Shares in internet search behemoth Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently rose to their highest level ever, giving the company a market capitalization figure (briefly) of over $200 billion. For a company that does not exist except in the virtual sense, that's impressive. The company makes no physical products (save for corporate search appliances) and rose to that level in just over three years on the public market. Is this for real?

Well, Google's recent quarterly earnings have shown that, so far, it is. The company just continues to make money hand over fist in the internet search arena, and has worked many acquisitions into itself to prepare for the day when -- gasp -- it can't grow by leaps and bounds on search results-based text advertising prowess alone. The company reported huge Q3 earnings today, with revenues of over $4.23 billion.

Analyst consensus expectations were for a $3.25 EPS figure, and Google smashed that with a $3.38 (GAAP) figure. So, stay tuned below as we'll hear what Google execs have to say about yet another record-setting quarter. Be sure and use the "Refresh" key to make sure you catch all the minute-by-minute updates below. All times are in EST.

:Earlier this morning, retailer Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) reported its second quarter earnings numbers. The company showed a decline of 15% in earnings year over year, but were able to come in above analyst estimates.

The stock is trading up 0.7% so far in premarket trading as we get ready to cover the company's conference call starting at 9:00 AM EDT. Be sure to refresh your screen often as updates will coming every couple of minutes during the entirety of this mornings call.

8:50 am - We have about 10 more minutes to go before this mornings call gets under way.

8:55 am - We are still on the call and waiting for the conference to get started. They have us just listening to a little easy listening music right now, and I expect that the action to get started here in about 5 more minutes

9:01 am - We seem to be running just a little bit late this morning, but should be getting started any minute now

9:03 am - Frank Blake is going through his opening comments. The issues around subprime market and the housing slowdown in general has been putting pressure on the company's business, and will continue to apply pressure. Comp sales were -5.2%. Sales were down 22%

9:05 am - best comp transaction performance in a while. saw a rise of 1.1$ for # of customer transactions

Home improvement giant Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) will get its chance to impress Wall Street tomorrow morning when it reports its second quarter numbers before the market opens. It has been a tough couple of months for home builders recently, and tomorrow morning we will see just how hard the slowdown has been for Home Depot.

If recent history is any indication, it could be an ugly day for the Atlanta based home retailer. The last time the company reported earnings was back on May 15, when it disappointed and missed estimates by 6 cents, showing earnings of 53 cents per share verse analyst estimates for 59 cents during its fiscal first quarter.

Out of the last four quarters, the company has managed to match estimates just one quarter. I wish I could say that I think this will be the quarter that the company turns things around, but I don't. The housing market has just been too brutal, and home builders have been too hard hit to put too much confidence in Home Depot's ability to come through this past quarter. Let's hope that I am wrong.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) reported its fourth quarter earnings today after the market close. The company showed earnings during the quarter of 35 cents per share, and the actual earnings for the quarter came out to 36 cents a share excluding special items.

The company will host its quarterly conference 4:30 PM EDT, and we will be covering the entire call, so be sure to refresh your page frequently to make sure you catch all the updated action.

4:25 pm - We have about 5 more minutes before the call gets started. The stock is trading down 0.3% in after hours trading at this time. Stay tuned, we should be under way shortly.

4:29 pm - Just about to get started here... they are playing some easy listening Fleetwood Mac music for us here while we wait for the call to get started.

4:31 pm - getting started now, currently just going over the SEC rules for the call and earnings release

4:34 pm - call is going to be slightly longer today because we are going to look at 3 areas.... Q4 2007, Full year 2007, and next major shift we can expect to see for Cisco

4:36 pm - CEO John Chambers now taking over for his opening remarks. This was the strongest quarter they have seen in many years. Another record from a revenue GAAP and non GAAP income.

As we noted earlier this morning, Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM) reported strong fiscal fourth quarter numbers this morning. The company showed ourth quarter income more than doubled from last year, and traders have been pushing the stock higher in early morning trading. As of 8:45 the stock is now trading up 4.0% in premarket trading.

We are going to be covering this morning's call in its entirety, so be sure to refresh your screen frequently as we will be updating this page regularly.

8:50 am - Getting ready for this mornings call to get under way.

8:55 am - About 5 more minutes and then we should be getting under way with this mornings call

9:01 am - getting under way now, just going through all the SEC regulatory comments now

9:03 am - Patricia Woertz, CEO , going over some full year numbers: 20% increase in yearly revenues, and 65% increase in yearly EPS

9:05 am - COmpany bought back 15.4 million shares of stock during the year

8:02 a.m. As I wrote yesterday, Strategic Decision #1: Steve Ballmer's decision to speak today, "directly to investors." He'll be answering questions from the little guy and the question on everyone's lips: will he be defensive?

8:04 a.m. Ballmer wants to speak about the business from both the perspective of an investor and a manager, and he promises not to yell at the audience. Heh. He starts out by saying that the next 10 years has as much potential for world-changing strides in computers and software as the last 10 years, and he's excited to be part of a company which "invests, profits from, and takes advantage of the incredible opportunity there is to innovate."

8:06 a.m. The thing that will change in the next 10 years? Digital writing. "Pencil and paper will be replaced by superior technology that is digital. And somebody will have the ability to benefit from that technology." He already sounds both (a) angry and (b) frantic. Maybe it's just his thang.

Today is eBay's Analyst Day, and we're watching the webcast to glean any important bits of info for you. Stay tuned for more throughout the afternoon.

Why did eBay take a stake in craigslist, the everyman's online classifieds? It made sense to me immediately, although I don't think I could put it in dollars and cents: for me and my friends, craigslist is IT (and, it turns out, we didn't find this particular IT on eBay). I got my job, my friends, my gossip, my double stroller, and someone to pick up my beat-up dryer on craigslist. It's how we all connected locally - and it's not nearly so efficient to buy or sell a large but relatively low-value item (hello appliances & baby goods) on eBay.

Meg answers an analyst question about craigslist by saying this: "We say - increasing returns on a city-by-city basis with craigslist. It's the theory that the buyers go where the sellers are, and the sellers go where the buyers are; we see it as, where classifieds get to a critical mass." Translated to say: newspaper classifieds are so over but it wasn't eBay which demolished them: it was craigslist. My question is, how do you monetize that? I suppose time will tell. I'd hate to see craigslist start charging for listing garage sale announcements and, yep, those beat-up old washers and dryers. Meg says that eBay will allow craigslist to remain autonomous (and, one would hope, still free but for job listings). We shall see.

[Disclaimer: I own a few shares of eBay, and next time I have cash to invest, I think I'm buying some more.]

Today is eBay's Analyst Day, and we're watching the webcast to glean any important bits of info for you. Stay tuned for more throughout the afternoon.

Skypecasts and Skype Me! are the names of the game: the answer to "how will eBay integrate Skype with PayPal and auctions?"

Everyone wants to hear more from our favorite CEO, Meg Whitman, and she has taken back the stage after lunch. She discusses the integration between Skype and eBay, raves about Skypecasts, and tells the gathered analysts: eBay transactions that allow potential buyers to "Skype Me" sell for twice the sales price of the transactions, that don't. Her keynote address is that "eBay provides your online reputation, PayPal provides your wallet, and Skype provides your online presence." She makes the argument that you will soon be able to take all of these aspects of your "self" with you wherever you go; "the internet will no longer be just a destination, but the fully integrated and ever present part of your lives."

[Tim Beyers from Motley Fool agrees with Meg: in his opinion, Skypecasts are a fantastic justification for Skype's $2.6 billion purchase price.]

Today is eBay's Analyst Day, and we're watching the webcast to glean any important bits of info for you. Stay tuned for more throughout the afternoon.

According to Skype President Rajiv Dutta, over 7% of worldwide long distance minutes are over Skype. That's truly incredible. Skype is such a young company, too, and far more penetrated in Northern Europe than anywhere else (it was founded in Great Britain). The possibility for growth seems fairly huge. Will it justify the $2.6 billion acquisition cost? More on that, later, as we talk integration. What it will do is give some hope to the people who wonder at the eye-popping richness of a 50x P/E ratio.

I want to just focus on the numbers but Skype is about "conversations," as the execs are telling us, so I'll describe the entirely adorable presentation introduction, in which a middle-aged man somewhere in England talks to his mom over Skype. She's still in her bathrobe. Oh. My. God. I fall over from the cuteness and spend several minutes under my desk.

[Disclaimer: I own a few shares of eBay, and I am responsible for some tiny fraction of those long distance minutes talked on Skype.]

Today is eBay's Analyst Day, and we're watching the webcast to glean any important bits of info for you. Stay tuned for more throughout the afternoon.

"I'll pay you back next time." How many times have you heard that? PayPal wants to change all that by allowing person-to-person payments via your mobile phone. If you are a PayPal executive and you're buying a case of wine in Napa Valley, no need to tote a bunch of cash -- just let your friend pick up the case on his credit card and you can PayPal him back a couple of bills in the parking lot (before putting the half-case in the trunk of your Mercedes sedan, of course). I'm psyched, because next time I go to the Goodwill outlet, and my friend Larissa and I go diving for funky thrift items to re-sell on eBay, we can combine our loot (it's less per pound the more you buy) and I can pay her back instantaneously. Or how 'bout this: garage sales! It's brilliant. If I could use my PayPal account at garage sales, I'd buy so much more.

This is working now, and a new feature that was just released: text-to-pay. There's a demonstration of how it works; the presenter buys a Walk The Line DVD from his phone with his PayPal account (a UPS deliveryman brings it immediately -- yeah, you're cute, eBay). It's great, but you could already buy that DVD with your cell phone (yeah, you had to call the 800 number and tell them your credit card number, etc. - but still. Not changing the world). You can't use your credit card at a garage sale. Your buddy doesn't have a credit card acceptor when you split the check. That's where PayPal makes a difference, in my opinion.

[Disclaimer: I own a few shares of eBay, and I've been known to sell things on eBay, purchased at the Goodwill outlet, for a profit.]

Today is eBay's Analyst Day, and we're watching the webcast to glean any important bits of info for you. Stay tuned for more throughout the afternoon.

eBay is really three brands now: eBay, Skype and PayPal. The PayPal team is on now, and after an introduction by a hugely pregnant woman whose presentation was excellent (but I was in such admiration of her belly that I had a hard time focusing), we got some numbers. This one was interesting to me: $3 billion has been withdrawn using PayPal debit cards.

I have a PayPal debit card, and I can't tell you how nice it was to be able to use funds from eBay sales instantaneously (to buy coffee at Starbucks, naturally). This figure really illustrates how widely the PayPal service has penetrated the interperson payment marketplace.

[Disclaimer: I own a few shares of eBay, and have been known to buy groceries, lattes and glasses of yummy red wine with my PayPal debit card.]

0:00 I'm listening to the call just after the market open, so I'll report it to you in time elapsed on the call. Everyone's buzzing about Time Warner's much-higher-than-expected earnings, which have still disappointed investors (the stock was down 31 cents to $17.11 at last check). Revenues were just a touch up from the year-ago quarter, to $10.5 billion, and operating income was up 11% to $1.9 billion. The company is churning cash, too, with $1.6 billion in free cash flow.

The big story, of course, is that AOL revenue and income are both down from a year ago. Publishing is down in both areas, too, but no one seems to be mentioning that. If you're looking for good news, there's a lot of it: cable income is up significantly and both "Filmed Entertainment" and "Network" categories show some strong growth in income.

0:25 James Barge, SVP of Investor Relations, takes the mic. He explains the company's odd and non-GAAP measures, including (quite a mouthful) adjusted OIBDA (operating income before depreciation and amortization). It excludes some items, like "non-cash asset impairments" and amounts from sales of business lines. It seems like a sensible financial measure but it's hilarious to hear someone say it. [This from a girl whose friends, it must be admitted, tell accounting jokes to one another. Did you hear the one about EBCOSITDA? Oh, never mind.]