GOOG Down With Plunging Markets Stocks are tanking in early trading Tuesday, with major indices off about 2%, after the holiday weekend on renewed fears the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis is worsening. Shares of GOOG are not immune, down 1.5%. Catalysts include Brad Bender's (Display Product Management) participation at the
Citigroup Tech Conference at 2:55 p.m. ET Thursday, September 8; continued
Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets worldwide;
Motorola acquisition approval and integration; regaining ground in China in search and pushing forward in mobile; any signs of life for
Google TV (including
Motorola); the roll-out of
Google Music and social network Google+; and progress in other newer initiatives (location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately
11x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to historical trading levels.
In-House Line-Up Planned For Motorola
(Beatweek Magazine) Last week, Google chairman
Eric Schmidt said that he was “excited to have the product line” in reference to Motorola’s
Android hardware products. After all, “these guys invented the RAZR.” If Google wants hardware innovation to happen on its Android platform, it’ll have to direct those advancements itself. So when Schmidt suddenly starts playing up
Motorola as being a hardware innovator, Google likely plans to use Motorola as a way of showcasing the kind of next-gen Android hardware that it wants to see on the market.
Read » Larry Page Continues To Clean House, Shuts Down Various Businesses (Google) Larry Page has taken a sharp knife to a lot of Google appendages lately. A few weeks ago, the company shut down
Slide, the social-gaming company it bought for close to $200 million last year. Last week it was a bunch of other marginal products, like Google Desktop (which offered desktop search), Fast Flips and Google Web Security.
Aardvark was also shut own which the company bought for $50 million last year.
Read » Google To Push AdSense, AdMob To Stop Serving Mobile Ads (TechCrunch) When Google bought mobile ad network
AdMob for $750 million in 2009, the company was clearly trying to capitalize on the growing mobile advertising market. Of course, because integration and redundancies, certain AdMob features have been axed. And now Google is announcing that it will soon end AdMob’s mobile web serving capabilities. Despite integration issues, I thought that was the whole point of the acquisition.
Read » Baidu Rips Of Android And Chrome (Reuters) Baidu, China's top search engine, offered a glimpse of many new things last week, one of which of its upcoming mobile operating system "Baidu Yi" aimed at bolstering its presence in the increasingly competitive mobile web market (basically they ripped off Android). The company debuted a new search page, slotting web apps to go with its Chrome-alike browser. Baidu is also on the lookout for potential acquisitions and investment opportunities in the mobile and cloud computing spaces.
Read » Hoarding Cash Allows Costly Acquisitions Like Motorola (Barron's) Morgan Keegan analyst
Tavis McCourt argues that hoarding cash is "destroying equity value" in tech stocks. Despite better growth prospects than many industries, tech as a whole trades at a lower price-to-earnings multiple. The most perverse aspect of all this, in McCourt's view, is that large cash piles not getting paid out are being used to feed expensive acquisitions. While he doesn't mention it by name, Google's $12.5 billion bid for Motorola arguably fits into that category.
Read » Google Acquires Coupon And Loyalty Company (TechCrunch) Google just acquired Zave Networks, a digital coupon and loyalty rewards programs company with products like Zavers. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, the market has been exploding. Not too mention Google lost out on acquiring
Groupon, so this is likely a way to further compete. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Let's hope it doesn't end up on the cutting room floor like the others mentioned above.
Read » Oracle And Google May Negotiate Ahead Of Trial (Electronista) Oracle and Google may have no choice but to spend a few days doing nothing but negotiating a settlement in Oracle's ongoing lawsuit over Java use in Android. Judge William Alsup said he was inclined to make the two discuss a deal in front of a federal Magistrate Judge. Neither side is likely to concede. Oracle has been eager to extract as much of a penalty as possible. Google, meanwhile, knows that licensing Java from Oracle could be prohibitively expensive even with lowered terms and may aim for a low lump-sum payment.
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