Googling Gloom

"Even Google can't escape the recession." That's the glum prognosis of BusinessWeek this morning in an analysis of the search engine's underwhelming first-quarter results revealed on Thursday. The hard-to-swallow news is Google (GOOG) reported its first ever quarter-on-quarter sales decline in its five years as a public company. The Financial Times goes even further back, saying Google's "11-year growth spurt" has come to an end. Google still managed to beat analysts' profit estimates, but it gave no sign things will improve any time soon in its core ad sales business. "The quarter confirms that Google is suffering from the economic slowdown," an analyst at Collins Stewart told BusinessWeek.

The New York Times gives a slightly rosier picture, noting Google has adapted well so far to the pullback in advertising by dramatically cutting costs. "As a result, Google reported net income for the first quarter of $1.42 billion, an 8 percent jump from a year earlier and higher than analysts expected," according to the newspaper. But Google's austerity is about the only good thing anyone could say about yesterday's results. While applauding Google management's foresight in cutting costs before things got really bad, one analyst told the NYT it's the end of an era at the dot-com star. "The freewheeling, high-spending days are gone," an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company told the newspaper.

Things aren't looking much better on the tiny screen. Nokia (NOK), the world's largest mobile-phone maker, reported its worst quarterly profit in more than a decade on Thursday, the NYT reports in a separate article. The stock, though, shot up 9 percent after CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told analysts this is probably as bad as it will get in the handset market.

In Detroit, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli can see the writing on the wall. The Chrysler CEO and board are essentially out of a job if Chrysler succeeds in merging with Italian automaker Fiat, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a letter Nardelli wrote to his employees. "Upon successful completion of the alliance, a board of directors for Chrysler will be appointed by the U.S. government and Fiat," Mr. Nardelli said in the letter. It continued: "The majority of the directors will be independent (not employees of Chrysler or Fiat). The board will have the responsibility to appoint a chairman. The board also will select a CEO with Fiat's concurrence." Chrysler has until the end of the month to strike a deal with the Italians, a tall order as negotiations are still under way with the United Auto Workers over new cost concessions, Dow Jones Newswires reports. And there's fresh heat today on the Obama-appointed head of the auto task force, Steve Rattner. According to the Washington Post, the investment firm Rattner founded in 2000, the Quadrangle Group, has been named in a pay-for-play investment scheme being investigated by New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The investigation has already taken down some big fish. "So far, three people have been charged and one, a hedge fund executive, pleaded guilty this week," the newspaper reports. It's not clear whether Rattner himself will be directly implicated, as the SEC complaint only cites an unnamed "senior executive" at Quadrangle as being involved, the Washington Post writes. But the WSJ has found someone who can finger Rattner as that "senior executive." According to the WSJ's source, it was Rattner who sought out a politically connected consultant in 2004 in a meeting that may have helped Quadrangle land a big investment from New York's state pension fund.

Could JPMorgan Chase (JPM) be the next big bank preparing to pay back Uncle Sam? After posting a better-than-expected first-quarter profit (overall net income was still down) on Thursday, speculation is running high that JPMorgan Chase will pay back the TARP loan ahead of schedule, the WSJ writes. CEO James Dimon appears anxious to clear its books of the loan. "We could pay it back tomorrow. We have the money," Dimon told analysts. The bank received $25 billion in TARP funds, which is now looking like a stigma as it starts to see its core business pick up again. In fact, Dimon himself referred to the loan as a "scarlet letter," the newspaper notes.

In an effort to jump-start the U.K.'s low-carbon transport efforts, the government is dangling cash incentives. According to the FT, "buyers of electric cars will get subsidies of up to £5,000 [or $7,465] under plans unveiled" on Thursday by the British government. There are a few snags, however, the always skeptical British press point out. Firstly, the subsidies will count only for electric models that hit the market beginning in 2011, the Times of London points out. And then there is the matter of a lack of charging points for the autos. The government has put aside another £20 million ($29.9 million) to build them around the country.

And finally, how do you say "big payoff" in Portuguese? No doubt, the translation experts at Rosetta Stone (RST) know the answer. Rosetta Stone stunned the markets on Thursday with a wildly successful IPO, "one of the few bright spots in what has been a slow period for initial public offerings," the Washington Post notes. The profitable language-instruction company, known for its language-instruction software, raised $112 million in the offering. The stock debuted at $18 and closed at $25.12, the newspaper notes.