Last week, Google announced its 2nd quarter results, which contained a line item of about $700 million for capital spending, including about $320 million for real estate purchases in Mountain View, California, its headquarters.
$700 million in capital spending represents a 342% increase from the 2nd quarter 2005. This capital spending pace is well ahead of the $1.8 billion for 2006 that I calculated only a couple of months ago. Compare to other capital spending behemoths like Comcast (cable TV) with about $1 billion in quarterly capital spending and Verizon (phone) with about $4 billion in quarterly capital spending. As stated in that prior post on the subject, Google is slightly different than these companies because Google has an international footprint while cable and phone are domestic industries, but it's breathtaking to see how large of a player Google has become in only 8 years of operations.
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