Another Google first - missed estimates - hiring to slow - share price drops 7%

Looks like Google just missed analysts estimates on EPS (see article here).

Key Quote

In the conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that one area the company exceeded its expense plan was in hiring, which added more than 1,500 workers to the payroll during the quarter. "We are very pleased with the talent that we've brought on board, but going forward we will watch this area very closely," he said.

This is one of the key downsides to being a public company it's very hard to "surge" and take some time to build now for the future by hiring as many great people as you can.

That said with every other measure (revenue, operating income etc.) on the up-and-up Google is the still the one to beat.

In other news it looks like Yahoo! is having a very tough time and now there is talk (again) of Microsoft buying them.