With the momentum slowing down (Google is down 13% from the beginning of the year) something else is going to have to keep this train moving upward.  I’d say that the only way to keep this going is to start giving out the info that people are asking for basically manage expectations! Hopefully Google will do this tomorrow at the analyst meeting; otherwise, we’ll have to just keep rolling the dice trying to figure out which way this crazy stock is going to move!

Categories: Investing