Michael Moritz, a Sequoia Capital general partner and Google board member since 1999, is leaving Google’s board by not seeking re-election on May 10, 2007. There are many reasons being passed around for why Moritz is leaving, including that he is being blamed for the “YouTube nightmare” (Sequoia was the lead investor in YouTube, and Mike may have been influential in the deal), that he has too much of a conflict of interest bet

IAC/InterActiveCorp reported earnings Tuesday, and the Ask.com parent beat earnings estimates by posting a 67 cents a share profit, compared with analyst estimates of 52 cents. Not all was well, though, as net income on continuing operations was hit bad by a write down of the coupon division, dropping 98% from $119.5 million to $2.69 million compared with last year’s fourth quarter (total net income fell from $113.1 million to $16.7 million).
Total revenue was $1.823 billion, up 7.8% from $1.691 billion a year earlier

Compete.com has released these graphs showing the top 10 video websites, also showing what would happen if Google Video was added to YouTube, due to Google owning YouTube, and thus claiming the traffic of both. As you can see, the Google/YouTube juggernaut owns 51% of the market:
Of the 194 million sessions among the top ten sites, 108.46 million belonged to a Google-owned site

Google released its earnings report last night, and the results were as stellar, if not more so, than anyone could have expected. Profit practically tripled from $372 million in 4Q 2005 to $1.03 billion in this quarter, the first time Google has posted a billion dollar profit in a quarter, while revenues rose 67% to $3.2 billion.
As part of a continuing trend, Google AdSense (or Google Network) revenue now makes up 37% of Google’s revenue, down from 39% last quarter, and far less than the half of Google’s business it used to be

Yahoo reported fourth quarter earnings this week, announcing an increase in revenues to $1.7 billion, up 13% from $1.5 billion a year earlier. They also announced net income of $269 million, or 19 cents a share, a huge 61% drop from the $683 million (or 46 cents/share) the year before. For all of 2006, revenue was up 22% to $6.43 billion, while net income was down to $751 million from $1.9 billion a year prior.
While the numbers themselves aren’t pretty, as any company that earned less money this year than the year before is having difficulties

JP Morgan has published a report on how Google Checkout did in 2006, and their findings show that Checkout reached 6% of the 1,100 consumers they surveyed, compared to 42% for PayPal, what I call a good, but not massive, start. They also found that:

Google Checkout users are younger (57% under 35), more likely to be male (penetration rates 2x more for men) and more affluent (34% have incomes over $75,000) than PayPal.
Only 19% of Google Checkout users reported it as Good or Very Good, abysmal compared with 44% of PayPal users and 65% of credit card users

Some New York City employee pension funds are making demands of Google and Yahoo, trying to use their millions of shares in the internet companies to get them to protect free speech in foreign countries. The funds are the New York City Employees Retirement System and the pension funds for the NYPD, NYFD, teachers and the Board of Education system

Google has announced a program designed to make cashing in those stock options a hell of a lot easier for their employees. The program is designed to make it easier for employees to cash in their options, by allowing them to transfer (i.e.: to sell them) their options to other financial institutions

Google stock closed today above $500 for the first time ever, a new record that puts it at a market capitalization of $150 billion. While GOOG has “only” gained $38 since it reached a record high of $471.63 on January 11, it turned out to be a pretty good buy at times this year. Many thought that Google wasn’t worth picking up, what with such expensive shares, but if you had bought Google on March 10, you would have seen a return of 48.59%, a gain of $166.65 to the current $509.65

Google announced today that it has finished the YouTube deal, trading merely 3,217,560 shares of Google stock for the top video sharing site. The deal also included restricted stock units, options, and a warrant that can be converted at a later date into an additional 442,210 shares of GOOG. Google also paid $15 million in funding to YouTube when the deal was announced a month ago.
At today’s price, of $482.88 a share, the 3 million+ shares are worth $1,553,695,372.8