Barron's Shooting Down Google

The online version of the venerable financial publication led off its free week of online access with a cover story about Google, a brand that can draw a lot of readers to a website.

hunting buddy over the weekend, catching the company with a shotgun blast over its future prospects. Fortunately for Harry Whittington, they were hunting quail and thus carrying birdshot loads in their firearms. Barron's has chosen the 12-gauge shotgun approach, loading up with Brenneke slugs and taking cold aim at the search advertising company. Taking an example where one very optimistic analyst's revenue estimate for 2006 is 20 percent off the mark, along with some other financial considerations, Flower giant FTD Group (FTD) recently complained about the high price of search advertising. "During the Christmas season, certain online search engine costs increased significantly over the prior year, and as such we made the decision not to pursue the resulting high-cost order volume," said Michael Soenen, chief executive officer. Barron's noted that a request to Google to make executives available for their article was declined. For readers seeking a glimpse of Google's top trio, CEO Eric Schmidt and founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Time Mindstorms NXT set available as part of the request for executive access.) document.write("Email Murdok here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.