Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) reported earnings for the third quarter of 2014, reporting $16.52 billion in revenue and $2.81 billion in profit. This represents a 20% increase year-over-year for revenue, but a decrease of 5% profitability over the same quarter a year ago. Google reported an EPS of $6.35 which is lower than what was expected of $6.53 and a fairly significant miss of Thomson Reuters’ consensus expected price.

Part of the reason why Google missed on earnings was due to the fact that a lot of Google’s foreign earnings grew very well, but as a result of a strong dollar those revenues didn’t translate to as much profit. Google also saw smaller growth in paid clicks, which was 17% rather than the expected 23.5% from Wall Street, additionally the cost per click continued to go down. In the quarter Google reported a decrease of 2% in cost per click which is also why Google may have appeared to not look as good as previous quarters. However, analysts expected that Google’s cost per click would actually go down 4% quarter over quarter, so Google actually outperformed expectations there.

Overall, Google still appears to be a very solid company with very solid profitability with operating profit still representing 23% of revenues at $3.72 billion, which is nothing to balk at. Google also announced three new Nexus devices, the Nexus 9, Nexus 6 and Nexus Play devices yesterday with the Nexus 9 and Nexus Play going on pre-order tomorrow. While it remains to be seen how this new hardware will affect Google’s earnings for the 4Q of 2014, they will very likely be very successful with the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 as both devices have been long awaited. And realistically, the Nexus devices will mostly sell in the fourth quarter and many will very likely be purchased for the holiday season so we could see Google’s revenue take a slight bump. But even so, it is merely a drop in the bucket in terms of Google’s $16 billion+ in revenue per quarter.

For the company’s 4Q 0f 2014, the biggest earnings will come from increased spending from retailers and advertisers for this holiday season and consumers go to Google to search for things to buy. Since the majority of Google’s revenue and profitability still come from traditional Google search, this holiday season should result in a fairly strong quarter if people are actively searching for products to buy.

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T-Mobile is going after AT&T once again, and this time they’re trying to compete with them (and Sprint) on their family plans. Family plans generally save families a lot of money because not all of the users in the household use tons of data nor do they all need that much. Generally speaking, most parents use very little data while the children tend to hog up most of the data. T-Mobile’s new plan is designed to deliver 10 GB of 4G LTE data to a family of four for the low price of $100.

T-Mobile Family Plan

As you can see from T-Mobile’s own table, their plan is a solid $60 a month cheaper than all of the competitors, coming out to $25 per person as opposed to $40. Additionally,T-Mobile is the only one of them offering free international data and texting in over 120 countries for absolutely no extra charge. And as if that isn’t enough, if you stream your music that doesn’t get counted against you on your monthly data cap of 10 GB. Even though this is questionably against Net Neutrality.

As you can see, their plan appears to be quite awesome in terms of data you get and additional bonuses. At T-Mobile’s prices, none of the carriers offer anything anywhere near as good. And at $100 for four people it is really quite hard to argue against, unless you live in an area where T-Mobile’s coverage isn’t competitive. Because, even now, T-Mobile’s coverage is only really competitive in larger metropolitan areas than out in the countryside where Verizon and AT&T are much stronger.

But this deal has one major caveat that T-Mobile is kind of hiding in fine print. The fine print states,”Offer ends 9/30/14. Pricing for 4 lines only 2.5 GB data per line/month until 1/2/16; then 1GB data per line.” So, yes, the offer is only good until September 30th, which isn’t actually the big deal, even though that indicates that this is not a long-term offering and is really a lot like a limited time promotion that cable companies like to do to grab you as a customer. However, it gets more cable company-esque. How so? Well, the price of the actual deal does not go up after a certain period of time but the amount of data per person goes from 2.5 GB per person to 1 GB per person starting January 2nd, 2016. This makes this deal only valid for a little more than a year, which is very similar to what cable companies do to attract customers (which is what T-Mobile appears to be doing).

If T-Mobile wants to retain customers, they should not make this such a limited time offer. In fact, it seems contrary to what T-Mobile has been preaching with no contracts and no bs. But frankly, this is kind of bs because most people that sign up for this deal will have absolutely no idea that their data will go from 10 GB to 4 GB.

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Personally, I feel a bit annihilated after today’s 2-hour visit to the dental office. My sins of the past (on racetracks finally caught up with me, and fixing them is no walk in the park. It’s 10PM here and I am shutting down – thanksgiving dinner is over and done for me, it was awesome seeing some old friends (Americans that decided to move to Croatia), even though time difference meant we’re eating dinner while the west coast is waking up.

But nevermind. To the readers in the US, I wish a happy thanksgiving day.

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