A QUESTION ABOUT GOOGLE AND WALL STREET

BANZAI7 NEWS--Google revved up its Internet-advertising sales in the fourth quarter and approached $2 billion in quarterly profit for the first time, the strongest sign yet that the Internet search leader has shaken off the recession's doldrums.

Google made a profit of $1.97 billion, or $6.13 per share, in the final three months of 2009, up sharply from $382.4 million in the comparable period in 2008.

Meanwhile investment bank Morgan Stanley has allotted 62 per cent of its 2009 revenue in pay and bonuses to its staff, the highest level in more than a decade, just a year after the worst banking crisis in 70 years.

QUESTION: Google and gigantic global banks have two key similarities: they are both essentially glass boxes filed with lots of servers, state of the art software and bright people finding ways to make boatloads of money. Why is it that Google, unlike Wall Street, does not have to pay out huge cash bonuses to keep its best and brightest? Googlites are happy to take shares of their company as compensation like the rest of the tech crowd.

Unlike the banksters, googlites work for a company that is the biggest of its kind, but is not too big to fail.