Well some time has passed since my first post on this topic so I thought I’d look at the latest quarterly numbers and throw in my 2 cents.

It seems like Google has been able to buck the trend this quarter at least as far as gross revenue is concerned. Apparently they have done this by simply increasing the volume of ad space available, but I haven’t spent much time researching the details.

However, there is no question the recession is having an effect. Google cut its head-count for the first time, laying off around 100 recruiters. This clearly signals they plan to reduce their growth in employees and may even reduce their overall head-count through attrition if they aren’t hiring aggressively. I feel Google’s cut may have been mostly symbolic so that management could show they have the fortitude to make cuts if necessary. After all what difference do 100 employees make in Google’s overall expenditures?

So which one of the 3 scenarios I laid out are most responsible. At this point it looks like a mixture of #1 and #2. Google has a pretty neat tool for ferreting out detailed search volume. To try and validate my data I tried this search but it was somewhat inconclusive since search volume was highest in 2004 but was relatively static across the time period which doesn’t make sense. I tried other comparisons such as “web design” and “electronics” and got similar results.

I’ll come back to this topic again when I can find some more conclusive data.