Google (GOOG) gave investors some Q4 numbers to digest after the bell on Thursday, but that news may have been overshadowed by a surprise change in management. As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, Larry Page will be taking over CEO duties from Eric Schmidt.

But let's have a look at the numbers anyway. On a reported basis, the search-engine business made $7.81 a share, good for a 27% year-over-year growth rate. On an adjusted basis, per-share profit came out to $8.75, comfortably ahead of the $8.06 projected by Wall Street. The top line also put in a strong showing.

A Financial Times article reported that next year Google (GOOG) plans to introduce its new operating system called Chrome OS. Google's new Chrome laptop will feature an operating system based on the computing power of the Web, rather than running "native" software made by Microsoft.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, called the new system: "A viable third choice in real operating systems to stand alongside Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) and a culmination of a vision he has worked on since 1983."

Google (GOOG) has been the bain of the publishing industry -- both printed and electronic -- for years. Its Google Books project scans books by the hundreds in order to make the content accessible online and for free. Have a newspaper website? Google probably scans it daily to aggregate pieces of your content at Google News (again, for free). Google CEO Eric Schmidt, though, thinks that newspapers can follow the Google model and make money using their content online, and not hide everything behind a pay wall.

Google has had an ongoing dispute with Chinese censors over Google's search engine content. China maintains strict censorship of the Internet sites that appear on Chinese search engines. Google (GOOG) on the other hand wants complete freedom of content on its site -- Google.cn.

Both sides have reached an impasse. Google has all but decided to close its Chinese search engine.

The newspaper industry continues to blame Google (GOOG) for its woes, and Google continues to claim its innocence. The search engine giant's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says that his company could actually help the newspaper industry survive the shift from print to digital ... a shift that's been more than a decade in the making, he was kind enough not to note.

According to Schmidt, publishers need to dig into the online environment and find new ways to generate revenue. "With dwindling revenue and diminished resources," he wrote in an op-ed piece published in News Corp's (NWS) Wall Street Journal, "frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame."

Some people join wine-of-the-month clubs. There are plenty of other programs out there, too, where your credit card is hit every month, and your purchase is sent to you directly. If only such programs were available for Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). . . .

The company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said Wednesday that Google plans to pick up a small company a month as a way to get its acquisition head back in the game. With the worst of the recession behind us, Google believes, this is a great way to get moving.

Yesterday, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) had its fifth birthday as a public company. Google, which has done nothing short of astounding in the last half-decade in terms of turning much of the advertising world upside-down, has defied many of the critics who probably never believed it would become as strong as it has in such a short time. That's because that kind of thinking was linear, and Google operated on an exponential scale using data and formulas to make things works quickly and efficiently, not haphazard management belief and inefficient decision making.

And so here we are. After the IPO that Google made accessible to anyone in a dutch auction back in August of 2004, the company's shares have made it all the way to $700 and above from their initial IPO price of $85, and closed yesterday at just over $443 per share after dipping almost down to $250 last December. Google has risen during the most intense part of a recession that's just now being acknowledged as being close to over.

Internet search titan Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is apparently closing in on its goal to produce renewable energy at a price point cheaper than coal. In an interview with Reuters Tuesday, Google's green energy czar, Bill Weihl, said that the odds of success have improved during the past year, and predicted, "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."

After announcing in late 2007 its quest for "green" energy, the company's Google.org division began investing in solar thermal, geothermal, and wind technologies. The tech firm's keen interest in alternative energy sources was a contributing factor last year when President Obama named Google CEO Eric Schmidt as one of his advisers.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and its thirty-something founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will again toss themselves a $1 annual salary this year. Their salary compensation has been a single greenback ever since Google went public in 2004.

The three will also forgo the bonuses and stock awards that are given to many of the search giant's 20,000 employees. But the beggar bags should not go out just yet.

Every week, there seems to be a new book that extols the magic of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). There is even a book called What Would Google Do?, which tries to apply Google principles to a range of businesses.

In fact, even with the plunge in the global economy, it seems that Google is impervious to the real world. Right?

Perhaps not. Interestingly enough, there was some negativity from Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt. This is according to a presentation he gave at the Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) tech conference.

This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

There's no doubt about it -- times are tough. People are struggling to find work and to pay the bills as the value of their homes and savings dwindle. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Or do they? It's all relative, of course, but world's billionaires have been taking some big hits too. We take a look at Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Lakshmi Mittal in their own separate posts, but here are some other billionaires who have lost billions this year (courtesy of Forbes and Business Sheet).

• Brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance lost $32.5 billion and $28.2 billion, respectively.
• Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, lost $16.5 billion. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) are down about 32% since the beginning of the year.
• Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen lost $12.3 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, while CEO Steve Balmer lost $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft are down 46% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google Inc. (NYSE: GOOG), lost $11.9 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, and CEO Eric Schmidt lost $3.8 billion. The share price of Google has fallen 55% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), lost $8.2 billion. Shares of Oracle are down 21% since the beginning of the year.
• Media maven Sumner Redstone lost $7.2 billion. Shares of his private investment firm National Amusements fell 70% this year.