Google blames printer for early release of earnings

Considering the thousands of earnings statements that are filed each year, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often. But when it does, and the company happens to be Google, and the financial results happen to be weak (a 20 percent drop in net income) - well let's just say that the stock has seen better days. Google blamed its printer, R.R. Donnelley, for filing the earnings report without authorization (R.R. Donnelley was down sharply as well). Stand by for the conspiracy theories - anybody shorting Google stock had the potential to make quite a few bucks. At last check, shares were down 9 percent, though trading has been halted. From the WSJ:

For the third quarter, the average cost that advertisers paid Google per click fell 15% from a year earlier, and fell 3% from the prior quarter. Also, paid clicks, a measure of how frequently consumers click on Google's advertisements, increased 33% from a year earlier and were up 6% from the second quarter. Google generally pulls in less revenue from the advertising it places on mobile devices than it does from traditional personal computers. That's helped create a downward trend for advertiser prices on Google, which has caused some concern.