Google tries to reassure after results shock

The pain continued for Google on Friday after its shares went into freefall in the previous session and a number brokerages cut their price targets. 
 
The sell-off followed the premature release of  disappointing quarterly results from the top search engine.
 
They revealed a weakening of Google’s core internet advertising business and big losses at its recently acquired mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility.
 
Analysts have been fretting that Google would regret its decision to buy Motorola in May for the equivalent of 9.5 billion euros.
 
Rob Cyran of Thomson Reuters’ BreakingViews blamed Motorola: “Google’s mobile operations had a horrible result. They had a loss of about $500 million. That’s bad for two reasons. First, Google will have to spend some time fixing it. And second its management could be distracted.”
 
“It seems like maybe people forgot about the fact that Google let us know multiple times recently that they were taking a pretty significant restructuring charge associated with Motorola,” said Scott Kessler of S&P Capital IQ.
 
“And of course that Motorola is a hardware business and it’s just not as profitable as Google has historically been,” he added.
  
Google chief executive Larry Page quickly appeared to apologise to investors for the early release of the quarterly figures, which he blamed on a error by the company that prints the results and files with regulators.
 
Page also promised Google will make more money from advertising linked to internet searches via smartphones. 
 
Thursday’s sell-off reflected a reversal of the optimistic sentiment that had propelled Google’s stock to a new all-time high earlier this month.
 
The stock had surged 27 percent in the three months before the publication of the results.
 

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