Google on 4Q07 earnings call: "we're almost uniformily seeing a gain in market share"

In the 4Q07 Google reported that revenue grew 51%!

• To put this in perspective, Google grew incremental revenues by $1.6b (4Q06 to 4Q07) which is almost as much as  Yahoo's entire revenues for the same quarter of $1.83b. 
• Moreover, at 51% revenue growth, Google grew over six times faster than Yahoo at 8%.
• Furthermore, Yahoo is projecting capital expenditures (in part to improve search) will be $675-775m for all of 2008, while Google just reported that it spent $678 million on cap ex in just 4Q07.
• Lastly, Yahoo is announcing layoffs of about 1,000 people, while last quarter Google hired 889 people.

Given that Yahoo is Google's main competitor in search and Internet advertising, it certainly looks like the market is rapidly tipping in favor of Google as I explained in Googleopoly.net my analysis of the network effects and dominance of Google in the context of the Google DoubleClick merger.

• As I explained in a previous post, the FTC clearly was looking to approve the merger so the staff gerrymandered its market definition to reach the desired conclusion.   
• I still believe in my Googleopoly analysis that Google is tipping towards much greater dominance of the Internet advertising marketplace.
  • The 4Q07 financial numbers produced by Google and Yahoo strongly confirm my thesis and should raise some concern at the FTC that they may have ignored the power of network effects in a hyper-networked business -- more than they should have.
  • I predict the FTC will increasingly second guess the wisdom of allowing the number one and number two Internet audiences, advertisers and publishers to merge.
  • A few more quarters like this and it will be hard to ignore...