Let's just hope they're not evil, because they are going to rule the world. They can certainly afford to buy it.

Google announced yet another record earnings period, with revenues of $1.578 billion - a freakin' 96 percent increase over the third quarter of last year.

Compare and contrast: Google's third quarter net income was $381.2 million, or $1.32 per diluted share, outstripping analyst predictions of $1.22 per diluted share (oh, analysts. Can't you do anything right?). This time last year, net income was $52 million. That is SEVEN TIMES more than last year.* What the hell are they putting in the water over at Mountain View?

This is the interesting part, which hearkens back to our post last month about Google's plans to expand into, oh, everything:

This quarter, Google increased its spending on research and development by about $56 million--from 14 percent of total revenue last quarter to 15 percent of total revenue this quarter, Reyes said.

According to eMarketer analyst David Hallerman, the uptick in research and development spending indicates that Google plans to come out with new products. "They're shooting out so many different ideas, and they're not all going to stick in terms of revenue--but they have so many of them," he said. (per MediaPost)

Some notes: the analyst mentioned above projects that 2005 will be the first year that Google's revenues will outstrip Yahoo's; he's projecting the Goog to take 28% of U.S. online ad revenue with Yahoo! at 24% (take heart, Yahoo, see above: analysts can be wrong). However those numbers shake down, there are interesting times ahead as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google do the dance of love and acquisition around AOL (Calacanis, how the hell did you know?) and Yahoo! ratchets up its defense against Google incursions with aggressive new innovations like the recent UK mapping feature. In the meantime, Google will be busy wi-fi-ing all of San Francisco, VoIPing up a storm, bringing high-bandwidth video straight to your desktop, creating new online software applications with Sun Microsystems, muscling into IM, playing fast and loose with online book publishing, blasting off to the moon, and donating oodles to charity to boot. I said it before and I'll say it again: IF YOU SEE EITHER OF THE GOOGLE BOYS, MAKE THEM MARRY YOU! Stalking aid after the jump.

Profit Rises Sevenfold at Google [NYT]
Google Doubles Revenue, Defies Predicted Summer Slowdown [MediaPost]

Related in Fishbowl:
Google owns the world, is also legitimately a verb
Google's dark plans to rule the world
No, seriously, Google really does want to rule the world - and beyond!

Original headline, rejected for unoriginality:

"It's Google's World, We're Just Living In It" [Google Search]

*Per the NYT: "Last year's results were depressed by a $201 million noncash charge related to settling a patent dispute with Yahoo." Okay, but the SEVEN TIMES thing is so fun to write -- see NYT headline -- that we did it anyway. We have not crunched the numbers without the Yahoo payout; if someone wants to do so and take Google down a notch, be my guest.