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Larry Page and Sergey Brin are taken aback as Google turns in an unexpectedly disappointing first quarter for 2014.
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin the multi -billionaire co-founders of search engine giants Google have been around along enough to have learned that when you play big, you sometimes also lose big.
And that’s what they succeeded in doing when their first quarter results for 2014 came in, which immediately caused their stock value to drop by 3.6%. Both Page and Brin each took a personal drop in their personal wealth level of close to $1 billion each, with Page currently worth $29.6 billion, while Brin is down to $29.3 billion, with both of them still clinging gamely on to their positions as the 19th and 20th wealthiest people on the planet.
Google returned first quarter earnings per share of $6.27 before special costs were taken into account, on net income of $12.19 billion. Industry analysts, as well as Brin and Page, had been looking forward to earnings of $6.33 per share and $12.3 billion in net income for the quarter.
What may have the Google boys scratching their heads is the statistics for the quarter reportedly show that their ad business has continued to display what has become a familiar pattern, with the number of web surfers clicking on ads placed on web sites of on the increase, and considerably so- up by more than a quarter from the same period in 2013. The fall in income was caused by a drop in the “ cost per click” income per advertisement fell by 9%, with analysts pointing to the fact that maybe are lagging behind in deriving income from mobile ads as the world gradually veers away from surfing on traditional desktop computers.
Brin and Page continue to set an example to other of the key players in the social media, software and hardware industries by refusing to draw any form of salary or bonuses, depending entirely on income from their considerable shareholdings.
