Google Swot Analysis

Strengths

*Google is king of search-related advertising, and search-related ads are the fastest growing sector of the online ad business, which is growing at 41% annually, said Piper Jaffray.

*Google has almost twice as many search ad clickthroughs as runner-up Yahoo. In December, Google had 16.5 trillion ad clickthrough, compared with Yahoo's 9 trillion, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

*Google earned $3.64 billion from U.S. online ad revenues in 2005, representing 69% of all paid search advertising, according to eMarketer.

*Google's market cap, now hovering at around $132 billion, is bigger than IBM and Chevron.

*Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Raschtchy said the stock would likely soar past $600 this year.

*Unlike high-flying Internet bubble companies of the 1990s, Google is profitable, with revenues growing an average 110% quarterly since it went public in August 2004.

*Google has a war chest of $7.6 billion for doing whatever it pleases.

*Google is one of the top 10 Web brands in the U.S., and the second-fastest-growing Web site, building traffic 29% in the past year, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Only Apple's Web site is more popular; Yahoo and MSN lag far behind.

Weakness

*Too dependant on search based advertising.99 percent of its revenues come from search-related advertising. The remaining 1 percent comes from sales of its enterprise search appliance.