Google after the bell for 10-16-06: GOOG shares down a bit today in light trading

Google shares landed at $421.75 today, a decline of $5.55 or 1.30% from last Friday's close. As the market begins salivating this week over Google's quarterly earnings set to drop at 1:30pm PDT this Thursday, only a little under 4.3 million shares traded hands today.

Will Google blow away estimates once again, just meet estimates, or not even meet estimates? That question is a forgone conclusion to many, as analysts polled believe that Google will come away with earnings of $2.42 a share, quite a lift over the same period a year ago, which saw $1.51 per share earnings.

Of course, stay tuned this Thursday to goog.bloggingstocks.com for a live, second-by-second blog entry that will cover Google's earnings announcement as it happens. It out to be a fun ride for all of us, and -- of course -- the analyst questions should flow like water (with some of them being goofy, as usual).

This post today by Doug McIntyre hits the nail on the proverbial head -- in that Yahoo!'s new Panama search engine platform may not even matter to the marketplace. I've said many times that being the first-mover and staying there for a consistent period of time is a strategy that is incredibly hard to maintain, and Google right now is in that enviable position. If it stays there, there will be plenty of nice quarterly results to witness going forward.