Google Schmoogle

At least that's what the analysts think. In after hours trading Google (GOOG) is down by over 7%, or $39+ (taking Baidu.com BIDU with it; which is down over $5+ or 3+% after hours). Google's 2nd quarter profits are up 28%, but "profit was $3.56/share, missing the average estimate of $3.57 in a Bloomberg survey of analysts." The reasoning behind the lagging profit is said to be due to increased Research & Development expenditures. "We overspent against our own plan on headcount,'' he [CEO Eric Schmidt] said..."We decided it was not a mistake. The kind of people we brought in were so good that we're glad we did this.'' A company spending half a billion dollars on R&D you would think there'd be some more impressive projects in the works. All-in-all a $39/share sell-off for being a penny off analyst expectations seems a bit harsh. Net income = $925.1 million ($721.1 million a year ago). Net sales was $2.72 billion, up 63%.