Here's Google's take on it.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2013.

“Google had another strong quarter with $14.9 billion in revenue and great product progress,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple, and intuitive experience regardless of your device.” Google Inc. Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results [investor.google.com]

They must have something Ebay doesn't have :

EBay sales slowdown : [webmasterworld.com...]

They must have something Ebay doesn't have

They have something no other company in the *history of the world* has ever had. Almost absolute web/information control across a growing wide range of devices.

During 2012/3 there have been so many changes, most seem to be aimed at keeping users of the search engine squarely on Google properties.

eg. embedded wikipedia info, answers to questions, images hot-linked full size from host sites, reviews, tour dates etc etc

If you're a shareholder it's something to celebrate -- it's clearly working!

We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple, and intuitive experience regardless of your device

At least he's not lying, I get a big brand store for almost every product I search for now.

Unfortunately I know those big brand site urls by heart already and wanted something else from Google.

What a big, beautiful market for competitors to aim for. A company making a fortune from first class marketing but an abysmal product in an environment like the Internet where things change very quickly makes for an exciting ride. Add a CEO with a health problem (vocal chord paralysis is no joke, both the causes and possible consequences can be very serious) and investors must be very brave.

Anyone else find the 26% growth in paid clicks interesting?

Market share in search is roughly flat for Google. Comscore shows relatively flat traffic YoY. I hand checked July and August YoY numbers...minimal traffic growth..single digit percentages at best.

So, 26% more paid clicks on relatively flat traffic means...?

So, 26% more paid clicks on relatively flat traffic means...?

It means they've gotten very good at showing people the right ads, at the right time.

Showing affiliate offers over 50% of the results page for many products surely helped, those aren't tucked away in a 'shopping' section anymore. Ads up top, big brands under that and affiliate offers over the right 50% of the page would be considered pure spam on any other site.

Every webmaster should charge search engines for indexing their site. The amount of bandwidth and computing power these bots have stolen collectively from webmasters daily would be criminal. We should create a coalition and if Google, Bing wanted to index it, they should pay. Imagine if there was a bot that went into every retail store and indexed all the information, prices, etc it could gather and then allow anyone to search for it. Surely, shop owners would be enraged, people would either block them or charge them fees!

They must have something Ebay doesn't have :

They do. Google is the gateway to the web for businesses in most any industry. For the gate to open these days, and traffic to flow, one must pay a toll.

Anyone else find the 26% growth in paid clicks interesting?

Yes, I find it interesting that so many publishers are reporting significantly lowers CTRs and slashed CPC. This tells me that more aggressive placement of ads in the serps is paying off for Google.

Google may be the gateway to everything, except in Asia and Russia, but everyone needs desktop OS to get to that gateway and/or hardware to get online.

Let's do some comparisons of the 3 dominant competing forces:

Symbol, Mkt Cap
AAPL 462.33B
GOOG 337.97B
MSFT 292.3B

The interesting thing IMO is that MSFT still makes this much money considering neither AAPL nor GOOG nor their millions of customers use MSFT wares, unlike DELL, HP, etc. The rest of the world uses Linux and they're kicking MS's butt. Microsoft is to computers what McDonald's is to fast food, everyone wants a piece of them but nobody manages to unseat them.

Anyway, note that the most sales and biggest market cap is obviously Apple and the whole key to their success IMO is the completeness of their digital ecosystem with iTunes, iBooks, etc. which both Google and Microsoft are trying to recreate.

The advantage Google and Microsoft have over Apple is the information gained from their search engines which could obviously be used to knock Apple off the apple cart if done right.

IMO Google and Android are poised to take over except there's just something lacking in the Google Play experience. I still find myself shopping elsewhere for movies and music or watching Netflix and even using other sources to find apps vs. Google Play itself.

In a recent disturbing turn of events, Google had the hands down best Navigation program and recently switched everyone to use Google Maps which you simply can't use while driving and is frustrating to use in the first place IMO. I had to switch to a competing program after using Google Navigation for many years. My wife can't stand the new version either, many complain, Google isn't listening.

Mobile utility apps like navigation should have a simple interface, easy voice commands, and a minimum of steps to make something happen which Apple and Siri do very well. Google Navigation did do it very well but took a huge step backwards in usability and I'm wondering if it wasn't in response to a utility patent but hard to say, the Scout app solved my problems so who cares.

That's a classic way you take all that information and bungle it's utilization and being so arrogant you ignore your customers and TADA! a classic blunder is born.

Until Google has solved the problem of actually listening to their customers, which Apple appears to do, then all the information in the world won't help them.

It's a moot point at the moment because they're dominating mobile sales worldwide and MS could change that in a heartbeat but MS is a lost little puppy for now.

Yes, I find it interesting that so many publishers are reporting significantly lowers CTRs and slashed CPC. This tells me that more aggressive placement of ads in the serps is paying off for Google.

I think one important role of AdSense has always been to give Google a second chance at users who miss or ignore the ads in the SERPs. And I'd guess that Product Search is catching the attention of many users who'd never paid much attention to AdWords, resulting in fewer prospects for those "second chance" publisher ads.

(I've got to admit that I've never paid much attention to AdWords, but when I was searching for a kitchen item recently, the Product Search ads with their photos, prices, and merchant names immediately caught my eye.)

So, 26% more paid clicks on relatively flat traffic means...?

It means they've gotten very good at showing people the right ads, at the right time.

Oh, please. Don't spread that BS Google keeps saying. I believe the figures have much more to do with the number of impressions that grew immensely. Less organic and way more ads. All sorts of widgets above the serps, etc. For many queries there are no more organic - just ads. There is only so much ads you can show - once you fill the entire page with them, that's it. This growth in revenue is unsustainable. Time to short GOOG?

For me there are two things that surprise me:

1. Google manages to keep its searchers/users even though Google minimized the world wide web to only a few hand-full websites so that it feels more like a directory than search engine.

2. Google manages to keep its business partners even though they minimized their organic revenue, accused them for spam and bad content and on top of that increased the pay per click prices.


How come that Google gets through with those practices?

I'm a shareholder, yet I'm not celebrating...they don't pay dividends.

For many queries there are no more organic - just ads.

Have you tried scrolling?

“We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple, and intuitive experience regardless of your device.”

Surely he meant to say "...regardless of your security and privacy settings"?