14 DAY TRIAL // Being the busy little bees that we are and with the minuscule attention span we've grown to have (or rather regressed to having), we're always running for the latest information, be it interesting or not, important or not. Our hunger for Google numbers has always been fed by the quarterly fiscal reports and the reported growth was enough for an 'Aah!' and then we'd move on with our lives.
Be that as it may, when some seriously disturbing or amazing figures are presented to us, they tend to stick to our memory just because they are shocking (at least that's how it works for me). Google has filed its annual 10-K report with SEC on Friday and when added up, the numbers tend to speak for themselves.
"Our full-time employee headcount has significantly increased over the last 12 months, growing from 10,674 at December 31, 2006 to 16,805 at December 31, 2007...consisting of 5,788 in research and development, 6,647 in sales and marketing, 2,844 in general and administrative and 1,526 in operations. All of Google's employees are also equityholders, with significant collective employee ownership," the report writes. That's a massive 57 percent increase in number of employees, translated into the astounding financial numbers.
The revenue is still 99 percent generated by the perfectly honed advertising business the Mountain View-based company boasts with. Google acquired 17 new companies in the year that passed, the most notable (and expensive) being DoubleClick and Postini, whose figures are already familiar. 14 of the remaining 15 have totaled just $281.6 million (Postini alone was worth thrice that).
When I read these numbers I'm getting an image of the Soviet army from WWII, the way Sven Hassel used to describe it: tanks rolling in, and no matter how many he and his company would destroy, there would always be more to come up front and fight. Update and security flaws or liabilities found will not stop the Google Internet armada from conquering the cyber space in its range of services.