Today: Google is buying in to an effort to bring wind energy to East Coast cities. Intel reports record revenue. Twitter aims for 1 billion users. An iPhone game maker, ngmoco, is sold for as much as $400 million.
Google’s money
Over the weekend, Internet juggernaut Google revealed that its engineers were working on developing self-driving robotic cars — and had even taken a robotic Prius on a road trip from the company’s Mountain View headquarters to Santa Monica and other scenic spots in California.
Today, Google said it will be investing in the development of a 350-mile offshore transmission backbone to link future wind power farms to big cities on the Atlantic Seaboard.
In a blog post, Rick Needham, Google’s green business operations director, said the company will be taking a 37.5 percent equity stake in the project.
According to The Associated Press, Robert L. Mitchell — CEO of Maryland-based Trans-Elect — said the first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection project will cost $1.8 billion and include 150 miles running from New Jersey to Delaware.
The robotic-car and wind-power announcements come just before Google’s earnings report Thursday afternoon, and shareholders may be wondering how such investments will pay off for the company.
Silicon Alley Insider’s Nick Saint today suggested projects such as the robotic-car effort are crucial to keeping its engineers happy, although Henry Blodget — also of Silicon Alley Insider — contended Sunday that Google would be better off spending the money on “something closer to its core business” such as Google Apps, Chrome or Android.
As for the wind power project, Needham explained Google’s rationale for the investment.
“We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy,” Needham wrote. “We’re willing to take calculated risks on early stage ideas and projects that can have dramatic impacts while offering attractive returns. This willingness to be ahead of the industry and invest in large scale innovative projects is core to our success as a company.”
In an e-mail to clients today ahead of Google’s earnings report, Gleacher & Co. analyst Yun Kim offers the Android operating system as an example of an investment that is paying off — even though Google doesn’t charge smartphone makers to use it.
“The main business purpose of Android was to accelerate adoption of smartphones in the mobile market as smartphone users are significantly more likely to increase the number of search queries vs. users of non-smartphone devices,” Kim wrote.
More Google news: Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president for search products, will be taking on responsibility for location and local services, Bloomberg News is reporting.
“Marissa has made an amazing contribution on search over the last decade, and we’re excited about her input in this new area in the decade ahead,” a Google statement said, according to the news service.
Google stock: The shares, by the way, closed today at $541.39, up $2.55 cents, or 0.5 percent.
Intel’s record revenue
Santa Clara chip behemoth Intel, which makes the microprocessors that are the brains in most of our Windows and Mac computers, this afternoon kicks off a cavalcade of earnings reports from Silicon Valley tech companies.
Intel reported profit of $3 billion, up 59.2 percent from a year earlier. Revenue jumped 18.2 percent to a record $11.1 billion.
“Intel’s third-quarter results set all-time records for revenue and operating income,” CEO Paul Otellini said in a news release. “These results were driven by solid demand from corporate customers, sales of our leadership products and continued growth in emerging markets.”
For the current quarter, Intel expects revenue in a range of $11 billion to $11.8 billion. By contrast, Wall Street analysts had been expecting fourth-quarter revenue of $11.3 billion, according to Bloomberg News.
“We continue to see healthy worldwide demand for computing products of all types,” Otellini said.
Intel reported results just after the stock markets closed this afternoon. Its third-quarter earnings came in at 52 cents a share. According to Bloomberg, that beat analysts’ expectations of 50 cents a share.
Before the results were released, Intel’s stock closed at $19.77, up 21 cents, or 1.1 percent. The shares were climbing in after-hours trading.
1 billion tweeters?
Just like Palo Alto social networking powerhouse Facebook, San Francisco microblogging site Twitter (which lets you share your thoughts online, as long as you keep your tweets to 140 characters or less) is aiming for 1 billion users.
“Twitter will get to a billion members,” co-founder and former CEO Ev Williams said, according to a Bloomberg report.
Twitter, you might recall, recently promoted Dick Costolo — an early investor and former chief operating officer — to CEO as the company aims to find more ways to generate revenue. Williams, meanwhile, led a redesign of the site.
iPhone game maker sold
Ngmoco, a San Francisco maker of games for Apple’s iPhone, has been bought by Japanese mobile game maker DeNA for as much as $400 million, the companies announced today.
CEO Neil Young and other ngmoco founders also said the game maker — which has been backed by Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures and other firms — will begin developing titles for Google’s Android operating system.
Employees and shareholders of ngmoco will be paid $300 million in cash and stock — and as much as $100 million more “contingent upon the achievement of certain performance milestones,” according to the release.
Silicon Valley tech stocks
Up: Apple, Google, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, VMware, eBay, Yahoo.
Down: Gilead Sciences.
Electronic Arts stock plunged $1.05, or 5.9 percent, to $16.61. According to Bloomberg News, the stock fell after reviews were posted for the Redwood City video game publisher’s new “Medal of Honor.”
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 15.59, or 0.6 percent, to 2,417.92.
The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 10.06, or 0.1 percent, to 11,020.40.
And the widely watched Standard & Poor’s 500 index: Up 4.45, or 0.4 percent, to 1,169.77.
Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.
