Google says it has plenty of ways to make money...

Google says it has plenty of ways to make money
Officials tell Wall Street analysts not to fret about growth

Google Inc. painted an optimistic picture of its future at an annual analyst meeting Thursday, trying to combat investors' fears that the company's torrid growth is slowing down.

In the process, the Mountain View Internet giant gave a little ground in its battle with Wall Street regarding how much financial information the company releases.

It all happened at Google's annual analyst day, where executives hosted Wall Street's researchers and repeatedly emphasized the potential for adding revenue through its international Web sites, by enticing more users to click on ads more often and by introducing new products. They also detailed the company's efforts to expand into offline advertising, such as radio, print and television, and maybe even direct mail.

If so, it would mean Google would operate in a market of up to $800 billion, according to Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt. Just getting a small percentage would be a considerable boost to the company's business.

"The size of this market is so much larger than anything we thought," Schmidt said.

Google, like most companies, used its analyst day, held at its Mountain View headquarters, to pat itself on the back in front of the investment community.

Google's shares, which have been on an uncharacteristic downward spiral recently, rose in trading Thursday. At the closing bell, they were up $11.65 to $376.45, a gain of 3.2 percent.

Earlier this week, George Reyes, Google's chief financial officer, spooked investors when he said at a conference that the company's growth is slowing. Although many analysts said he was only stating the obvious, the market reacted with a one-day sell-off.

The new financial information that Google released, which does not follow generally accepted accounting rules, included operating income, operating expense and cash flow for every quarter in 2004 and 2005. The data are particularly important to investors for forecasting Google's future performance because the company has a policy against providing its own forecasts, bucking Wall Street tradition.

Despite the hat-tip to openness, Google's executives repeatedly declined to answer specific questions posed by analysts Thursday about the business. Executives mostly spoke in generalities, without discussing any future Internet products, key users or advertising levels.

Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, addressed the recent criticism of the introduction of a censored search engine in China in compliance with the Beijing government's demands. He reiterated the company's argument that it is better to provide a limited amount of information to users there than none at all.

By not being in China, the company would be "not only hurting ourselves but the Chinese people," Brin said, citing his own childhood in Soviet-era Moscow.

Schmidt teased the analysts with the possibility that Google may eventually be a business with $100 billion in annual revenue, more than 15 times what it is now. In fact, he said, one of the company's goals in 2006 is to build a $100 billion global company, refusing to say whether he was referring to revenue or the company's market capitalization, which is $111 billion.

Schmidt emphatically denied that Google is planning to take on eBay's dominant PayPal online payment system. Last week, it started allowing users to buy products on its Google Base classified service, using a Google Account payment service that can be funded with a credit card.