Say it isn't so: Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) may be tightening its always-loose belt and reigning in costs as the economy tries to pick its way out of a recession. The company that prepares free gourmet lunches for employees and gives extraordinary time for employees to develop pet projects is pulling things into reality a bit.

Revenue growth at the search giant has slowed in the last year, as even internet advertising has slowed down in the face of a prolonged economic crunch that we're experiencing. Like many of us here at BloggingStocks have said for years, almost all of Google's revenue comes from online advertising. It was late to the game in trying to develop other revenue sources (yes, even a year makes a difference), and the incremental gains the company has seen in revenue still mostly revolve around some form of advertising. What happens when customers have no budget to advertise?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal that "We have to behave as though we don't know" (what's going to happen). Google will be cutting efforts to projects that have not caught on, aren't generating revenue and
also cutting back efforts on products that aren't exciting. Google's leader indicated that the company needs to "prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business." That's great, except the "ads" part..

Google still has the model of envy when it comes to ad-based online revenue, but now it's having to stretch ads into more of its properties, like Google Finance and Google News. Can Google find more revenue engines than those small text ads that appear next to its search results? It has to -- it can't continue the same way of generating its cash flow and expect things to turn out alright in the future. Is Google a one-trick pony? Could be, although it's still too early to tell.