As this is being written the markets are just getting started and I’m listening to the recording of the Google (disclaimer: I own GOOGle stock) Second Quarter 2007 Earnings Call. CEO Eric Schmidt starts out sounding robotic, like he was reading from some prepared script.

- 13,786 employees. That’s the number CFO George Reyes points to that Google had ending the second quarter. Analyst commentary around the increase in some 1,500+ employees — somewhat disturbingly referred to as “head count” (what’s wrong with the word employees?) — seems to be more negative than positive, questioning if the expense was necessary in a quarter that was “seasonally slower.” In short: why are they hiring more people, creating more expense, when business isn’t as good. It’s the equivalent of running out too many employees during the slow times. Running a search company isn’t like running a restaurant. An emphasis on hiring new talent that do something for the future doesn’t compare to staffing during peak times. But it wasn’t only engineers that were hired, these numbers also included marketers and other job classifications.

Google contends that despite budget overspending on new hires, the hires they made were necessary and they were excited about the talent they acquired.

- universal search. Sergey Brin pointed out that search results now include videos, images and other results which he deemed a major breakthrough for the search. I like how this has been implemented.

The earnings call reminded me of the fight scene in Rocky IV where Ivan Drago gets cut and Rocky realizes that Drago is human and can be hurt. Google is human too, yes.

Kevin Kelleher writes:

Yes, Google made more money than ever before - no surprise there. And, as you’d expect from an ever-larger company, it did so at a slower rate. But the revenue growth rate was disarmingly slow: 6% higher than its last quarter. That’s the lowest quarter-on-quarter revenue growth that Google has shown since it went public. Is that what you’d expect from the company that’s causing Yahoo so much pain? Hardly.

Google can’t keep recreating its outstanding results forever. Although today might be a bit rocky, I suspect the stock price will ultimately bounce back and continue to grow because Google didn’t have a bad quarter, they just didn’t have as good a quarter as analysts expected.

• GOOGle up almost 10% in after hours trading
• Rumor: Google finally admits to working on Linux variant, Goobuntu?
• WhereonEarth to be on earth with Yahoo
• Google financially on fire!
• Apple stock options probe hits stock price
• 300 percent plus increase for Google Q2