SYDNEY (Reuters) -
Google Inc, the world's leading Internet
search engine, said on Tuesday it was well positioned to
weather any economic downturn as its advertisers were broad
based.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged sliding
share values and a shortage of credit in financial markets was
"a very serious issue" and that many people were expecting a
global economic slowdown.
"It's too early to say if there's (already) been any
specific impact but if there were I don't think it would be
much," Schmidt told reporters at a briefing during a visit to
Sydney.
"We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we'll be
well positioned. We're not particularly dependent on any
particular one market. There's not a lot of advertising for any
one market over another," he said.
Direct marketing, a successor to online marketing, had
historically performed well in times of economic recession,
Schmidt said.
"There tends to be a flight in a global slowdown to higher
quality advertising and higher quality advertising is
determined by what sells," he said.
Google, which earned $4.827 billion in revenue in the
fourth quarter, makes around 98 percent of its income from text
ads but was exploring new formats, such as advertising on You
Tube videos.
Google has a $900 million, three-year deal to sell
advertising to News Corp's MySpace customers under which it
must pay MySpace whether or not it makes money selling ads on
the site.
Shares in Google, which traded near $750 in November, fell
4.1 percent to $419.87 on Monday.
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