• The New York Times et al., Friday, July 16, 2010 3:52 PM

Despite growing net income and revenue in the second quarter, Google appears to have fallen out of favor with anxious investors. As a result, Google's stock price has sunk 17% in recent months, and fell roughly 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

"Like an impatient audience at intermission, Google's investors are waiting for its second act," writes The New York Times. "As Google grows and search becomes increasingly competitive, analysts and investors are beginning to wonder what is next for the company."

"The latest figures also reflected only a modest improvement in pricing in the company's core search advertising business, echoing a concern that had spread after the first- quarter earnings," according to The Financial Times.

"Google also faces ongoing questions about when it will come up with another meaningful source of revenue beyond search, whether from mobile advertising or from its online video-sharing site YouTube,"

Meanwhile, "Google's biggest threat at this point is Apple, whose iPhone and iPad tablet threaten to pinch Google's mobile advertising opportunities on the Web," writes eWeek. "Google's Android platform is strong, but still trails far behind the hallowed iPhone, whose biggest threat appears to be itself thanks to faulty antennas."

Overall, "Investors just want to see higher sales growth out of Google," The Wall Street's Journal's MarketBeat blog wrote yesterday. As always, "The number to watch is revenue after subtracting revenue shared with partner sites, which is called traffic acquisition costs. Last quarter, Google's revenue growth was up 23% from the year-earlier period. That looked great, but it clearly wasn't enough to please investors."

Alas, "Although Google's revenue increased 24% [for Q2] over the same period last year, sales were only up 1% over the first quarter of 2010," reports DailyFinance. "The results suggest that the era of blowout Google earnings reports may be coming to an end, as the company matures and its growth rate slows."

Read the whole story at The New York Times et al. »