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October 20, 2004
Media Watch: SF Chronicle scoops Google's optimistic "assumptions"
Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle appears to be first with a story about Google's rosy business forecasts, working from "internal documents" that he says provide more information than the company's founders are expected to deliver with its first quarterly earnings report as a public company tomorrow.
Writes Kopytoff:
Everyone agrees that Google is expanding rapidly. The questions are how much and for how long.The internal Google documents obtained by The Chronicle give unusual detail about the matter. They include advertising forecasts that have not been publicly disclosed.
Google predicted that the number of advertiser accounts will jump from 280,000 this year to 378,000 in 2005, according to the documents. From 2004 to 2008, the number of accounts is expected to more than double to 652,050.
Google made the forecasts as part of its specifications for a new billing system that was to be built earlier this year by BFS Finance, a subsidiary of the conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. The numbers, labeled "assumptions," were intended to help in designing the project.
A Google spokesman declined to comment other than to say that the company has thousands of advertisers.
Kopytoff fleshes out the scoop with facts, figures, and analyst observations. It's worth reading in its entirety for a snapshot of the Silicon Valley upstart poised for explosive expansion.
The cynic in me insists on wondering if Google planted this story, however. It makes the company look awfully good, at a time when it's coming under increasing pressure from search engine competitors, and with Microsoft eager to nip a desktop rival in the bud.
Equally possible: given the Valley's boom and bust cycle, and the troubled history of Internet companies in particular, the hopeful projections may be remembered as a flash of optimism before the balloon deflates.
Links:
Google forecasts growth: Search engine sees 372,000 new ad accounts in 4 years by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 October 2004
Recent Silicon Valley Watcher coverage:
Media Watch: Search & destroy by Doug Millison, 18 October 2004
Tech Watch: VCs searching for search engines in all the wrong places by Tom Foremski, 18 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at October 20, 2004 07:53 AM
| Posted to Media Watch
