Stefan Mileschin

Google has seen its share prices fall and its CEO ruthlessly parodied after accidentally leaking its third-quarter earnings online yesterday.

According to AP, Google's financial printer accidentally published an incomplete version of its third-quarter earnings online. Google was supposed to release its financial report after the markets closed.

A draft press release which said "PENDING LARRY QUOTE", in place of comments from chief executive Larry Page said: .

"At just 14 years old, we cleared our first $14 billion revenue quarter. I am also really excited about the progress we're making creating a beautifully simple, intuitive Google experience across all devices."

Net profit was reported at $2.18 billion, compared to $2.73 billion in the same period a year ago.

The final version came a few hours later, with the same numbers but with a comment from chief executive Larry Page in place of a line on the draft which said, "PENDING LARRY QUOTE".

But the results were not as good as the "Larry Page" comment suggested and analysts were not impressed, although to be fair most of them had not factored in the purchase of Motorola Mobility.

The search giant reported that third-quarter earnings missed Wall Street expectations, causing its stock to plunge 9 per cent before trading was temporarily halted.

At one end of the comment scale was Independent tech analyst Jeff Kagan who told AP that the soft results "just a hiccup in Google's climb" and said the firm was still "on the growth side of the wave".

Anthony DiClemente at Barclays who said that his fellows on the "the Street" had been overly optimistic going into the quarter and did not fully discount the potential Motorola drag on the business".

The incident sparked a number of parady sites with one which was supposed to be "PendingLarry" on Twitter getting a lot of hits.

@PendingLarry https://twitter.com/@PendingLarry ran lines like "Somehow, I'll find a way to blame today's early release on Apple Maps" and "To be fair, we released our earnings yesterday afternoon on Google Plus".

There was also: "An early release ... I ... I swear that's never happened before" and the "You guys, that SEC filing was a beta release."

So far, Pending Larry has more than 1200 followers and has written 27 tweets before he quit.

http://news.techeye.net/internet/goo...arning-posting